ACQUIRING FLUENCY IN ENGLISH

On the face of it, acquiring fluency in English should present no great difficulty to Hong Kong Chinese people at the present time.  The Californian State Department of Education  (1984) states the following with regard to the acquisition of fluency in English by Cantonese-speaking students in the USA:

“To acquire fluency in English, students need substantial exposure to English in acquisition-rich environments.  This type of environment can be provided in the home, school, or community. Educators often underestimate the exposure language minority students have to English.  Several research studies indicate that, regardless of the school program (submersion, ESL, or bilingual education), many language minority students in the United States acquire basic interpersonal communicative skills in English in two to three years.”

The Board of Education makes another interesting point:

“Cognitive/academic language development in English is more efficient when school personnel build on already acquired cognitive/academic language skills in Cantonese.”

I will deal with the first point first.  Hong Kong would appear to present an acquisition-rich environment for several reasons:

·        The availability of newspapers, radio and TV, films, video cassettes, books, learning material.

·        The comparatively high number of native English speakers.

·        The amount of school time devoted to English.

·        The availability of native speaker teachers of English.

·        The number of visitors to Hong Kong from English speaking-   countries.

·        The presence of a great many proficient speakers of English as a second language.

Comparisons with a mainland ‘international city’ such as Shanghai may make the first point clearer.  In 1988, there were no English radio stations, no English TV stations (apart from one half hour of news in English which may be available on wire from Beijing) available in Shanghai.  The Voice of America was easily received, if the student could afford a short wave radio set. Such sets were not freely available and were occasionally subject to Government control. The BBC was, until the transmitter in Hong Kong was inaugurated, hardly receivable.  In any case, short wave reception is always subject to fading and interference.  In addition, the English is often stilted and the programme content unattractive or irrelevant. Films in public cinemas were dubbed into Chinese, if they were produced abroad. One English daily newspaper, “The China Daily” was available but was of interest only to the badly informed, the student of propaganda or the truly naive.  Some of its English was marked heavily by Chinese Communist cultural transmission and did not give the reader an opportunity to read an idiomatic, modern model (see Xu (1987)). A visit to the biggest Foreign Language bookshop in Shanghai revealed a poor selection of dated language learning material, about twenty popular English novels, some tourism books, guides to aspects of Chinese culture and a number of translations of Chinese literature.  Access to foreign language books was controlled. Cassette tapes were of poor quality and relatively expensive. Many Chinese students preferred to copy the cassettes accompanying English courses resulting in a deterioration of fidelity.

By comparison, Hong Kong is blessed with the facilities for English language learning in a way which even few continental European cities are: two English language TV channels, two daily English newspapers, three full English radio channels (and other music stations featuring English), good bookshops and accessible libraries. A possible problem is the level of the English employed in the media:

“The major barrier (to) preventing students from using all types of media in English... is the difficulty of the language used.” (McLennan, (1990), Vol 1 p. 251)

This is due in turn to the presence of a significant minority (well above the percentage of foreigners in China) producing and consuming English media at native speaker level.   Paradoxically, the NS minority in Hong Kong may make language learning more difficult.

Kwok (1975) takes the view that there are few opportunities for practicing spoken English in Hong Kong and that although there is a ‘plentiful supply’ of English resources, students are exposed to very little.  No explanation is given for the non- exploitation of English resources.

Poon (1989) sees something she describes as not fitting into a theory of ‘cognitive dissonance’ (Festinger 1957) in the paradoxical behaviour of students with overtly instrumental learning orientation who ascribe importance to oral ability in  English but do not exploit opportunities for improving it:

‘Although the students perceived speaking skills as the most important of all to their business career and were least confident in their ability in it, they tended to spend the least time on these skills in school as well as outside school.’(p.106)

More interestingly, only 58.9% of students would be pleased to practice their English with a colleague outside class. Only 5.8% would watch English TV without looking at the Chinese subtitles.

I believe that such apparently paradoxical views are better understood not as examples of unfulfilled cognitive dissonance, which would act to mediate conflicts of opinion, but as examples of simultaneously existing roles, values and functions of English which are contained in different parts of the personality.

The second observation by the Board links with the idea of ‘intellectual fluency’ mentioned by Harris (1989) as a central condition for English-medium tertiary education.  Because of the constant code-mixing in secondary schools, it would be difficult to maintain that cognitive skills in Cantonese are developed in such a way that English can build on them (see Johnson 1983).  This is a more difficult problem than the term ‘fluency’ would suggest on its own.

CONDITIONS FOR SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING

Richards (1974) quoting Van Humboldt, remarked that languages cannot be taught, but the conditions for speaking a foreign language may be created. Spolsky (1989) provides a synthesis of modern ESL research in his model of second language learning which is one of the three models I have adopted as an implicit“ frame of reference for a large part of my discussion. 

As I have already pointed out, it was not the aim of this study to carry out systematic research from any single viewpoint and the adoption of these models, like the models for classroom observation later in the thesis, served as background references rather than explicit research instruments.

Spolsky’s model incorporates factors such as attitude, motivation, personality, capabilities as central parts of the model rather than peripherals.  It is a model which does not establish how language is learned but ‘the conditions under which learning takes place’.

I have chosen this model as it seems the best to analyse the answers to my apparently simple question in this research:  ‘What are the difficulties in learning English in Hong Kong?’   The physical, environmental, sociological conditions under which learning takes place (as opposed to the abstract conditions) seem to be so prominently highlighted, by spontaneous reaction as well as by considered response, by the respondents to my questioning that any systematic model which highlights such factors is welcome to me.

Spolsky’s model is a preference model.  This is derived from the work of the Jackendorff who distinguished between well- formed, necessary conditions and typicality or preference conditions when handling the problem of grouping.  Thus it is possible to establish the idea of stronger and weaker judgments which result from the convergence or conflict of compet­ing criteria.

In practice, the conditions used by Spolsky are either necessary or typical and can be graded.  They are not always absolute.  They provide a useful versatility to the varying conditions for second language learning. ‘...The model shows that there are in fact multiple paths to a complex set of outcomes.’

An important point made clear by Spolsky is that ‘methods’ are not in the foreground of his model; rather, his model incorporates the factor of teaching method into a dynamic picture of what is going on. This overall picture may suggest better teaching methods.The alternative models, enumerated by Spolsky, include Krashen’s Monitor Model, Stern’s Theory, the socio-educational model of Gardner, Second Language Education Theory (summarised by  Ellis,  Klein),  Lado’s Linguistic Theory,  John  Carroll’s Model,  Gloria  Sampson’s  Model,  Halliday  and  Schlesinger’s Model, John Schumann’s Acculturation Model. An overview of Spolsky’s model is provided by the following diagram:The model may also be expressed as a simple mathematical formula:

Kf = Kp + A + M + O

Kf = the knowledge and skills at some future time

Kp = knowledge and skills at the moment including general knowledge of the learner’s first and any other languages

A  = various components of ability including physiological, biological, intellectual and cognitive skills

M  = various affective factors such as personality, attitudes, motivation and anxiety

O  = opportunity for learning the language, consisting of time multiplied by kind, the latter covering the range of formal and informal situations in which the learner is exposed to the language.

As Spolsky admits, this is an oversimplified formula in that   ‘it does not go far enough in capturing the complex interaction or all the interlocking influences that a preference model will demonstrate.’

Spolsky then gives 74 conditions which are relevant to second language learning.   Of these conditions, I was particularly interested in those devoted to Condition 31  (Learning Style Preference Condition); Condition 33 (Second Language Learning Anxiety Condition); Condition 45  (Official Use Condition); Linguistic Convergence Condition (Condition 48); Linguistic Divergence Condition  (Condition 49).  These conditions gave valuable hints to the progress of my own investigations.

The choice of these conditions was supported by initial re­sponses to our main research question: ‘What are the difficul­ties in learning English in Hong Kong’ but also by studies of the language learning situation made hitherto, of which Fu (1987) is typical and which summarises much previous research.

THE TRIANGLE - HOLISTIC, TRANSACTIONAL AND STRUCTURAL

Fu sees the language learner in Hong Kong as being in a

triangle:

CHINESE

AND ALL

ITS VARIETIES

   PRAGMATIC                             AMBIVALENT

       NEED FOR                            CONSIDERATIONS

       ENGLISH                             REGARDING BOTH

LANGUAGES

“The triangle, it is not hard to guess, is neither neatly equilateral nor right angular, but rather fairly lopsided and constantly shifting in form.”

As she explains later in some detail, the actual situation in Hong Kong is more complicated than a mere attitude/motivation model may suggest and must incorporate situational factors  (class size, environmental noise, books available, time allotted) which I term logistical factors; methodology (teaching style, training of teacher, teaching tradition, teaching expectations of student and teacher); and attitude.  Fu’s triangle is but one corner of my model for understanding what goes on in Hong Kong.

The elements which make up a language learning situation would not, in my view, be isolated.  This is particularly true in Hong Kong, where the pressures on teachers, students, adminis­trators and other persons involved, directly or indirectly, in the language learning process are manyfold, complex and inter­woven in such a way that analysis of, say, the success of a particular teaching technique entails necessarily an examina­tion of many extraneous factors. There are three basic constraints on the successful language teaching situation:                    

LOGISTICS

(material/environmental)  

        METHODOLOGY                     ATTITUDE

         (didactic)                                    (psychological)

Even with such a simple triple division, we run into difficulty and the necessity of the holistic“ approach becomes clear.  The environment, that is the actual physical shape, layout, noisiness or otherwise of the typical Hong Kong classroom enforces a certain methodology and produces, in time, a certain attitude in both teachers and the taught.  A certain psychological attitude in some students, as examined by Pierson (e.g. 1980), Bond (1986) and others, influences the teacher to employ a certain teaching technique and encourages a certain learning environment.  And so on.

Another misleading division is made in the examination of, say, student motivation with cursory examination of teacher motivation.  Again, we may look too closely at learner difficulties and ignore the teacher’s own difficulties, hang- ups and inadequacies.  This brings us to the second prong of our approach, namely that the language learning situation is a transactional“ situation, based on a subtle repricocity, where the attitude, receptivity, motivation etc. of each party in the process influences the final outcome.  This is particularly true in the cultural distance evident in the teaching of English to Chinese students.

Besides being holistic and transactional, the third property of our approach is that it is structural, that is an approach characterised by a web of relationships and an emphasis on the underlying structures of a process or situation which generate the surface phenomena.

Some assumptions adopted by Strevens (1987) are shared in this approach:

1)   Language is ‘but one element of the complex, seamless fabric of the total culture of a society.’

2)   ‘Language in this context embraces much more than vocabulary, grammar and phonology.’

3)   ‘Difficulties of understanding’ (and I propose, of learning)    ‘in cross-cultural circumstances are as much - or more than   cross-cultural as linguistic.’

I will refer later to the language learning barriers highlighted by Strevens, and others (e.g. Spolsky 1986), in more detail.

The integration of all three elements of my triangle with the three accompanying principles, allied to Strevens’ assumptions, together with the comprehensive model proposed by Spolsky and the Transactional Analysis model which follows will form the basis of my investigations.

TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS - A GENERAL MODEL OF HUMAN INTERACTION

Transactional Analysis is a comprehensive phenomenological, non-psychoanalytic model in humanistic psychology.  It was developed by Eric Berne, (1910-1970), born Eric Leonard Bernstein, a Canadian psychiatrist resident in California for much of his professional life. The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought“ (ed. Bullock, 1988) defines Transactional Analysis thus:

“In psychotherapy, a theoretical and practical approach developed by Eric Berne, and popularized in his book Games People Play (New York, 1964; London, 1966).  Building on Freud’s stress upon infantility and Adler’s preoccuption with power strategies and Life Style, it postulates three positions from which people can communicate (child, adult, and parent) and six possible classes of transaction (e.g. work, pastimes, intimacy), of which games are most frequently the focus of transactional analysis.  In a typical game, one player pretends to be having an adult-adult relationship with another, but is actually trying to manipulate the other into being a ‘parent’ to his ‘ child’, and thereby to achieve a goal such as avoiding responsibility for his own actions.   The analyst, usually working with a group...exposes such games, and encourages more constructive ways of interacting.   Transactional   analysis  (commonly shortened to TA) has become a major popularization of the concepts of unconscious Psychiatry.”

This ‘definition’ is imprecise in certain respects.  Firstly,  ‘positions’ in TA refer to life positions, of which there are four basic types (I’m OK - You’re OK, I’m OK - You’re not OK, I’m not OK - You’re OK and I’m not OK - You’re not OK).  Transaction in TA is interaction, not time structuring (work, pastimes etc. are ways of structuring time).  Parent, Adult and Child are ego states, observable patterns of feeling and behaviour.

For our purposes, the terms which are of greatest importance are:

STROKING

TRANSACTION

LEARNING POSITION

LIFE POSITION

GAME

RITUAL and thus RITUALISATION

DISCOUNTING

SYMBIOSIS

SCRIPT

PERMISSION

CONTRACT

All of these terms, except LEARNING POSITION and RITUALISATION, which are inventions of my own, are used in psychotherapy, which is the mainstream application of TA. TA has developed into a special way of looking at education (as evident e.g. in work of stretching from Ernst (1972) and collected by myself  (Adams 1991)). A concern of my own is the development of a TA Education Model, which whilst incorporating the terms of main­ stream TA, will use the same in a specific sense relevant to education.   In the present work, the terms are used in both senses (General Model and Education Model) and it is clear from the context which sense is meant.

The special definitions of the above terms are given below.

I will also use occasionally the special terminology from Berne  (1963) when analyzing group dynamics and structure as applied to schools.

The advantages of the TA psychology model are:

1.   It can be employed not only in the analysis of empirical data but it can be easily understood by the participants in research tests to improve overall test cohesion.

2.   It can be used as a frame of reference for improving attitude and motivation and removing language barriers due to low self-esteem, cultural hostility, projection etc.

3.   It is comprehensive with a sound basis in common psychological practice.

4.   Most importantly, the model shares interest in both teacher and student motivation/attitude etc. and focuses on transactional dynamics.

5.   It can be used to investigate my hypothesis that attitude to error is set, reinforced and adjusted by student/teacher interaction rather than student decisions alone.

DEFINITION OF TERMS IN THE TA EDUCATION MODEL

STROKING          - The interpersonal methods used to motivate students: e.g. recognition appreciation, personal concern.

TRANSACTION       - Communicative manoeuvres made within the classroom or outside. There are personal transactions and professional (teaching or learning) transactions.

LEARNING POSITION - The basic approach to learning adopted by a student expressed in a set of attitudes towards the subject, the teacher, the institution, his classmates and other participants in the educational process.                 

GAME              - See definition in General Model. Games are played by students to stave off growth and intimacy.  Teachers play games to confirm their position regarding teaching.        

Institutions play collective games with ulterior aims other than education (e.g. control, indoctrination, prestige).

RITUAL            - A ritual is a stereotyped series of transactions often devoid of dynamism and

                    actuality.  In teaching and learning it is a negative component of certain teaching

                    and learning styles (e.g. rote, memorization).

DISCOUNTING       - (1) The process by which symbiosis is maintained.

(2) The shaping of student responses by the teacher to fit into pre-selected attitudes.

(3)Rejecting useful and creative impulses from ego states considered  inappropriate to the ordinary teaching  and learning situation.

SYMBIOSIS         - (1) The effect of continued discounting.

                   (2) An unhealthy relationship of dependency.

SCRIPT            - Students may have a pre-programmed educational career related to their life

                              script.  Teachers may have a career script.

PERMISSION        - The ability to exhibit autonomous behaviour, i.e. behaviour not related to parental programming or societal, familial, or peer pressures.

CONTRACT          - An explicit or implicit set of operational rules between teacher and student, student and institution, teacher and institution, institution and supervisory body,

                                supervisory body and society.

The model served as a frame of reference for the formulation and analysis of the first research project and for the ultimate formulation of solutions to language learning difficulty (intervention strategies).               

BARRIERS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING               

When conditions and constraints operate sufficiently strongly and are allied to pre-existing attitudes or a certain overriding motivation, a psychological barrier may be formed.  It is common to speak of a ‘language barrier’ or a ‘cultural barrier’.  What do we mean by such a term?

Strevens (1987) identifies cultural barriers in learning English in terms of a clash of assumptions (in the purpose for which English is studied, differing attitudes to rational argument, personal comportment, eye contact rules etc.).  This leads to a clash of behaviour, to miscommunication and to inefficient learning.  This disharmony is ultimately derived from differing assumptions in at least six areas: philosophy, concepts of nature, notions of government, concepts of science, literature and the society’s ‘ultimate myths’.

Spolsky (1986) writes from the viewpoint of an inhabitant of a cosmopolitan city in which some doubt prevails over the  ‘standard’ to be adopted for educational purposes.  The choice and definition of the standard is a major barrier for many people in education.

Barriers are maintained by both teachers and students. The teacher may have certain inhibitions and anxieties which hamper effective teaching of English. The student may not respond to certain teaching techniques.

In Hong Kong, where most teaching is conducted by local teachers, ‘cultural barriers’ should be minimal.  However, some of the course material is constructed, sometimes at the direction or influence of the Education Department of the Government, with typically Western responses in mind: enquiries as to personal opinion, family circumstances, hobbies and interests are not easily answered by local students, given the overwhelming peer pressure, group cohesion and conformity

evident in Hong Kong classrooms. 

Languages contain cultural assumptions, and in Hong Kong learners learn a type of British or Commonwealth English because of the strong presence of British and Commonwealth teachers.  This is not discounting the emergence of acceptance of ‘Hong Kong English’ which I investigated earlier in this thesis, nor the growing and continued influence of American English. Local teachers probably experience difficulty handling e.g. the actual verbosity and openness of the characters in some English teaching material and probably adapt it to their own communicative strategies (see the previous section on this subject).  The lack of real (i.e. culture-incorporative) code-switching, may be a more convincing explanation of ‘Hong Kong English’ than ‘interference’ and ‘inaccuracy’. Kuiper and Tan (1987) suggest that the cultural“ base remains the same for speakers of ‘Singaporean English’ whether they speak Chinese or English.

What sort of cultural assumptions does English contain and, secondly, what cultural presuppositions of the Cantonese and other Chinese people in Hong Kong may be said to hamper foreign language learning?

The second question is dealt with, partly, in the section in this thesis devoted to the general learning difficulties of Chinese people (however tenuous the conclusions may be) and in the section on local students’ communicative strategies.  In another section, devoted to the question of Hong Kong English, I suggested that many Hong Kong people probably overidentify with Chinese culture as a reaction to their status as Colonial underdogs in the past and I believe that this constitutes a substantial language learning barrier contained in some part of the prejudicial Parent. Here in 1990, one year after Tiananmen, there has probably been a significant erosion of this barrier but as 1997 approaches, and the efforts to secure continued prosperity in Hong Kong by the British seem more and more feeble, there may well be a swing back to some overidentification with a Chinese Cultural Tradition.

The first question above can perhaps be answered by some examination of Strevens’ (1987) categories of:

Philosophy and Religion

Concepts of Nature

Notions of Government

Concepts of Science

Literature and

Society’s Ultimate Myths.

Each of these areas has what Strevens calls ‘cultural loading’ and, I would argue, the different cultural assumptions are contained in English itself to some extent, at least in much of  the English which the student and teacher will be exposed to in  school text books, newspapers, class readers, education degree  courses and the like.

The introduction of English into Hong Kong probably also brought with it a different focus of academic interest.   Fernando (1987) describes this shift brought by the British academics in Sri Lanka as ‘the need to seek scientific truths to improve man’s material lot in preference to the need to seek spiritual ones to help him cope with life’s transience’.  As English is so strongly an academic language in Hong Kong, its effects on traditional Chinese academic approaches cannot be underestimated.

In conclusion, if ‘language learning is culture learning’  (Kuiper and Tan 1987), to some extent at least, cultural assumptions of L1 are an important issue in any discussion of second language learning difficulty.  Their flexibility and permeability decide whether they become a language learning barrier or not. In our first research project, reference was often made by students to their cultural identity as a  ‘difficulty’. It was difficult to decide, however, whether such perceived difficulty was a sociological or a psychological factor. 

This section sought to set some of the specific English language learning (TEFL) and general educational/psychological parameters of our discussion. The preliminaries to the first research project are now performed. We now move on to directly answer - as best as we can - the main research questions: ‘What are teacher and students’ attitude to errors in English?’  and, more  importantly, ‘What are the actual and  perceived  English  language  learning and teaching difficulties in Hong Kong  sec­ondary schools?’