Key Concepts and Theories Origins of Monolingual Principle

Research Context: A CSL Course

The Vocational Training Council (VTC) is the largest vocational education, training and professional development group in Hong Kong. To accommodate the social and vocational needs of the non-Chinese-speaking population, VTC has a long tradition of providing survival and workplace Chinese courses for speakers of other languages. VTC has provided 92 courses to 1586 students off campus between 2009 and 2015. Internally, VTC has trained over 1500 current students on campus between 2003 and 2016. Riding on the successful experience of developing and operating vocational language programmes, VTC has begun offering Chinese language programmes to school leavers since April 2016. School leavers are drop-outs who failed to follow the mainstream school curriculum after the six-year block of basic education due to poverty, family and financial issues, and learning difficulties. A report at the Hong Kong Legislative Council (2017) identified their lack of Chinese competence to be one of the major reasons for leaving school. According to the 2017 Census and Statistics Department, only 12.5% of Indonesians had attended post-secondary education. Other ethnic groups with relatively low proportions of the population having attended post-secondary education included Thai (13.3%), Nepalese (15.0%) and Pakistani (20.5%). Many ethnic minority school leavers opt for vocational education with VTC to equip themselves with practical work skills.