Downturn English Level in Hong Kong
Hong Kong is a prosperous international financial city of the world. For this business world, English is important. But Hong Kong students have a downturn English level, they have got worse and worse result of English public examinations in recent years, many people state that is the responsibility of local schools and universities. In fact, the poor English proficiency of students is created by their own personal motivation and living environment or government policy. I am going to discuss several reasons how students are getting poor English.

One of the reasons, I believe, is the changing educational policy by the government. Not only will it affect the environment of studying English for students, it also makes it difficult for teachers. Both students and teachers are always to adapt these new and complex educational systems. For example, the government implemented the policy called “Mother-tongue Education” earlier. Obviously, students have got worst English proficiency in this program, because some of the subjects had been changed into Chinese. Students have less opportunity to write, read, speak and listen. In addition, both politically and economically, but also from the economic aspect, Hong Kong society must recognize Putonghua, due to the rise of China. So the government had to carry out the educational policy “two language and three dialects”. This reduces the important of English and Putonghua has become more important. For example, many foreigners have started to study Putonghua and our students also spend more time to learn it. They want to balance it, so that learning English cannot achieve practice makes perfect. Finally, their English has been becoming poorer.

Apart from these, a personal motivation is also the important reason why students have low English proficiency. In our daily life, we communicate with others through 99% Cantonese. Many students still dislike using English for communication, because they are afraid of being laughed by others when speaking or writing wrongly. So how can they become fluent in English? Moreover, students do not practice more in speaking and writing, so they make many pronunciation and grammatical mistakes, such as tense, voice, verb forms, etc. Eventually, their English standard cannot but deteriorate gradually.

Last but not least, a better living environment of English language helps us improve our English. However, it is difficult to form a good English living environment in Hong Kong. For example, radio programmes have been reduced to 1 or 2 channels. This leads to less chance for people to practice English listening. Furthermore, the cultures of Japan or Korea Icons are invading into our society. Young students would like to watch television or movies about them more than the English ones. The English songs are being replaced by Cantonese, Japanese or Korean songs. Therefore, English has become less important in Hong Kong than before.

In conclusion, although it is not a mother language, English has always been regarded as an important academic subject in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is an international city. English is the most important for us to communicate with foreigners; we must improve our English for communication and competition with others. Moreover, government also carries out a good educational system. For instance, government places importance on the use of English, not the result of examination.