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Resistance and Creativity in English Reading Lessons in Hong Kong
Angel Mei Yi Lin
(In Language, Culture and Curriculum, vol.12, issue 3, pp. 285-296.)
Abstract
In this paper, I present a fine-grained analysis of a videotaped lesson segment of a Form 2
(Grade 8) English reading lesson in a school located in a working class residential area in
Hong Kong. The excerpt was taken from a larger corpus of similar lesson data videotaped
in the class over three consecutive weeks. The analysis shows how these
limited-English-speaking Cantonese school children subverted an English reading lesson
that had a focus on practising skills of factual information extraction from texts and
negotiated their own preferred comic-style narratives by artfully making use of the
response slots of the IRF (Initiation-Response-Feedback) discourse format used in the
lesson. The analysis shows the students' playful and artful verbal practices despite the
alienating school reading curriculum which seems to serve to produce an uncritical labour.
The implications for teaching are discussed.
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Crayon Shin-Chan said to his classmate angrily, "Let's have a duel!"
His classmate replied fiercely, "Okay!"
"They are going to fight again! Let's call the teacher!" Another classmate said
anxiously and speeded away.
When the teacher came, the two boys were tickling each other with their fingers,
each trying hard not to laugh.
"They are using the `mutual tickling' method to see who's stronger; the one who
first laughs loses!" A bystanding classmate explained to the amused teacher.
(Conversations taken and translated from the Crayon Shin-Chan comics series,
"Taking flight", Vol. 9, p. 110.)
1 Sociopolitical Background: Language and Power in Hong Kong
Hong Kong was a British colony situated on the southern coast of China. Since its cession
from China to Great Britain in 1842 as a result of China's defeat in the Opium War, it had
changed from an agrarian fishing port to a labour-intensive industrial city in the 1960s and
70s. In the 1980s and 90s, with the boom of China trade following "the open door" policy
of China, Hong Kong had gradually changed from a light-industry based, manufacturing
economy to an economy primarily based on the re-export of products processed in China,
and business and financial servicing for China (Ho, 1994). It also has an increasing
demand for a low-level white-collar workforce with some functional skills in English (e.g.,
shipping, export/import, accounts clerks; receptionists; telephone operators; typists;
secretaries). While the universities are producing the bilingual middle-management
workforce, the majority of secondary schools are producing the non-management white
collar labour for the day-to-day routine work that requires some English.
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Despite its international cosmopolitan appearance Hong Kong is ethnically rather
homogeneous. About 98% of its population is ethnic Chinese, and Cantonese
1
is the
mother tongue of the majority. English native speakers account for not more than 2% of
the entire population. They had constituted the dominant class, at least until July 1997
when the sovereignty of the colony was returned to China and Hong Kong became a
Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China.
Notwithstanding its being the mother tongue of only a minority, English has been both the
language of power and the language of educational and socioeconomic advancement, i.e.,
the dominant symbolic resource in the symbolic market (Bourdieu 1982/1991) in Hong
Kong. Even after Hong Kong became an SAR of China English has maintained its status
as a primary language of higher education and business, partly due to its global domination
as a major language of science, technology and business. For instance, it is still the
1
. Cantonese is a regional Chinese language widely spoken in the southern Chinese
province of Guangdong. Phonologically it is quite distinct from Modern Standard
Chinese (the national standard language of China, known as "Mandarin" or
"Putonghua"); however, there are both overlaps and differences in the grammar and
lexis of the two codes. While linguists and educationists differentiate between
Cantonese and Modern Standard Chinese as two distinct codes, Hong Kong
Chinese people in their daily life often refer to their own language as "jung-man",
meaning "Chinese language". It is usually the linguist who sees Hong Kong
Chinese as in fact speaking Cantonese as their mother tongue and reading and
writing a form of Modern Standard Chinese that has been influenced by Cantonese
lexis and syntax. Hong Kong Chinese themselves however usually do not pay
attention to these distinctions in their daily language practices. They know that the
written style is and should be different from the spoken style of their language, but
they consider themselves using "jung-man" all the same. They can distinguish
spoken Mandarin or Putonghua from Cantonese but they see them as different
regional ways of speaking "jung-man" and generally do not see them as
constituting totally different languages. Ethnically and culturally they regard
themselves as Chinese and "jung-man" as their familiar native language in contrast
to English, which they do not ordinarily speak among themselves and which they
largely see as a language of the "gwai-lou" (a Cantonese slang word referring to
Westerners) or the middle- class yuppies, who tend to code-mix or code-switch
between Cantonese and English.
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medium of instruction of most universities and an important language requirement of most
white-collar, professional, executive and civil service jobs. While Putonghua (Mandarin
Chinese, the standard national language of China) is rising in its political importance, it
seems unlikely that it will take over the socioeconomic and higher education functions of
English in the near future.
The symbolic market is embodied and enacted in the many key situations (e.g., educational
settings, job settings) in which symbolic resources (e.g., certain types of linguistic skills,
cultural knowledge, specialized knowledge and skills, etc.) are demanded of social actors if
they want to gain access to valuable social, educational and eventually material resources
(ibid.). For instance, a Hong Kong student must have adequate English resources, in
addition to subject matter knowledge and skills, to enter and succeed in the
English-medium professional training programmes of medicine, architecture, legal studies,
etc. in order to earn the English-accredited credentials to enter these high-income
professions. The symbolic market is therefore not a metaphor, but one with transactions
that have material, socioeconomic consequences for people.
2 The Schooling and Examination Systems: Institutions of Social Selection
The schooling system can be said to be largely subsumed under the public examination
system, a major institution of social selection (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977) in Hong Kong.
The secondary school curriculum is, for instance, in reality, if not in name, heavily
influenced by the public examination syllabuses. Public examinations are important
because the job market uses public exam results as an important screening criterion on job
applicants. A student's higher and professional education opportunities are also dependent
on her/his public examination results. Schools in turn depend on its graduates' public
examination results to acquire prestige and status among parents and in the community.
Teachers are therefore under school administrators' constant pressure and monitoring to
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produce good public examination results in the students. It is not difficult for a
success-oriented student to discover that public exam-taking skills constitute the most
important factor for success in school and in the society (at least initially) and that the rule
of the game does not hinge on gaining "education" or "learning" but exam-taking skills
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.
3 The Larger Study: Uncovering Institutions of Social Reproduction
The data and analysis reported in this chapter have been taken from a larger study (Lin
1996a) which examined how English lessons were organized in junior forms (Form 1-3;
comparable to Grade 7-9 in North America) in secondary schools in Hong Kong. The
purpose of the study was to find out whether schools situated in different socioeconomic
contexts provide their Cantonese-speaking students with differential access to the
socioeconomically dominant English linguistic and cultural resources in Hong Kong, and
thus serve as institutions of social reproduction (e.g., perpetuating/reproducing the lack of
linguistic and cultural capital for success among socioeconomically disadvantaged
children).
In the study, I visited and videotaped all the English lessons on at least five consecutive
school days in each of the eight English classes of the eight teachers participating in this
study. The eight teachers were in seven schools from a range of socioeconomic and
academic backgrounds. I informally interviewed small groups of the students, and
collected other curricular, assessment, and background information on the classes and the
schools. The data excerpt included in this chapter has been taken from a corpus of lesson
data videotaped in the class of one teacher (Mr. Chan)
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over three consecutive weeks.
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. For instance, many students are willing to pay expensive tuition fees to private
exam-oriented tutorial centres to get tips and training on exam-taking skills.
3
. All personal names are pseudo-names.