It is a general observation that the language ability of our youngsters has been decreasing over the past years. Discouraging as it is, this judgement seems to apply both to Chinese as well as to English language education. Recognising the grave urgency of this matter and its long term implication for the quality of our education system in the future, the Hong Kong SAR government has taken a series of measures to rectify the situation, the most important of which is the "mother-tongue teaching scheme". While the general public might need some time to accept this change, and debates and queries might go on for a while, the SAR government clearly noted that the adoption of the mother-tongue teaching scheme should not imply negligence of English education in Hong Kong. This attitude is particularly important if we expect Hong Kong's historical past to become a positive and vital element for Hong Kong's future development. With such cultural-political deliberations in mind, and taking into consideration Hong Kong's socio-linguistic reality in the use of Cantonese on the one hand and her inevitable exposure to Putonghua on the other, the ideal of "biliteracy and trilingualism" has been officially incorporated into the first policy speech of the Hon. Tung Chee-hwa, the chief executive of Hong Kong.

Another important measure initiated by the SAR government is the promotion of the use of computers and information technology in the school sector. In line with this policy, the SAR government has injected an enormous amount of money to equip the school sector with multimedia computers and to provide training for 30,000 teachers in the necessary IT knowledge and skills. In face of the rapid growth and the great impact of the Internet all over the world, connectivity becomes the next important catchword for the promotion of computers and IT. In this regard, initiatives have been taken by individual schools and other organisations (a lot of which are now funded by the QEF). Furthermore, the abundance of Internet services providers (ISPs) in the private sector and the cheap services they provide help prepare another channel for teachers and students to be hooked up to the network through home-based computers. Despite all these advances in hardware, however, many people have noted the fact that regretfully the local development in software has not been as fast, and not much locally relevant information has been made available in spite of the rapid growth in connectivity.

Recognising the importance of the above two issues, we see here and now the possibility as well as the necessity of bringing these two ends together by employing the latest information technology to provide useful and practical language-educational tools in service of our local need, namely, in service of the ideal of biliteracy and trilingualism.