There are serious misconceptions about the Medium of Instruction policy of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), said an HKSAR official in charge of education.

First, the main objective of using Chinese as the medium of instruction (CMI) policy is to allow students to learn efficiently in a language that they are most familiar with, so that they could participate meaningfully in a learning process.

It is not designed to enhance students' ability in Chinese as a news magazine commentator recently said, according to Raymond Young, deputy secretary for education and manpower of HKSAR.

Second, some people are of the view that the HKSAR government's actively promoting the use of Chinese as a medium of instruction would mean less importance being attached to the teaching of the English language.

"This is absolutely untrue when we look at the substantial additional resources that have been allocated to upgrading the English language teaching and learning in Hong Kong during the past two years," Young said.

New measures include introducing the Native English Teachers scheme and establishing language benchmarks for all English teachers, he added.

Young noted that many people believed that using English as medium of instruction (EMI) always led to high English standards, while CMI would lead to a decline in English standards.

"We agree that given the right conditions, such as teacher capability and a genuine English-speaking environment, EMI is in fact beneficial to the learning of the English language," he said.

But in most of these so-called 'EMI' schools in Hong Kong, teachers were teaching with limited, and often incorrect, English.Many of them did not even bother to use English at all, he said.

"The students, on their part, failed to understand what was being taught, and eventually lost their interest in their studies altogether. As a result, not only did they suffer in terms of subject content, they also failed to learn good English," Young said.

The Support Center for Teachers using Chinese as the Medium of Instruction of the University of Hong Kong and the Joint Working Group conducted two surveys respectively last year and both surveys confirmed the positive impact of CMI teaching on students learning, Young said.

"The use of CMI teaching could enhance students' self-learning ability and confidence, stimulate a higher order thinking, re-kindle students' interest and motivation in learning, improve student-teacher relationship and activate students' participation," Young said.

Young also denied that the government would allow English medium secondary schools to operate classes taught in Chinese as some reports have said.

Commenting on the proposal of applying the medium of instruction policy to all schools across the board, Young said: "Whilst promoting the use of the mother-tongue, we should not disregard the fact that some schools do have the right conditions for EMI, and EMI has not affected the effectiveness of teaching and learning."

"If the purpose of the medium of instruction policy is to ensure effective learning, we saw no justification to require all EMI schools to switch to CMI schools. The community as a whole is for retaining those schools which are effective with EMI, then we should work together to make the system work," he added.