This paper reports the interim findings of a longitudinal study which aims at exploring the effectiveness of a 3-year English Enrichment Programme, on top of the regular English curriculum, in exposing secondary students to more subject-specific English while they learn their content subjects in the mother tongue. The study was carried out in response to the Hong Kong government's decision to firmly promote mother tongue teaching in her post-colonial era after 1997. To evaluate the effectiveness of this programme on students' learning of English, in-depth study with selected schools was done and different research tools including questionnaires, lesson observations, interviews and language proficiency tests were used to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. It is found that the increased exposure to English may have had a positive effect upon students' perception of learning English, if not on actual performance. A closer look at the cases, however sheds light upon the intricate interplay between factors leading to the different degrees of perception about the effectiveness of the programme. These factors include: the willingness of the school to pool resources and efforts in making the most of the programme, the language competence of students, and the teaching focus and methods in class. Recommendations on the way forward will be discussed.
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The present paper tries to identify the social and psychological factors that motivate students to have better performance in English as a second language, and to postulate a theoretical model subsuming these socio-psychological variables to explain and predict the performance in English as a second language for Hong Kong students in Australia. Gardner (1959) hypothesized that students would have higher performance in the second language performance if they exhibit the desire to learn the second language in order to integrate themselves with the target culture than when they exhibit the desire to learn the language for pragmatic reasons. The perceived status of language affects the use of and attitude toward a language. Giles, Bourhis and Taylor (1977) defined Ethnolinguistic vitality as structural characteristics such as socio-economic status, demographic representation and institutional support pertinent to a language. Smolicz, Hudson and Secombe (1998) described multicultural policies of Australia as a solution to the dilemma of reconciling the immigrants' love of their homeland and its culture and their desire to adapt to the overarching Australian framework. 247 students of ethnic Chinese in Sydney metropolitan area who were studying in weekend Chinese schools (age 8 to 16 with mean age of 10.1) and 628 Hong Kong students who were studying in primary and secondary schools (age 8 to 16 with mean age 10.5) were sampled. Path analysis was used to determine the relationship between the performance of Chinese and English with ethnolinguistic vitality, motivation, attitudes and use and class anxiety in the learning of English.
[Copyright of Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) at http://www.aare.edu.au]