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原文章由 Dimsuen 於 07-8-15 01:45 硐表 
I understand that RC has, may be 90% local student, but I think local students can still speak native accent english if they speak with other native accent speaking kids in early childhood.
I am a new parent this year. It has been more than a month now since school started. I would like to share with parents my view of RC's language environment. Other RC parents may also want to share their views, especially those who have been with the school since the year before.
I really cannot tell the percentage of non-chinese students. But I think there are probably more than 10% of non-asian children, mostly western and quite some african. And amongst the obviously asian children, there are quite some Japanese and Koreans. Then amongst the Chinese children, quite some are half Chinese (ie half western/Japanese/etc). Then amongst the rest, quite some "竹昇" (some people consider this term insulting, but I meant Chinese kids returning from overseas, and meant no insults).
I do think that the English environment is quite ok if you are really to consider such combination. What I noticed is that many children with oriental/chinese faces speak native English.
I did not intend to start any debate on which ISs are better, or which ISs have more western kids: no, I do not have the statistics. But we have to admit that local parents loves to put children in ISs nowadays and that is also why we are seeing a lot of local faces and cantonese speaking children in many ISs. The more popular an IS is amongst local parents, the harder it make for many expat children to enter, in particular, some expats will probably be here for say 3-5 years only. And this is exactly what made RC very international.
However one other thing I also noted, though, if you are really interested. Let's see what language the Chinese kids at RC tend to speak. I know that there were quite a bunch of children who joined RC from local schools last year (ie 2006-2007). And it appears to me that those kids tend to hang out with kids with similar backgrounds (ie kids previously also from local schools). And then the rest of other Chinese children from other ISs, or Chinese children from other countries, ie the English speaking group, would hang out with English speaking kids. To be honest, the 2 groups would have quite different habits when we are talking about the language they speak. And they also have quite different interests: say different pop idols, different after school interests, etc.
I noted that many children from local schools do have a bit of the problem mixing with the English speaking (whether Chinese or western) kids. I think they just do not have the confident and do not have the habit to speak more English outside the classroom. I know that is quite natural, because they have been spending most of their life speaking Cantonese, and to them English is still a very foreign language.
The problem is less obvious if the kid joined RC (and in fact any IS) at a younger age, say before Year 2 or 3. But if they are joining at an older age, especially secondary students, they probably are really very used to speaking Cantonese and are very relunctant in switching channels.
So it is, indeed, very common to hear some groups of chinese kids speaking purely in English and some groups of chinese speaking purely in Cantonese. Now, if that really bothers you, you might need to consider WHEN you are putting your own child in an IS -- personally, I would say, the earlier the better.
Friendly discussions are welcomed.  |
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發表於 07-9-17 18:14
