Hong Kong tutors sell `sex appeal’ > 영어토론방

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HONG KONG (AP) _ Angela Yiu and Stella Cheng spent weeks meeting with fashion stylists and photographers before deciding on the miniskirts and high heels to wear in their promotion campaign.They're not models peddling perfume or sports cars. They're English tutors who earn good money helping secondary school students pass Hong Kong's grueling exams to get into college. ``Their long legs are the most beautiful ones in the tutorial industry,'' said Ken Ng, head of Modern Education, one of the city's biggest tutoring businesses. ``This is our selling point.''

Sex appeal has become a hot selling point, just as important as teaching ability and knowledge, in Hong Kong's hypercompetitive world of ``cram schools'' _ or ``bou zap se'' in the local Cantonese dialect of Chinese. Attractive teachers are marketed like movie stars. Their schools show them off on billboards, full-page newspaper ads and TV screens in railway stations and on buses.

Some tutors have their own teams of stylists, fashion designers and photographers, Ng said. They also have personal Web sites, where potential students can see their photos and read their online journals. It's just the latest twist in the competition to grab the business of students caught up in Hong Kong's make-or-break exam culture. Youngsters take two college exams during their seven years in secondary school, and have to pass both to get into a university. So hoards of students flock to after-school lectures at tutoring centers.

The Census and Statistics Department says a third of secondary school youngsters sought private tutoring in the 2004-05 school year, spending a total of US$18.9 million a month _ 25 percent more than five years earlier. With competition growing fierce on that front, the tutorial centers in recent years have increasingly focused on promoting their teachers as trendy icons.

``When our rivals are equally good at predicting the exam questions, we need a new ground to outrun them,'' Ng said. ``And hat is the tutor's appearance.'' Yiu, who has a business degree, said: ``Being a model is not a long-term career. I should plan for the future. I know my good appearance has a market.''Indeed, tutoring is one of the most profitable jobs in Hong Kong. Top tutors who have more than 4,000 students can earn high salaries. ``In the advertisements, going to tutorial centers is portrayed as a trendy after-school activity more than a chance to acquire knowledge,'' she said. ``This is a twisted tutoring market.''

But he added that while tutorial centers have become highly commercial, they provide useful techniques in tackling exams, such as predicting question types. Daytime teachers don't have comparable resources or the time to do that, he said. Tutorial centers will continue, he said, ``As long as university certificates and exam results are the best evidence to prove one's competence and guarantee a stable income.''

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