Comment on 耀中國際學校(九龍塘)

belledog

DMum,
The ESF now has their Chinese lessons every week and they are adding more and more Chinese to their curriculum, my daughter once in YC, but had quit last year for we noticed their were many problems in the school, the academic, or admin, the campus, the teachers...., yes, they emphasized on both language, Chinese and English, but the Chinese they just push the students to learn thousands of words within a year, and to write essays of several hundreds words within a short time, the school expect the parents to help a lot, if the parents do not have much time to follow up their homework, this will be a big problem, and the kids will then lose all the interest in further studies of the subject, also, the Chinese curriculum is written by people from China, and some are not really suitable for Hong Kong students, we parents have complained many times about the wordings used. I can only say everything is in a rush in this school, the teacher will teach 3 -4 chapters in a week so as to finish the textbook before holidays, or before the test, and expect the parents to teach at home. Maybe that's why their students change to other school always, this already reflect it's problem. If a school is good, then why so many students run away from it?? I think this is like a local school more than an international school according to it's teaching style.

DMum 寫道:
Dear all,

Please don't compare the english standard between ESF and Yew Chung.  I am not the yc staff or yc parents and I only discuss with you about the difference between the two schools.  Kids in ESF only studied English and they don't know the Chinese.  My friend told me his kids are in grade 6 and in grade 5 respectively, they only know how to write their name in chinese,they treat the chinese words like pictures and draw it on the handwriting book.  In ESF curriculum, they  are compuslory to take english lit. and english but they don't sit for the chinese language in IGCSE,  Please see their websit.  However, YC insists their students to sit english and chinese papers in IGCSE as first language.  If you have only limited resources (timing) . you invest all your time in English or you want your kid to learn english and chinese.  If you want your son learn a kind of language, expecting him to speak extremely fluent english .  I think you must select ESF.  However, if you want your kids to speak fluent english in order to communicate with others, express himself and learn chinese language, you can select YC.

When my son sat for the placement test in YC  this month, I am very surprised because the duration time for the placement test last for 3 hours.  The test was inclusive of english, chinese and mathematics. My son told me he wrote at lest two chinese essays which essays must be more than 300 words.   I think their chinese standard is the highest in the international schools.  According to the IGCSE, they only wirite 350-400 words for essay in chinese language as the first language in grade 11.  My son also told me he also write the english essay without words limitation.The mathematics paper is so difficult because it has a lot of reasoning questions.

Does any parent to share view on the placement test with me?

DMum

Dear Belledog,
ESF chinese standard is far, far  behind YC. Even they add chinese to their curriculum, but they never ask the students to sit for the examination becuase this paper is not easy in IGCSE.  Do you tell me your kid in which grade.  According to the statistics provided by yc, 97% of students get c or above in IGCSE examination for english and chinese paper.  I agree the chinese is more difficult than the english. It is so hard for students to learn two language at the same time.  However, the briitsh curriculum compares with the local curriculum, you feel that one is heaven and the other is hell.  Do you know the chinese curriculum is in local primary school, the kids must analyse which 修辭 are used for each sentences.  The kids must analyse the whole passage.  

belledog

DMum,
I agree that the Chinese in ESF is not as good as YC, the ESF is about 2 grade behind, that is year 5 student will study the year 3/or year 4 longman Chinese textbook. I choose an international school for my daughter is for her to study happy, not much pressure as local school, and the kids can expand more interest , that is the difference of local school and international school. I cannot get this feeling from YC, and my daughter is not happy, that's why we leave the school, if i were to pay such a high school fee, and just get decks of homework, i think this is not worth.
My daughter shows great improvement in English after going to ESF, before she can just spend all her time in Chinese when she was in YC, you may notice that the English standard is not so good in YC as in other ESF, the YC students speak English like a local school, their accent is not good enough. Before, i like YC very much, but after these several years, I know YC is not what i am looking for.

DMum

Dear Belledog,
Can you tell me the workload for your kid and how many hours does she spend everyday.  I see the leaflet it show that kids must spend two hour for Grade 7 to do his assignment everyday.  Please tell me yor kid in which grade before leaving yc.  How many chinese worksheet for her to do?

DMum

Belledog,

Can you tell me more about yc curriculum?  There are 5 lesson for chinese only per week but all the other subjects are taught by native speakers, why the kid speak local english.  I don't concern the accent and only want to know whether they can speak fluent english.Singaporean and Australian has different accent when they speak english but this is not a great problem.  Both of them speak fluent english and nobody laugh at them.

Last week, I attend the introduction meeting and one of parents is foreigner and she can also speak fluent catonese.  She asks the assistant director whether it offers intensive chinese course for new student.  I surprise why foreigners want their kid to learn chinese.

Chinese language is very, very difficult than English.  If you don't always practice, you can't remember how to write the chinese words.  

From esf website, the kid are not compulsory  to sit for the chinese paper in IGCSE and the reason is esf know that their standard is not sufficient to sit for this paper.  However, we never say their chinese standard is not good and their accent has problem.

Actually, I don't think the Chinese language in ESF is only two years behind the yc standard. You want to spend $10 to buy an orange or you want to spend $10 to buy an orange and apple at the same time.
If you spend $10 to buy an orange and apple, I think you don't compare $5 orange is not good as $10 orange because it is unfair.  Why you don't think the kid can eat apple with orange at the same time.   

belledog

Dear DMum,
My daughter left YC last year and that she finished grade 4 there. On average, she spent 3-4 hours doing the homeworks. Everyday she had English/or/and/Maths homework, that only spend about 1 hour to finish, Chinese is not the same everyday, sometimes one/two homework, at weekend, you may have 3-4 homeworks in Chinese, my daughter is very slow doing Chinese, like just looking up the dictionary, she spent 2 hours to finish one chapter, of course, i had helped her , if not it would take even longer time, sometimes the teacher just tell them to copy the whole chapter as homework, and my daughter cannot go to bed until 12 at night , so every night, we struggled for the homeworks, and give up other after school learning. If your child is in Grade 7, then you must be entering the new campus, that's once an attraction to me, that time i wish i could wait until my daughter can go into the new campus, but i had finally chose to leave with her 10 other classmates at the same time. I have no comments for the secondary, but i know many moms do not consider secondary in YC.

DMum

Thank for your reply.  My son is studying in local school and he must do a lot of supplementary exercise such as maths and chinese.  Everyweek, he must do more than 100 maths questions and 12 pages of chinese worksheet except the school homework.  He also practice piano and learn music theory in order to fulfill the school requirement.  Therefore, he do all at least 10:00p.m.. After 10p.m., he is very tired.  His academic is not poor but I think if he wants to keep the standard in secondary school, he must at least do his homework after midnight.  This is my reason to apply for yc secondary school.

belledog

DMum,
Yes, i agree that Chinese is very important today and many foreigner want to learn Chinese either. YC has presented a good curriculum, but whether they can really put into reality is a question. The Chinese teachers seem not to have a criteria to follow the teaching progress, e.g. my daughter's Chinese teacher teach about 2-3 chapters a week, and have dictations on the 2/3 chapters every week, but in another class, their Chinese teachers only teach 1 chapter every week, and NO dictation every week, only maybe once a month... then when the school term is nearly over, the Chinese teacher in another class cannot finish the text book, so he teaches 1-2 chapter every day and a whole week for dictations! I was really surprised when the other parents told me. I do not say YC is not good in the curriculum, but only the school have so many problems inside they may not be able to implement it. If you have time, you can spend some time to go through all the comments from other parents, that you can have a broader view of this school.

DMum

Belledog,
How many chinese chapters did they teach to  student per term? Do they request students to have recited dictation? I don't want my son to spend a lot of time to learn chinese in local primary school becuase the standard of existing local primary chinese curriculum is equivalent to secondary level.  Even, we use a lot of time to do supplementary exercises but the mark is not so high.   

belledog

DMum,
For year 4, the textbook has 14 chapters, and the whole year they have 6 textbooks, so each term they will teach about 28 chapters. There are 3 terms each year. Upper grade may have more...

DMum

Belledog,
It is a lot of chapter each term, the cotent of each chapter is quite difficult or not.  Please tell me the maths and english standard.

belledog

DMum,
As to my daughter, the Chinese is difficult for her, so that's why i changed school, the Maths is OK and quite the same with other ESF, the English is a bit not as good as ESF.

YC-MOM

耀中真係 "唔憂做"。
當日佢地話中學要收 20 萬 debenture，好多家長都嘩然，都諗點解佢地咁有信心，敢 "開價" 咁高。
比唔比得起 20 萬 debenture，只係其一；值唔值 20 萬 debenture，自己諗；如果你覺得值，又比得開心，咁就好，我自己就覺得唔值。
其實，debenture 計劃推出後，前後下來約年半，期間真係好多讀耀中多年的學生都轉校了；唔好話人地比唔起錢，我識有 d 去了都係要比 debenture 的國際學校，如 GSIS， AusIS，和 CanIS 等，有 D 直情出國讀 boarding school 算了。
不過走還走，最近聽聞，中學部下年 ( 即 07 年 8 月 開學的學年 )，好似收生情形一樣唔錯。看來，佢地一早摸清了香港人對國際學校中學的需求。
那怕有人走，一樣大把新客路。

對學校 "滿意" 與否，要看家長/學生的 "要求"。
我對學校係有要求的，但我唔承認我要求過高，
我要求的，只係對一間自稱為國際學校的學校的要求。

當然，我知有 d 家長的要求冇咁高的，佢地有 d 直情覺得耀中好到不得了，咁我都好戥佢地開心；如果你係對耀中滿意的一份子，我亦真心恭喜你。

我唔會懷疑在 BK 唱好耀中的人，會係學校的 STAFF，
因為，我自己都識唔少耀中的忠實擁躉；
的確一直都有好多，好似我咁對學校不滿的家長，但事實亦的確有一批好捧場的家長，你可以話佢地真係耀中 die hard fans，雖然一樣有不滿，有投訴，但卻奇怪地，年年都乖乖留低。

講句公度話，如果孩子讀開本地學校，耀中可能真係滿足到家長。

耀中每班人數少，小學一般 20-23 人一班，同本地小學 35-40 人一班，當然唔同喇，小學部老師亦大部份都係有好好的 qualification，亦好好心機和有愛心，家長當然覺得，同本地學校有好大分別；至於英文，耀中話晒都係英文教學，英文點弱，都比本地學校強，另外亦有中文讀 ( 好多人講到耀中中文點好點好，我就唔覺，係叫做比其他國際學校如 ESF 多 DD ，但學生水平好參差)。
不過，我講的係小學，到今時今日，好多人 ( 包括我 ) 都覺得耀中小學 ok。
但如果打算入的係中學部，我只有祝你好運。

Placement Tests 難唔難，真係冇乜意思，問題係學校點睇 placement tests 的 results。
我見的，就係插班入耀中的，( 中小學都係 ) ，大部份英文都好差，咁個 placement test 有幾難又點，反正佢都唔會真係點揀人。你英文差？照收，比你去 IEP ( intensive english program ) 讀一年本載，我眼見耳聽，係我孩子 (小學部 ) 今年班中有由 IEP 轉回 normal class 的，佢講的寫的，我完全唔明，根本唔係英文，連港式英文都唔係，衰 D 講，比好多新移民還差 ( 新移民孩子，好多都好努力學英文 )，咁你話佢未入 IEP 前的英文係點？
講講中學，每級 8 班，你估佢地可唔可以咁揀擇？聽聞中學部有 d 學生唔係好識講英文，有好多係band 2 尾學生，不過家長可以負擔，就比佢插班讀耀中，叫做學校個名好聽 d ，得罪講句，唔好話國際學校 ( 應該有英文係 first language 的水平 )，本地學校都未必間間收佢插班。咁你話個 placement test 做黎做乜？都係一個 procedure 嗟。
再睇中學 website ，睇下老師的團體相片，就見中學部聘請的，竟然主要係本地老師 ( 睇樣，大部份似本土香港人，唔好問我點睇，但我一睇就知唔係外國回流的 "竹昇" )， 外藉老師數目比例不合理。
以學校係全英語教學，應該中文科先會係華人老師，但係照數數目，恐怕 history，chemistry，math 等的老師，都只係本地老師。
咁你信唔信香港老師的英語水平？
同埋，佢地之前會係邊間學校的老師呢？
教開國際學校？教開本地學校？
又或者係從國內來的？ ( 留意多些，就知耀中越來越 "大陸化" )。
耀中中學的英語水平和英語氣氛點解差，( 起碼，比小學部差得多 ) 再明顯不過。

最後補充，我都係說說我的所見所聞的，比大家參考。
如果你覺得學校 ok，你覺得滿意，咁真係恭喜你，我都想大聲咁講，我滿意耀中，但係，真係講唔出口。

YC-MOM

belledog 寫道:
YC has presented a good curriculum, but whether they can really put into reality is a question.

講中晒。
耀中的中文課程 ( 小學部 )，簡直係笑話，
係每天都有中文堂，課本亦好深，咁又點？
根本學生冇可能活學活用。
這個問題，唔淨係耀中的問題，
另一間標榜 BILINGUAL 的學校 ( 唔好開名喇) 都係一樣，
學生出來中英都唔掂，
或者可以咁講，如果以 "中 & 英" 這個組合，真的很難可以真係 BILINGUAL，
" 英 & 法 " 或 " 英 & 意 " 等這些組合易 D ，畢竟，中文真係難學好。

Tasha

如果学生從傳統學校轉去YC,相信應付中文課程會设有困難.中文課程的問題一般發生在YC土產學生身上.由於課文艱深,內容缺乏趣味性, 加上學校斷層教學法 (美其名為版塊理論) 把認字,閱讀, 寫作分開在不同年級教授, 令同學無法掌握語文的連貫性, 更缺乏運用的机會,因此大部份学生的中文基礎都比較弱 (相對於中文課堂的時間)寫作能力尤其不足,有些學生對中文科很抗拒.情况就如一二年級只學 apple, today, will, under, happy , the, it, very, hello 等等單字,到了三四年級才做reading,等到五六年級才做 composition. 學習語文是一個相輔相承的過程, 閱讀有助認字, 認字有助閱讀, 寫作有助認字, 閱讀有助寫作 等, 三方面互相補足,分開教授, 無疑是忽視語文學習的整體牲. 外校轉來的家長看見YC的課本都會驚訝於中文課程水平之高, 更甚於一般傳統學校. 但請記着在YC, 學生的中文水平絕對不等於課本的水平. 中文課程艱深,令學生抗拒學習中文, 是很多家長轉校的原因. (當然英文水平低也是另一個原因). 從傳統學校轉去YC, 當然沒有以上的問題, 但家長要有心理準備, 孩子的同學和孩子的中文水平有很大的差異, 對老師是很大的挑戰.–

有關YC IGCSE 中英文科的成績, 想提供一些資料. YC 有好些學生是考 第二語言的考卷的, 即是 English as second language, Chinese as second language.並不全是first language的 (就正如以往香港会考, 英文分 Syllabus A and B 一樣) 要知YC真正的語文 level, 應該向學校就個別考卷的成積查詢, 而不是相信一個籠統的數字.YC在引述學生的公開試成積一向含糊,有時更令家長覺得誤導之兼.

轉校是個重要的決定,要多打聽第一手資料, 在高小階段轉校,要考慮升中問題,個人認為YC中學部的管理,師資和教學質素實在令人搖頭嘆息!請小心考慮!!


Quote DMum : "According to the statistics provided by yc, 97% of students get c or above in IGCSE examination for english and chinese paper."

Tasha

Tasha

一位家長在Parent Teacher meeting 的經歷: 家長想跟一位教science科的老師談談自己的孩子,看見老師是黃皮膚,十足港人模樣,於是說廣東話,怎知老師開口說英文,於是家長轉英文台,怎知老師的英文說得立立亂, 文法語句錯滿漏百出, 詞不達意, 家長聽得很辛苦,知道老師絕對不是native English speaker, 於是問老師会不会說中文,然後大家都轉了中文台! 看來YC 應該開辦IEP給個別老師修讀.

[quote]
YC-MOM 寫道:

再睇中學 website ，睇下老師的團體相片，就見中學部聘請的，竟然主要係本地老師 ( 睇樣，大部份似本土香港人，唔好問我睇，但一睇就知唔係外國回流的 "竹昇" )， 外藉老師數目比例不合理。
以學校係全英語教學，應該中文科先會係華人老師，但係照數數目，恐怕 history，chemistry，math 等的老師，都只係本地老師。
咁你信唔信香港老師的英語水平？

foolish.mom

My kid is now in YC year 5. This year I showed 2 of his Chinese compositions to my friends, and they were all amazed of his Chinese standard. My friend commented that my kid's composition is much better than her daughter at the same age who studies in a band 1 local school. Don't think that my kid is exceptional. His Chinese is not the top in class. Thus I think it depends on whether the kid can study both languages. I don't think YC's chinese is poor, but only that half of the students are good at chinese, and the other half have "abandoned" learning chinese, like those in other IS.  

YC-MOM

耀中的 IEP，亦係另一個大笑話，
由本地學校轉來的學生，英文不好，就會被篇入 IEP
( 其實英文水平唔較夠，本來係唔係就唔應該收個學生呢？ ) 。
IEP 班是雜牌軍 ( 起碼小學部的 IEP 就是 )，不分年齡都是同一班，專門惡補英文，沒有中文堂，一般學生會留在 IEP 半年至一年，之後就會被篇回 normal class。
IEP 真係一個唔錯的 "搵錢" 概念，而家好多人嚮往國際學校教育，起碼，單單在 BK ，都有好多打聽插班讀國際學校的家長，但出面間間都難入，即使係新校如 RC，ISF，聽聞收生要求都很高，耀中就唔同，卦名去考筆試，其實學位係先到先得，你肯早 D 比錢，就收你，你亦可以開開心心完這個國際學校的夢想。
有 d 學生要讀一整年 IEP ( 部份讀半年就得 ) 先轉回去 normal class，就等於變相留班一年。有一個 case，係一名學生，小學去過 IEP，上到中學又被要求再去 IEP，你話佢中學畢業會係幾多歲？
其實如果留意下，不難發現好多學生都係比一般同學年齡大；例如，本來 8 歲應該讀 P4，但如果你英文唔好，可能會叫你讀 P3，如果真係非常唔好，佢地會先篇你入 IEP，讀完去 P3 定 P4，任佢話。
另一 "搵錢大法"：舊年有個家長好 desperate，佢孩子年齡應該讀 P4，但佢報名插班時，P4 已經冇位，學校叫佢入 P3，而佢又肯 ( 佢孩子唔係差的，但都要留班 )。

foolish.mom

DMum,

I like your analogy of using $10 to buy both an apple and an orange. My $10 is expensive for me, but I can get an apple and an orange of good quality. I'm not here to argue with other parents who are against YC, I'm just trying to show a successful example of YC's bilingual education, at least up to year 5. My kid was in YC since 2 years old, and never went for private tutoring or extra language lessons outside YC.