Patri and Pennington’s (1998) were through the comparison of their study with Pierson, Fu and Lee’s (1980) study to conclude that in Hong Kong, Indian students have higher enthusiasm in English learning than the Hong Kong students, they came to this conclusion just because the scores of the Indian students’ were higher than that of the Hong Kong students’. The question lies in that whether the two study research objects are comparable is worth of suspecting. The conclusion they reached may be due to differences in education backgrounds, academic levels, family income, and parents' expectations between the two groups, making the research conclusion lack broad representativeness.
5.3 Deficiencies in data statistics
Patri and Pennington (1998) only provided a descriptive statistics, the data evaluation criteria they set was not rigorous. To verify whether the difference between the two sets of data is statistically significant, T test should be used. Only when P<0.5, could it illustrate that the scores of the Indian students’ was higher than the Hong Kong students’, if P> 0.05, then results might show that the higher scores of the Indian students than the Hong Kong students may be due to sampling errors and it could not represent that the enthusiasm of the Indian students was higher than that of the Hong Kong students (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2007).
6.0 Advantages of the research
The advantages of Patri and Pennington’s (1998) research are mainly reflected in the following aspects, first, there is less research on English language education for minorities in the past, which mostly studied how the use of English reflects the formation of ethnic identity, and this research expounded and confirmed that ethnic identity can also affect their language attitudes and language usage. Therefore, the research is positive to fill the gaps in the relevant researches. Second, the problem of English education for ethnic minorities is not only concerned about the aspects of educational skills, methods, learning techniques and methods, but also involves culture, tradition, cultural adaptation and many other aspects, Patri and Pennington’s (1998) research broke through English education research content and methods for the mainstream people, by introduction of cultural adaptation and other variables to study the situation of the Indian people in English teaching, learning and use, which has broaden the research on English education for ethnic minorities, their research methods can not only be applied to the problems of Hong Kong Indians’ English teaching, they can also be widely used in English teaching research towards other minority groups.
7.0 Improvements
The author believes that Patri and Pennington’s (1998) research can be improved from the following three aspects, first of all, by adopting the combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods, using questionnaire to collect quantitative data, using semi-structured interview to collect qualitative data. Second, they can make use of empirical research method by collecting the relevant data and information of Hong Kong Indian students and Hong Kong students in person, in selecting the research objects, they should pay attention to ensuring the 2 groups were not statistically significant in education backgrounds, academic levels, family economic income, etc, so that the research conclusions would be more accurate. Finally, the data of the two groups of students should be calculated by T-test method. When p<0.5, showing that there were statistical differences between the research results of the 2 groups of students, Patri and Pennington’s (1998) research conclusion was established. When p>0.5, it shows that there was no statistical difference between the two groups of students, their research conclusion was not established.
8.0 Conclusion
Patri and Pennington’s (1998) study mainly focused on the English language usage, language attitudes of Hong Kong Indians. The research has some flaws in statistical methods and research design, but the research has scientific research value and practical significance for filling the gaps in English education for ethnic minorities.
