Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides teachers with information that they can share with their students in the classroom. It focuses on needs-based learning and teaching, and it reinforces Lee’s findings that most CanSL learners need to know Cantonese for work-related reasons. The book describes in some detail the background of the non-Chinese-speaking (NCS) student population and the range of teaching practices used in the local Chinese language classrooms. The romanization system used throughout the book is Jyutping, which was created by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong in 1993. The Cantonese sentence shows that, Chinese characters are given first, followed by Jyutping, and then by the English translation in parentheses. It should also be pointed out that many Cantonese syllables change their tone when they are combined with other syllables to form a word.