Volume 2 Issue 1 April 1st 2016

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Maintaining English Standards

Maintaining English standards required to succeed in Hong Kong schools can be quite challenging for many students. This is why it is very important to get a fast start and to provide sufficient opportunities to develop necessary English skills and abilities during formative learning years.

We regularly find children, as young as 3-4 years of age who are already behind in their English development. This makes it very difficult for them to catch up to their peers before important primary school interviews.

Top Lemon Tree students start training as toddlers and participate in the Lemon Tree Way Programme during kindergarten and primary school years. They attend classes regularly and steadily, while taking up private tutorials to address language weaknesses when necessary.

Another habit of our top students is to participate in summer courses, which provide additional opportunities to practise and maintain standards during school holidays. Free summer courses are made available for Lemon Tree (Ascot) regular English students for this purpose.

In the end, maintaining English standards required to do well in Hong Kong schools means getting an early start and keeping up with your training and development. This is what we have found to work best during our 17 years of teaching English to young learners in Hong Kong.

Reminder - FREE 2016 Summer Courses Lemon Tree (Ascot) provides a wide range of free courses to our regular English students each Summer. Eligible students can begin signing up between 1 April and 31 May 2016.

We will have a wide variety of English courses available again this summer. Please contact Lemon Tree (Ascot) for consultation and to discuss which summer course will be most suitable for your children.

Interesting Facts About English

Educational Testing Service (ETS) finds that 63% of Fortune 1000 companies around the world identify English as the language spoken on a day-to-day basis!

By comparison, Asian languages such as Japanese (8%) and Mandarin (7%) were found to be daily language of far fewer of multinational organisations surveyed.

Tips for Parents Curing ‘Th and F’ confusion

Children often have difficulty pronouncing the English th sound correctly. Usually, this is due to biting down on the lower lip instead of on the tongue when making sounds. The result is an f sound instead of th sound.

A quick exercise to help remedy this problem is to make use of a lollipop. Simply hold the lolli just outside a child’s mouth. Instruct them to extend their tongue outward, touching the lolli. From this position, practise making the th sound. Make sure the child doesn’t move their lower lip during this exercise.

Repeat as many times as necessary. In time, the child’s muscle memory will be reformed. They will begin to naturally use their tongue instead of lower lip, which will enable them to make the English th sound correctly and with ease.

This is part of ‘Getting English Right!’

Fo Tan Branch: Shop G52, Plaza Ascot, 1 Tsun King Road, Fotan, N.T. Tel: 26348386

Tai Po Branch: Shop 47, Sun Hing Shopping Mall, Tai Po. Tel: 26506156