ABSTRACT
Language education in Hong Kong has been a special issue due to its specific political background. Despite British rule until the handover of sovereignty to China in 1997, English has never been the social language of ordinary people in Hong Kong. The use of English has been confined to the legal, commercial, and higher education arenas. The first language of most Hong Kong people (about 99%) is still Modern Standard Chinese (the unified written language) and the local dialect Cantonese (the spoken language; Hong Kong Working Group on Language Proficiency, 1994). However, Chinese language education does not seem to have benefited much from this favorable language environment. The passing rate of the Chinese Language subject in a public examination has been below 70% in the last 10 years (Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority, 2006), which is similar to that of the English Language subject. Such results indicate, at least, that the Chinese reading and writing abilities of local secondary school graduates have been worse than expected.
