Conclusion & Discussion

It is difficult for our participants to learn Cantonese. They think that the teaching method is crucial for learning the language. As our participants have mentioned that having a teacher that could speak Tagalog would be a great help. Maybe bilingual education can help them to learn Cantonese effectively. However, what is bilingual education? When the school’s language of instruction quickly changes from a minority language to majority language or the school helps children to become bilingual, the education can be called as bilingual education. There are two types of bilingual education, namely the strong version of bilingual education and weak forms of bilingual education. The strong version of bilingual education is used to describe the classrooms that teach most of subject content through two languages. Immersion bilingual education is one of the examples of strong version of bilingual education. Children are immersed in a second language and they become fluent in that language through content learning. For weak forms of bilingual educations, children are allowed to use their home language for a transitional period, and then they have to change to the majority language of the classroom. Since its ultimate goal is to move children away from their home language and only use the majority language in the classroom so it leads to relative monolingualism in the majority language.

We believe that our interviewees might have acquired better Cantonese literacy if the schools had adopted the weak forms of bilingual education to teach them Chinese. Although helping minority children to be bilinguals and be able to speak both Cantonese and their home languages fluently will be the best way of helping them to integrate into the mainstream society, it is quite impossible for a school in Hong Kong, no wonder it is a local school or an international school, to adopt the stronger form of bilingual education for all children from different minorities as the government and schools do not have such huge capital and resources to provide each minority group a bilingual education of its mother tongue and Cantonese. More importantly, people in Hong Kong generally think that being able to speak Cantonese and English will be enough to 'survive' in our society, as a result schools do not have much incentives to organize other kinds of bilingual education for minority children.

Instead, we think that the weak form of bilingual education is more feasible in Hong Kong and allowing the minority children to use their home languages to study Chinese in the early stage of their schooling can help them learn better. In fact, there are six types of week bilingual education can be chosen, including Submersion with structured immersion, Submersion with withdrawal classes, Segregationist, Transitional, Mainstream with foreign language teaching and Separatist. Within these six types of weak form bilingual education, we think that the concept of Transitional bilingual education can be a reference for schools to set up similar bilingual education to help minority children to learn Chinese. With this kind of education, minority  children are allowed to use the home language for two or three years in elementary school to learn Chinese and because of the medium of instruction is their home language, they can acquire basic  Cantonese vocabulary and grammar more effectively.

Reference:
Baker C. & Jones P. S. (1998) Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Multilingual Matters Ltd.: Cleveon.

Baker,Colin.2009.Becoming bilingual through bilingual education. In Peter Auer and Li Wei, eds. Handbook of Multilingualism and Multicultural Communication. Berlin/NY: Mouton de Gruyter. P.131-152.

 

Interviewee's thoughts concerning HK Education & Cantonese

To better understand the problems and challenges that the Filipino community in Hong Kong are facing in regards to learning the local language, it is important to first look at the issue from their point of view. We have found that all three of our participants expressed a strong desire to learn Cantonese but somehow the Hong Kong educational system have not managed to teach the language in a successful manner to local minorities. They explained that when they were younger, they did not really understand the importance of learning Cantonese because at school, the majority of their classmates and friends were like them, South Asians who spoke English in addition to a language from their country of origin and communicating with each other was never really a problem. They also had this strong preconception that Hong Kong is an international city and everyone is supposed to be able to speak English. Once they entered the work force, however, they soon realized that this was not exactly the case and not knowing Cantonese proved to be a language barrier.

They gave us some insight into how to make Cantonese easier to learn for local minorities which include motivating students and helping them realize that Cantonese will be a great advantage in their futures - if not crucial.  For this reason, they also thought it was important to have passionate and engaging teachers so as to make the classes more interactive because they were often disappointed by teachers who simply read out from a textbook.  They also suggested that having a teacher who is a native speaker of Tagalog could prove to be better-able in teaching Cantonese efficiently because they would understand what difficulties Filipino students face when learning Chinese. They also expressed that since Chinese characters are harder to memorize, more time, patience and exercises should be given to reinforce previously learned material.

Interview with Hanna

Who is Hanna?

Hey, my name is Hannah. I was born in Hong Kong to Filipino parents and have a younger sister. After finishing my Degree in Architecture in Cebu, I returned to Hong Kong to work as an Architectural Assistant.

Family Background

	Mother	Father
Age	51-60	51-60
Profession	Housewife	Architect/Interior Designer
Nationality	Filipino	Filipino
No. of years in HK	15	15
Highest education level	University	University
Language Proficiency	Tagalog: Intermediate English: Intermediate Cantonese: Intermediate	Tagalog: Intermediate English: Intermediate
Language Use	Home: Tagalog + English codemixing Work: N/A Social gatherings: Tagalog + English + Cantonese	Home: Tagalog + English codemixing Work: Tagalog + English codemixing Social gatherings: Tagalog + English codemixing

What languages do you use in everyday life?

I mainly speak Tagalog or English with family, but I speak Bisaya with my sister and friends from Cebu because we both studied there and some Cebuanos might regard Tagalog as a “higher” language – Bisaya is what we speak among us. So because Tagalog is the official language taught in school, people normally learn Bisaya from friends.

Of course, I also use English at work and other different occasions and because I have 2 other Cebuanos colleagues I also speak to them in Bisaya. I only know a little Cantonese, like 1%.

What do you identify yourself as?

Even though I was born in Hong Kong, I would say Filipino.

How could schools improve the teaching of Cantonese to children from local minority communities?

I think the government is doing a good job, because I know a lot of other Filipinos who speak Cantonese, but I just wasn’t interested to learn it when I was in school. For example, my mom, she can speak Cantonese pretty fluently after living 15 years here and I really admire her for that. She hasn’t learned how to write though. I would say that it would help a lot to show young Filipinos or other minorities the importance of Cantonese and reinforce that it will be vital to their futures, even though it will be hard, because at that age, they are unlikely to understand. I think it would also be a good idea to give out more exercises and to teach as a slower pace because Chinese characters are so hard to learn for us, who are used to having an alphabet.

Would you want your children to learn Cantonese?

Of course I would like them to learn Cantonese! But I would really like for them to learn Mandarin, I think it will definitely be useful for their futures.

Interview with Jenny

Who is Maria?
Hi, I am Jenny. I was born in Hong Kong and both of my parents are Filipino. I have 3 brothers. After finishing my first year college, I have become a singer, a recording artist.

Family background

	Mother	Father
Age	51	64
Profession	Sales marketing	Musician
Nationality	Filipino	Filipino
No. of years in HK	29	40
Educational level	2nd year college	Grade 6 primary
Language Proficiency	Tagalog: intermediate English: intermediate Cantonese: Beginner	Tagalog: advanced English: intermediate Cantonese: Beginner
Language Use	Home: Tagalog+ English (with code-mixing and code-switching) Work: English Social gatherings: Tagalog+ English (with code-mixing and code-switching	Home: Tagalog+ English (with code-mixing and code-switching) Work: English Social gatherings: Tagalog+ English (with code-mixing and code-switching

What languages do you use in everyday life?
I use Tagalog to communicate with my parents and siblings at home, but sometimes we also use English in our conversations, so there are many code-mixing and code-switching. I did not learn Tagalog at school so I can speak fluently but I can only write a bit of it because I studied in Hong Kong from primary school all the way to first year college.

When I hang out with my friends, we mostly use English as some of my friends are not Filipino and they do not speak Tagalog. But of course if I go out with my Filipino friends, we will use both Tagalog and English. Although I seldom go to church now, but if I go there I will definitely speak Tagalog because there is like a small Filipino community in the church where I usually go, so we naturally speak Tagalog with each other.

Since all the colleagues that I am working with are either Chinese or Westerners (mostly French!), so I have to use English to communicate with them.

What do you identify yourself as?
It is kind of mixed identity. I will call myself a Filipino, but I will not be regarded as a 'real' one by other Filipinos who live in the Philippines. I think this is because of my appearance and clothing, I do not look like a Filipino, even though I am a very traditional Filipino deep inside. And maybe I am also affected by cultures in Hong Kong, for example  I believe in Feng shui! That is why my identity is a bit complicated, I would say I am half Hong Kong half Filipino.

How could schools improve the teaching of Cantonese to children from local minority communities?
It is about teachers. I did not pay attention to my Chinese classes was because I did not like the way teachers taught me. I found the teaching materials and the design of curriculum is okay, but sadly the teachers who taught me Chinese were not very supportive and they were actually quite boring. I think if the teachers are more interactive and more willing to teach, this may increase students' incentives to learn. Also, it would be better if my teachers knew how to speak Tagalog, so that there would be a better understandings between teachers and me.

Would you want your children to learn Cantonese?
Absolutely. I am so regret now that I did not put much effort in learning Cantonese. I did not realize how important Cantonese is until I started working. If I could go back to the past when I was still a student, I would definitely have made more effort on my Cantonese. So if I have children in the future and if we are staying in Hong Kong, I will push my children to learn how to speak Cantonese and to write Chinese because this will be a great advantage for  their study and work.

Interview with Gloria

Who is Gloria?

I’m Gloria. I was born in the Philippines and my whole family moved to Hong Kongfor 8 years. My mum is a Filipino and my dad is a Chinese. I have 4 siblings. I studied finance in the University. After graduation, I work as a financial planner in an insurance company.

Background information

	Mother
Age	41-50
Nationality	Filipino
Highest level of education	High school
Occupation	Housewife
Years in HK	8
Language Proficiency	Tagalog (Advanced) English (Intermediate) Cantonese (Beginner) Ilonggo (Advanced)
Language Use	Home : Tagalog (use code-mixed & code-switching) Social gatherings: Tagalog, Ilonggo

What languages do you use in your everyday life?

When I talk to my parents and siblings at home, I use Tagalog, one of the official languages of the Philippines. Since my father lived in the Philippines for many years, he knows Tagalog and there is no problem communicating with him in the language.

I studied international school when I was 15. When I talked to my classmates and teachers, I used English. My school also offered Cantonese courses, so I learned how to speak and write Cantonese in the classroom. I communicated with my Cantonese teacher in Cantonese. However, my Cantonese is only at intermediate level.

During social gatherings, I talk to my friends in Tagalog because most of them cannot speak Cantonese fluently. For the gatherings at the church, I use English. Since some of my friends only know Ilonggo, it is easier to communicate with them in English.

In my workplace which is an insurance company. I use Cantonese with my colleagues and most of my customers. I can read Chinese and write Chinese. But I do not know some of the financial terms in Cantonese so I have to learn them little by little in my workplace. Since most of the time, I have to use Cantonese in the company, I feel the need to improve my Cantonese. When there are customers who speak English, I communicate with them in English. Language is not a barrier in my workplace.

What do you identify yourself as?
I live in Hong Kong for more than a decade and I have many Chinese friends. However, the Philippines is my birthplace and I feel I also belong there. I regard myself as a Hong Kong person as well as a Filipino. I think I have a mixed identity.

Do you think the Hong Kong education system has given enough support for minority communities in learning Cantonese?
I think the government has tried to help the minority groups to learn Cantonese. But learning a language requires hard work. If you are not willing to learn the language, no one can push you to do it. When I was at school, my teacher taught me Cantonese but I was not willing to learn the language because I did not know the importance of Cantonese. I wish I had put more effort in learning Cantonese.

Would you want your children to learn Cantonese?
Yes, definitely. I want to teach them step by step. First, I will teach them English because it is easier to learn. Then I will teach them Cantonese. If they want to learn Tagalog, I will also teach them but I will not force them to learn.

Other languages in the Philippines

When we think of Filipinos and their language, the first thing that pops up in our mind is usually Tagalog, the official language of the Philippines. But in fact, apart from Tagalog, there are quite a number of languages and dialects being spoken by Filipinos from different part of the Philippines and we are going to introduce two of them.

Bisaya-speaking area in
the Philippines

Bisaya (or Visayan in English) is an Australasian language mostly spoken in the Philippines by approximately twenty million of speakers. It is widely spoken in the Central Visayas, including well-known regions like Cebu, Bohol and Negros Oriental.Despite the fact that Bisaya is not the official language of the Philippines, it has the largest native language speaking population in the country.

These kids are singing a traditional Bisaya song with their home made ukuleles, enjoy it! :)

Ilonggo is an Austronesian language spoken in the Western Visayas region of the Philippines. The language is also referred to as Hiligaynon. There are 7,000,000 native speakers of Ilonggo in the world. Moreover, there are 4,000,000 people who can speak the language with a certain degree of proficiency. It is spoken in many provinces, like Iloilo, Negros Occidental, Guimaras and Capiz. It is also spoken as a second language by Karay-a speakers in Antique, Aklanon and Malaynon in Aklan.

Here’s is a short clip for learning Ilonggo. Enjoy!

Reference

Lewis, M. Paul (2009). "Hiligaynon". http://www.ethnologue.com/. Retrieved 23, April, 2013



Use of tagalog in in the domain of religion

Tagalog is often used in the domain of religion in the Philippines. Here is the Lord’s prayer in Tagalog.

Ama Namin

Ama namin,  sumasalangit ka

Sambahin ang ngalan mo.

Mapasaamin ang kaharian mo.

Sundin ang loob mo,

Dito sa lupà, gaya nang sa langit.

Bigyan Mo kami ngayon ng aming kakanin sa araw-araw,

At patawarin Mo kami sa aming mga sala,

Para nang pagpapatawad namin,

Sa nagkakasala sa amin

At huwag mo kaming ipahintulot sa tukso,

At iadya mo kami sa lahat ng masama..

Sapagkat sa Inyo ang kaharián, at ang kapangyarihan,

At ang kaluwalhatian, ngayon, at magpakailanman.

Amen