NEW METHODS FOR TEACHING CHINESE LANGUAGE

NEW METHODS FOR TEACHING CHINESE LANGUAGE: 3.

Mr Teo Siong Seng asked the Minister of Education in view of the new Chinese Language teaching methods to cater for average students coming from non-Chinese speaking home environment, what assurance or choice will his Ministry give to parents who want their children to

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perform well or do much better than average students in the Chinese Language studies and examinations.

The Minister for Education (Dr Ng Eng Hen): Mr Speaker, Sir, the Nominated Member Mr Teo Siong Seng has asked for some assurance from my Ministry for parents who want their children to perform well in the Chinese language studies and the examinations. I have given much of the assurance during the recent Principals Ceremony and the press reported about it. But this is a useful occasion to reiterate.

Let me, first, preface my remarks by giving the general directions of the Chinese language changes that we are going to undertake.

And, as we have said, this is to respond to the ongoing trends in home language environments where the majority of Chinese households use English as the dominant language. But here I would agree with the Nominated Member of Parliament that the aim remains to help all students progress as far they can or want to because we do want to ensure that Chinese learning remains relevant and engaging, and help students learn the language in settings and modes which they are likely to use in their daily life.

This dominant use of English – which is now 60% among all Chinese households and as well as Indian households – will mean a wider spread of capabilities in Chinese Language (CL) among students. The proposed CL approach is to cater to the entire spectrum and not only a select band. The NMP has asked for assurance and I would first say that, yes, we will continue to support those who can attain high levels of Chinese Language proficiency and I will give some details. But we must also recalibrate our expectations and teaching methods for the broad middle band from mainly English-speaking homes and for students who now face exceptional

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difficulties in learning the Chinese Language. We will provide more details during the upcoming Committee of Supply.

In direct response to the Member, students with good CL ability will continue to receive support if they offer Higher Chinese Language. Currently, about a quarter of our students are taking Higher Chinese at the PSLE and the "O" Levels. At the "A" Levels, students may opt to take Chinese Language and Literature at the Higher 2 or even the Higher 3 level instead of the Higher 1 level. Other "A" Level subjects are available for students to hone their Chinese Language skills or deepen their understanding of China. These include General Studies in Chinese, China Studies in Chinese, or History in Chinese.

Beyond these formal subject offerings, MOE provides opportunities for greater depth of study and enrichment through special programmes. As you know, we have 15 SAP (Special Assistance Plan) primary schools and 10 SAP secondary schools, and each of them with their own school-based flagship programmes to nurture an interest in Chinese Language and culture. I am sure that many Members have visited these schools. They are very entrepreneurial, they have a lot of community support and very interesting programmes that they are conducting and we will encourage them and will give them adequate resources. The Bicultural Programme for Chinese spans the upper secondary to JC level and aims to groom a core of students with a confident grasp of Chinese Language and culture. This Programme enrols about 350 Singaporeans each year. In addition, we have the Chinese Language Elective Programme (CLEP) which is also available at the "A" Levels, and this helps deepen students’ appreciation of Chinese Language and literature.

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As I have said, if more students do well in Chinese and there is demand for SAP school places, MOE is willing to consider setting up one more SAP school.

Mr Teo Siong Seng (Nominated Member): I want to thank the Minister for the reply. Since I left school 37 years ago, there have been various changes in the method of teaching Chinese. It looks like we are trying to stop the deterioration of the Chinese Language level amongst students. I have two questions. One is that besides considering a change in the teaching method, would the Ministry also consider improving the environment for learning Chinese? The second question is, would the Ministry try to highlight to the students the value of studying Chinese?

Dr Ng Eng Hen: The answer to both the questions is yes, we do want to maintain the standard of Chinese Language but I think there is also a broader challenge and one which we monitored quite closely and this is the language speaking environment in homes and society.

Language is aural-oral, which means that you have to listen and speak it to learn it. That is the basis for learning a language and as the speaking environment changes, I think we have to take that into consideration. We have given figures that 20 years ago, about one in 10 Chinese households used English at home, it is now six in 10, a six-fold jump, quite a dramatic jump. It is not only for Chinese-speaking households, the same effect is seen in Indian households, it has jumped from three in 10 to six in 10 and even for Malay households where it has jumped from 0.5 who use English as the dominant language to 3.5 – nearly four in 10 Malay households use English as the predominant language.

And not only at home but the time that they spend – their primary mode of

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communication on the Net – we did a survey of what students were communicating and because they are messaging, communicating on the Net, the predominant language is English, the lingua franca of the Internet. So their exposure to that has increased. So, inextricably, the time exposed to any other language, whether it is Chinese, Malay or Indian, has come down and we are recognising this and we are trying to evolve our system to cater to a wider spread of ability, not only to help those who can manage to go as far as they can, to support the ones who are willing to take or can take the HCL but to also support those in the middle band as well as those who are weak and we think that we can do that by shifting our teaching methods to make it more relevant so that they indeed see the importance, as the Member has said, and we are trying to invite businessmen to come to schools to explain to them the importance, to even take them through certain aspects of Chinese history or Chinese culture or Chinese geography and I think that this needs to be a community's effort. I agree with the Member that it is more difficult because English has become more dominant but it is something that we wanted to do and MOE will study the details closely to see how we can do this, how we can support this but this will require the community's efforts as well.