You speak your mother tongue?

Parents have an important role to play in shaping their children's attitudes and interests in the learning of mother tongue languages, especially during their early years, said Minister of State for Communications and Information and Education Sim Ann on Saturday.

Speaking at the Mother Tongue Languages Symposium, Ms Sim said parents and grandparents can read to their children and grandchildren regularly, as it is a "simple and inexpensive, yet powerful strategy" to help them pick up languages. She added: "When children hear grown-ups read, they pick up sounds that form the language, which in turn helps them to speak and interact using the language."

The symposium featured 10 sharing sessions and workshops for parents to help them enhance their children's learning of languages, conducted by pre-school teachers and experts. Exhibition booths were also set up by the Education Ministry and various schools from the pre-school to secondary level, to showcase innovative methods of teaching and learning mother tongue languages.



Parents have an important role to play in shaping their children's attitudes and interests in the learning of mother tongue languages, especially during their early years, said Minister of State for Communications and Information and Education Sim Ann on Saturday. -- ST FILE PHOTO: SEAH KWANG PENG

My mother's or father's tongue is not MANDARIN, which is also another dialect in the Chinese Language.

I think many young Singaporeans have lost it. Also with this loss comes the loss of much cultural and historical richness.

halsey02 said:

My mother's or father's tongue is not MANDARIN, which is also another dialect in the Chinese Language.

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Beijing Mandarin is the top dialect of the Chinese language so it is generally considered as the mother tongue to the overseas Chinese...

I think many of our brothers here still have their tongues with them.

kopiuncle said:

I think many of our brothers here still have their tongues with them.

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the kids are speaking more English than Chinese nowadays and the usage of Chinese will continue to decline further. Singapore will become a predominantly English speaking country in another two generations. not my business. i wouldn't live to see it happen.

Before LKY came into play,,,was there such a term as Mother tongue?

halsey02 said:

My mother's or father's tongue is not MANDARIN, which is also another dialect in the Chinese Language.

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Cant comment much on Chinese. But i am proud tat my children able to communicate with their grandparents boyanese. Though we still speak and write malay in our daily lives.

You must have been educated by this guy..


[video=youtube;me63GK-Byh8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me63GK-Byh8[/video]

Sideswipe said:

Beijing Mandarin is the top dialect of the Chinese language so it is generally considered as the mother tongue to the overseas Chinese...

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The_Hypocrite said:

You must have been educated by this guy..

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the Beijing Mandarin is a beautiful Chinese dialect. the Qing, KMT and CCP all made Beijing Mandarin the official national spoken language of China for good reasons.

SINGAPORE: The increasing number of Singaporeans speaking English at home has had an impact on the teaching and learning of students' Mother Tongue languages.


Speaking at the East Asia Summit Conference on Bilingualism, Minister of State for Education Sim Ann said children now have varying levels of proficiencies in their Mother Tongues compared to students of the past.

More than 60 per cent of students in Singapore come from English-speaking homes.

Among these students, a number of them enter Primary 1 with little or no opportunities to speak their Mother Tongue at home.


For such students, the National Institute of Education’s (NIE) Head of Asian Languages & Cultures Academic Group (ALC) Goh Yeng Seng said schools should consider using bilingual textbooks and English as a supplementary language of instruction during Mother Tongue lessons.


For example, to explain new vocabulary and to encourage students to ask questions.


Prof Goh said: “Since English is their first language, their master language, their most comfortable language, why don't you use their master language as a resource rather than see that as a barrier? So… we should make full use of that.


“Particularly at the beginning stage, we should allow them to use English to raise questions. I always say, when they want to raise questions, they're actively participating in your lesson.”


Prof Goh also said this could be good training for students to learn skills in bilingualism and translation at a later stage.


While the method is already carried out in a small number of schools, Prof Goh said the challenge is ensuring there are enough bilingually-trained teachers.


He added that this could be a uniquely Singaporean product that can be exported.


Indeed, the search is on for a good teaching method for bilingual education.


Ms Sim said: "I found it interesting that so many delegates came up to share with me and to say that for their respective countries in their respective education systems, bilingualism is a challenging and at times controversial subject. So I think that what this underscores is that the search for good pedagogies, for good methods of teaching and learning and I think it's something many countries are in pursuit of. And we are amongst them."


Ms Sim said the practice of bilingualism can be affected by social and cultural developments, and that is a challenge in promoting bilingualism.


She added Singapore schools have always had to adjust its teaching methods according to social realities.


Ms Sim said: "Schools have been doing this in many creative ways and I think at the same time, draw on the support of parents as well as community groups to make language learning a lot more fun and engaging for our students."


National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Adjunct Professor for Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy S Gopinathan said: "I think we cannot accept that the situation will always remain the same. Languages are a content. Language learning, language use is dynamic. So how do we prepare for that? How do we keep abreast? I think the earlier commitment to be pragmatic about it, to change when we needed to change, rather than be ideological and say, no, this is the standard we want and this should be for everybody.


“So my point was I think we have a good track record of both keeping to the primary commitment of equality of languages and bilingualism will be fundamental in our system, but also coming to say, we need to change, we need to adjust, we need to think of new strategies, we need to customise it more for learner abilities and learner use."


Ms Sim said Singapore's bilingual policy has prepared its children for a globalised world, while strengthening Singapore's identity as a hub for trade, commerce and people-to-people exchanges.

She added many countries today also recognise the value for children to learn two or more languages in school.

Ms Sim cited statistics that point to half of the world's population being bilingual or multilingual.


The bilingual conference is a first for participating countries of the East Asia Summit.

International language experts will discuss over the two-day conference how teaching and learning languages can help enhance integration in the region.

Sideswipe said:

the Beijing Mandarin is a beautiful Chinese dialect. the Qing, KMT and CCP all made Beijing Mandarin the official national spoken language of China for good reasons.

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Nothing against speaking of Mandarin , for I speak it too, learn it when I was in school..in fact, when I first started school, my language was my MOTHER's Tongue..& that was not Mandarin, never mind going into, Beijing, Shanghai variation etc.. Later when I have to attend proper Government school, Mandarin I had to learn for the MIW closed down all the "mother's tongue" school.

My point is, when we talk about, " our mother's tongue" it is our heritage from our ancestors...many of us in the past speak our mother's tongue better than our father's tongue..for example, our dad, is Hokkien speaking, our mom, Cantonese, most likely we will speak Cantonese. But, many will be proficient in both or speak, what our mum speak best.

This is what I meant by our Mother's tongue...the language in which our ancestor's originated from..in which we have KILLED. Go anywhere in SEA the Chinese speak their mother's tongue & communicate in general in the localized version of Mandarin.

Our Mother's tongue here is expected to be Mandarin..in which is just another dialect..that is my point. Have nothing against speaking or conversing in Mandarin..sorry, it is not my mother's tongue!

Its the common language because its spoken by the northerners as they are the majority. Its a numbers game. Anyway, mandarin is a shit language as its a bastardised manchurian dialect. U like it its yr problem. U dont have to be like Tony Chat promoting yr own selfish agenda.

Sideswipe said:

the Beijing Mandarin is a beautiful Chinese dialect. the Qing, KMT and CCP all made Beijing Mandarin the official national spoken language of China for good reasons.

Click to expand...

The_Hypocrite said:

Its the common language because its spoken by the northerners as they are the majority. Its a numbers game. Anyway, mandarin is a shit language as its a bastardised manchurian dialect. U like it its yr problem. U dont have to be like Tony Chat promoting yr own selfish agenda.

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HongKong. Taiwan. No problem with dialects. And they r doing economically well!

U are right, to me Mandarin is another language, I speak it as we were taught in school. I just treat it as learning another language like Viet. But for the pappies and mandarin speaking scum to say its the language of the 'Chinese' they can go get Fucked...anyway, mandarin was never the language of the Chinese...its a bastardised manchurian language. By speaking mandarin its nothing but a reminder to the Han Chinese than they are still conquered by the Manchurians.

[video=youtube;fYBBiQDmNDY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYBBiQDmNDY[/video]

halsey02 said:

Nothing against speaking of Mandarin , for I speak it too, learn it when I was in school..in fact, when I first started school, my language was my MOTHER's Tongue..& that was not Mandarin, never mind going into, Beijing, Shanghai variation etc.. Later when I have to attend proper Government school, Mandarin I had to learn for the MIW closed down all the "mother's tongue" school.

My point is, when we talk about, " our mother's tongue" it is our heritage from our ancestors...many of us in the past speak our mother's tongue better than our father's tongue..for example, our dad, is Hokkien speaking, our mom, Cantonese, most likely we will speak Cantonese. But, many will be proficient in both or speak, what our mum speak best.

This is what I meant by our Mother's tongue...the language in which our ancestor's originated from..in which we have KILLED. Go anywhere in SEA the Chinese speak their mother's tongue & communicate in general in the localized version of Mandarin.

Our Mother's tongue here is expected to be Mandarin..in which is just another dialect..that is my point. Have nothing against speaking or conversing in Mandarin..sorry, it is not my mother's tongue!

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Tell that to Old fart and the pappies, Old Fart insisted on his speak mandarin campaign and his excuse was it hindered the learning of mandarin...

whoami said:

HongKong. Taiwan. No problem with dialects. And they r doing economically well!

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When I speak my own mother's tongue with my fellow Singaporeans, I feel much closer and more united. I think we have lost big time on this issue. But I fear it's gone now.Only the old folks still communicate in their mother's tongue - very colourful and very musical as well.But it is a dying practice.....