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.

Source: channelnewsasia.com/