The debate on Chinese language education is on, yet again.
I am not sure how many times the Ministry of Education (MOE) has revised the Chinese language syllabus and teaching methods in the last ten years. But one thing I am sure - I am damn glad I am not a Chinese language teacher.
The traditional teaching methods that have garnered so many criticisms from students and parents are precisely what is used in the teaching of many, many languages other than Chinese. In my opinion, rote memory is required to lay any kind of language foundation. I doubt I learnt my ABCs via osmosis, and SB didn't pick up Japanese just from reading manga comics. I remember those hours spent memorising my tenses - past participles, future tense and what have you.
Parents and students have criticised Chinese lessons in schools as being dry and uninteresting. Then again, I doubt other subjects such as mathematics could be conducted in a more interesting way than the languages. But there do not seem to be any complaints thus far. It seems unfair that parents encourage their children to do additonal supplementary English readings in the form of story books and such, but do not make the same effort for Chinese, even at the most basic levels. They then turn around and complain that the language is dry and uninteresting. If all I had to read were textbooks when I was studying English, I would have thrown a tantrum too.
The conclusion I have drawn so far, is that the entire debate has nothing to do with the teaching of the language. It is all about the mindsets that surround the learning of the language. The effort put into the picking up of any subject needs to be two-way; the teacher must make the effort to teach, and the student must make the effort to learn. All I seem to be seeing from the entire debate, is that parents and students want maximum returns for minimum effort (or no effort at all).
A case in point. The top PSLE student this year is a Chinese girl who could hardly speak English upon her admission to the school. In a few years, she has changed all that. Situational circumstances aside, I understand she has put in incredible effort into the learning of the language. While she has of course been rewarded for her hard work, I think many feel that it should be the case of course. The situation is now reversed in the case of the typical Singaporean English speaking student, who is poor in Chinese. I wonder how much effort has been put into the learning of the language, before the students and parents turn around and point fingers at the teaching institutes? Is the effort even a fraction of what the Chinese girl has done for her English? Are we being fair?
I don't see the point of continuing this debate and driving the poor Chinese teachers insane in the process. I have always been a pro-Choice person and here is my pro-Choice solution. Leave the syllabus and teaching to the people who are trained for them. What the MOE can do is to abolish the compulsory bilingual system for the Chinese in totality. Let the learning of Chinese be voluntary, just like, for example, a third language, or a humanity subject. In this way, those who are willing to put in the effort will reap the benefits, and might even better appreciate the opportunities and the edge it gives them. At the very least, there will be no petty threats of emigration just to avoid the bilingual policy. If the government is worried that there would be a dearth of effectively bilingual citizens eventually, I think the continual ascendency of China and the natural "kiasuism" of Singaporeans would probably even things out in the end.
At any rate, I am glad that whatever the decision, that I am done with my formal education, and I do not have to be the unwilling receipient of all the various syllabus changes being rolled out. I do not know if they make any difference to the quality of students turned out, but I get the feeling that the fresh graduates who show up at my office seems to be equipped with less and less foundation knowledge as the years pass. The only thing they appear to excel in is finding information from the internet. It makes for some entertainment as I think up various ways to ask the question "You mean you never learnt that in school?"
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Ooh, I love this debate on languages. Actually, as a product of the system (a sadly deficient product, I must admit), I would have to disagree on some points.
Firstly, the Chinese language as taught in Singapore is not exactly how other languages are taught. Firstly, there are inherent differences in languages. Take Japanese for example. Children are taught kana first, then kanji. As they progress in the learning of the language, they are taught to substitute some kana with kanji where appropriate. Yet, the language can actually be totally written in kana and still be comprehensible. There is only about 100 kana characters commonly in use. Kana is like the ABCs of the Latin languages, and with only 100, this is very few compared to the thousands of characters required for Chinese (around 2000 to 4000 for basic literacy in Chinese)! It is more difficult to learn Chinese, at least for reading and writing. If a person does not know the spelling of an English word, they can roughly figure out how to spell it based on phonetics (and phonics). If a person does not know an English word, the pronunciation can be guessed from the spelling (compared this to Chinese characters) and the meaning can be gleaned from the association to pronunciation. How do you achieve this sort of guessing in Chinese without a strong knowledge of characters and their pronunciation and meanings? Actually, there is too much emphasis on reading and writing, considering language is primarily evolved as a verbal form of communication.
Secondly, many languages are taught as native languages. This means that the learner is already growing up and living in an environment where the language is spoken by all people around them. In Singapore, this is not the case for Chinese learners. Many are from English-speaking families. There is little contact with the Chinese language outside school. So, in effect, these learners are like foreign language learners.
The same problem is actually found in English teaching. Since Singapore is rather diverse in ethnic and language groups, there are many students coming from such diverse backgrounds. Unfortunately, many of them are from families that do not use English on a daily or regular basis. If English is taught as though the students already know English well, how do students without a strong background in English cope in such an environment with such unrealistic expectations? We used to be taught grammar. Many later cohorts were not. And many of these students cannot construct grammatical sentences well at all! I should know, since I just marked some undergraduates' essays, and found most of them sadly deficient in grammar. For students who do not speak English natively, they have no structured way of learning the language. Hoping to learn via osmosis (from speaking, listening, reading books, reading comics, watching TV) is not enough, if the learner has no idea of the rules underlying all these modes of communication.
In foreign language classes, there is indeed rote learning, but this rote learning supplements the learning of rules (for example in grammar, orthography, pronunciation. etc.), accompanied by explanation in the native language of the learner. Since many Singaporean students are like foreign language learners, something must change in the way languages are taught in the Singaporean classroom.
Oops, that is somewhat of a rambling argument...
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