HKIER

Abstract

This paper reports on an investigation into Hong Kong students' comprehension of 45 non-technical words commonly used in science. A total of 4644 Secondary 4, 5 and 6 students in a randomized sample of 46 schools, stratified by school type and area, participated in the study. The results showed that many students did not correctly comprehend a large proportion of the words, confused them with words that were phonetically or graphologically simnilar and even took them for their antonyms. Such poor performance raises doubts as to whether the majority of Hong Kong students have attained a 'threshold level' of competence in English to benefit from learning science in English.

摘要

本研究探討學生對45個科學科常用的非專有英文名詞的理解。研究採用以學校種類和地區為分層的隨機樣本，受試者合共4644名來自46所中學的中四、中五及中六學生。結果顯示學生錯誤理解大部份非專有名詞，將同音和同形的名詞混淆，甚至與相反詞混淆。一般學生對非專有名詞的低劣理解能力令人懷疑他們有否足夠的程度以英文來學習科學。