Posted by
bbvv
18 yrs ago
I'm a british born chinese and will be speaking english to my son. As I want him to be able to speak cantonese and later mandarin, I will be sending him to a local school.
Will his english accent cause problems at local schools as I find that most kids speak in an american accent. Just worried that the teachers will say that his english is incorrect due to his accent.
Any parents had this problem before?
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interesting...
taught at a local elementary school for two years - most of the time I found the accent to be BRITISH not american...they use British books, British spelling and whatnot. Even pronunciation was focused on the British pronunciation and not American. (I am an American.)
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agree with hkchoichoi, the accent is usually British, OR Australian...... us Canadians are the "oddballs". Unless your child is in Tutor time, or American International.... etc. Most of the time, you will come across teachers with British or Australian accent. Even my daughter who went to Anfield International for just 18 months for nursery... speaks different accent from my accent.... in regards to "water", "tomato", "Vitamin..."
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dyu mean accent or pronounciation? If accent I agree with Waffle, if pronounciation Kate and HKCC - the school system is English (private schools excepted).
Here's an interesting story - I was in the MTR a couple of weeks ago and saw a mother holding a dictation book and teaching her son dictation. The page she was on said P.4 dictation and that the student had to learn the passage for the next days dictation. I really could not believe they'd get a student to rote learn a passage and then dictate the same passage, so back at work I asked a HK colleage if this was how it worked in public schools and she said yes, that was indeed how it was!!!
Crikey, how horrifying. How will they ever learn to spell or read phonetically???
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If your kids are attending the local school and subjected to the local exam, TSA, it doesn't matter as accent is not marked up or down. In fact, it is not even a consideration. Your LET would not correct his/her pronunciation. Even if he/she does, it would be according to the British system and most NETs attached to the local schools are aware of this.
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Forget about the local schools. No offence or pun intended, even the so-called elite local schools have an average of English proficiency.
Forget about phonetics, most of the locals have the same Hong Kong phonetics.
And forget about the importance of grammatically correct sentence. Almost 90% locals will ask “What time is now?” or “What color?”.
What is the most worrying trend is that, English language has been taught in local schools using some form of Cantonese.
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bbvv
18 yrs ago
Yes, local as in government school. The way my nieces say "cat" is "ket", and "cattle" like "kettle". So they can only differentiate the two when they talk in full sentences. I find most HK people speak like this - funny considering HK used to be under the British colony. The government education system is poor in HK hence the need for parents to seek private tutorings for their children.
Also where english medium is used at these local government schools, are they taught by HK nationals or overseas?
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bbvv
18 yrs ago
waffle_hk, I will be speaking to my son in english as I am not fluent in cantonese and my husband will speak to him in cantonese. I want my son to be at least bilingual. Mandarin is just an extra option as most schools require children to learn this language since the handover. My main concern is that I do not want to confuse my son. Although it's ages yet, I would be sending him to secondary school in UK and accent would not be a problem anyway.
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I think children pick up whatever accent they are surrounded by at the time - they are very flexible. Growing up I lived in the UK, the USA and Aust - and at various times as a child I was either a Pom, a Yank or an Aussie - with very strong accents from all 3 countries at different times. I wouldn't worry too much about accent - just the quality of the education/english teachers (ideally native speakers)
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bbvv
18 yrs ago
Waffle_hk, will have to contact my friends in UK with kids on the level of English. As mentioned by firsttimemom, kids memorise more than understanding the usage of English so I will definitely not let this happen. Guess I have to look around for some books on nouns, verbs, adjectives, past and present tenses, spellings and vocabs. In HK, chinese parents are so much involved in helping their kids in their homework - kids are competing against each other - it is really quite sad that pressure are put onto kids to do well so that they are not looked down on.
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