HKIER

摘要

N.A.

Abstract

The objective of this study is to explore the problem of medium of instruction in Anglo-Chinese schools in Hong Kong. A sample of 152 Form One pupils from an aided Anglo-Chinese school was chosen for the study. An English attainment test was given to the pupils in order to find out their standard of English before enrolment. Thirty eight pupils of lowest standard in English were assigned to the English remedial class, the remaining pupils were randomly assigned to three classes, 38 each. The study was carried out in these four classes for one academic year under normal teaching condition.

All four classes were taught through the medium of Chinese during the study in the subject of social studies. However, the written language used was different among the four classes: the remedial class used Chinese as written language, two other classes sued English as the written language throughout the whole course of study, the fourth class used Chinese as the written language in the first term and then switched to English in the second term. Three tests were administered to all the pupils involved in each term in order to find whether significant difference would arise among the four classes. The following results were obtained.

1. The remedial class that learned all things in Chinese performed significantly better in the subject under study when compared with the other three classes.
2. The fourth class showed about equal performance with the remedial class in the first term when the written language was Chinese. However, they fell behind the remedial class in the second term when the written language was switched to English. Furthermore, their result was significantly better than the other two classes that used English during the whole study.