However, English is a foreign language, rather than a second language, in Hong Kong. Students’ needs may be different. Many students do not have a sufficient English learning environment around them, and may have many questions about structures and vocabulary. It would indeed be necessary for teachers to have more control over language input. The exclusive use of English for classroom instruction and activities may not be effective, which has long been argued in local English language education circles.

In recent years, the notion of translanguaging has gained attention in language-learning research. Unlike code-switching, translanguaging advocates learning an additional language with the support of multilingual and multimodal resources. A translanguaging classroom would allow or even encourage students, for example, to translate new items of vocabulary into their first language or carry out discussion using any preferred language if needed.

There has been fine-tuning in the past 15 years to enhance students’ English abilities. Now would be the right time to take another approach and raise the quality of secondary school English education with an re-emphasis on grammar.

Andy Seto, Shau Kei Wan

Senior secondary students shouldn’t skip grammar

I write in response to “Teach grammar properly for solid foundation in English”.

At present, the senior secondary English curriculum revolves around application and fails to provide training in metalinguistic skills.

Grammatical rules are mainly taught to primary and junior secondary students. Senior secondary students tend to be drilled in past exam papers or practising their reading, writing, listening and speaking skills for the Diploma of Secondary Education English exam.

For students with a better grasp of English syntax, this focus on application would no doubt be helpful. When students don’t have an adequate understanding of grammar, however, it makes no sense for them to concentrate on writing and speaking exercises that emphasise language output. This emphasis on writing and speaking regardless of knowledge of grammar does not improve students’ English.

Sometimes, weaker students don’t even know which exact grammatical rules they are unclear about. They may vaguely recall fragments of rules learned in primary or junior secondary school, but forget the details. Reviewing all of these rules systematically in senior forms would definitely sharpen students’ English skills.

With the current English curriculum, unfortunately, there seems to be no incentive for secondary schools to spend much time on grammar. But adding a section to the exam to test students on grammar may add to the burden already weighing on our students.

I therefore suggest revamping school-based assessment, which accounts for 15 per cent of students’ final grade in English, to assess students’ understanding of English grammar.

Anson Chan, Guangzhou

Government intervention points to HKU’s governance issue

If the council believes there are not enough checks and balances in the current management structure, it needs to find a way to fix that. If there is a formal complaint of misconduct or dereliction of duty, the council can set up a disciplinary panel to deal with that.

Now the government has stepped in and formed an investigation and study group. But I wonder how an external party is going to coordinate internal communications. I can only interpret this to mean that there is a lack of proper governance at HKU.

Jeannie Y.L. Lee, Lam Tin