PM Lee says teaching of Chinese needs to cater to range
of abilities
HAVANA, CUBA: Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has
said the teaching of the Chinese language has to cater to the
changing landscape as well as the range of language backgrounds and
learning abilities.
He said Singapore wants to succeed at mother tongue as it
is critical to Singapore - not just economically but because of the
sense of identity as Singaporeans and as Asians in a globalised
world.
At the same time, Mr Lee said Singapore needs to know what can be
achieved and the best way of attaining it.
Mr Lee was speaking to the Singapore media at the end of his trip
to Cuba on Thursday.
Mr Lee's comments follow an ongoing debate, after Minister Mentor
Lee Kuan Yew said the teaching and learning of Chinese should have
been done differently from the start.
After a flurry of comments over the past few weeks about
Singapore's bilingual policy, Prime Minister Lee put things in
perspective.
He said: "We have to try and do what is educationally sound and
pedagogically and academically in the interest of the child. If you
politicise this and ask what is it (or) which is the popular thing
to do when I teach Chinese or when I teach English or when I teach
Science, then we're going to do a big disfavour to the child.
"We have to find out what is educationally sound, and what is the
best way to teach it and is within the capabilities of the kids, to
interest them in the subject and not to turn them off the language.
That is what we will try and achieve."
He said the reason why Singapore has to tweak the way it teaches
the Chinese language is because of the changing profiles of the
students. There are now more of them from English-speaking
homes.
So more schools are expected to use English to teach the Chinese
language.
On the other hand, the proportion of students who take Higher
Chinese (HCL) in secondary schools has also increased as more
students understand the importance of learning the language.
"Now 27 percent take HCL in secondary schools, more than double the
figure before the last changes were made," said Mr Lee.
There is also a need to have a tailored approach of teaching the
language which adapts to everybody.
Mr Lee said: "We are trying, in an English-speaking environment, to
maintain a level of working proficiency in Chinese and other mother
tongues for all of the population. But different levels of
proficiency, depending on the ability of the person and the
language background which he comes from, his home background.
"Some can reach almost first language standard and join the
bicultural programmes. A majority should have a functional mastery
of the language - some from Chinese-speaking homes, some from
English-speaking homes too, because many students from
English-speaking homes actually have good language aptitude and
quite often do Higher Chinese.
"But some students from English-speaking homes are going to have a
lot of difficulties with Chinese, however hard they try. Maybe they
are generally weak in school, but not always. The correlation
between your language ability and your general academic skills is
not that close. Quite often, we come across students who are
generally bright and able, but have a lot of difficulties with
Chinese.
"So we have to set standards for this group which are realistic,
which they can aim for, but without bringing down standards for
everybody else. That is why we introduced CL-B."
CL-B refers to the simplified Chinese Language B syllabus
introduced for weaker students in 1999.
Technology has also made it a totally different experience for a
person to read, learn and work with the Chinese language.
Mr Lee said: "In China now, everybody uses computer inputs one way
or other. The young people are working on keyboards so much that
when they have to write the characters, they do not remember how to
produce them."
Communication styles too are changing, with more people using email
and SMS.
Prime Minister Lee said: "There are all sorts of strange
abbreviations. I was exchanging messages with a young person in
Chinese and the person typed '3488'. So I asked, what on earth is
'3488' ('暂时拜拜')?
"There are all sorts of other abbreviations and synonyms which have
become part of the lingo. If you stick to the traditional formal
language teaching, you are not going to teach people that, you are
not going to use that, and students are going to learn a very
formal language. But that is not what they will often encounter in
real life."
Mr Lee said testing methods will also need to change.
"So, in an exam, you can bring an electronic dictionary along and
ideally, everybody should have a keyboard and should type and write
on the keyboard rather than have the burden of struggling with the
mechanics of memorising and writing characters by hand," he
said.
Moving forward, he said the way the Chinese language is taught in
schools will be updated based on changing language usage and
ability patterns in society.
There were revisions in 1999 and in 2004 to cater to different
learning tracks for students, depending on their language
abilities. Revision number three of the teaching and learning of
the Chinese language is already underway. The Education Ministry is
expected to release the results during the Committee of Supply
debate in Parliament.
- CNA/ir
