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

The language situation in the Philippines is multilingual in nature, with the vernaculars used at home and in the neighborhood. Filipino is the national language, a symbol of unity and linguistic identity, whereas English is the language of academic discourse and business. The schools use both Filipino and English. Filipino is used for most subjects, which are mainly related to social studies, while English, the second language, is used for instruction in science and mathematics. For subjects taught in English, the performance ranges from average to below average, with a score of 50% in mathematics and 40% in science. While the poorer performance in science has been attributed to inadequate proficiency on the part of the teachers (Gonzalez & Sibayan, 1998), the results also suggest that science learning is hindered by the low English proficiency of the students and teachers. English belongs to a totally different language family than Filipino, and competence in English is closely related to socioeconomic status. Children of the poorer classes, due to poor teaching and living conditions, are seldom functionally literate in English for carrying out higher cognitive activities that are required for the effective learning of science (Gonzalez, 1998).

Foreign-language immersion programs in elementary schools in the United States have grown significantly since the early 1970s. Most immersion programs involve Spanish, as there are a large number of Spanish-speaking immigrants from Central and South America, but there are also programs in French, German, Japanese, and Chinese. These programs are mainly early total immersion or early partial immersion, in which only half of the school day is spent in the immersion language. According to Met and Lorenz (1997), teachers involved in partial-immersion programs reported that their students could handle concrete objectives in the immersion language in the primary grades, but students were frustrated in the learning of abstract concepts in higher grades, probably because their cognitive development was at a level higher than their language proficiency. To facilitate learning in higher grades, some teachers used English when dealing with abstract concepts or allowed their students to communicate in English. These observations point to the need for matching the cognitive demand of the subject curriculum with the second-language ability of the students in order to achieve desirable effects of immersion. The same problem is also observed in Hong Kong. When dealing with more abstract or complex concepts in content subjects at the senior secondary levels, many EMI teachers tend to use a mixed code of Chinese and English to enhance student understanding because they believe that the English proficiency of many students is not sufficiently developed to enable them to think abstractly in their second language.

Meta-analysis is a statistical procedure that can assess the effect of variations in programs. Using this technique, Willig (1985) compared the bilingual programs conducted in American schools with traditional programs, in which non-native English-speaking students were taught exclusively in English. After controlling for prior student differences, minority-language students who were taught in their native language performed significantly better than their English-taught peers throughout the curriculum, such as in reading, language, mathematics, and overall achievement. The bilingual students also showed more positive attitudes towards self and the school. However, such programs are significantly different from the immersion models implemented in Hong Kong and other places, as they aim to protect and to develop children's native languages while developing the majority language. Another important aim of these programs is to build ethnic identity in the minority-language children in a majority-language society (Fishman, 1989).