Daily dose of languages

An innovative plan helps students with their studies, writes Eddie Luk

‘Local students do not spend sufficient time listening to and speaking English and Putonghua after school on a daily basis’

POK Oi Hospital Tang Pui King Memorial College pupils take English and Putonghua listening sessions daily to improve their language proficiency.

Principal Benjamin Kwok said this was the first time his school made English and Putonghua listening sessions compulsory.

“Students do not spend sufficient time listening to and speaking English and Putonghua ... on a daily basis. So, we have decided to give them a 12-minute English and Putonghua broadcast every day after morning assembly,” he said.

Students listen to English on four days and Putonghua one day each teaching cycle.

“All school students from S1 to S7 have to take part in the Reading and Listening programme.”

The school selects articles from English and Chinese newspapers, magazines and textbooks and invites some native speakers who teach English and Putonghua subjects at other secondary schools to read and record them as sound files into a computer. The files are then put on the school's server.

Students can access the school server and open the recording using the computers in their classrooms. Different articles are broadcast for different levels of students.

Mr Kwok said that after morning assembly students returned to their classes for a 12-minute listening session. “We also distribute the hard copy of the articles to each student so that they can read along with the broadcast,” he said. “Meanwhile, English and Putonghua teachers will also ask students in each class to read the articles again during the lesson the next day.”

“The programme boosts students' listening and speaking skills. Teachers can correct students' wrong pronunciation and help them with gesture and tones when speaking. It also improves students' writing skills as they can use the vocabulary and sentence patterns learnt from the articles.”