香港1997年普通话中小学课程效用评估（英文）

An Assessment of the Effectiveness of the Hong Kong Government’s 1997 Pǔtōnghuà Curriculum for Primary 1-6 and Secondary 1-5

1997年中国恢复对香港行使主权的时候,能说流利普通话的香港人不多。为此,香港政府颁布了普通话课程,并将之定为小一至中三(为期九年)的核心科目及中四、中五的选修科目。本文缕述了课程实施时的社会语言环境,并对比研究了两组学生的普通话水平的结果。研究对象分别是完成了九年普通话课程的学生和课程实施前在求学阶段就学习普通话的香港理工大学毕业生。比较结果显示:完成九年课程的学生,普通话水平明显高于理大毕业生。前者在词汇语法判断、朗读、说话和拼音等方面优势明显较佳,在聆听、判断、朗读、说话以及拼音的能力表现二者比较平均。测试中表现较好的研究对象,具备以下全部或部分特征:拼音试题表现较佳;所读学校曾以普通话为教学语言;有内地生活背景。

Although Pǔtōnghuà is the national tongue of China,there were relatively few Pǔtōnghuà-speakers in Hong Kong in 1997 when the metropolis became under China’s sovereignty again.To address this issue,the Hong Kong Government promulgated the Pǔtōnghuà curriculum in 1997 and made Pǔtōnghuà respectively a mandatory subject from primary-1(grade 1)to secondary-3(grade 9),and an elective subject after secondary-3.This paper provides the sociolinguistic context where the curriculum is implemented and reports the findings of a comparative study of Pǔtōnghuà abilities of two groups of participants respectively with and without exposure to the curriculum in their Pǔtōnghuà learning experience.The findings indicate that the curriculum appears to benefit the former group:the overall Pǔtōnghuà proficiency of these participants is significantly better than their counterparts whose Pǔtōnghuà learning precedes the implementation of the curriculum.Specifically,the former group of participants’ grip on grammar,oral narration,conversational speaking and pīnyīn is much stronger,and their grip of the five specific Pǔtōnghuà skills appears to be more even.Additionally,participants with the following traits tend to do better in the Pǔtōnghuà tests of the study,viz.experience of Pǔtōnghuà-medium instruction,stronger Chinese-mainland backgrounds and better performance in the pīnyīn test.