To Hong Kong teachers and students, a good pronunciation instruction need to address the issues, such as the acceptable standard of teachers and / or students’ speech and pronunciation, inter-language effect on accents, and the lack of environmental support for speaking English. The recent public debates regarding the falling standard of English in Hong Kong highlight the vulnerability of the lack of consensus on the acceptable standard for the models for English in the local context. One of the newspapers article expressed such concerns.
Hong Kong seems to present English teachers - local and foreign alike - with sometimes conflicting expectations about their roles. Many are left uncertain whose standards they should apply, let alone be able to determine whether they ought to be seen as models for learning English in the local context.
The syllabus specifications concerning pronunciation rule that "no noticeable first language characteristics" be one of the primary factors for determining whether someone's speech is "error-free". This in turn presupposes "native-like" pronunciation is a prerequisite for the highest award of level 5 attainment, with the assumption that some of the so-called "native varieties" are the standards against which candidates' proficiency is measured. (South China Morning Post, 2007:11)
Since the pronunciation performance of individual L2 speakers can be shaped by the underlying model of the instructions or training and the unique language patterns emerged from a society implementing the bi-literate trilingual policy, the need to make the case for the recognition of Hong Kong English (Bolton: 2002) can be a direction to pursue in the near future.
