Deepen English reading and writing skills and create a pleasant learning experience

South Yuen Long Government Primary SchoolThe Chinese language department is committed to strengthening students' biliteracy and trilingual abilities. It has always provided students with an enjoyable and effective learning process in English teaching, and focused on strengthening students' writing and reading skills to lay a solid foundation for learning. Principal Wu Dan emphasized the importance of applying English, so he invested abundant resources and highly participated foreign teachers to create a real context and infiltrate festival elements into the campus to increase learning interest, so that students can apply what they have learned and use English boldly, and then develop the habit of independent learning and remember the knowledge.

Foreign teachers are highly involved and strengthen the expression level

The school attaches great importance to cultivating students' expressive skills, so it arranges for high participation of foreign English teachers to optimize the effectiveness of English teaching. Among them, the foreign teacher will read the silent book once and record it and store it on the school's special online platform. The English team will first play the pronunciation in class, and then the students will imitate it to lay a solid foundation in pronunciation, rhythm, language sense, etc., and improve students' English expression ability. Even outside the classroom, students can search for the correct pronunciation of foreign teachers in the online education resource library at any time by scanning the QR code. Because the school makes good use of foreign teachers and online resources, it helps shape students' independent learning habits at home and greatly reduces the burden on parents.

Principal Wu added that local teachers and foreign teachers worked closely together. In addition to putting a lot of thought into English pronunciation to lay a solid learning foundation for lower-grade students, they also did not ignore the learning needs of upper-grade students. They specially arranged for them to go to the English room to chat with foreign teachers during recess time in groups of 3 to 4 people. Accompanied by their peers, they could communicate in English without any pressure, achieving a subtle effect, eliminating students' fear of speaking English and providing students with opportunities to use English.

Gradually lay a solid foundation and develop writing skills

The English team specially produces Task Books and different types of worksheets of appropriate levels for students in high school, middle school and primary school, which provide basic vocabulary and additional words for each lesson theme. Principal Wu pointed out that the school participated in the PLP-R/W program implemented by the Education Bureau to strengthen classroom planning from reading to writing, allowing lower grade students to lay a solid foundation of vocabulary and review important sentence structures before writing. In the third and fourth grades, teachers will begin to analyze sample essays for students to learn how to segment them into paragraphs and use rhetoric, connectives, etc. After consolidating the use of words and sentence patterns, senior students will imitate the model essays and write new articles. Teachers will also share students' masterpieces in class to encourage peers to learn from each other. Through a step-by-step learning process, students can develop solid English writing skills.

Promote all-round activities and create a strong context

Principal Wu emphasized that learning English must be integrated into real life situations and allow students to learn and use it flexibly. Therefore, the school holds a Christmas party before the holidays, with students taking the lead in a role-playing competition. Among them, students can choose a character from their favorite storybooks or cartoons, play that character in the auditorium, and convey Christmas blessings to teachers and students in English through singing, dancing, etc., integrating holiday celebrations into English learning, and getting twice the result with half the effort. Principal Wu said with a smile that the students had been preparing for the 120th anniversary celebration at the same time, and the response was very enthusiastic, which made the teaching team very gratified.

Outside the campus, the school also encourages students to participate in off-campus competitions to enhance their confidence in using English and realize their potential. Large-scale competitions include English writing competitions, school drama festivals, school recitation festivals, etc. to improve students' English proficiency in an all-round way. In addition, students will also participate in the Cambridge Children's English Certification, which tests familiar topics to test their proficiency in listening, speaking, reading and writing in English, and then strengthen daily exercises to make up for their own shortcomings and continue to pursue excellence.

Close collaboration among subject groups to strengthen independent learning

The English subject team realized that if the teaching was limited to asking students to string new words together, it would be too boring and it would be difficult to enhance students' enthusiasm for learning English. Therefore, the "Spelling Bee" competition was held to encourage students to actively participate. Students in each class will conduct preliminary rounds in the classroom in advance, and the two students with outstanding performance in each class will advance to the finals. Director Yu mentioned that the difficulty of some questions will be increased to test students' English proficiency, and encouraged students to strive for improvement, hone their peers to learn from each other, and improve their learning motivation.

The STEM Coordinator, the General Studies team, etc. also work closely together in the form of cross-disciplinary collaboration to connect different STEM themes, allowing students to conduct experiments and collect first-hand English information, greatly expand their vocabulary library, and cultivate the habit of independent learning.

Diversified teaching methods to improve the connection between primary and secondary schools

The school is very aware of the importance of transition from kindergarten to primary school to prevent new students from falling behind in their studies due to difficulty adapting to primary school life. Therefore, primary school freshmen do not need to read silently at the beginning of their schooling. Instead, they sing songs related to the subject in order to adapt to English learning. In the future, the school will further strengthen the training of new phonics. We strive to enable primary school students to master phonetic symbols in the basic learning stage and build their confidence in learning English.

Excellent grades in high school, admitted to the school of choice

The school's excellent English teaching policy not only lays solid language skills for students, but also comprehensively develops their listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, enables them to cope with different learning challenges and tasks, and continuously improves academic performance and learning effectiveness. At the same time, the school’s results in the placement allocation for secondary school have always been very satisfactory. Every year, many students are admitted to Band 1 English secondary schools, including schools such as Yuen Long District Secondary School in Heung Yee Kuk, New Territories, and Chiu Yuk Sau Memorial Secondary School. This reflects that the school’s teaching effectiveness is remarkable and it successfully helps students enter the school of their choice and move on to the road to success. The school has also received feedback from many secondary schools, saying that its students have achieved outstanding results in public examinations, and many have achieved 5 or 5**. Teachers are happy and encouraged by their students.