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14 Current฀Language฀Attitudes฀of฀Hong฀Kong฀Chinese฀ Adolescents฀and฀Young฀Adults฀ Maria Axler, Anson Yang, and Trudy Stevens ABSTRACT฀ This chapter describes the results of a modified replication of Pierson, Fu, an d Lee' s (1980 ) direc t attitude s surve y i n whic h bilingua l questionnaires were administered to Hong Kong secondary students. The results are similar to another recent replication by Penningto n and Yue (1994) and rather different from those of the original research, suggesting definite changes in attitudes over the last decade. INTRODUCTION฀ Hong Kong is a community where the majority of the population are native Cantonese speakers and where the English language has been maintained , up t o th e handover, i n a position o f prominenc e b y colonia l authorit y I n research on language attitudes, Chinese students have frequently exhibite d ethnocentric responses to Westerners (Bond and Yang, 1982, p. 171). At th e same time, Hong Kong adolescents and young adults have a strong desir e to lear n Englis h becaus e the y believ e tha t bein g abl e t o us e Englis h wil l help them to find lucrativ e employment in the future o r because English is necessary for tertiary education (Lin , Detaramani, Yeung, and Wong, 1991, p. 13 ; Lin and Detaramani , this volume; Richards, this volume). This kin d of ambivalence was also evident in direct attitudes research conducted b y Pierson, Fu, and Lee (1980), where students were described as having mor e positive view s o n usin g Chines e rathe r a s than Englis h whe n the y ha d a 330฀Mari a฀Axler,฀Anson฀Yang,฀and฀Trudy฀Stevens฀ choice. Th e researc h o f Pierson , Fu , an d Le e (1980 ) als o indicate d tha t students saw use of English — and, by implication, Western values — as a threat to Chinese identity. Recently, Pennington an d Yue (1994) modified an d applie d th e direct attitudes part of the Pierson, Fu, and Lee (1980) investigation in order t o measure the attitudes of Hong Kong secondary students in consideration of the significant politica l and socia l changes that had take n place in the community sinc e th e 1980 s (Penningto n an d Yue , 1994, pp. 17-18) . The results o f thei r stud y sugges t tha t ther e ha s been a change o f languag e attitudes within this population of learners. In particular, whereas students in th e origina l stud y associate d th e us e o f Englis h wit h a los s o f ethnolinguistic identity, Pennington and Yue found no such association in their subjects' attitudes. Pennington and Yue speculate that the difference s could also be a result of differences i n sampling or other methodologica l aspects of their study in relation to that of Pierson, Fu, and Lee (1980). The purpose of this chapter is to describe the results of administerin g the same direct attitudes questionnaire used by Pennington and Yue (1994), as adapted from Pierson, Fu, and Lee (1980), with a group of Hong Kong secondary student s an d graduates . A n additiona l dimensio n ha s bee n added to the present study as well. Unlike the earlier studies of Hong Kong secondary schoo l student s attendin g English-mediu m schools , wher e questionnaires were presented in Chinese, the current subjects, a group of 250 Cantonese native speakers, were presented with a choice of completing either version of a bilingual (Chinese and English) version of Pierson, Fu, and Lee's original questionnaire. SETTING฀AND฀SUBJECTS฀OF฀RESEARCH฀ The research was conducted in three schools in East and Central Kowloon, Hong Kong . In all schools, a bilingual version o f Pierson, Fu, and Lee' s (1980) original (Chinese) questionnaire items from the direct attitudes part of their survey was presented to students in Forms 5,6, and 7, or graduates of these forms, ranging in ages from late teens to mid-twenties. Each school represents a somewhat different type of school and student. The first school, from which 100 students, 70 male and 30 female, generally from middle-class families, were drawn, offers a Canadian-style secondary school curriculum. Many of the students in this school have either visited Canada fo r extende d period s o f time, have...

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