TNAG-1606-FCO40-22121-Minutes-and-Hansards-of-the-Legislative-Council-of-Hong-Kong-1987 — Page 135

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establish

of

a special body

body to be

be charged with

with the

task of improving the standard of Chinese

primary school textbooks and workbooks in all

subjects.

(2) selecting the most suitable and effective way of

teaching Putonghua in schools

Unlike other Chinese communities, Putonghua is not used by young children in Hong Kong as their daily spoken language. It is

is therefore necessary that we should develop our own teaching method suitable

to Hong Kong. In order to determine the most

suitable way to

to teach Putonghua in Hong Kong, we do need a special body to deal with the matter and assist the departments concerned in finding out an

answer.

(3) improving the linguistic proficiency of students,

especially in relation_to_the_spoken language

People in many quarters have deplored the poor standard of Chinese of our students in coping with

the needs of daily life (e.g. writing an application letter for a job in fluent Chinese). The emphasis on the written languages in school syllabus and language training has led to an unbalanced development at the expense of training in the spoken language. In fact, the standard of

spoken

is becoming increasingly important. At many major meetings, more people than ever before choose to speak in Chinese.

shows all the more that the standard of spoken language merits our special attention.

Chinese

This

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