JOURNALISM is a craft that uses language as its tools. It involves a close embrace with the linguistic medium of its transactions. Hong Kong students studying journalism in English are doubly disadvantaged by their lack of familiarity with English and by the role of English as a prestige language in a society that mostly speaks another tongue. English is used in a narrow range of contexts in Hong Kong: in elite domains of international business; as the language of colonial government; among the expatriates who play key roles in the political, economic and cultural life of the territory; and in the classroom where hundreds of thousands of primary to tertiary students labour under archaic methods of teaching that emphasise grammatical rules and rote learning of set texts. English is not used in the street, in the media or in the home of the average Hong Konger. It is a foreign language.