Doing-English-lessons in secondary schools in Hong Kong: A sociocultural and discourse analytic study

This study examines how English lessons are organized in junior forms (Form 1-3; comparable to Grade 7-9 in North America) in secondary schools in Hong Kong to find out whether schools situated in different socioeconomic and sociocultural contexts provide their Cantonese-speaking students with differential access to the socioeconomically dominant English linguistic and cultural resources in Hong Kong. I visited and videotaped all the English lessons on five to six 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, academic, and sociocultural backgrounds. I informally interviewed small groups of the students, and collected other curricular, assessment, and background information on the classes and the schools.;In a fine-grained discourse analysis of the classroom data, I delineated how different teachers made use of different varieties of discourse formats to organize different types of lesson activities. With one exception, the English lessons in schools situated in disadvantaged socioeconomic and sociocultural contexts where there is little access to English outside school are characterized by meaning-reduced, linguistic-operations-oriented activities. Doing-English-lessons in these classrooms seems to have the effect of reproducing the students' sociocultural world and their lack of interest in and access to the dominant English linguistic and cultural resources. In the exceptional case, the teacher made artful use of a special pair of discourse formats across Cantonese and English to interlock an English learning focus with an interesting story-telling focus. Among all the other students coming from a similarly disadvantaged socioeconomic background in this study, her students were the only ones who expressed an interest in learning English and positive feelings towards English lessons. The classroom data analyses also show that children were artful and creative in their Cantonese verbal practices. The findings point to the need for a culturally compatible English curriculum which affirms and builds on the children's indigenous linguistic and cultural resources, and helps them to acquire the dominant English resources to succeed in school and in the society. This is especially needed for children who inhabit a sociocultural world where there is little access to English outside school.