Mr. Charles Callis, Vice President of business development and international business operations at the Waterford Institute, was the keynote speaker at the Learning and Teaching Expo 2013 last week. He shared with the audience the results of a study conducted by the American non-profit education research organization on the English reading and writing skills of 426 primary and kindergarten students in Hong Kong, and made recommendations towards improving the English literacy skills of local school children.

     Mr. Callis introduced in his lecture the direction and goals of the research study that was conducted by the Waterford Institute: "The Waterford Institute is an American non-profit educational and research institutions with 35 years of history in conducting academic research of different scale across different regions, with the hope of uncovering issues that students face when learning English, understand their learning needs and progress, in order to provide practical assistance for them."

       Mr. Callis outlined the pilot project conducted between February and June of 2013 on eight schools (including kindergarten and primary schools). Free access to the American Waterford Early Learning (WEL) digital English learning platform pilot program was provided to nearly 500 students and their English literacy standard was evaluated by the platform’s English proficiency analysis program. As Callis reported: "According tothe concluding analysis,it showsthat the English proficiency of Hong Kong students is lower than that of their American counterparts. More importantly, the analysis reveals that the largest discrepancy in English standards occurs in students from grades three to four. In fact there were many grade four students that remain at Level One* (equivalent to a 3-4 year old native English speaker).  These differences in learning outcomes can be traced back to the kindergarten years and without timely and appropriate intervention this gap with increase with age." In his speech, Charles Callis stressed the urgent need to address this discrepancy, because students who struggle with English will not be able to keep up with the school curriculum, leading to a lack of confidence in continuing their study and more difficulties in improving their proficiency in the high school and university years.  

      The key to addressing this problem, Mr. Callis believes, lies in personalized learning. Digital educational platforms such as WEL** integrates technology in the teaching environment to provide evaluation and monitoring of progress of the students, and design course materials tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of each individual. This will cater for students of different ability and progress to increase training on their weaker English skills, thus decreasing the difference between expected and actual English proficiency at each grade level. 

     E-books and e-learning platforms have gained popularity in recent years, and is also becoming the latest trend in learning and teaching technology. Mr. Callis suggested that parents who are looking to purchase such products not only need to keep in mind of the interest, audio/visual effects and interactivity, but also supplement these products with materials suitable to their children’s learning requirement and progress. Better results can be gained by parents spending two days per week and 15-30 minutes per session with their children for e-learning.  

    *Level One (3-4 years old native English speaker equivalent) focuses phonological awareness ability, recognition of letters, letter sounds and reading of simple words or phrases; Level Two (5-7 year old native English speaker equivalent) focuses on phonics and reading comprehension; Level Three (7-9 year old native English speaker equivalent) focuses on reading fluency .

** WEL courses are designed for students 3-16 years of age, consisting for five core components in the areas of phonological awareness ability, phonics, grammatical concepts, reading comprehension and vocabulary, and language fluency. The program tracks the progress of each student to provide a personalized learning experienceand its aim isto enhance student awareness and interest in English learning.