應否選擇國際學校?(唔該俾D意見)

almom

原帖由 thankful 於 09-7-3 21:52 發表

你呢d case我見得仲多, 小學咁細, 都己經唔聽你點攞d英文書睇下, 到中學開始就連中文書都唔想睇, 唔睇中文, d中文程度慢慢退化, 而英文仲慘, 從來都唔識, 退無可退. 好多local school學生讀上去都係咁, 最後入U 都有困難因為唔識睇, 唔識寫英文. “中英並重”, 就連自欺欺人都做唔倒!

Hey, naughty naughty. Not like the usual you. :)

But I do agree.

CindyMak

Agree!
When I decided to put my son into IS, language proficiency is not the 1st priority....it is the by-product.

I would say, if you simply want you kids having good Chinese and English, you can put them in local school (I believe learning Chinese from school is the easiest way for parents) and put them as an exchange student for a year in high school.

原帖由 almom 於 09-7-4 23:52 發表

I think it is not ONLY whether who is better in which ever language. To most local Chinese families that have chosen IS, they did not choose IS ONLY because IS have better English.

IS and local sc ...

sccc

Hi foolish.mom

Thanks for your great information about CIS.  

So you are saying that the envoiroment is a population combined of 70% being chinese original, maybe chinese born in western countries, maybe taiwanese, maybe.... and do have western foreigner but not the majority.

It is a great information to be that their mean of communication is English (you mean they can speak fluent english).

However an issue arised there?
Say an example, Say " I haven't seen you for long time"..... but in Chinese community people like to say " Long time no see..." <=== simple a Chinese English but not the formal English. Say another example: Bicycle in Mandarin ===> 自行車 but HK people will say 單車 in mandarin.  
Can you get what I mean? Will the environment be inferior to other IS like GSIS or HKIS or Candarin IS because of the population of students in CIS is less western than other IS? Thus affecting the level of English. (Note: However I found that their English academic result is good based on IB standard).
I am not arguing that CIS is not a good iS for english because I don't understand their approaches. So if you or someone fully understand the operation of their approaches, could you please give me more picture about the level of English / or resource the school provided to students.
Besides, are you parents of CIS students? if yes, please share more about CIS academic and displine so I can have more information to plan for my kid. PLEASE!!

Mighty

SCCC, "long time no see" was no doubt a chinese saying but it became so popular that even native speakers use it too.  So you will hear them saying 'long time no see' or 'long time no talk'.  Of course everyone understands grammatically they are wrong.  I am more concerned when I hear IS students (those who speak fluent English) using wrong pronouns (he, she, his and her got mixed up all the time), or wrongly say "drink more water" etc.    They are fluent english speakers because they use English most of time.  However, these mistakes simply show that they are not at native level and that they do not have a 'real' language environment.  
It would be ideal if you can find an IS that has english speaking children as its majority.  Likewise, I would regard ESF (most of the ESf schools, not all) as English medium schools and not real IS.

hysterical

I don't mean to be rude here, but it seems that you really have very little understanding of IS.

CIS is one of the best IS in Hong Kong, and its curriculum is very well-known for its bilingual teaching as well as immersion method. Furthermore, the school has very good IB exam results and university acceptance. So, I am not really following your query about the percentage of caucasians and their use of grammar!?

What is your concern here? If you are only deciding between GSIS and CIS, I think you need to first worry about getting admitted. Both schools are VERY hard to get in. For example, CIS reception accepts maybe 1 in every 5 applicants, and I think it's likewise for GSIS. Then there's the debenture issue. If you have one, your kid has priority, but it's not available to buy and goes for $2.9 million on the second-hand market for CIS.

So, let's say that your kid got into both schools, then you can worry about how to choose.

By the way, wisekid's son is a genius and really would be top of his class, probably performing a couple years above his age level. Foolish.mom's kid is also an exceptional student as well. They are good reference cases, but not everyone can be like them.

Since your kid is still small, I think you should first decide local or IS. Then, you could first make a list of all the schools, ranking them as you go. Try to get into the top feeder kindergartens for the respective schools, like Braemer Hill (?). Finally, when the time comes, apply to as many schools as you can and hope for the best.

I think there's really no absolute right or wrong. One school may work for this person but not suitable for the next.

Good luck and best wishes!

原帖由 sccc 於 09-7-5 01:25 發表
Hi foolish.mom

Thanks for your great information about CIS.  

So you are saying that the envoiroment is a population combined of 70% being chinese original, maybe chinese born in western countries,  ...

bakusensei

原帖由 sccc 於 09-7-4 15:59 發表
Hi bakusensei,

As you said" your husband is teaching in a so-called "elite" and  "traditional" secondary school with more than 100 years' history. He produces lots of As every year. Even though he ha ...

Thanks for asking his comment.

While he hadn't taught in the IS stream, he may not be the best position to comment how IS teach the kids but he didn't want to put our little boy in the local "factory":

- initiative of learning of local school kids were getting lower n lower owing to the curriculum design and the situation nowadays in local school of HK. He had never thought of giving homework to F.5 students when he started his teaching career 10 years before. But now, he even needed to give lots of exercise to his F.7 students in order to maintain the grade.

-  Except the minority, like those Prince Philips scholarships holders, etc., most students, even in the so-called elite schools, just knew how to tackle the exam but not how to acquire the knowledge or even the way to acquire knowledge.

- He had helped in setting the HKCEE and HKAL exam paper for a few years. It seems that the local students did not thoroughly understand the subject. When they changed the way to ask the questions, quite a no. of them didn't know how to answer. Their application of the knowledge they should learn was even worse. When they ask sth that should already been learnt in HKCEE in the HKAL exam (but put in the content different from what they learnt in HKCEE), less than 1/3 of the AL students know how to answer! The worst is quite a number of local school teachers complaint about they set that question, commenting it's too difficult!

foolish.mom

sccc,
My kid joined CIS secondary last year. Thus I really have not much knowledge how the school teach them English in reception and primary school. In secondary, the emphasis in English is no longer "listening, speaking or literacy". They are teaching English literature and technique and style in writing.
What I observe is that they all speak fluent English with western accent, majority American accent. Majority of the parents also have native accents, and use English to communicate among ourselves.
In general, students are very strong in academics, and I am satisfied so far on their discipline.

bakusensei

原帖由 wisekid2007 於 09-7-4 00:52 發表
I myself don't buy those kind of early learning or early pushing of the kid in learning.

For my boy's case, he just followed his local kindergarten's curriculum of starting to recognize Chinese chara ...

thanks for your sharing, wisekid2007 :)

I remembered reading your smart boy's novel u uploaded onto your blog and was v. impressed. my boy's friend's mum kept telling me that they r over two now and we need to start teaching Chinese characters (but the pt is i even didn't start teaching the Eng letter name.)

it's great to listen to the sharing of successful cases w/o going thr those crazy grade jumping taskes.

:)

oooray

原帖由 bakusensei 於 09-7-5 19:08 發表


Thanks for asking his comment.

While he hadn't taught in the IS stream, he may not be the best position to comment how IS teach the kids but he didn't want to put our little boy in the local "fact ...

Very valuable first hand information!
Nowaday situation looks much worser than the time I studied in local school, where and when (80's) I thought was already deteriorating comparing to 60's & 70s'.

oooray

原帖由 wisekid2007 於 09-7-6 11:25 發表
Hi sccc,

I share the views of Almom that the main reason of sending my boy to IS is not for the high English  or other languages' proficiency but for the way and style of education adopted by IS.

My ...

100% agree that don't study in IS if you want you children to be an OA in HK government.
From my point of view, such Chinese test requirement is much much higher than a jornalist but seems 99% irrelavant to your ability (unless u want to be a human MP3 in your further career).

leeleelee

針無兩頭利，又要中文好又要英文好！我想最重要選擇那類型的學校要按每個家庭的需要。
我放自己的兒子在IS因想給他一個快樂及自學的環境，我們及小兒都試過local school 的日子，我們一家也願慳錢給他繼續供他讀我應為最自由及愉快的校園生活，

祝每個家長可找到自己最心儀的學校。

Mighty

喂、係唔係有人唔記得食薬呀！！
This thread reminds me a bit of Fate's almost a year ago!! Keep it going, guys!!