讀國際學校有甚麼好/不好?

yyyy

自己的小朋友讀國際學校, 但身邊朋友的子女大部份都讀local學校, 有時都擔心自己有沒有選擇錯誤, 所以想聽聽妳的意見, 妳是憑甚麼原因給自己的小朋友讀國際學校?
知道來這網頁的妳可能沒有選擇比自己的小朋友讀國際學校,其實又很想聽下妳為甚麼不讓自己的小朋友讀國際學校?

lionking

For me, the only disadvantage is fee...local school is free of charge relatively.

Other said that their Chinese is wrost...but what is the use of Chinese in HK?

yyyy

Do you children study in local school or international school? Why you putting them there.

lionking

are you asking me or all?

for me, my target is international school but it depends,...the only one I would go ESF Shatin Junior...otherwise local school...

My son is too young 2 months only...so I start planning and gathering information....from now...

ChunMaMa

I want my son to go into int'l school because I don't like the 填鴨式 method of education. I don't like dictation and memorise forcely.

And I want my son to learn fluent English, not just simple English as we studied at local school. Local school is very concentrated on teaching grammar and has no English environment for kids to speak "real" English. You know, the school in overseas, they don't need to teach grammar as English is their first language, they will never speak English in wrong grammar.

melisa

ChunMaMa 寫道:
You know, the school in overseas, they don't need to teach grammar as English is their first language, they will never speak English in wrong grammar.

會說流俐的英語，並不等於會寫好文章，為了提高學生的英語水平，加拿大的學校都要教英語文法

Jackie

When I studied overseas, our professors told us that our writing (from HK students) are sometimes better than native americans.  Even though native Americans can speak English fluently, their spelling, and sometimes grammar are wrong.
Also, I think that in the future (around 20 years later when it's the turn for our children to start their business life), Chinese is a very important language which one must be fluent in both writing and speaking in order to survive in Hong Kong.   

ChunMaMa

I think misspell words is irrelevant to whether you study local or int'l school. Just like we sometimes forget how to write the Chinese words.

And for grammar, I agree but do you think teacher will correct their grammar for their writing.

At least they can speak fluent English and not just simple English as we learn from local school (More complex English can communicate better to foreigners). I am not telling that we cannot learn very good English at local school. Just I think that int'l school can provide the real English environment for kids to learn English "easier".

And I don't mean that Chinese is not important, so most int'l school provide Mandarin lesson. I think can read and talk Chinese is enough to survive and kids can learn Chinese naturally as they live in Chinese environment. Or we can teach them Chinese as we know Chinese better than English.

I don't need my son to write very good essay as I am not going to ask him to be a writer.

wcllks

What is the use of a perfect English accent?

To show foreigners that Hong Kong is a real international city since people in Hong Kong can speak both Chinese and English in a perfect manner.

wcllks

I don't think I can convince you that accent is of some sort of importance.  On the other hand, I don't think you can convince me that accent is not important at all.

I would appreciate a foreigner more if he can speak Cantonese without any accent.  I believe a foreigner would do the same.

just my 2 cents  

faye

I think there are 3 separate issues here:
1) benefits of particular accents.  From my experience as a Chinese student who studied abroad and in my profession.  Foreigners are more impressed when one speaks English with a British accent (by that I mean BBC English).  It's similar to hearing a foreigner speak Cantonese/ Mandarin without accent.  Are you more impressed by one who speaks Mandarin with Beijing accent or one who speaks it without proper regard to the 4 intonations?
However, that is a first impression matter.  If one is intelligent, courteous, professional etc, other people will pay one the proper respect in due course.  Personally I feel that when one is learning to speak a language, one should learn to speak it with a proper accent.  It's part of learning the language properly.

2) what is the proper accent?  I would say it is whatever accent the national news anchors use.

3) learning the "proper" accent in schools.  I have met people who studied in local schools speak the Queen's English.  I have also met international school students speak English with a Cantonese accent!  It's really a combination of individual effort, school environment, teachers' input and family.  No doubt inter'l schools provide more Eng-speaking exposure/ opportunity than local schools.  However, it's also easier for them to pick up bad language speaking habits.  I am talking about peppering the speech with the words like "like" and "you know".

Like all things in life, it's a balancing act.

faye

There are many different accents within one country, that is why I say "national news" rather than county news.  

Like it or not, there is one or two "preferred" accent for English (if the word "perfect" or "proper" is objectionable to you).  This is why you find most of the big name language courses (such as Linguaphone, Berlitz) use one particular English accent rather than a hotchpotch of Irish accents or Indian accent.  The "preferred" accent used to be BBC English, but recently US English is also accepted.  Likewise for other languages, there is also a "preferred" accent and you will find that is the one used for language courses.

As for your second question, I don't think you can quantify how much more impressed these people are with British accent.  On a relative basis, assuming 2 Chinese persons with everything equal but the accent, the one who speaks English with a "preferred" accent is more impressive than the one who speaks it with a Hong Kong accent.  

wcllks

Faye has made very good points.  To me, a "preferred" accent is the accent of the people whom I believe my child will interact more with in the future.  (Hong Kong accent is not counted since we don't use English to communicate.)