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There is a myth that A-level English Language is an easy option and is not taken particularly seriously by employers. Do not be fooled. If you want to stand out from the crowd, read on!

Similar to other A-level subjects, English Language is nothing like its GCSE or IGCSE precursor. It is challenging, requires knowledge of specific terminology and involves analysis of a variety of texts from diverse genres and subjects – and not only written texts. Some of the questions it raises are for example, why do people speak in a particular way in different situations? Do men and women speak differently? What makes a good communicator? With questions such as these, A-level English Language offers students the opportunity to learn a great deal about language while actively engage with it.

For many students and their parents, the choice of what to study is linked to beliefs about university admission procedures and employment options after graduation. Studying English Language enables students to pursue opportunities linked not only to language, but also those within areas such as human-computer interface design, business communication, marketing or advertising. Moreover, with its strong focus on analysis, reasoning and communication, A-level English Language is also particularly valuable for law and the business world.

A-level English Language fosters the intellectual abilities and related skills sought by universities and employers. Business and law schools consistently indicate a preference for students with skills related to written and oral communication, critical thinking, problem solving, international perspectives and creativity.

For students who decide that the scientific study of language (linguistics) is the university course for them, they can opt to study linguistics with subjects such as psychology, journalism, social sciences, translation or education. Alternatively, they can choose to specialise in linguistics and its related areas. For linguistic graduates, employment opportunities are wide as there is a shortage of prospective employees with a background in linguistics. Indeed when Professor Stanley Peters of Stanford University, was asked if there a demand for people with a linguistics background, he replied, ‘You bet there is,’ and noted that the supply of such people was ‘extremely limited.’

So to return to A-level English Language, what does this course of study involve?

The course of study is divided into four units in the same way that other A-levels are, and so there are AS and A2 levels. The entire course considers a wide range of spoken, written and multi-modal texts, thereby providing the inspiration to learn about spoken and written language from real and imaginary worlds, as well as to engage in the craft of creating one’s own texts.

The AS-level provides a focus on the familiar and engaging area of everyday language. It has a practical emphasis on finding out about written and spoken language and using it effectively. It also looks at how language choices reflect identity and context variation, while also looking at the writing process used to generate different genres for different audiences.

A2, on the other hand, focuses on the origins of and variations and changes to the English language over time, moving on to the present use of English as a global language. Other topics studied include the development of children’s spoken and written language, and Unit 4 of A2 provides students with the opportunity to choose a topic from the course for investigation and subsequent presentation of an internally assessed project of 2,500 – 3,000 words – a real research project!

So is English Language A Level is an easy option? Absolutely not – it’s the gateway to many different degree and subsequent career options.

Sean Martin

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When I first moved to Hong Kong, I was bemused by the advertisements for tuition services that I saw on posters, billboards, buses and television. After finding work as a tutor, I became even more confused. How could tuition companies possibly have the budget to pay for such extensive advertising? I thought the tutors in the ads must be quite amazing to have their images plastered all over the city, and more importantly, I wondered when my name would be up in lights.

A colleague recently sent me a link to an article entitled Meet the Glamorous Celebrity Tutors of Hong Kong from a US website, Slate.com (http://www.slate.com/id/2302695/), which provided the answers to my questions.

The Slate article reveals that some tuition schools can afford to spend in excess of US$1 million per year on advertising, including slots on prime time television, because of the huge number of students that they teach. Beacon College, one of the oldest and most famous tuition companies in Hong Kong, has about 60 tutors and more than 25,000 students. This is a ratio of 417 students to a tutor. The article depicts such tutors as being more like pop stars than teachers; and according to writer Hillary Brenhouse, tutors can’t wear the same outfit twice in case their ‘fans’ notice, won’t disclose that they are married in case it diminishes their popularity, and can have earnings of more than US$1 million dollars a year. The faces of these tutors are so widely recognised that they have, in effect, become brands in their own rights. Even I can name two or three of them, having seen their posters and bold claims of success on the way to work each day.
So why don’t ITS’ tutors have their faces on posters on the MTR or on the side of buses?

The answer lies in a culinary analogy – food comparison – that the Slate article notes. The article quotes Professor Mark Bray of the University of Hong Kong as saying that, ‘Hong Kong cram schools are like the McDonald’s of education: they have a product, they mass produce it, it’s relatively cheap, it’s probably not very nutritious, but it fills your stomach.’
I have already mentioned the tutor to student ratio at Beacon. At ITS, we have around 50 tutors working with approximately 600 students at any one time; this is a ratio of 12 students to each tutor. We are more like a Michelin-starred restaurant than a McDonalds fast food restaurant: we take immense pride in creating a product that is made to order and which is, in knowledge terms, highly nutritious.

So when am I going to have my name lit up in lights as one of Hong Kong’s celebrity tutors? Well, Hong Kong can breathe a sigh of relief as this is exceedingly unlikely to happen! I want to be known for my well-prepared ‘meals’ that have been created with care and attention, and I want to be part of the ITS team of ‘chefs’ that each day feels a sense of pride and pleasure in the quality of their ingredients, their preparation techniques and their delivery of nutritious meals.

Matthew Wisbey

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Hong Kong children are some of the most time-managed and tutorial-class taking in the world. With all of the pressure put on students to learn and excel, parents have the right to expect that supplementary classes are as well-managed, educationally sound and effective as they possibly can be, and children have the right to enjoy useful, fun and engaging lessons that will help them in their current and later study, and in their lives beyond the classroom.

So what should someone pay attention to if they are considering enrolling their child in a group language education class?

1.) Curriculum and materials- The curriculum design and choice of learning materials is of critical importance and is best done by EFL experts; teachers and consultants familiar with the latest EFL teaching methodology. ITS offers two Young learners programs, PTE Young Learners and Cambridge YLE, and the curriculum for both courses works as both an all-around English-language improvement class and also as useful preparation for the exams themselves.

2.) Class size- It goes without saying a smaller class gives students more opportunities to interact with the teacher and with each other. Small classes work especially well in language learning, as the less-confident students in well-managed classes tend to work at the level of the more advanced students, and given the proper learning tools, students even begin to teach each other!

3.) Teacher involvement- All classes are made of individual students, and have a different dynamic. Good teachers respond to these different class styles and can make the lesson even more interesting and effective, and be able to provide more detailed feedback as to a specific child’s strengths and weaknesses, and suggestions on how to further improve their language skills.

4.) Support- Effective teaching methods and skills should be ever-evolving, and teachers should be given the support, training and encouragement to improve existing skills and develop new ones, and teachers then support the children in their classes to become better learners and better people.

5.) Joy in learning- Effective learning can and should be a pleasant experience for everyone involved.

These are a few things to look for to ensure that your child’s learning experience is as effective and positive as it can be. Please contact us for more information about ITS’s new group English classes!

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“No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.”
- Confucius
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Are you encouraging your child to hate reading?
by F Kelly

As educators and parents we all know the value of reading – but how many of us are in fact encouraging our child to hate reading, even though we are desperately trying to establish a reading habit that is going to last a lifetime?

Even with the best will in the world, our efforts to establish a reading habit can have completely the opposite effect. But don’t worry – we have five simple tips for you so that all your hard work is not wasted.

Tip 1 Match the palate

Reading tastes are like food tastes – we reject food we don’t like and regardless of how much we know about the negative side of eating fast or junk food, we often indulge.

Think of reading as feeding the mind, so why not appeal to what is liked rather than constantly offering something that is strongly disliked?

A good example of this is the comic book. If your child likes reading comic books, encourage them, after all, isn’t it better to be reading comics than not reading at all? And this advice is not as silly as it may at first seem – did you know that you can now buy Shakespeare and many of the classics as manga-style comic books? Check out the website http://www.mangashakespeare.com/ to see some examples of these.

So do you still think all comics are bad?

Tip 2 Make it fun!

Let’s be honest, if you were given something to read that you were going to be grilled on and nagged about, how much would you enjoy reading it?

If you give your child a book, let them get on with reading it. Don’t set passages to be learnt by heart, don’t grill them on the content and then criticize their ‘mistakes’ and last, but by no means least, don’t pick books way above your child’s reading ability.

Reading should be fun – your child should feel comfortable picking up any text and settling down with it. It’s not important if a text is too easy or too difficult – if they are interested in it, they will read it. If you take the fun out of reading, your child is going to become very reluctant to read as they get older. Do you want to hear that dreaded comment, ‘Reading is boring! I hate it!’

Tip 3 It’s okay to dislike a book!

There is a very common perception that some books are above any kind of criticism – the classics, for example. This is quite illogical – after all, has everyone loved reading Bleak House by Dickens? Of course not!

Encourage your child to have an opinion on what they read and to be able to explain why. If they use the words ‘boring’ or ‘interesting’ to describe a book, ask them to give reasons why it was ‘boring’ or ‘interesting’. And remember, a discussion is when people are allowed to have different opinions, it is not a Q & A session.

Tip 4 Forget about dictionaries and highlighters

How many times have you opened a library book only to find that someone has highlighted all the words their child did not know! For me, such vandalism of a book is utterly despicable. But in terms of reading, it probably ranks at the top of how to make a child an ineffective reader.

If you read with your child and stop at every word they do not know, highlight it, check it in a dictionary and then write it down in a notebook, your child is not reading; they are simply decoding sounds in words so that they can pronounce them. They then sit and learn reams of ‘new’ vocabulary out of any meaningful context.

Children must learn to use context to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words. As they get older they will be given reading comprehension passages and will eventually need to be able to access this information under exam conditions. Students who score well are effective readers – they use context to help them understand what the text is about.

Of course dictionaries are an invaluable resource, but they are sadly often misused. A better way to use a dictionary would be to ask your child after they have been reading if there were any ‘difficult’ words and did they manage to guess their meaning while they were reading – i.e. did they use the context of the text to help them guess the meaning? They can then check in the dictionary to see if their guess was right. This is a far more productive way to use a dictionary. The goal is to build up this skill so that your child can eventually do this by themselves. Perhaps begin with two words they identify as being problematic and then do the above process together. Make it fun and praise the guesses made. When they are confident about doing this, encourage them to do this alone.

Tip 5 Do as I say, not as I do!

If you tell your child that reading is important and they have to read for 20 minutes a day, will they think this is true if they seldom see you read? This is the perfect example of ‘do as I say, not as I do.’

Children learn a great deal from watching their parents’ behaviour. If you regularly read and clearly enjoy it, there is a very high chance that your child will also do so. However, if you enforce a reading time for your child and during this you watch TV or play computer games, what message do you think you are giving?

According to the award-winning children’s literature writer Emilie Buchwald, ‘Children are made readers on the laps of their parents,’ and I hope that these tips help you and your child find a passion for reading.

Next month, how to help your child learn and retain words. See you then.

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Return to: ITS Tutorial School Home Page

The South China Morning Post recently reported that ‘the lack of international school places in Hong Kong could undermine its long-term development as a regional business centre.’ (Dennis Chong, ‘Business fears over lack of school places’, SCMP, 13 July 2011). The article cites surveys carried out on behalf of the British and Canadian Chambers of Commerce that indicate that this issue is having a detrimental impact on both the international business community’s perception of Hong Kong and their willingness to locate their operations here.

This is not an issue that will be resolved quickly, given that the availability of land is at a premium in Hong Kong (particularly on Hong Kong Island where the majority of the international business community lives) and that the construction of new schools is a costly and time consuming business. In addition, by allocating land for the development of new schools, the government forgoes the capital receipts associated with other land uses. However, this opportunity cost needs to be weighed against the lost tax revenue that could result from a failure to address this issue.

Given the importance of education in an increasingly competitive world, the concern of parents is understandable: not only are there insufficient international school places in Hong Kong, but the range of educational options can be somewhat bewildering: international schools offer a wide variety of examination systems and educational approaches. ITS’s Educational Services Team has, for a number of years, been helping parents to find places for their children at Hong Kong international schools. In the last year, the team helped more than 80 families to find school places for their children.

Many parents – both local and foreign – are willing to consider international education options for their children once they move on to senior school. ITS’s UK Education Team has excellent working relationships with a wide range of boarding schools in the United Kingdom. These schools provide a very high standard of education and excellent facilities that cater for a wide range of sporting and extracurricular activities. They also offer an opportunity for children to become more mature, independent, and self-sufficient. Studying in the UK is a particularly good option for those students who are planning to attend a UK university.

Furthermore, ITS’s two registered schools can provide interim solutions for those families who arrive in Hong Kong when the school year is already in progress. We can act as the main education provider for those children who are waiting for a suitable school place to become available. We can also offer an alternative for students of 16 or older who wish to opt out of full time mainstream education: individual or small group A Level classes, which lead to an internationally recognised qualification that will prepare them for university entrance.

Until such time as the Hong Kong government acts to resolve the shortfall of international school places, ITS will be here to help families to make the best of the available opportunities.

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