Lee Kuan Yew proposes S$100m bilingualism fund

[Fook Seng]

Please continue as I do not have his book. How about Chinese parents who cannot speak Mandarin? There are many families where one parent is Chinese but the other is from another race, and there is an increasing number of parents whose parents are of different race as more Singaporeans are marrying outside of their race.

Of particular interest is the point about his daughter, as I find that interesting. It is no surprise to me that intelligence has nothing to do with language abilities from my personal experience.

One way of creating the home environment for Chinese, for instance, if the parents are not proficient in the language, is to use the mass media. They can turn on the Chinese channels on TV or listen to radio broadcast in Chinese. It could be difficult for the adults but the children can learn very fast. The problem is the parents normally shun such channels because they don't know the language. Give it a try as even through sub-titles these programmes can be quite interesting.

 

[xenomorph]

MM Lee has been doing good deeds in the past few years, it is really a welcome gesture as he retires gracefully towards his twilight years.

good for his karma. my his son and grandsons continue to rule singapore, forever and ever, amen.

 

[Liquigas]

One way of creating the home environment for Chinese, for instance, if the parents are not proficient in the language, is to use the mass media.

The reality is that most parents do not wish to create such a home environment for their children to learn Chinese. Parents know very well that very few among us have the ability to master two languages at the same time. Being practical Singaporeans, naturally they tend to focus on the learning of English over Chinese. Many will continue to speak English to thier children at home even though they have been told that teaching of English can be left to schools and parents speaking Mandarin at home to their children will go a long way in helping them. In Singapore, we know too well that being good in Chinese is worth less than being good in English. My former boss was a Nantah graduate but during the time when his two children was growing up, he refused to speak to them in Chinese at home because he wanted to create a conducive environment for the kids to learn English.

 

[red amoeba]

One way of creating the home environment for Chinese, for instance, if the parents are not proficient in the language, is to use the mass media. They can turn on the Chinese channels on TV or listen to radio broadcast in Chinese. It could be difficult for the adults but the children can learn very fast. The problem is the parents normally shun such channels because they don't know the language. Give it a try as even through sub-titles these programmes can be quite interesting.

i can personally attest to this manner of "teaching" - my parents don't speak English / mandrain at home...they speak dialect. But i listened to Chinese radio / Chinese TV...to pick up.

this is helpful - since many parents nowadays rely on TV to "entertain" their kids.

the dangerous thing that many parents are doing now - letting their maids "teach" their kids the wrong / broken english.

 

[red amoeba]

The reality is that most parents do not wish to create such a home environment for their children to learn Chinese. Parents know very well that very few among us have the ability to master two languages at the same time. Being practical Singaporeans, naturally they tend to focus on the learning of English over Chinese. Many will continue to speak English to thier children at home even though they have been told that teaching of English can be left to schools and parents speaking Mandarin at home to their children will go a long way in helping them. In Singapore, we know too well that being good in Chinese is worth less than being good in English. My former boss was a Nantah graduate but during the time when his two children was growing up, he refused to speak to them in Chinese at home because he wanted to create a conducive environment for the kids to learn English.

which in his book, he wrote a few chapters regarding Nantah and his struggle against the resistance to switch Nantah to english teaching school.

actually, when the chips r down -meaning you get to choose only 1 lang to master - it has to be English for practical reasons.

It is meant for majority (75%) of the people that can master 1 main language and the other fairly well (Chinese). But learning Chinese after English is tougher than the other way.

Sure, the parents may think well, being good in Chinese but poor in English (Ultimately) is useless- which is true. But the point is, you will learn less and less Chinese as you progress up the school education system. Until Uni level, it is completely 100% being taught in English. Most parents have the fear that if they don't start the child from speaking English from young, they will catch no ball by kindergarten / P1...a very realistic one indeed, I am seeing it around me.

Sooner or later, you begin to think firstly in English - unless u work as Chinese leeporter.

 

[Checker]

Environment important for learning. But kids spend much of it outside the home, with peers. In Aust, US, many Chinese immigrant parents speak only Chinese at home. But their kids hardly speak (let alone read/ write) Chinese, especially beyond primary school. Common to see parent speaking Chinese and kids replying in English.

Probably true SG has some headstart in Asia where bilinguialism is concerned. Probably important as China has a lot more growing to do, and USA (Europe/Aust) want to do business around the region. But there will be costs : more stress, tears, less close relationships with parents, divisions in community...

 

[freedalas]

Environment important for learning. But kids spend much of it outside the home, with peers. In Aust, US, many Chinese immigrant parents speak only Chinese at home. But their kids hardly speak (let alone read/ write) Chinese, especially beyond primary school. Common to see parent speaking Chinese and kids replying in English.

Probably true SG has some headstart in Asia where bilinguialism is concerned. Probably important as China has a lot more growing to do, and USA (Europe/Aust) want to do business around the region. But there will be costs : more stress, tears, less close relationships with parents, divisions in community...

If like the past, kids are brought up in a dialect speaking home environment, they will akin to Mandarin naturally. The old-timers will attest to this. When their parents or grandparents speak to them in dialects and vice versa, it becomes a natural foundation for the kids to move forward into Mandarin, simply because dialects and Mandarin have the same roots. Language experts will tell you that it's not even about switching from one language to another as in switching English to German or Malay, it's a natural progression from a dialect to Mandarin. It's so because dialects and Mandarin are just slight deviants of the same language. The grammar, sentence construction, idiomatic expressions are all the same. Just think about it, most of the ah peks and ah umms selling food at hawker centers never really went to school and yet they could speak Mandarin and read as well (you always see them reading Wanbao and Shin Min). It's because they had the foundation in dialects and the rest is just picking it up from there. What really made learning Mandarin so damn difficult is the result of LKY abolishing dialects. So a chinese now has to learn mandarin as if he is an ang-moh or anyone of different race. In other words, it became a total strange language. LKY himself being a peranakan could not speak any dialect. So he never understood why dialect-speaking chinese could learn Mandarin quite easily. He had to learn it the hard way. That's fiine but the whole trouble is that he thinks the problems he faced apply to everyone else, and he's writing a book to teach others how to learn Mandarin??? Worse still, the state-controlled media publicised his book as if he is the one who discovers the secret be all and end all to learning Mandarin. How much more of a prostitute media like ST can get?

 

[fivestars]

Speaking Mandarin is communist?

2 in 1 bilingual?

 

[Annoyed]

As a not-so-good multilinguist, I have to agree with your statement. Don't want to get started again on my pet peeve that is language education, but suffice to say that the standard of Chinese in Singapore is beyond atrocious, as is the standard of English in Singapore - BOTH spoken AND written. Can't comment on Malay and the other Indian languages due to lack of personal knowledge.

But the so-called bilingual policy has destroyed English as well as the other languages in Singapore. I notice that there're many good bilinguists and even multilinguists in this forum and elsewhere. But friends, you're exceptions.

Thanks, you practically took the words right out of my mouth. As an aside, that's also one of the reasons I hate the term "mother tongue". The second language learnt in Singapore is what it is: a SECOND LANGUAGE, NOT a mother tongue. And it's sad when so many people fail to see that the terminology itself is a problem. When you call Mandarin a mother tongue, you teach it like a mother tongue, and it impedes learning for those who don't speak it at home. Same goes for the teaching of English, which is automatically taken to be the first language. Teachers assume the kids already know it, when the reality is that there ARE kids out there who don't speak a word of it at home. Of course, if they don't shape up, they get shipped out to the lower streams as though it were a matter of intelligence when there's really no correlation. When I was studying in the States, I had Asian-American friends who spoke Korean, Vietnamese or any of the Chinese languages at home; most took English as a Second Language in school even though they were born and bred Americans. The disadvantage they went through at the early stages of their education didn't have too much of a negative impact; hell, they ended up in good colleges, and with good careers as well.

One other thing that came to my mind - how do you reconcile having English as a first language and a separate "mother tongue" at the same time? Geezers.

That is the reason why I feel bilingualism has failed to equip the common man with a working language that one can comfortably use in a professional context. If learning a native language is already difficult, how successful would the policy be in teaching two or more languages? Perhaps it has to do with how languages are being taught in schools during formative years and the impact family and socioeconomic backgrounds has on language acquisition. A good system should be able to overcome these hurdles. In my view, it hasn't.

A well-meaning suggestion which, I'm afraid, doesn't quite make sense. You tune in to channels that utilize the language most familiar to you. Most people don't watch the news because they want their children to learn Mandarin or whatever; they watch the news because they want to know what's going on - and to do that, they opt for the language that they're most fluent in. Same goes for entertainment. My Chinese helicopter parents never watched the Channel 5 news or tuned into an English radio channel for a day in their lives.

As for the subtitles, they do make for fairly good entertainment because of how bad they are. A few hours of "Did he took the gun out?" and "He said he just saw her entered the room" literally makes me ROTFLMAO.

One way of creating the home environment for Chinese, for instance, if the parents are not proficient in the language, is to use the mass media. They can turn on the Chinese channels on TV or listen to radio broadcast in Chinese. It could be difficult for the adults but the children can learn very fast. The problem is the parents normally shun such channels because they don't know the language. Give it a try as even through sub-titles these programmes can be quite interesting.

When I was growing up, my mom - also a Nantah graduate - piled me with stacks and stacks of English books even while speaking to me in Mandarin and watching Chinese TV everyday. She said she wanted to make sure her children never suffered from the same discrimination that she did at the workplace, being unable to communicate effectively in English. It's one of the best things she has done for me, and I know I will be eternally grateful.

My former boss was a Nantah graduate but during the time when his two children was growing up, he refused to speak to them in Chinese at home because he wanted to create a conducive environment for the kids to learn English.

 

[lee6100]

Thanks, you practically took the words right out of my mouth. As an aside, that's also one of the reasons I hate the term "mother tongue". The second language learnt in Singapore is what it is: a SECOND LANGUAGE, NOT a mother tongue.


Absolutely agree. The rot started when they renamed it "Mother Tongue" and right from primary school gave it equal weight to the other three subjects. Making MT a prerequisite for things such as entry to university meant that pupils and students spent an inordinate amount of time on the subject to the detriment of others. Many good kids didn't make it to uni because they didn't do well in MT and the FTs who come here went to their own unis without a MT requirement, did well, came here and took jobs which our kids should be doing. Policy making based on one man's biased experience has caused us enormous damage and loss of unfulfilled talent.

 

[fivestars]

Chinese Medicine got poison, no standard?

English Medicine high class and International Standard?

Chinese Association and clan is communist change to CDAC?

CDAC the best for Chinese to pay and pay?

Chinese language not an international language but communist language?