From monocultural to multicultural: An expanding knowledge-base required of L1 Chinese teachers in Hong Kong Pamela Leung Hong Kong Institute of Education Abstract: Hong Kong has been a popular city where the East meets the West. Despite British rule for 150 years, the use of English has been confined to the legal, commercial and higher education arenas. The first language (L1) of nearly 7 million people in Hong Kong is Chinese and the spoken dialect Cantonese is commonly used as a social language. To teach the Chinese Language subject, a schoolteacher usually uses Cantonese as the medium of instruction as Cantonese is considered the L1 of both the teacher and students. Such convention was challenged when the sovereignty of Hong Kong was returned to the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1997. By the national standard in PRC, schools should adopt Putonghua (Mandarin) as the teaching medium regardless of any local dialects. Although it is not yet an official norm, many schools in Hong Kong have started teaching Chinese Language in Putonghua. As a result, pre-service teachers are expected to be proficient not only in Putonghua but also in teaching Chinese through a non-native language. While the effectiveness of teaching Chinese in Putonghua is still controversial, the scenario is worsened by the steady growth of non-Chinese speaking (NCS) population in last decades. Scattered in different schools, some 40,000 students from non-Chinese ethnic background have to study Chinese Language so as to live an ordinary life in Hong Kong. In addition to being capable to teach Chinese students L1 Chinese in different media (Cantonese or Putonghua), pre-service teachers would also need to be prepared to teach NCS students according to the L1 Chinese Language curriculum. To depict an update knowledge base (Grossman, Wilson & Shulman, 1989) required of Chinese language teachers in the changing social context and to reveal the complexity of learning to become a schoolteacher of Chinese in Hong Kong, this paper will adopt a content analysis method to examine the official curriculum and assessment guidelines (Curriculum Development Council, 2001, 2004, 2008, 2014) for different target groups of students and discuss the implications for L1 teacher education in the local and global contexts. Keywords: Teacher knowledge, Language teacher education, Language curriculum 1 1. Chinese language education in Hong Kong Language education in Hong Kong has been a special issue due to its specific political background. Despite the fact that the majority of residents (approximately 99%) in Hong Kong speak Cantonese Chinese (HKWGLP, 1994), Chinese is not the only official language. Before the British Government returned its sovereignty to China in 1997, English occupied a uniquely important position. Even since the handover of sovereignty back to China, English has continued to be an official language. Moreover, English has been designated as the official medium of instruction in schools. Chinese has been taught as a school subject only since the 1950's when public examinations were instituted at the end of primary and secondary schooling (Tang, 2002). Before the 1950's, the school structure and curriculum of Chinese in Hong Kong was modeled on that of Mainland China (Tse et al., 1995, p.9). According to Tse et al. (1995), "Chinese" in Hong Kong has a complex meaning, referring to writing using traditional complex characters and Cantonese speech. Although the shared Chinese written language (Modern Standard Chinese) is largely understood by almost all literate Chinese communities, the Cantonese speech does not correspond completely to the written form. Because of the heavy emphasis on set texts in Classical and Modern Chinese in the Chinese Language curriculum, there are persisting discrepancies between the written language taught at school and students’ "social language" (Cantonese) (HKWGLP, 1994, p.8). Lee (1997) argues that because Putonghua (Mandarin) is the national standard spoken language in China, it should be the mother tongue of all Chinese people. However, because most Hong Kong people speak Cantonese, it is more accurate to consider Cantonese to be the "first mother tongue" and Putonghua to be the "second mother tongue" of most Hong Kong people. Hence, Chinese language education in Hong Kong is a "second mother tongue" education because the written Modern Standard Chinese that most Hong Kong people use is closest to Putonghua. The written language Hong Kong students learn does not match their spoken language. 2. Chinese Language as a school subject The interpretation of 中國語文 (Chinese Language) as the title of a subject in both primary and secondary schools has been controversial among language educators for decades. As the meaning of the two characters 語 and 文 can be viewed from different perspectives, 語文 has been interpreted as 語言文字 (language and script) 2 (Pang, 1984), 語言文章 (language and writing) (Lee, 1991), 語言文學 (language and literature) (So, 1983b) and, to some extent, 語言文化 (language and culture) (So, 1983a). As Z.G. Zhang (1994) points out, "Despite the different interpretations of 文 in 語文 since 1949, most scholars agree that 語 refers to 'language'" (p.140). The differences in the interpretations of 文 represent different emphases in Chinese language teaching. The debate on the nature of Chinese language teaching in Hong Kong was triggered in 1974 by the separation of the discipline into two secondary school subjects, Chinese Language and Chinese Literature, following the practice of English language education. A focus of concern was that the teaching of the mother tongue should not follow the teaching of a second language. Another key concern was whether Chinese Language should include the teaching of literature and culture in addition to the teaching of language skills. Arguments for the inclusion of literature and culture in teaching Chinese Language reflect the thinking that originates from traditional Chinese language education. Various language educators have pointed out that the teaching of Chinese language is implied in the teaching of Chinese literature (Chan, 1987; Lee, 1991; Pang, 1984; So, 1983a, 1983b). P. K. Wong (1998) suggests that 語文 in Chinese has always been ambiguous because it refers to both language and literacy. In his view, the Chinese tradition of teaching 語文 to students is to make them literate so that they can be educated to become all-rounded persons, implying that to be literate in Chinese does not only mean to be able to read and write, but also to be cultivated. Similarly, Z. G. Zhang (1999) affirms that the teaching of reading in Chinese has a long tradition of emphasising both 文 and 道, whereas 文 refers to language and rhetoric and 道 refers to an overall understanding of ancient scholars' thinking. In line with traditional thinking, Chinese language teaching is perceived as a means to appreciate literature and to recognise culture. Hence, the literature and culture components are indispensable to the teaching of Chinese Language. On the other hand, some scholars are of the view that the teaching of language skills is more fundamental to the teaching of Chinese Language than the development of personal character or appreciation of literature. Lee (1991), Wang (1984) and Yu (1987) emphasise the importance of training students’ language skills in teaching the Chinese Language subject. According to Lee (1991), because of the discrepancy between the spoken language and the written language, using literary works as teaching materials is inevitable. However, emphasising solely the appreciation of 3 literary works in the teaching of Chinese Language is impractical and does not meet the needs of society. 3. Chinese Language curricula and the effectiveness of teaching After a prolonged debate in the education sector, a new set of Chinese Language curricula from primary to matriculation was formulated in the 1990s (CDC, 1990a, 1990b, 1991). With a more balanced emphasis on the teaching of the four language skills, i.e., listening, speaking, reading and writing, and the inclusion of an explicit cultural component, the new Chinese curriculum for matriculation (CDC, 1991) is considered an improvement in terms of teaching Chinese as a first language (Li, 1995). The dominant view is that although Chinese Language should foster moral characters and cultivate the appreciation of literature, its main task is to develop the language abilities of students. Given a clearer direction for the teaching of Chinese since the early 1990s, the general efficacy of Chinese language teaching seems to be improving progressively. According to the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination Annual Reports (HKEA, 1994, 1999; HKEAA, 2003, 2006), the passing rate of Chinese Language was 58.5% in 1994, 58.8% in 1999, 64.1% in 2003 and 68.4 % in 2006. The spirit of teaching Chinese as L1 was firmly stemmed in the subsequent Education Reform during the turn of the century. As stated in the new curriculum guide (CDC, 2001) , The learning of Chinese Language includes nine domains: Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking, Literature, Chinese Culture, Morality and Affection, Thinking, and Language self-learning. These learning areas are dispensable and interdependent. The learning of the Chinese Language should be led by Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking which at the same time serve as a spur to the other domains (p.9). Following the main aim of equipping students to become life-long learners by "learning to learn" in the Education Reform, the fundamental difference between the Chinese Language curricula in the 1990s and the 2000s lies in the rationale: the former being "knowledge-oriented" while the latter being "ability-oriented" (Fok & Wong, 2010). A major challenge of the new curriculum to most teachers and students is the cancellation of prescribed texts for public examination together with the introduction of a range of new assessment methods. Besides, in addition to reading and writing, speaking, listening and integrated language skills are assessed.