Evaluation of the effects of medium of instruction on the science learning of Hong Kong secondary students: Performance on the science achievement test

Bilingual Research Journal, Summer 2003 by Yip, Din Yan, Tsang, Wing Kwong, Cheung, Sin Pui

Abstract

This paper is the first of a series of articles reporting the findings of a longitudinal study on the impact of a new language policy about the medium of instruction on science learning of secondary students in Hong Kong. This paper compares the science achievement of Chinese students learning science through a second language, English, with that of students receiving instruction in their mother tongue, Chinese. Based on the scores on a science achievement test made up of multiple-choice and free-response questions, the English-medium students, despite their higher initial ability, were found to perform much more poorly than their Chinese-medium peers. They were particularly weak in problems that assess understanding of abstract concepts, the ability to discriminate between scientific terms, and the ability to apply scientific knowledge in novel or realistic situations. This result implies that the English-medium students were handicapped in science learning by their low levels of English proficiency, and learning English as a subject through the primary years is not sufficient to prepare them for a full English immersion program in secondary school.

Introduction

The medium of instruction in secondary schools has long been a controversial issue in Hong Kong. Prior to 1998, individual schools were free to decide their own instruction medium. Because there is a great demand for graduates with high English proficiency, most schools opted for English as the medium of instruction without considering whether or not their students were capable of learning effectively through English. However, in 1998, the government imposed a language policy for schools, which stipulates that most schools must adopt Chinese as the medium of instruction (MOI), and only about a quarter of the schools that take in the more able students are allowed to teach in English. As this policy will have a far-reaching impact on secondary education in Hong Kong, the present study investigated the effects of this policy on students' learning of science in their first 3 years of secondary schooling.

Background and Rationale of the Study

The majority of the population in Hong Kong is Chinese and speaks Cantonese, a dialect of Chinese, as the language for daily communication. For the purposes of this paper, when the authors use the term "Chinese language," we mean "Cantonese." However, Hong Kong was a British colony from 1842 to 1997; hence, the government uses English as the official language. English is a language of power because proficiency in English confers advantages in securing well-paid posts in the government and in the commercial sector. The high status of the English language is reflected in the education system, which aims to produce graduates proficient in both Chinese and English.

Primary schools in Hong Kong use Chinese as the MOI and teach English as a subject. After Primary 6 (Grade 6), students are streamed according to MOI into different types of secondary schools: those with English as the medium of instruction (EMI) and those with Chinese as the medium of instruction (CMI). Prior to 1998, secondary schools were free to choose their MOI, and most schools opted for EMI to meet the demand for graduates with high levels of English proficiency. One problem with this mode of late immersion is that most students entering English-medium secondary schools were not equipped with an adequate level of English proficiency for them to learn content (nonlanguage) subjects effectively in English. Furthermore, some subject teachers could not teach proficiently in English.

An undesirable outcome of this situation is that many teachers used a mixture of Chinese and English for instruction (Johnson, 1983). Shek, Johnson, and Law (1991) showed this mixed mode of instruction has become more prevalent since the implementation of compulsory education from Primary 1-6 (Grades 1-6) to Secondary 1-3 (Grades 7-9) in 1978. In many of the EMI schools that took in less able students, the teachers used Chinese most of the time for teaching, classroom control, and interpersonal interaction. Interaction in English was mainly restricted to asking simple recall questions that required one-word or single-phrase answers from the students, highlighting vocabulary in English textbooks with explanations in Chinese, and going through worksheets or notes written in English (Johnson, 1997; Pennington, 1999; Evans, 2000).

The weakest students could not understand even very simple text written in English. Their learning style basically consisted of translating content words in a text by looking in the dictionary and writing the Chinese characters alongside the English vocabulary in their notes or textbooks. In order to prepare for tests and examinations, they had to commit to memory terms and isolated chunks of texts in English that they did not quite understand. Under these conditions, it was very unlikely that these students could develop an intrinsic interest in and motivation for learning. Given students' poor English abilities and the pressure to cover syllabi heavily loaded with factual content, many teachers considered a mixed mode of instruction (Chinese and English) as inevitable and even desirable. This situation was also common in some of the schools that admitted students of higher abilities.