引用:

原帖由 taurus 於 2006-8-21 09:54 PM 發表
Does any body know if the book " A pen and a man ... " is still being used as English textbook in primary school ...

Ha Ha! Those were the days!!

I can still remember the text :
"A man. A pan.
A man and a pan. This is a man. This is a pan.
The man is holding the pan.
What is the man holding? The man is holding the pan."

The picture actually shows a Malay holding a frying pan (or may be a wok).

The book was used by primary schools in British colonies in Asia in early 60s or perhaps late 50s as well.

引用:

原帖由 taurus 於 2006-8-24 02:55 PM 發表


Thank you brother dd05ng ...

You have a good memory or you may still have this book now ...  

This book was used by a majority of primary schools in late 50s and early 60s ...

I haven't got the book - it's many many years ago!!

My memory is not good neither. These few sentences are all I can remember. Perhaps it's because I'd studied this book in three different schools. The first time was when I did my Primary 2 in a private school. Then I moved to a government primary school the year after. But I had to do P2 again because I was too young for a P3 class. So I studied this book again in P3 in the government primary school. (I remember that they did not teach English in P2 in government primary school during that time). Then during the summer in between P3 and P4, I went to attent an evening English course. The course was for adults and they used this same book as the main text. There were only  a few kids in the class, among 20-30 adults. I actually spent only a few days in the course and didn't turn up again. But that's already good enough to force me to memorize these few sentences.

You're right, those were the days when we were too young to understand all kinds of problems in life. I could still remember those people who went to attend the evening class after spending 10+ hours in their workplaces in day time - they were so eager to learn. In contrast, the 2-3 kids in the class (including myself) just kept wandering around in the playground and then disappeared after a few classes..

Brother taurus and brother eiahyeah

Yes. We are the old ones in this forum.

In school, my English standard was only about average. I think we had a better English learning environment (in terms of software) during our time. We (students, parents, and teachers) were more determined and better motivated. Our mindset, during those days, was that one had to do better in English if one wanted to get into a better school and then a better job. In primary school, we had to learn Grammar and that formed the solid foundation. For non-English speakers, learning Grammar is a very useful approach to understand the characteristics and constuction of the language.

During the 50s-70s, most of the young people watched western movies, listened to pop songs. I was able to pick up quite a bit of vocabulary and pronunciation through the lyrics of songs by the Beatles, Bee Gees, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Peter Paul and Mary, ..... From movies, I still remember how I learned to pronounce "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain" from My Fair Lady.

In terms of hardware (especially information and communciations technology), the English learning environment should be much much better nowadays. The problem is, as I see it, young people in Hong Kong are in general lack of themotivation and determination to improve their English (and even Chinese). They do not have the desire to communicate with others using proper English (or Chinese). They watch Cantonese movies, listen to Cantonese songs. What's worse is that most of the lyrics and conversations are not proper language. They wrote SMS, ICQ, again, not in proper language. From time to time, I feel miserable whenever I have to read letters/emails/reports written by the local university graduates. In contrast, young people in the Mainland are more determinated and highly motivated to learn English.

The government, the Education authority in particular, has to be responsible for this crisis. They have been trying hard to convince Hong Kong people that using our mother tongue as the media of learning is a better approach. I am sure, in the case of Hong Kong, it is definitely the best approach to produce a bunch of school leavers who can neither write nor speak English and Chinese properly. Lots of kids are actually proud of being illiterate, because this is how their idols and peer group behave.

Well, I have been talking too much (typing too much), it is the old age syndrome

Cheers. Have a nice weekend.

[ 本帖最後由 dd05ng 於 2006-8-25 09:08 AM 編輯 ]