It has been observed that the English competency of many students in Hong Kong is deteriorating, and Hong Kong Education City (HKedCity) shares the worry of most schools. To alleviate the problem, English Campus of HKedCity is always dedicated to creating an interesting learning environment and providing one-stop services especially practical English language teaching and learning resources and activities for students, teachers and parents.

A survey has found that television was the most popular mass medium among students. Coming up in October 2003, HKedCity will collaborate with the Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR), TVB and ATV to present a year-long English-learning project -- "English in the Air" especially for you. As you remember, this project is initiated for the second year by SCOLAR to promote English learning via the medium of television. In this project, 4 TV programmes suitable for teenagers are selected to be aired on TVB Pearl and ATV World starting from October 2003 to June 2004.These programmes are: Road Scholars, Lizzie McGuire, Smallville (season 1) and Sail Away.

It is hope that students can learn English in an enjoyable way whereas teachers can teach English with interactive resources at their fingertip. To encourage teachers and students to make use of TV programmes in learning English, HKedCity will provide:

• A dedicated website (http://www.hkedcity.net/english/tv) with learning materials, activities, programme information, chat room and forums
• Teaching packages and teacher workshops
• An "Interactive Classroom" for teachers to communicate with their students
• School activities for interaction among local and international schools
• Online learning games with gifts and prizes for competition participants and winners of each programme
• Grand prizes including trips to exotic places outside Hong Kong
• Online Weekly "Top 10 Students Chart" with corresponding "Top 10 Schools Chart"

Jacqueline Cheng
Chief Executive Officer
Hong Kong Education City