English Proficiency Level Decline In Hong Kong: Fault Of Mother Tongue Education System?

English proficiency level decline in Hong Kong: Fault of mother tongue education system?
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Introduction
Despite the fact that Hong Kong has been highly influenced by the Western history. The city is still seen as racially homogenous with a monolingual society of about 98 percent of the population being from the ethnic Chinese. Also, 89% of the citizens in the city speak Cantonese as their first language (Maxwell-Reid & Lau, 2016). These communities have a strong intra-group cohesion where speakers seriously maintain use of their language. Their first language is usually seen as a language of solidarity and the only preferred medium of communication (Yang, 2016). In this regard, the use of English language in Hong Kong is almost negligible.
Thesis Statement
Several findings from Hong Kong reveal that students are proficient in native language than English during their schooling year. This is credited to the fact that the social and cultural environment does not allow for the proficiency in English as a learning and spoken language. It is important to understand the rationale behind this and work on ways to establish English proficiency in the country.
Challenges of English Proficiency Learning in Hong Kong
English language proficiency in Hong Kong is often seen as being a language of success which is only used at the higher levels of business and administration. It is mostly used in written communication and rarely as a spoken language. Here English knowledge is related to people of high income, education levels, and social prestige (Chan, 2016). The main challenge, however, is that most of the teachers are not trained in the language. The monolingual lives of students outside class also provide for very limited opportunities for them to practice the language. In addition, English is also seen as being pedagogically harmful inter-language by authorities who have pressed some form of sanctions in English learning (Qian, 2008).
These factors have created serious learning problems for most students. Research shows that at least 30% of students will have difficulty following English language curriculum. According to a recent survey, 21% of total students will fail in the use of English exam, while another 35% will obtain an E., this makes the future studies for the student conditional (Qian, 2008). The main issue here is that English competence is also not seen as being important. According to one study, it was revealed that at least 80% of the lectures and 60% of university tutorial are conducted in English; however, as much as this is of high value to students, it is not translated to the system (Trent., 2017). For example, when the same students were asked factors that were necessary for academic success, the English language was ranked at fourth overall. Study skills and knowledge of different subjects were rated at the top by the student in all years at the university (Mann & Tang, 2012). Third year students rated subject knowledge as the most important while English was ranked at the bottom. This shows that even for students, English proficiency is not a great concern for them (Trentt., 2016). This is because they believe that by being f...