ABSTRACT
In 1995, returning from the US as a school psychologist, I became a teacher in Hong Kong. At that time, Hong Kong was still a British colony (the region was returned to the sovereignty of China in 1997). In-service student teachers who were mainly teaching remedial classes in mainstream schools constantly spoke of their apprehensions when teaching new arrival children (NAC) from mainland China. It was initially puzzling: aside from their places of origin, how different could these students be? Hongkongers and mainland Chinese have the same ancestors; historically, the ancestors of many Hongkongers were immigrants from China too! Class discussions drove me to conduct a literature search on NAC. However, surprisingly, a dearth of information was found. This led me to investigate; NAC later became the focus of my dissertation (Chong, 2004).
