Abstract
This chapter focuses on Cantonese-L1 Hongkongers’ main difficulties in the process of learning English for Academic Purposes (EAP) or Standard English. As the British Received Pronunciation (RP) is widely used in teaching materials in Hong Kong schools, pronunciation difficulties at both the segmental and suprasegmental levels will be explained and illustrated with reference to phonological features in RP and Cantonese. Lexico-grammatical anomalies commonly found among Cantonese-L1 EFL learners, at elementary and intermediate levels, will be exemplified with the help of 12 salient corpus-based learner English structures. In addition, problems arising from the transference of the Chinese-specific ‘response to negative question’ pattern into English will also be discussed.
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Notes
- 1.
Ta Kung Pao, 26 Feb 2015, p. A7.
- 2.
This policy was withdrawn with effect from 2013.
- 3.
The two surveys were conducted in 2001 by the American Chamber of Commerce and Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, respectively. Also cited in SCOLAR’s Action Plan (2003, p. 4) are similar findings reached by the Establishment Survey on Manpower Training and Job Skills Requirement conducted by the Census and Statistics Department in 2000.
- 4.
‘Brightman ready for her date with the stars’, China Daily, 14 Mar 2015, p. 12.
- 5.
Compare, e.g., 我很難學好英文 (ngo 23 han 35 naan 21 hok 22 ho 35 jing 55 man 35 / wŏ hăn nán xué hăo yīngwén, literally *‘I am difficult to learn well English’.
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Li, D.C.S. (2017). Challenges in Acquiring English for Academic Purposes (EAP). In: Multilingual Hong Kong: Languages, Literacies and Identities. Multilingual Education, vol 19. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44195-5_4
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