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E-examiner S-student 
E: We’ve been talking about the first time you talk, talked a foreign language and I’m going to ask some questions related to this. Let’s begin with, first of all, learning languages. At what age do you think children should start learning a foreign language?
S: I think earlier the better. Maybe probably, maybe probably the moment they were born, they should, they should learn a new language,
but not through some formal edu… not through some formal schooling
method, but through immersive method. For example, if I got
a baby of my own, I would have told f… like, I would have told,
I would have told the the caregivers, or the nannies to,
to speak to my babies, s in En, in English, so that they
would not feel like, they would not feel like, they wou, like, they wou, they would not
alienate the language, they would not feel that this is something
that it’s, they’re, they’re not familiar with.
So, I would say probably the moment they, they are born,
they can… they, they should learn a new language through immersive method.
E: So, in your opinion, which skill is more important, speaking or writing?
S: Writing. To me, it’s writing. Because we’re,
because I’m living in Hong Kong, and people speak Cantonese,
but the documents are written in English. I think it depends, because, d, I live in Hong Kong. This is not a English-speaking city but it heavily
relies on English. So, I would say that speaking part
is not important, but the writing part, communication part, it’s…
like, the writing part it’s very important so... I was choose writing
because it’s the only useful, like, it’s the most useful aspect of
English that has been used in Hong Kong.
E: Do you think that people still need to learn foreign languages?
S: Yeah. S, people still need to learn foreign languages because we are living
in a globalized world. And a lot of s, the knowledge, for example,
if you are, if you want to become a university student, you have to learn foreign language which is English. And if you, and if you wanna go,
if you wanna go on, if you wanna go to a trip, for example,
a trip to Spain, a trip to France, you have to learn
Spanish and France, or Mexico yeah, right? And I think
that learning foreign languages is useful. And also, it expands
your cultural knowledge and makes you less close-minded
or narrow-minded, you know. It… So that you won’t lose touch
with the, with the global world.
E: OK. Thank you. In your opinion, do you think that minority languages will disappear?
S: Minority languages will disappear. That’s because, because language…
because there’s a power relation between languages too. For example,
English is the dominant languages. Sorry, because English is
the dominant la, language out of all existing languages. And when a
language that, that, that does not… that is not spoken by
people, it becomes a dead language, right? For example Latin
is a dead language because there’s no native speaker
of Latin. So… I think minority languages are also facing the similar situation
that because their languages have no value, have no,
cannot be capitalized in this capitalistic world, so many people will stop using it or stop learning it because it’s not worth it. And then…
So, as time goes by, this language will become extinct. So, I think yeah.
E: So, so, how can these languages be protected?
S: I think these languages can be protected, if it has been codified.
For example, if we are trying to protect a minority language, we sh…
we can send, we can send people to study the language,
to document their uses, their grammar, their vocabulary,
and then to make a dictionary, and then...
and also to study the language in a scholarly
environment. So that, so that I remember that their,
these resources will be available for a lot of language
enthusiast, and they can… And so that they can have learn these
resources in a systemic way. So yeah, I think
in order to protect a ne, minority language, it has to be codified.
E: Thank you very much. That is the end of the speaking test.
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