WHAT IS MOE UP TO NOW? TEACH CHINESE IN ENGLISH

euphratis SG

What's next?

Chinese is a character derived from pictorial. Like any other language frequent usage & memorising produces better mastery of it.

Then they introduced 'Han yu pin yin' which kill many student because of the difficult not in Chinese but to master 'Han yu pin yin'.

1. The confusion between English phonics & HANYU PINYIN alphabetic pronouncing.
2. The 'UFO' of certain pitch of Chinese character that cannot be represented by the intonation markings.

Now they are making it even more confusion to student to mix.

sgboy2004 SG

Teach chinese in Tamil

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Baby sgboy2004

MooKu SG

No mah, hanyu pinyin quite easy...

Well actually I think teaching Chinese in English might not be such a bad idea, given that alot of students nowadays already have a very weak foundation before they start Chinese lessons. It's like ang mohs learning Chinese. Or Chinese learning Japanese or French. It's all learnt using English as a medium. Smile

Compare the pros and cons... Not using English MIGHT worsen the level of the Chinese language as the years go by, because of more and more weak students. They find that being taught Chinese by using Mandarin is tough, so some might not be able to cope, hence finding it too difficult and eventually giving up.

With the use of English, students may find it easier to understand what they are being taught. At least when learning is made easier, it's more digestable and ensures a higher literacy rate in the Chinese language, because they learn, whereas in the former case they refuse to. When a certain foundation is built already, it wouldn't be too late for the mastery of the language and the reasons behind how the words are structured or formed etc. Smile

Just my five cents' worth Mr. Green

lyling SG

Actually the problem boils down to the fact that there are not many good and attractive children's books in Chinese. Go to kinokuniya and Borders, compare the quality of the English story books and Chinese story books. I went to kino and found that many attractively packaged Chinese books are translated from the English version. No wonder these children do not want to read Chinese.

Futhermore, Chinese is taught in school in an uninteresting manner. The way of teaching English in Primary school has been revamped many times, now students get exposure to Big Books, have meaningful activities etc. But when it comes down to Chinese, the students are forced to learn 'ting xie', 'zao ju', 'mo xie'. ...yucks...I really hated 'mo xie' when i was in primary school. The whole idea of memorising a passage made no sense to me. I used to read and understand a passage and paraphrase it and rewrite the whole thing without losing its meaning....but my teacher gave me zero....she said that although my sentences were grammatically correct and the entire meaning of the passage was intact, i was not following instructions.

I really got to liking Chinese only after I graduated from my secondary school, when I got used to reading 'fan ti zi'. It gave me exposure to novels, and I was fanatic over jinyong, liangyusheng, qiong yao and yishu. I was lucky that I need not attend Chinese lessons in JC, as I was exempted, being a first language student in secondary school. I still sat for the 'A' levels, and spent one week before looking at novels and studying how the authors expressed descriptions of places, people, feelings etc.....and I scored an A1.

No matter what Chinese should not be taught in English, the revamp in the lessons should be to make them more meaningful for students. There should be more teachers, writers, publishers out there to actively promote good and attractive chinese publications, especially for children. What happened to those interesting Chinese Children magazines I had when I was young, magazines like 'youer tian di', 'shao nian yue kan'.....

nismoS132 SG

i agree that language is something that has to be in practise constantly. i used to speak english during chinese classes in pri sch simply because i almost didn't understand it. it was only after i started reading chinese comics that really got me into wanting to understand chinese more just so i could read more comics.

but the general populace doesn't seem that interested in comics. and again there's the problem of not wanting to read because they can't read chinese in the 1st place.

another unorthodox method i've heard of is karaoke, which is probably more effective than reading, since it's active, rather than passive.

most of the people i know speak chinese with no problems. they just can't read it.

[email protected]_arms SG

More emphasis should be put on Chinese. E.g. some subjects should be taught in chinese, like maths or science, the way it is done in China. However, this must be done from primary 1 onwards, or else you will kill other students trying to adjust to the problem. THis follow’s nismo’s theory of practice makes perfect. THe reason why standards of mandarin sucks, is because people dont practice, why? Because Chinese is percieved as unhip, why? Because there are little glorified movies in chinese being used to teach. New methods of teachings should be used like movies, Hero is good. Instead of having teachers just coming in… explaining some chengyu and moving out to the next class, its pathetic.

MooKu SG

We can't teach other subjects in mother tongues because that would mean having to segregate the various races into different classes for different subjects. Involves alot of work. In addition, we're trying to promote racial harmony. Wink

This, of course, is an exception in e.g. Chinese schools like Chinese High or Dunman High... they teach Moral Education in Mandarin. But these schools have a high percentage of Chinese students, and even if there were students from other races, they normally speak very fluent Mandarin.

From the ST Forum page, a lady wrote in and pointed out that in order to use English to teach Chinese efficiently and effectively, the teachers would be required to be proficient in both languages. I thought that was a good point. And then the problem now is, we don't have many such teachers from the previous generation, let alone the current generation. Neutral

[email protected]_arms SG

Yeah true, most Mandarin teachers I know cant speak English properly. But even without resorting to making students study certain subjects in mandarin. The current methods of teaching must be modified. Because something is terribly wrong if an expat without any mandarin-speaking-background, can master the language in 3 years, while our students here are still strugglin after 16 years. The teaching method should be revised i believe. Perhaps more mandarin movies, since movies are definitely more eye catching then boring books.