Teaching three languages to kindergarten children in a trilingual context

Abstract

Implementation of a bi-literate and trilingual educational policy in Hong Kong after the transfer of sovereignty from Britain to China has led to the teaching of Cantonese, English and Putonghua in kindergartens. This paper considers how trilingual education is effected in kindergartens and the factors that contribute to pedagogical practices. Five kindergartens were purposely selected to represent the range of kindergarten provision in Hong Kong. One class for 4-year-olds in each of these kindergartens was observed for five consecutive days with observations taking place for three hours per day in each classroom. Lessons in the three different languages in each kindergarten were videotaped. Each language was taught by a different teacher, usually a native speaker of the language, in each of the kindergartens. An adapted version of Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching (COLT) Observation Scheme (Spada & Frohlich, 1995) was used to code teaching practices and all 15 teachers (5 kindergartens x 3 teachers) were interviewed in individual sessions to gain more information about their beliefs and practices relevant to language teaching. Analyses indicated that (i) teaching of the three languages is strongly influenced by textbooks and is theme-based; (iii) Cantonese teachers focus on sentence patterns, thematic content, and imparting moral values; English teachers focus on form over meaning in their teaching and they use more games and songs than teachers of Cantonese or Putonghua; Putonghua teachers align their thematic units to the Cantonese ones, and teach similar vocabulary as the Cantonese teachers, but they teach more rhymes and Chinese poems than do Cantonese teachers; and (iii) All teachers believe in a child-centered approach to early language education but did report using didactic methods. The influences of the socio-political context, parental expectations, the characteristics of the taught language, and teacher characteristics on language pedagogy are discussed.