In the paper that follows, the recommendations and perspectives are not meant to be strictly

prescriptive, nor are they exhaustive. Teaching is a complex, multi-dimensional, interactive activity

which needs to be evaluated using multiple sources, and with an appreciation of the fact that there are

differences between disciplines and various teaching contexts. However, it is intended that this paper

provides some important elements of various ‘levels’ of teaching.

An obvious, but nevertheless crucial, point to make is that "good" teaching develops "good" learning

in students. That "good" learning involves several elements.

employment for a majority of students

broader context that takes into account social, ethical, and other factors.

and presentation skills; problem-solving skills, bi-literacy and tri-lingualism; leadership;

entrepreneurship; etc.

as a lifelong process.

The discussion below is intended to serve as a general framework for academic staff members, Heads

of Departments and Deans.

Evaluation of any complex activity (such as teaching) involves at least two stages:

1. Determining what makes up the activity in total;

2. Gathering relevant information about each of the activities and making judgments based on that

information.

Below, each of these matters is addressed in turn.

Essentially "teaching" can be categorised as four [related] sets of activities, as follows.

This may involve some or all of the following:

2

Staff / student interactions take place in formal classes, and in out-of-class settings. The following are

activities commonly carried out by teachers.

appropriately in the light of that feedback

Some typical activities are the following.

Obviously, there is a wide and varied list of activities which could validly be included here; the

following are some examples.

appropriately on that feedback

when applications are successful

subject or discipline

3

It is important to note that the lists above are meant to be indicative rather than strictly prescriptive or

exhaustive, and will certainly vary according to the context.

Some examples of criteria / sources of information which might be used in relation to the various

activities are given below, together with suggestions as to who might be in a good position to

comment validly on the information.

students to think deeply with and about important concepts and theories in their respective

disciplines

ask questions, think, apply, and evaluate their new understanding and skills

inside and outside the classroom

Comments on these matters might usefully be made by:

Students - via SFQ and other standardised questionnaires

- via other feedback forms or procedures

- in staff / student consultative committees

Colleagues - as a result of classroom visits / knowledge of materials produced

Others - via examination of Teaching Portfolios or other materials

Here the prime criterion is that the staff member, in his / her interactions with students, is able to

assist them to learn. Associated with this are the following aspects:

4

inside and outside the classroom

procedures), though colleagues who attend teaching sessions can also provide useful feedback.

The main focus here is the extent to which authentic and challenging methods of assessment are

appropriately used to challenge students to think about and reflect on their learning experiences,

demonstrate their competence in authentic tasks, and to develop the ability to assess their own as well

as other people’s work. Associated with this are the following aspects:

Colleagues and external examiners are in the best position to give feedback on the majority of these

matters. However, students are in a strong position to make comments about some.

development

Colleagues and Heads of Department are probably in the best position to make comments about the

quality and usefulness of the activities listed under this heading.

5

Overall, the quality of teaching performance may perhaps be thought of in terms of three broad

categories:

Defining or describing exactly what is meant by each of these is problematical, and is more properly a

matter of informed professional judgment (taking into account what has been written above), rather

than the application of any objective "formula" or set of rules. There is also the difficulty of

combining judgments about the quality of performance vis a vis the four sets of teaching activities

referred to above: and the "quality of teaching" for each of the sets of activities is located on a

continuum, rather than being a difference in kind.

Nevertheless, in order to come to an overall view about the quality of teaching, the quality of the

separate activities must somehow be combined into a holistic professional perspective. Some features

that might be associated with each of the levels of teaching quality are offered below. Again, it must

be stressed that these are broad descriptions, rather than tight prescriptions.

The staff member is expected to

students and the learning objectives to be achieved.

contexts

dealing with real-life problems

discuss, apply and evaluate their new understanding and skills

teachers, peers, and other people

teaching

6

In addition, some of the following would normally be associated with "Good" teaching.

In addition, “outstanding" teachers might also have the following qualities.

enhance the quality of teaching and learning

scholarship (publications, teaching materials, etc.)

Updated 10 February 2003

Native-speaker Teachers of English in

Hong Kong

Introduction

For several years there has been a growing impression in Hong that the

standard of English is on the decline. Schoolteachers, university teachers and

employers in the business sector all agree that their students or employees have

a much poorer command of English than in earlier years. Tourist visitors to Hong

Kong also express surprise at the generally low standard of English in a

population which they had expected to be better at English.

The Education Department has always refuted the charge that the standard of

English has fallen. Their claim is that while there may be fewer excellent speakers

than before, there is now a far higher percentage of Hong Kong people who know

is influenced by the fact that the demand for good English in Hong Kong’s service

industries has increased much faster than the supply of good English speakers.

In a recent Report of the Government’s Education Commission (Education

Commission Draft Report No. 6, 1995) the whole question of language in

education is reviewed. While maintaining the position that English standards

have not in fact declined, the Report admits that ‘there is no room for

complacency regarding the level of English’ and that ‘much more needs to be

done to address the shortage of S6 and S7 students with the requisite English

requirements to enter tertiary education institutions and of school leavers and

graduates with adequate English proficiency for vocational purposes’ (ECR6

Draft: 12). To achieve this, the Report makes several recommendations, one of

0950-0782/97/03 0163-19 $10.00/0 ©1997 J. Boyle

LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION Vol. 11, No. 3, 1997

which is that there should be a marked increase in the number of native-speakers

of English employed in Hong Kong schools.

The following article examines this proposal from two perspectives. First, we

discuss worldwide changes in perception of the role of native-speakers in the

teaching of English as a second or foreign language. With English now

established as an international language, and with the recognition of different

varieties of English, the term ‘native-speaker’ has to be defined more broadly.

When employing English language teachers, more attention is now being given

to expertise, rather than simply to country of origin. While it is still agreed that

the native-speaker has something special to offer, s/he is no longer automatically

considered to be a better teacher than the non-native-speaker.

Secondly, in the light of these changing ideas on what constitutes a

native-speaker and on the relative merits of native-speaker and non-nativespeaker

teachers, the article reviews the use of native-speaker English language

teachers in Hong Kong over the past decade, focusing in particular on EETS. This

involved the importation of a large number of native-speaker teachers of English

into the Hong Kong school system, with the aim of raising the falling standards

of English. The Expatriate English Teachers Scheme, and a subsequent further

scheme to import native-speaker English teachers are discussed critically and the

article ends with a consideration of the position of both native-speakers and local

non-native-speaker teachers of English in Hong Kong.

Part 1 — Changing Ideas on Native-Speaker Teachers of English

Who are native-speakers of English?

In the early days of teaching English as a foreign language, the presence of a

native-speaker was considered a great boon. Here was not just Chomsky’s

idealised native-speaker, but one in the flesh, with all the answers on grammatical

correctness, nuances of idiom and appropriateness of expression. The concept

‘native-speaker’ had not yet been subjected to careful definition, since the

common-sense understanding of the term seemed enough, that is, ‘people who

have a special control over the language, insider knowledge about “their”

language. They are the models we appeal to for the “truth” about the language,

they know what the language is (“Yes, you can say that”) and what the language

isn’t (“No, that’s not English”)’ (Davies, 1991: 1).

Coulmas (1981) takes the native-speaker as the common reference point in his

edited series of articles on different fields of linguistics. In this he follows Katz &

Fodor (1962: 218) who hold that the basis of any theory of a particular language

‘must be the explication of the abilities and skills involved in the linguistic

performance of a fluent native-speaker’. Coulmas quotes Robins (1971: 364): ‘The

informant is not a teacher, nor a linguist; he is simply a native-speaker of the

language’. Coulmas discusses the possible range of native-speaker informants,

from the ideal to the real, and within the real, from the naive to the linguistically

sophisticated, but notes that ‘notwithstanding these fundamental differences, the

speaker’ (Coulmas, 1981: 5).

Davies (1991) gives a thorough and thoughtful survey of the whole question

of the native-speaker in English language teaching and applied linguistics. He

quotes Ferguson (1983: vii) who believes ‘the whole mystique of native-speaker

and mother tongue should preferably be quietly dropped from the linguist’s set

of professional myths about language’. Davies’ own position is rather different,

and he argues that the notion of native-speaker is much more than just a

professional myth and has substance. On the one hand he accepts that ‘non-native

speakers can become native speaker like in the target language in terms of

proficiency, communicative competence and linguistic competence’ (Davies,

1991: 165). On the other hand he provides support for the position of Janicki

(1985) and Coppieters (1987), with data from a study of his own which suggests

‘a significant difference between native-speakers and non-native-speakers’

(Davies, 1991: 166). There does seem, therefore, to be something special about the

native-speaker.

The idea of native-speaker has always been a useful yard-stick in English

language teaching. ‘But who are these native-speakers?’, asked Professor

Widdowson in his plenary address to the TESOL Convention, and teasingly

(given his largely American audience) suggested: ‘One answer might be: the

English. And why not? A modest proposal surely. England is where the language

originated and this is where the English (for the most part) live’ (Widdowson,

1994: 377).

Widdowson then went on to reject the idea that native-speakers are exclusively

those who speak RP British English, or Standard American English for that

matter. Just as there are varieties of English — Canadian and Caribbean, Irish

and Indian, New Zealand and Nigerian — so there are varieties of native-speakers

of English, a cause which applied linguists like Smith (1981), Strevens (1982)

and notably Kachru (1986) have championed for many years. Their central

contention is that once English is accepted as a global language which does not

belong to any particular country, the concept of native-speaker has to become

much broader.

Varieties and standard English

The acceptance of the idea of several legitimate varieties of English, however,

leads to a problem. Are any or all of these varieties to be considered ‘standard

spoken with an RP (Received Pronunciation)/BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation)

accent, a position gently probed by some (Crystal, 1985) and vigorously

rejected by others (Tripathi, 1992). However, the debate is not entirely one-sided,

with Christophersen (1987) defending British RP/BBC English, and Sinclair

supporting British English as at least ‘a coherent, universally acceptable type of

English which could be used throughout the world’ (Sinclair, 1988: 6).

This notion of international intelligibility is important in any discussion of

native-speakers, varieties and standard English. If a national variety of English

is unintelligible outside of that country, it is of limited value. But if a national

variety is intelligible internationally, there is no reason not to accept it as a

standard variety of international English. And people who speak it as a first

language can perhaps legitimately be called ‘native-speakers of English’.

The distinction between native-speakers and non native-speakers, then, has

undoubtedly become more blurred. Indeed, in a talk celebrating the Silver Jubilee

of IATEFL (International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign

Language), John Swales (1993: 284) went so far as to say: ‘we have to concede that

it no longer makes any sense to differentiate between the native speaker and the

non-native speaker’.

What constitutes a native-speaker?

It has increasingly become accepted that factors other than place of birth and

first language enter into what constitutes a native-speaker.

Clearly mother tongue is important: ‘No language is like the native language

that one learned at one’s mother’s knee’, says Bloomfield (1927/1970: 150) and

‘No language completely replaces the mother tongue’ says Halliday (1978: 199).

But neither Bloomfield nor Halliday would say that this is the whole story.

To help us define what we mean by native-speakers, let us take three cases.

For the first, let us take a girl, born in Poland, who learns Polish as her first

language. At the age of four she emigrates to America to live with cousins who

speak only English. The child grows up in this American family, goes to a purely

English-speaking school and has no dealings with any Polish speakers. By the

age of fifteen, is this child a ‘native-speaker of Polish’? Surely not, since by this

stage she knows no Polish at all for practical purposes. Is she a ‘native-speaker

of English’? Surely, yes, since whatever deficiency she had in English because of

her slow start, very quickly disappeared as she grew up and mixed with her

English-speaking peers. So the first language criterion is not sufficient in defining

a native-speaker.

Let us consider a second case: someone who learns English as first language

in America and develops full native-speaker proficiency in it. At the age of fifteen,

let us say, he goes to China and spends fifty years there, practically never using

English, gradually forgetting the language. At the age of sixty five, is this person

a native-speaker of English? If asked this question, he might say (in Chinese?

halting English?) something like: ‘Well, it was my first native language, and I

spoke it till I was fifteen. But I use Chinese all the time now and have forgotten

most of my English’. This would hardly be an acceptable description of a

native-speaker.

For our third case, let us take a real example, that of Professor Christophersen,

mentioned earlier as a supporter of the RP/BBC position on standard English.

He was born and received his education up to University level in Denmark. For

graduate studies he went to Cambridge, England. He then worked for a time at

the BBC, and has since taught English in Universities around the world, in Africa

and the Middle East, as well as in Britain and America. He was the first Professor

of English at University College, Ibadan, Nigeria, and later became an Emeritus

Professor at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. Would he be considered

a ‘native-speaker of English’? Professor Christophersen himself might well say

No, on the grounds that his mother tongue and the language he used for the early

part of his life was Danish. On the other hand, the dominant language of use for

much of his adult life has been English and his proficiency in English, both spoken

and written, is superior to most native-speakers. Is it not arguable that these two

latter criteria make him a native-speaker?

‘Native-speakerness’, then, has something to do with the language you first

learn; something to do with how much you use the language; and something to

do with your level of proficiency in the language. Tay (1982: 67) includes these

three elements in the definition of a native speaker: ‘one who learns English in

childhood and continues to use it as his dominant language and has reached a

certain level of fluency’.

Rampton (1990), in analysing what constitutes a native-speaker, suggests that

the term should be dropped and suggests instead the terms ‘language expertise’

and ‘language loyalty’. When considering the communicative aspects of language,

Rampton prefers to call accomplished users of a language ‘expert’ rather

than ‘native’ speakers. His term ‘language loyalty’ covers two aspects, inheritance

and affiliation. He questions the assumption that inheriting a language, by

birth or by inclusion into a social group, automatically gives a privileged level of

proficiency in all domains of the language. Rampton believes his terms ‘tell us to

inspect each native speaker’s credentials closely, and they insist that we do not

assume that nationality and ethnicity are the same as language ability and

language allegiance’ (Rampton, 1990: 100).

Despite the different terminology, Tay’s and Rampton’s analyses agree on the

importance of: 1) inheritance/birth or at least an early start; and 2) a certain level

of expertise, proficiency, fluency. Tay’s third element, continual use as dominant

language, is less clearly included in Rampton’s analysis, while Rampton gives

more emphasis to another aspect which he variously describes as loyalty,

allegiance, affiliation — terms surrounding the notion of attitude, of how a person

feels about the language.

Allied to Rampton’s idea of affiliation is another important element which

Davies (1991) would wish to include, namely self-confidence in the language,

which displays itself in a certain comfortable identification with other native

speakers. As he points out: ‘A Singaporean, a Nigerian, or an Indian might see

him/herself as a native speaker of English but feel a lack of confidence in his/her

native-speakerness’ (Davies, 1991: 7).

Combining the ideas of Tay, Rampton and Davies, therefore, we can select five

elements which seem to be essential to being a native-speaker:

(1) inheritance/birth/early start;

(2) expertise/proficiency/fluency;

(3) continual use as dominant language;

(4) loyalty/allegiance/affiliation;

(5) confidence/comfortable identification.

It must be realised, of course, that the five criteria given above are merely

guidelines and that each of them is relative. There are degrees within each

category. How early must the early start be? What level of proficiency? How

continual must be the use and how dominant the language? How strong the

allegiance? What degree of confidence? Many cases could easily be imagined

where it would be difficult to say on which side of the line the person fell.

native-speakers.

Native-speaker and non-native speaker teachers of English

Having considered changing ideas on who should be called native-speakers

and on what constitutes a native-speaker, let us turn now to the question of the

relative merits of native-speaker and non-native-speaker teachers of English.

In terms of English language ability, the advantages of being a native-speaker

as an English language teacher correlate with the five criteria listed above.

(1) English learned from birth or very early on is fixed for life and tends only to

fade if neglected over many years.

(2) The intricacies of the grammar of the language are learned instinctively and

can be employed with speed and certainty. Given a reasonably stimulating

language environment, the level of proficiency, including vocabulary and

idiom, can be expected to be very high.

(3) Native-speakers of English tend to mix with other native-speakers and

therefore continue to use English as their dominant language, even in

situations when another language is the dominant language of the broader

speech community.

(4) Apart from unusual circumstances, there is a strong sense of attachment to

the mother tongue.

(5) Given normal educational opportunity and psychological balance, there is

a high degree of confidence in ability to use the language, though this will

vary from person to person.

For the non-native-speaker teacher of English there would be corresponding

disadvantages in terms of English language ability in relation to the five criteria.

(1) A language learned later in life can be easily forgotten, unless it is constantly

practised.

(2) English has a difficult grammar, a huge vocabulary and a wealth of

idiomatic usage, creating an enormous, ongoing challenge for the nonnative-

speaker.

(3) It is difficult to keep English as the dominant language of use for someone

who lives in a speech community where the dominant language is not

English, and especially so when the dominant language is in fact that

person’s own native-language.

(4) It is difficult, especially in situations where English dominates in terms of

power, for the non-native-speaker to feel a sense of loyalty to the language

and the culture it brings with it.

(5) It is difficult for the non-native-speaker to feel confident in his or her English

language ability and identify comfortably with native-speakers, particularly

when the native-speakers are constantly critical of the standard of English

in the country.

The question of confidence is particularly critical since lack of confidence can

affects a teacher’s effectiveness radically. Many excellent non-native-speaker

English teachers feel a lack of confidence when compared with native-speakers

on the grounds of peculiarities of accent, intricacies of grammar, or knowledge

of vocabulary. But such diffidence is often misplaced. The native-speaker with a

strong Cockney, Glasgow, Australian, or Deep-South American accent can pose

more problems as a teacher of English than many a Singaporean, Nigerian,

Indian or Hong Kong Chinese teacher. In grammar, the native-speaker may

know what is correct, but may be unable to explain the grammatical rules. In

vocabulary, some non-native-speakers may be far superior to some nativespeakers

in the vocabulary of specialist registers, for example, Computer

English or the English of Accounting. This is not to deny, of course, that in

general the native-speaker is at a distinct advantage over the non-nativespeaker

in terms of language ability.

However, apart from the advantages or disadvantages in terms of English

language ability which are inherent in being a native-speaker or non-nativespeaker,

there are other factors to be considered when comparing native and

non-native-speaker teachers of English. Linguistic and cultural affinity with the

students often favour the non-native-speaker. Unlike many native-speakers of

English, the non-native-speaker teacher is often bi-lingual or multilingual. If

local, s/he probably knows the students’ native language and culture, and can

more easily appreciate their problems of language transfer and cultural

alienation. With this linguistic and cultural advantage, s/he may be able to get

closer to the students than the expatriate native-speaker teacher, though this is

not always the case. Above all, the non-native-speaker teacher of English has the

advantage of appreciating more clearly the students’ problems in learning

English, since s/he has been through the same difficulties.

Another two important factors to be considered in the discussion are

professional training and pedagogical ability. The non-native-speaker, trained in

ESL/EFL (English as Second Language/English as Foreign Language) and a

good pedagogue, is very probably a better teacher of English than a nativespeaker

who is alternatively trained and a poor pedagogue. On the other hand,

a native-speaker teacher who is alternatively trained but is a good pedagogue,

may well be able to compensate for the lack of ESL/EFL training by nativespeaker

language ability and may in fact be a better teacher than a

non-native-speaker who is trained in ESL/EFL but is a poor pedagogue. Given

equal training, pedagogical ability will sway the balance, and given equal

pedagogical ability (though this is very hard to measure) specialist training

should sway the balance.

As always, in complex issues where several different and interconnected

variables are involved, whose relative weights are hard to judge, it is difficult to

go beyond broad generalisations. Suffice it to say that there are some excellent

and some very poor native-speaker teachers of English and equally there are

some excellent and some very poor non-native-speaker teachers of English. It is

impossible to say simply that one is better than the other.

Nevertheless, it has to be said that at the end of the day there is a still a natural

tendency among lay people (i.e. non-experts in language and linguistic matters)

and among people like Heads of Language Schools, for example, to prefer

native-speaker teachers. This is especially true for higher-level learning of the

language, and applies not only to English language learning, but to the learning

of other foreign languages.

But as English becomes more global, and as more people in different parts of

the world are accepted as native-speakers, attitudes, as we have seen, are

changing. In an interview quoted in Phillipson (1992: 193–4) Peter Strevens, one

of the great figures in English language teaching, with wide international

experience, says: ‘At the outset it was the native-speaker who was taken for

granted as the automatic best teacher, and all other teachers looked up to the

native-speaker. Now that’s no longer the case’.

Hong Kong and the teaching of English

In Hong Kong, what Strevens says is largely correct. The native-speaker

presence in English language teaching used to be much stronger than it now is,

and native-speakers in the past were indeed assumed to be better teachers than

local Chinese teachers of English. But this is no longer true.

Most Chinese teachers of English in Hong Kong would never consider

themselves as native-speakers. Judged on the five criteria given above, they

would be classed as non-native-speaker on all counts.

(1) Their early learning of English consists of classes in a kindergarten school,

with perhaps a little support at home from a Philippine maid. Otherwise the

vast majority of Hong Kong children learn only Cantonese for the first years

of their lives.

(2) The proficiency level of most English teachers in Hong Kong schools is poor:

many of them were trained to teach subjects other than English.

(3) Most of them practically never use English outside the classroom and even

in the English class many of them use Cantonese a great deal of the time.

(4) Most of them do not like teaching English and feel no sense of loyalty or

allegiance to the English language.

(5) Not surprisingly, their confidence in their English is weak and many of them

feel a sense of inferiority when faced with native-speakers.

Hong Kong of course has a colonial past. Phillipson (1992) argues that one

aspect of linguistic imperialism is a sense of inferiority in many non-nativespeaker

teachers of English when they compare themselves with native-speaker

teachers. Phillipson’s thesis is that the English language has been deliberately

used as a tool in the cultural domination by the First World (Centre) countries of

the developing countries (Periphery), and that the Centre has made huge profits

through the multi-million dollar business of English language teaching.

Phillipson devotes several pages to attacking the notion that the ideal teacher

of English is a native-speaker: ‘It is highly likely that the native-speaker fallacy

has served the interests of the Centre’ and ‘has diverted attention away from the

solution of urgent pedagogical questions, and prevented the flourishing of local

pedagogical initiative which could build on local strengths and linguistic

realities’ (Phillipson, 1992: 199). He argues the case for non-native-speaker

teachers, saying that in many instances they are far better teachers than

native-speakers.

Pennycook (1994), writing in the South East Asian context, also describes the

part played by native-speaker teachers of English in the cultural domination of

other countries and in the consolidation of the enormously profitable textbook

market. Along with the apparently innocuous teaching of the English language

goes ‘a constant advocacy for a particular way of life, a particular understanding

of the world’ (Pennycook, 1994: 178).

To what extent the linguistic imperialism and cultural domination that

Phillipson and Pennycook describe is true of Hong Kong in general and of local

non-native-speaker English language teachers in particular is hard to say. Hong

Kong people are very pragmatic. They have used to their advantage British rule,

law and order, and have made Hong Kong a flourishing business and financial

centre. They are very practical about the learning of English. If it is necessary for

their prosperity, they will get on with it to the best of their ability.

As for local teachers of English, it may be that they have been subjected to a

subtle colonialism, both linguistic and cultural, of which they are unaware. But

while they accept their deficiencies and admit to a certain sense of inferiority

when compared to native-speakers, purely in terms of language ability, local

teachers would not agree that they are victims of linguistic and cultural

domination because of this. They are also aware of their strengths as teachers.

They know their pupils’ difficulties, their language and culture, and are often

close to them on a personal level. They are particularly strong on English

grammar, since in their own learning of English this was emphasised. They know

their accent is internationally quite intelligible: Cantonese is a phonetically rich

language containing almost the full repertoire of the sounds of the English

language. While they agree that the standard of English in schools is falling, they

are no longer willing solely to take the blame for this, nor to support as a solution

the importation of large numbers of expatriate native-speaker teachers of

English.

It is in this context that we must now turn to the second part of the paper and

review the role that native-speakers have played in English language teaching in

the final few years of Britain’s last colony, considering in some detail the EETS.

Part 2: Native-Speakers and English Language Teaching in Hong

Kong

Recent history

In 1982 a group of international educational experts visited Hong Kong at the

invitation of the Government to review Hong Kong’s educational system. Their

Report was informed, perceptive, hard-hitting and explicit.

While it rightly concentrated on the much bigger question of the medium of

instruction in schools, the Report did have something to say on the use of

native-speakers of English in the educational system. Pointing out the low

standard of English among many of the local Chinese teachers of English, the

Report suggested that the policy of localisation of staff was partly to blame: ‘the

effects of the policy on localisation of teaching staff have begun to be visible and

the “localisation of staffing” policy ought to be amended’ (Llewellyn, 1982: 3,1,9).

The Llewellyn committee recommended that Chinese pupils in their early

years of learning English should be exposed to native-speakers of English. These

need not necessarily be high-powered professionals: in fact, in order to keep costs

at a reasonable level, Llewellyn gave explicit examples of the kind of person who

might be used — the non-working spouses of British expatriates or other suitable

English speakers, engaged as ancillary staff on a contract basis or simply as

part-time helpers. These should be given a short form of training before

beginning in the schools. Their role would be as assistants to the regular teachers

and as models of native-speaker English for the pupils. All of these recommendations

of the Llewellyn Commission were eminently sensible and workable.

First Education Commission Report (ECR1)

Unfortunately, instead of beginning immediately, and modestly, along the

lines recommended by Llewellyn, a Government-appointed body, the Education

Commission, in its first Report (ECR1, 1984) launched into grander things: ‘We

further recommend that the standard of English teachers and the quality of

English teaching in schools should be improved by the recruitment of expatriate

lecturers of English for the Colleges of Education and the Institute of Language

in Education’ (ECR1, 1984: 3, 13). The Institute of Language in Education, a

Government-funded institution, headed by an expatriate, had been established

to upgrade the language standards of local teachers.

Under the existing regulations, secondary schools in Hong Kong could hire

up to three qualified expatriate language teachers. ECR1 noted that most schools

were not doing this, the reason being that schools were reluctant to get involved

in finding housing for the expatriates. However, ECR1 called this problem ‘not

insuperable’ and ‘well worth overcoming’ given the benefits to be gained from

having native-speaker English teachers in schools. Accordingly, the Report

strongly recommended that more encouragement should be given to schools to

employ locally available native English speakers.

All this sounded very encouraging and much more substantial than the

modest proposals of the Llewellyn Report.

Second Education Commission Report (ECR2)

However, between ECR1 in 1984 and the second Education Commission Report

(ECR2) in 1986, not much was actually achieved. Commenting on progress in the

hiring of expatriate lecturers for the Colleges of Education, ECR2 said simply: ‘We

note that a phased recruitment exercise is in progress and a number of new recruits

are expected to be in post by September 1986’ (ECR2, 1986: 3, 3, 2). On the subject of

native-speakers for schools, the Report was even more cryptic: ‘We understand that

the Government is developing proposals to recruit qualified English teachers whose

mother tongue is English’ (ECR2, 1986: 3, 3, 3).

This slowness in implementing the recommendations of ECR1 was surprising,

especially since the Government had hinted at giving help to schools with the

housing problem. The truth was, however, that as well as bringing native-speaker

expertise, expatriate teachers brought problems to schools. Headmasters were

wary of recruiting expatriates, because they foresaw practical difficulties in the

classroom and staffroom.

The Expatriates English Teaching Scheme (EETS)

These problems emerged more clearly when the Government embarked upon

a new initiative aimed at a more extensive use of native-speakers in English

language teaching. This was known as the EETS.

The plan was to provide each Government and aided secondary school with

two or three expatriate teachers of English. Part of the idea of the scheme was to

encourage schools to switch from English-medium of instruction to Chinese-medium

of instruction. Schools which made this switch would get two extra

expatriate teachers of English. The British Council was asked to recruit for the

EETS and give pre-service training and in-service back-up to these teachers. They

were hired on a two-year contract, with air fare and housing allowance included.

Problems with the EETS

The first problem with the scheme was its cost. It was estimated that an average

expatriate teacher‘s salary would be about HK$123,000 annually, not including

housing benefits (another $4,000 per month), nor medical benefits, nor return air

fare. As there were over 300 Government and aided secondary schools, the

scheme could, if a sizeable number of schools responded positively, cost in the

region of HK$50 million or more.

From the expatriate teachers’ point of view, there were certain financial aspects

of the scheme which were unsatisfactory. The housing allowance of $4,000 per

month, though adequate for a single person, was not nearly enough for a married

person with children. Also, the exchange rate between the pound and the Hong

Kong dollar was very favourable when the teachers were recruited. The exchange

rate changed substantially, however, against the pound, during the period of the

pilot scheme, thus eroding the salaries of the Hong Kong expatriate teachers. No

exchange rate clause had been built in to the contract.

Another practical problem was that schools were not required to give their

decision on switching to Chinese-medium till the end of October. This meant it

was impossible to know how many expatriates had to be hired for the start of the

school year in September. In the event, some schools filled in with temporary

teachers, till the expatriates teachers arrived later. Naturally, this did not help the

teachers or students, nor allow the expatriate scheme to get off to a good start.

Several of the other problems encountered by the EETS are summarised in

Johnson & Tang (1993): the powerlessness of the expatriate teachers, as ordinary

teachers, to effect change in the schools, in contrast to the role they had expected

as innovators and leaders; the problem of language at staff meetings, with the

Chinese teachers, naturally enough, reluctant to change from Cantonese to

English for the sake of one or two expatriates who could not speak Cantonese;

the fact that the expatriate teachers were given mainly oral English classes and

therefore had less marking to do; their lack of involvement in extra-curricular

activities, again on language or cultural grounds. The list could be lengthened.

The reaction of local English teachers

Even before the scheme started, the local Chinese teachers of English objected

to it. Experienced local teachers saw the scheme as a slur on themselves, as if the

expatriates were being brought in to show them how to teach English. ‘The

recruitment of expat teachers should not be embarked on lightly, because I

believe that is not the answer’, said a secondary school teacher, K.Y. Lee (1986),

adding that if the expatriate teachers were given extra fringe benefits, then ‘with

teachers doing the same job but enjoying different remuneration, problems are

bound to arise’.

Another problem for the local teachers was the sheer difference of approach

of expatriate and local teachers, both in the staffroom and in the classroom. The

expatriates were considered to be too outspoken and critical of school regulations

and traditional ways of doing things. In the classroom their more communicative

approach to teaching was considered by the Chinese students as mere noisy fun

and games, and unhelpful for the serious business of passing the public exams.

The cost of the scheme was also felt to be disproportionate by local teachers,

many of whom could not get funds for simple classroom teaching aids. Instead

of spending such huge amounts of money on the EETS, Law (1987) suggested

several less costly, and more urgent things: improve school libraries with graded

materials for extensive reading; provide more audiovisual materials; provide

schools with more tape and video recorders; improve the facilities of the English

teachers centre; provide in-service courses for local teachers.

It was not only local Chinese who foresaw difficulties in the scheme. Expatriate

teachers too, who had worked in Hong Kong for some years, queried whether

the scheme would make any significant impression on the standard of English

in local schools. They also warned about possible conflict with local teachers: ‘The

only evident impact that may occur is if the UK-recruited teachers were to be

employed in a supervisory role. However, this action could well present

problems within the established hierarchy in schools and usurp the role of senior

and experienced local teachers’ (Parsonage, 1987).

No-one was averse to using native-speakers in principle. In a study by Law

(1990) 120 local school teachers were surveyed on their attitude to having

expatriate teachers in their schools. In general, the responses were very positive,

with 76% strongly agreeing or agreeing with the statement: ‘I think it is good to

have expat teachers in senior forms’.

However, everyone with real classroom experience in Hong Kong advised that

expatriates could best be used in modest programmes, which were clearly

supplementary to the existent school programmes: ‘The Government can employ

native speakers’, suggested Law (1987), ‘to talk with local teachers and make

provision to allow teachers one afternoon/morning off each week for one year

to join immersion programmes for active involvement and for exposure to

natural use of the language’. Like the proposals of the Llewellyn Report, these

suggestions from local teachers were sensible and cost-effective.

The native-speaker myth

The root of the problem was that the Education Department had not really

tuned in to the local teachers’ resentment at the implication of the EETS that an

expatriate native-speaker teacher of English was better than a local teacher. At

this stage, in other parts of the world, as we have seen in the first part of this

article, the notion of native-speaker was being re-examined and the automatic

superiority of native-speaker teachers of English was being rejected. The balance

was in fact being righted and was tending more towards local teachers, who knew

the language and culture of the pupils, and who had also a good standard of

English. By contrast, many of the expatriates in the Hong Kong scheme knew

little or nothing of the language or culture of their pupils.

Cheng (1988), an ex-headmaster and a faculty member of the School of

Education in the Chinese University of Hong Kong, spoke out in support of the

local teachers: ‘I believe that a properly trained Chinese teacher with a good

command of English can teach the subject just as competently as a nativespeaker’.

He went on to acknowledge, however, that Hong Kong did not have

enough qualified teachers of English with a good command of the language.

English language teaching in Hong Kong schools is not a popular option:

classes are large; the workload is heavy; there are few promoted posts. If the EETS

had been presented in a more modest light and the native-speakers had been

introduced as helpers, working alongside locals, learning from their experience

and from their knowledge of the culture and language of the Chinese students,

the scheme would have been more successful. Instead, they were brought in as

native-speaker specialists, expecting special treatment and special status.

Evaluation of the pilot EETS

For the above reasons the pilot EETS was not a great success. In the first place,

there was a poor response from schools, with only 41 schools signing on to

participate in the scheme when it started in September 1987. Moreover, by

January 1989, 22 of the 75 teachers recruited had quit the scheme. Less than half

of the schools at this point said they wished to continue with the EETS when it

ended its pilot run.

The finger of blame was pointed at the British Council, but this was not entirely

fair. Though no doubt some of the problems might have been more clearly

foreseen, the preparation and back-up given to teachers in the pilot scheme was

good.

An interim report was commissioned after one year, with an external

consultant from the University of Edinburgh. This report pointed out the basic

flaw, that many of the expatriate teachers had been given the wrong idea of their

role and had seen themselves as the spearhead of curriculum change. As the

report observed, there was a ‘certain arrogance about this view’. In general, the

interim report was fair and, while noting some mistakes, was by no means totally

condemnatory of the scheme.

The Government unwisely chose to keep this interim report under tight wraps,

thus arousing the suspicion of the PTU (Professional Teachers Union), who

demanded to have it released. This was a reasonable request, since the EETS

affected local teachers’ working conditions. In addition, the Professional Teachers

Union had detailed their misgivings about the scheme at its planning stage.

Nevertheless, the Education Department refused to release the Report.

A copy, however, reached the press and inevitably the more critical parts were

highlighted. In general, the EETS received very bad press coverage. For this, the

Education Department only had itself to blame, since it was so reluctant to give

out information. At the end of the pilot scheme, a second report was commissioned,

but again not released. This was even more extraordinary, since whereas

the first, interim report had been, in the words of one British Council officer,

‘neutral to slightly positive’, this second report was ‘very clearly positive’.

In some schools the expatriates did excellent work and were much appreciated,

especially where they team-taught with local teachers. A local educational

commentator wrote of the ‘stimulating effect of the expatriates’ presence and

their more relaxed teaching methods. Students seemed to like the system of

dialogues and role-plays used by the Westerners to provoke a more active use of

English’ (Mellish, 1989). Another classroom observer of the scheme said he

witnessed ‘some superb teachers’.

Those who had previous experience of working abroad, especially in Asia,

were the most successful. When their contract in the pilot scheme was completed,

some of these stayed on in Hong Kong, in secondary schools, in Colleges of

Education, and in University positions.

The modified scheme

Should the scheme be continued or not? This was the question faced by the

Education Department. The standard of English in Hong Kong was not

improving and influential voices were being raised in the business and academic

communities to do something about it. The new Professor of English in the

University of Hong Kong entitled his inaugural lecture on the subject of English

in Hong Kong, ‘The Worst English in the World?’ (Harris, 1989).

Accordingly, the Hong Kong Government decided that the EETS should

continue for two years, but with certain modifications. Instead of recruitment

being done centrally by the British Council, this would be done by the schools

themselves in the case of aided schools, and by the Education Department in the

case of Government schools. This was an important change since it made the

teachers immediately answerable to the Headmaster and to the Hong Kong

Education Department, instead of to the British Council, as in the pilot scheme.

In addition, the in-service support given to the expatriate teachers, was taken

over by the Government’s Institute of Language in Education.

The modified scheme was an improvement on the original scheme in many

ways. Most importantly, the teachers were given a more realistic idea of their

role, no longer as ‘agents of change’, but as native-speaker helpers in a complex,

difficult sociolinguistic situation.

There was also less press coverage of the scheme and the teachers were

allowed to get on with the job. ‘The pressure on expatriate teachers exerted by

frequent and ill-researched press reports about the difficulties they faced and the

presumed failure of the scheme, and by their knowledge that the scheme was

being closely monitored and evaluated, was often extremely uncomfortable for

them’ (Report of Working Group, 1989: 52).

Fourth Education Commission Report (ECR4)

With things going better for the EETS, by the time the Education Commission

brought out its Fourth Report in 1990 it had been decided that a permanent

scheme should be set up in September 1991. When the time came for schools to

decide whether to join this permanent scheme, there was a reasonably favourable

response, with almost 100 government and aided schools (about a third of the

total) opting to have expatriate teachers.

The question of expatriate teachers, however, occupied only a small part of

ECR4 which dealt at length and in detail with the much larger question of the

medium of instruction in schools. This had been a long-standing and vexed

question in Hong Kong’s educational history (Boyle, 1995). Educationalists had

for years been advocating that there should be more Chinese-medium schools,

on the grounds that many Hong Kong pupils did not have a sufficient level of

English to benefit from English-medium schools. Business leaders on the other

hand were fearful that a large swing to Chinese-medium education would

produce graduates whose standard of English was too poor to conduct

international business effectively. This was a serious question, with competition

from places like Singapore, with its excellent standard of English.

The policy on medium of instruction in schools advocated by ECR4 was to

concentrate on a top 30% who could study in the medium of English, and to

encourage the other 70% to study in the medium of Chinese. However, whatever

the Education Department might say about the value of Chinese-medium of

instruction, Hong Kong parents still wanted English-medium schools for their

children.

Changes in the 1990s

In the early 1990s this larger problem of the medium of instruction diverted

attention from the question of expatriate English teachers. However, the new

EETS, after its initial fairly positive start, began to look more doubtful, as the old

problems re-emerged. There were also some changes in Hong Kong which did

not help the scheme.

A new nationalism was arising, as the takeover of Hong Kong by China in

1997 neared, and the privileged position of expatriates on overseas terms became

less acceptable. The situation of local English language teachers in schools was

getting worse, not better. More young children from Mainland China were

entering Hong Kong and putting pressure on the school system. Also, the new

emphasis in schools on the learning of Putonghua (Mandarin Chinese), in

preparation for the takeover, did not help English language learning.

Hence it was not surprising that in 1995, out of 360 eligible government and

aided schools, only 33 signed on to have expatriate teachers. The reasons were

familiar: on the Head’s side, administrative problems with having expatriates on

the staff; and on the local teachers’ side, resentment at the implied belief in the

superiority of native-speaker teachers: ‘Are the schools saying local teachers are

not good enough, so they need to recruit a native-speaker?’ (Lee, 1995).

Sixth Education Commission Report (ECR6)

With a history of such limited success for the EETS, it came therefore as a

surprise when in late 1995 the Education Commission issued a Draft Report

(ECR6 Draft, 1995) which blandly stated: ‘The Commission notes that the

Expatriate English Language Teachers Scheme (the Scheme) has been useful in

improving the learning of English in secondary schools’ (ECR6 Draft, 1995: ix).

The Draft Report then recommended that within four years all secondary schools

(now about 400 of them) should have two or more native-speaker English

language teachers, who would be hired on local, not overseas terms. If there were

an overwhelming demand from schools for expatriate teachers, said the Report,

then priority would be given to schools which had opted for Chinese medium,

or which had previously participated in the EETS.

All this was quite unrealistic. First, it would entail the recruitment of about

200 native-speaker teachers a year, and on much less favourable terms than

before. Also, to envisage an overwhelming demand from schools for expatriate

teachers was flying in the face of past experience: there never had been an

overwhelming demand for expatriate teachers.

Comments were invited on this Draft Report from educators and the general

public. In early 1996 an Education Report (ECR6) was published, incorporating

a summary of responses to the Draft Report. On the subject of hiring expatriates,

a note of realism was sounded: ‘While some educators recognised the merits of

the recommendation, many local teachers and school heads had reservations

about the cost-effectiveness of expatriate teachers’ (ECR6, 1996: 5). A more

explicit dose of realism was soon to follow with the first local Chinese Financial

Secretary’s budget in March 1996 which cut by half the Education Commission’s

proposed funding for native-speakers. It appeared the financial writing was on

the wall, and probably wisely, for the renewed and expanded EETS.

Conclusion

This article in its first part examined the concept of native-speaker, noting the

central position of the native-speaker in linguistic studies and in language

teaching theory and practice. It was seen how the spread of the English language

around the world and the acceptance of legitimate varieties of English have

occasioned a broader interpretation of the notion of native-speaker. The article

attempted to define criteria by which a native-speaker could be judged as such,

and with these criteria in mind, the relative merits of native-speaker and

non-native-speaker teachers of English were discussed.

Within this context, the situation of local teachers of English in Hong Kong

schools was next considered. Most have a relatively low level of proficiency, little

occasion to use English, little affinity with the language, and a sense of diffidence

in their ability as English teachers. They readily acknowledge the superiority of

native-speaker teachers of English, purely in terms of language ability, but when

other factors are taken into consideration, local teachers would not accept the

automatic superiority of native-speaker teachers of English. They also objected

from the start to the idea of a large-scale importation of native-speaker teachers

into Hong Kong schools.

Part 2 of the article reviewed the recent history of native-speaker teachers of

English in Hong Kong, with special reference to the EETS, a scheme designed to

help solve Hong Kong’s problem of declining standards of English. The scheme

was by and large a failure and the recent suggestion from Hong Kong’s Education

Department to implement another similar scheme seems also to have little hope

of success.

Too much blame, however, must not be put on the Hong Kong Education

Department which is caught in a difficult position. The business community

claims the standard of English is declining and that something must be done

about it, if Hong Kong is to maintain its place as an international business centre.

The attempt to improve English standards through the school system has not

been successful in recent years, especially because of problems with recruiting

good local teachers of English.

Considerable effort and money have been expended, through the establishment

of the Institute of Language in Education and in other ways, to improve

the quality of local non-native-speaker teachers of English. But the new

communicative syllabus in English has proved difficult for local teachers to cope

with and many feel inadequate in their jobs. Teaching the English classes in

schools has become one of the most unpopular options for Hong Kong teachers.

Hong Kong’s thriving economy, with a range of job options for good speakers of

English, also helps to draw the best away from teaching.

In this climate the idea of using expatriate teachers and the introduction of the

EETS might seem at first sight to have been very reasonable. However, in

reviewing the chequered history of the EETS, this article has suggested that one

of the reasons for the relative failure of the scheme was that by the time it came

to be implemented, attitudes worldwide were changing on what constitutes

native-speakers of English and on their role in English language teaching.

Whereas other places were concentrating on level of expertise rather than country

of origin, Hong Kong was following a British-is-Best policy and through the

British Council hiring all the teachers for the EETS from UK. To suggest a sinister

imperialistic interpretation for this is probably unwarranted. It was simply that

the Council’s network made it much easier for them to hire British teachers. This

was also in line with the standard Hong Kong practice of hiring from UK for the

Police Force and even for those sections of the business community which wanted

British accents rather than American or Australian.

It is interesting, however, that in Hong Kong, at the time of the EETS, it was

only in schools that there was this concentration on British recruits. The English

Departments and English Language Centres in the tertiary institutions were

increasingly being staffed internationally, and this tendency has increased. For

example, in the two oldest Universities, the University of Hong Kong and the

Chinese University, the English Language Centre/Unit is headed by an

Australian and an American respectively, and teachers in the Centre and Unit

come from Hong Kong, Mainland China, America, Britain, Canada, India, Sri

Lanka and the Philippines. It can only be hoped that if the new scheme to hire

expatriate teachers for Hong Kong schools goes ahead as planned, the net will be

cast wider than the British Isles.

Even if it is, the prospects for the success of the second round of hiring

expatriate teachers on a large scale (EETS Mark 2) seem slim. The problems which

surrounded the first EETS have if anything grown more acute. With the return

of Hong Kong to China, there is liable to be more resentment of foreign, especially

British dominance in any sphere, including the field of English language

teaching. The problem of discipline in schools is by all accounts increasing.

Expatriates who do not speak the local language are more liable to be given a

difficult time by unruly pupils who will increasingly look on non-local teachers,

especially British ones, as very definitely foreigners.

Another problem with EETS Mark 2 is its proposed scale. A lesson which

should have been learned from the first EETS was the wisdom of beginning small,

as the Llewellyn Report had suggested, and of listening more to the voices of local

teachers. Instead of doing this, the Education Department went ahead with an

over-ambitious scheme which was enormously costly and had little effect on

English language standards in Hong Kong. It would have been much better if the

large sums of money spent on the EETS had been spent on providing more

support and better conditions for Hong Kong’s local teachers of English.

With the experience of the first EETS, and with the ending of colonialism, there

is a growing unwillingness on the part of local teachers to accept the notion that

expatriate native-speaker teachers of English are any better than local teachers.

Native-speakers will increasingly have to prove their worth, and this will

probably mean a greater effort than in the past to appreciate the language and

culture of their pupils. There will probably still be a place for expatriate

native-speaker teachers, but they will have to be good, and conditions will not

be as easy as they were under the colonial regime. With the increase in

opportunities for University education, there will be a larger number of local

Hong Kong teachers, better qualified and more confident. There will also be an

enormous number of good teachers of English from Mainland China eager to

find jobs in Hong Kong.

If Hong Kong is to stay prosperous, it must not lose its English. There is general

agreement among academics and businessmen that the new Chinese government

will be more keen than ever that Hong Kong should have a high standard of

English. If Hong Kong has any future, it is as an entrepôt between China and the

outside world, and for this role good international English is essential. But just

as Hong Kong’s political future depends on its producing high-quality local

administrators, so its linguistic future depends on its producing high-quality

local teachers of English. Experienced and culturally sensitive, expatriate

native-speaker teachers may still have a place in Hong Kong’s educational effort

to improve its English. But their role must be as ancillaries and consultants,

offering expertise in a needed skill, rather than as a special class, insisting on the

privileges of their linguistic birthright.

References

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