李光耀承認推行雙語教學政策錯誤

papa_pop

"ISF adopts a variant of the Immersion Program and it seems promising toproduce bilinguals who have both languages at near native-level, or onenative, the other near-native." That's my observation too I'm not an ISF parent though.

Apart from the school focused on bilingual education, it also benefits from a 'balanced' student body whose mother tongues comprise both English and Mandarin.  This has put ISF in an advantageous position when compared to other so-called bilingual schools.  Most of the kids there can master two languages at native or near-native level as they only need to pick up one more language on top of their mother tongue.  Sure parents have many other considerations apart from the language environment when choosing a school for their kid.

In comparison, local bilingual CKY stands a lesser position as its student body comprises 99%+ local HK Chinese with Cantonese as mother tongue. They would need to aim for biliterate and trilingual.  Again, the immersion approach has worked wonder for my kid - well, I'm not aiming too high to get him to master an English standard comparable to IS students and Chinese comparable to local students.

By the way, Avatar, I don't think there are many parents who are embracing your "不切實際、虛假的夢" when enrolling their kids in these schools.  But thank you for giving us a heads up once and again.

almom

原帖由 Avatar 於 09-12-4 18:28 發表
因此，本人認為近年一些標榜推行Bilingual 的新興學校, 例如推行 IB 但又強調中、英俱佳，其實是誤導父母以為入讀的子女能建立雙母語能力，即英文及得上國際學校，而中文及得上本地學校。其實只是給父母們一個不切實際、虛假的夢，基本上沒有任何一個人能以同樣的程度來掌握好兩種語文。如果你認為自己可以，那是在自欺欺人。

First, IB =/= bilingual.
In fact, most students are not getting a bilingual diploma at IBD. You need to take 2 "A" languages to be bilingual. Even with CIS, which is considered to have a very good Chinese program, not all students are "bilingual" students. Many students are taking English A and Chinese B.
On ther other hand, there are indeed quite some students from CIS and other IB schools that are so competent that they do both English and Chinese (or French, etc)  A and get a bilingual diploma. These students achieved that because they put in effort.

Second, IB schools do have the curriculum that ultimately lead to a bilingual diploma, IF STUDENTS WANT TO. So IB schools do have (or they have to have) the resourses to educate students to be bilingual. However, it is unrealistic to expect that everyone can be that strong.
Local schools also provide a curriculum where students can, if they work hard and try hard, get "A" in Chinese both English at HKCEE. Realistically, not many get "A" or even "B" in both. In fact, many students still fail in either or even both of the languages. Can we say that the school misled you?

Last, I also think that this discussion of whether it is possible to be "bilingual" would not be fruitful. We have different expectations of how good we have to be in the 2 languages to be called bilingual.
I would say that, since my kids are in an IB school, I might simply follow the IB criteria. If a student are taking both "A" languages, then he should be bilingual, if he attain a certain "grade". Language "A" in IBD is the "hardest" available course in the IB curriculum, I would say that if someone gets a score of say 6 (with 7 being the full score), I would say he is pretty much "good at the language".  Of course, this is for my own convenience. I am sure some other people have much higher expectations. I myself is quite happy with my kids having English A and Chinese B.

[ 本帖最後由 almom 於 09-12-5 11:07 編輯 ]

papa_pop

Although I have tried not to sidetrack to the accent issue, I'm tempted (after all, it's me who mentioned Singlish in the first place on this thread).

Frank McCourt (Angela's Ashes, Teacher Man), a teacher turned writer (when he's over 60) born in New York to an Irish family, moved back to Ireland when he's about 5.  Studied there till 19 when he returned to New York to join the US Army (such that he could enrol in New York University using GI Bill).

When McCourt started his teaching career at 28 in New York, he was embarrassed by his strong Irish accent and teased by his students (and parents), and was almost told to go back to his Old Country with his 'brogue'.  Mind you that he was teaching in a vocational and technical high school where students would proceed to become plumbers and machine men, not an independent private school for US brats.


[ 本帖最後由 papa_pop 於 09-12-5 12:09 編輯 ]

mow-mow

To those who stress so much importance on accents, I wonder if you would seriously consider that McCourt's level of English language ability (due to his strong Irish accent) is lower than those of his students, who were destined to be plumbers.
Accent is superficial, content is what reallly matters.
If I were McCourt, I wouldn't be embarassed by the accent at all.Their teasing him & telling him to go back to the Old Country is nothing short of racisim!

iamfine

Professor Yash Pal Ghai when he first came to HK was accused of speaking with an African accent that nobody can understand.  See what he has left with HKU and see how he is now changing Kenya and the rest of Africa, almost single-handedly.

almom

原帖由 thankful 於 09-12-6 11:58 發表
Papa_pop, where are you?  We need your help because I find talking to stccmc is absolutely hopeless and it will lead us nowhere (except the entertaining part about 陳克勤 which he steadfastly refuses to give us an aswer).  Please clarify what you meant.  Please reply to #86.

Hey, friend.
I have BK arranged the topics such that the newest reply to a topic is always "on top" on my screen and it is always #1. So the "number" of the replies change each time there is a new reply. In this respect, I cannot locate your #86.

What was it about?