New Immigrants in Hong Kong
LCOM3001
New immigrants as Secondary School Students in Hong Kong
In recent years, there have been more students in Hong Kong who have a mainland background. Those who have moved and settled in Hong Kong from the mainland are called "New Arrived Children". Others who travel across the border everyday for schooling in Hong Kong are cosidered "Cross-boundary students".
According to the Education Bureau, there were 522 New Arrived Children admitted to school from December 2013 to February 2014 (See actual data). In the past 2 academic years, over 5,000 New Arrived Children were admitted to local primary school and over 6,000 in local secondary school (Education Bureau, 2013).
This is telling us that there are in fact a group of students in Hong Kong whose mother tongue is not Cantonese as the locally born and raised students, their experiences and lives in Hong Kong will be different and lead to many changes to their daily living.
We are very fortunate to have stories from 2 Form 2 and a Form 4 Newly Arrived Children. Their stories about moving to Hong Kong and settling in will give us insight into how they are adapting to this new environment, especially given that the languages in everyday life are very different.
Ying is a 14-year-old girl born in Dong-guan (東莞). She moved to Shenzhen for primary school and then to Hong Kong 5 years ago. She is now a speaker of Cantonese, in addition to her mother tongue - Putonghua. She is also able to understand her home dialect, but she cannot speak that language. Now studying in a local secondary school, Putonghua and English are her major media of teaching while Cantonese is only used in certain teaching environments.
Even though Ying is still considered a New immigrant in Hong Kong, her language use habits have not changed a lot because she was a resident of Shenzhen before coming to Hong Kong where Shenzhen is also a city where Cantonese is also used widely. Her family is also Cantonese-speaking. The only changes appeared in school where her schoolmates and teachers are now Cantonese speakers, therefore she now also uses Cantonese when she communicates with people at school. The rest of her linguistic practices stay very much the same, this has in fact made easier for her to adapt into the new environment in Hong Kong.
In terms of education medium, there is a bigger difference between her schooling in Shen Zhen and Hong Kong. In her current Hong Kong secondary school, English is used in most of the subjects except Chinese, Chinese History and Religious Studies, while in Shenzhen, English is only used in English class and other subjects in purely Putonghua. This is in fact the actual difficulty for Ying because she feels that her English is not good enough for her current studies.
Ying did not receive much help in learning Cantonese when she first arrived in Hong Kong, partially because of her Shenzhen background. She attended a small tutorial group in “correcting” her accent which she now thinks has improved a lot. Ying is also very fortunate to have a group of caring classmates who are willing to teach Ying and correct each other’s language use in conversations. Ying feels that she has now “removed” most of her accent so it is less noticeable and therefore she doesn’t think that she is being discriminated against.
Si is a 13-year-old girl from Fujian (福建) who came to Hong Kong 2.5 years ago. She now speaks Cantonese and Putonghua, she can also understand the Fujian dialect spoken back home. Before coming to Hong Kong, she did not know any Cantonese; therefore Putonghua constituted most of her language use habits. Today, studying in a local secondary school, she learns to be a user of different languages, including Cantonese and English.
Si does not see herself as a fluent speaker of Cantonese: she thinks she has an accent and she is afraid that she is using it incorrectly. Since most of her family members still live in Fujian, Putonghua is still the language used to communicate with them even though she is now in Hong Kong. It is interesting to notice that when she communicates with her paternal grandparents, a translator has to be involved. Her grandparents would speak in Fujian dialect and Si would reply in Putonghua, her parents will need to facilitate the communication by translating Si’s reply.
In her school environment, there is a major shift from using Putonghua to English and Cantonese. She now has Cantonese-speaking schoolmates and teachers; also some subjects taught in Cantonese - like Religious Studies or Chinese History. Si finds learning both Cantonese and English difficult because she is unfamiliar with both languages. In particularly she finds English grammar complicated. She is also struggling to understand what others are saying if they are speaking too fast.
Si however sees all three languages (Cantonese, English, Putonghua) as important in different aspects of living in Hong Kong. Therefore she applied different strategies to improve her Cantonese and English. She attends tutorials in learning English; she also finds self-study materials hoping to improve her English, for example reading English books and newspapers. She also uses the dictionary a lot to learn new vocabularies.
Given the local environment, she now watches local TV programmes and movies to gain exposure in Cantonese. She also tries to communicate with others in Cantonese ONLY to force herself improve her Cantonese. Si recognizes the importance of Cantonese in daily life in Hong Kong but she thinks English and Putonghua would be more important for her future including career development.
Yanni Yang, 17, was born in Dalian and moved to Nanjing (南京) when she was small, with Nanjing dialect and Putonghua as her mother tongue. She moved to Hong Kong at 10 and has been here for 7 years. She is now a Form 4 student in a local secondary school and English and Cantonese are the major medium of instruction.
She found herself very difficult to adapt to the new environment in Hong Kong. Before coming to Hong Kong, she knew nothing about Cantonese, but all subjects taught in the primary school were in Cantonese except for English class. In addition, her English standard at that time was lower than other classmates. The school provided her with some English tutorial classes and asked other classmates to help with Cantonese. Due to a lack of systematic support of learning Cantonese from school, Yanni fortunately gained help from a community centre. She can now speak fluent Cantonese.
After coming to Hong Kong, her language habit does not change much when communicating with her family but in school and other social occasions. When Yanni was in Nanjing only Putonghua was used in school; but in Hong Kong Cantonese and English are the medium. She also tries to speak in Cantonese in daily life like talking to shopkeepers and security guards. She expresses that it is very essential to learn Cantonese in Hong Kong, “you can live here (Hong Kong) without Putonghua but surely not Cantonese.” She thinks that fluent Cantonese helps her integrate into her community, especially with schoolmates and friends. She recalls that when she first arrived in Hong Kong, some of her classmates did not welcome her because of being unable to speak Cantonese.
Yanni believes that Cantonese is only too important for living in Hong Kong, but at this stage English is more crucial for academics. As for all the subjects she will take in the public examination, only Chinese Language is assessed in Chinese but all others in English, similar to most of the students who are studying in EMI schools. Nevertheless, Yanni still thinks that Cantonese is important in her future career development because it is more effective to communicate with local colleagues and customers.
