75
E
composing and speaking simple sentences idiomatically. At the Head Masters' Conference in England held last month, it was resolved that-"It is desirable that modern languages be taught more collo- quially than is customary in schools at present," and we think that much of the deficiency in speaking English which we noticed in the greater part of the school might be supplied if some time were given to the teaching of colloquial English. We do not see from the table of hours of work supplied to us that any time is given especially to this subject; the 244 hours a week put down for conversation appears to mean no more than that the boys are taught various subjects in English, by European or Chinese Masters, during that number of hours. We feel sure from our experience that no definite improvement can be effected in this matter unless especial attention is paid to it.
In the lower classes, where the number of pages of the reading book prepared was small, the boys had read the same piece so frequently that, on five out of six occasions when the examiners asked a boy to close his book and repeat four or five lines which he had just read, they were repeated verbatim with as much fluency as when the book was open before him. The consequence of this frequent reading of the same passage is that boys get into the habit of not looking carefully at the whole of a word, and when, in an unfamiliar passage, the eye catches sight of a word slightly similar to one better known, the boy pronounces the latter and seems totally unconscious that he is making nonsense of the sentence. We noticed a very common mistake, which ought to be remedied at once; nouns in the singular were read as plural and vice versê, tenses in the present as past and vice versa. The same mistakes occur in the written work of all the Classes.
The Dictation was taken in cach Class, except in Class I., from the part of the reading book which the boys had prepared, in order that there should be no unfamiliar words in the piece chosen. And care was taken that the unfamiliar voices of the examiners should not in any way make the passage unduly difficult. A boy was allowed to make six mistakes and yet to pass (errors in punc- tuation counting, and in spelling 1). In spite of this-and the portion on which marks were assigned was no longer than in previous years-there were too many failures; we think that a good many of these might have been avoided by more care on the part of the boys, and if English Masters only had been allowed to teach reading. Punctuation was very weak especially in the Middle Classes. The writing was good, and it was pleasing to find several perfect papers in Classes IV., VII. and VIII.
Composition. As in previous examinations the boys in Class I. were asked to write an essay. Three subjects were given (The Sports and Pastimes to be seen in Hongkong, The Peak Tramway, and The Benefits of Foreign Trade), and boys were invited to select one and write upon it. We were much pleased with the work in I.A.; two or three essays being excellent, and the mistakes in composition very few. In the other classes, II. to V., a short story was read out twice by an English Master, and an explanation of it given in Chinese by a native Teacher, The boys were then instructed to reproduce the story in their own words. A few boys acquitted themselves creditably, but the mass of the work was very poor. We do not feel sure that this is the best method of teaching Composition, as boys seem to try too much to reproduce the exact words they have heard; and they make this effort at the expense of the sense. Much attention is needed to this subject. We think it would be better to teach the boys to compose and write correctly short sentences relating to some simple subject chosen by a Master; afterwards to write longer ones and to combine them. Many papers were quite unintelligible.
Grammar.-We were satisfied with the work of I.A. and I. C,A., and also of II.A., where there was evidence of good teaching, and we found the analysis of sentences on the whole good. Much of the work of the other Classes was ruined by inaccuracy and by an inability to express correctly what had been learnt by heart. Too much dependence is put upon rote-work. It may be necessary for a teacher to know that "an adjective is a word that may be joined to a noun to describe, to delimit, or to point to, that which we are naming by the noun," but it is not good to burden the memory of Chinese boys with such things unless it is desired to "sacrifice Education to Examination." Many boys had been taught to reproduce this definition, but the majority of them, in this and other cases, made nonsense of what they had tried to commit to memory. And when a boy in the Third Class, who has been in the school three years, writes such rubbish as The common noun distinguishes as proper nouns the things, persons or places are given the name to it that is used for proper," it is time to consider whether the whole method of teaching Grammar from a text-book does not require revision. This is only a sample of the many unintelligible answers with which the majority of papers teemed. Such a provincialism (appearing in about 75 per cent. of the papers) as "shew" for the past tense of "to show " ought not to be possible, and the learning of difficult definitions and explanations