Excellent learning and teaching, improve English skills, face the wider world

St. Stephen's Church College is student-oriented and provides Christian holistic education to help students deeply understand themselves, explore their talents and abilities, and realize their personal ideals. Principal Mak Wai Lun firmly believes that "dreams are created", and by creating rich learning experiences and campus life, it helps students understand their own interests and goals, and then clarify their development direction as early as possible. The school is also committed to helping students improve their English skills, broaden their international horizons, and face the wider world.

Continuously optimize teaching strategies and construct a balanced learning process

The school has always kept pace with the times and designed diversified learning strategies to enhance students' interest in learning English. By providing sufficient platforms and opportunities, students can continue to try to apply English and accumulate more vocabulary. In terms of junior high school English courses, the school promotes the connection between primary and secondary English courses, emphasizes listening and speaking elements, and adds a "5-minute reading aloud" segment to the classroom. The teacher will select passages and poems suitable for each student's learning level, and lead them to read aloud, thereby exercising their English conversation skills, and deepening and extending their understanding of the field of English culture. In addition, the English subject team also designed a "10-minute English Chat" where students can discuss and report in groups to promote English learning and communication.

At the same time, the English subject team will add different writing elements to teaching, such as sentence writing training, creative writing, etc., to gradually build students' vocabulary library, grammatical awareness, etc. Schools will also add bite-size and mini reading tasks according to students' levels to make reading an essential part of every lesson. In addition, the school participated in the Education Bureau's Chinese Teaching Support Program this year. Support services will be targeted at junior high school students, starting from promoting teacher exchanges and optimizing school-based curriculum, to improve teaching quality, enhance students' English ability and confidence, and lay a solid language foundation for them.

Establish "Language Arts Class" to deepen cultural accomplishment

In order to deepen students' knowledge and cultural accomplishment, the school has specially added "Language Arts Curriculum" (Language Arts Curriculum) in Form One and Two, integrating currently popular English poetry, pop songs, dramas, movie appreciation, stories and other elements into the curriculum to create an immersive English context for students. Principal Mak Wai Lun pointed out: "We believe that interest is an important motivation for students' learning. We hope to inspire students' interest in English learning by integrating English learning into popular culture." Therefore, through diversified teaching methods, students can acquire English-related knowledge and provide teaching content that suits their learning interests, which will help them expand their abilities and strengths, and dare to express themselves in English.

Introduce international English courses and build a broad world view

In addition to constantly optimizing English courses, the school also introduces internationally renowned English course elements and assessments into school-based courses, setting up courses of different levels for students of all levels, and providing appropriate teaching content according to their academic levels. For example, at the junior high school level, the school has set up a TOEFL Junior preparatory course for Form 1 freshmen to help students understand their personal English proficiency and learning needs as early as possible; the school will also sponsor Form 2 students to take the TOEFL Junior exam, helping them to gradually obtain different professional certificates and enhance their competitiveness.

At the high school level, the school specially offers TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) courses to provide students in the fifth grade with English course content for daily life and workplace use, thereby making students realize that English is a communication skill that needs to be used in life, not just a subject for exams. Moreover, the course content covers part of workplace English, which can help students establish a preliminary understanding of employment and promote their direction and planning for further studies and employment.

In addition, the school also arranges for Form 6 students to participate in IELTS courses, and allocates resources to support them in successfully passing the exam. More than half of the first batch of students taking the IELTS test in 2022-23 were able to successfully score 6 to 8 points, reflecting the remarkable effectiveness of the school's English teaching and enhancing students' confidence in taking the HKDSE. Principal Mak Wai Lun added: "The IELTS test is an English proficiency test recognized by international and local universities for admission to bachelor's degree programs. Students who obtain a certain score will benefit their future studies. Students can also regard the test as a warm-up for the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination and accumulate experience in public examinations."

Immersive English activities with rich context help students develop themselves

The school advocates the concept of "English is in life", so it actively promotes different learning activities outside the classroom. Starting from daily life, it combines English Café and English Passport to record students' participation status and give rewards to encourage students to participate in activities. Principal Mak Wai Lun said: "I think when students have the courage to talk in English, as educators, we should first give them encouragement and affirmation, instead of just focusing on their grammatical rights and wrongs. After all, language is a tool for communication. Students will naturally make progress as long as they "listen more and speak more"; if you just constantly correct them, it will only dampen their interest in learning English."

At the same time, in addition to attaching great importance to students' academic performance, the school also attaches great importance to the development of students' diversified potential. It makes good use of the Quality Education Fund and allocated HK$1.5 million to optimize its hardware facilities and add lighting and sound equipment to the standards of the town hall and cultural center, so that students can perform drama, singing, dancing and other performances on a professional stage. The school also combines drama performances with English learning, extending learning opportunities beyond the classroom. For example, it invites students to perform English drama performances, providing more opportunities to apply English and naturally integrating English with life.

In addition, the school has set up an English debate team to train students' logic and thinking skills, and learn how to use appropriate English vocabulary and grammar to express opinions. In the process of preparing for the debate competition, students also need to prepare and discuss debate strategies together, which helps to cultivate teamwork spirit. Under the school's systematic promotion, the debating team has repeatedly achieved great results, winning the Senior Division II championship and best debater in the Hong Kong Secondary Schools Debating Competition 2022-2023 (Grand Finals HKI & NT), allowing students to develop their English skills to a higher level.

Carry out interdisciplinary learning activities and combine positive education elements

Interdisciplinary learning effectively connects different knowledge and skills to enhance learning flexibility. The school organized the "Week of Positivity 2023" cross-curricular English week activity last year, which covered the four major themes of "cherishing life", "diligence", "empathy" and "respect". Elements such as singing, drama, game booths and singing activities were integrated into classes or lunch periods to practice values ​​education. Stimulate students' interest in learning through exciting and rich English activities, and explore and demonstrate their language ability and artistic development. The school also won the "School Commendation Award" from the Education Bureau for this activity. It is one of the three award-winning schools in Hong Kong and is deeply recognized by the society for bringing diversified learning experiences to students.

Help students equip themselves to meet their ideal future

The school's high-quality school-based curriculum and excellent teaching policies have successfully created an efficient English learning environment. Some students achieved 5** and 5* excellence in English in the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination and were admitted to the Bachelor of Arts program at the University of Hong Kong. The graduates are all grateful to their teachers for their companionship during the past six years, which has always inspired them to plan their future directions and pointed out their shortcomings in learning, so that they can always make progress. This year, the passing rate of our students in the Diploma of Secondary Education Examination has increased by more than 15% compared to two years ago, and the English subject has reached level 8 with positive added value. This shows that the school's practical teaching policy is very effective in improving students' academic performance and has made great progress and growth.