Top news
Including only teachers' salaries and the opportunity cost of time
spent in the classroom by Hong Kong students EARTH has estimated an
annual waste equal to about HK$4.8 billion or US$611 million. This
total includes neither the opportunity cost of time spent doing
homework nor the cost of language textbooks devoted to the study of the
English language. Nor does it include the private sector inefficiency
that necessarily results when the government drowns the private sector
with unneeded, low quality language proficiency.
This is only Hong Kong's loss. Can you imagine what is must be for all
of East Asia?
Government relations
No change.
Community relations
- Hong Kong friends kept EARTH alive this month. This
newsletter's additions have been a direct result of their support.
Website additions and maintenance
New additions
- Quality Assessment
- Section five was added with a stand alone entry entitled Hong Kong's Bottom
Line: The opportunity cost of English language study in Hong
Kong. It is a well-hone combination of fact and factually based
fiction, that should convince any reasonable person that Hong Kong
needs to reassess its current language policy.
- Accompanying section five are one new graph, fourteen
new tables, a factual cartoon cum graph, several additional
links, and more documentation. You might just want to begin with the cartoon, because what follows is anything but
funny.
- As has become EARTH's habit, a review of last month's
up-loads was undertaken. As a result, a large number of small errors
and one not so small error were corrected.
- EARTH's Viewpoint - Five, four, three, two, one and
still counting. (pdf
document - 28KB) José Luiz Rodrigues Zapatero's withdrawal
of Spanish troops is a boon to world democracy. The US should remain in
Iraq until a freely elected Iraqi government has been installed and
order is restored. With or without Bush it will be painful. Preferrably
without.
- Tsong Kit for Beginners - Part 2 Chapter 3
has been completed and uploaded.
Maintenance
- Having discovered an important technical source of broken links
many pages found under the section Quality Assessment were reformatted
and the links restored.
Software update
- There were no new purchases.
Strategy Update
It is somewhat amazing that EARTH has come as far as it has. It
is for this reason that you can probably expect more from the
HKLNA-Project. The section entitled Quality Assessment is nearly
finished, and depending on the availability of data, one or two more
months will be required before completion. Whereupon EARTH will begin
creating a promotional slide-show in Quicktime format for the entire
HKLNA-Project.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Dr. SIU Hin Ho,
Lai
Tsai (my Hong
Kong girlfriend!), and Klaus Colanero for their direct and encouraging
support. Supporting remarks were also provided by Prof. Dr. Peter
Baron, as well as YANAGI Toshio, and Roger C. Stewart. It also appears
that the folks at
ProZ.com
have renewed their interest in the HKLNA-Project, and maybe even EARTH.
To EARTH's other creditors, please be patient; EARTH is doing the best
it can with extremely limited resources.
Closing Remarks
Please do not forget to take advantage of
EARTH's
quality translation
service. EARTH's survival might very well be the
HKLNA-Project's
success!
Sincerely,
R. A. Stegemann
hsmr@pacific.net.hk