Comments on: Chinese education in Singapore: As you sow, so will you reap

By: BT Seah

BT Seah — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:11:27 +0000

Perhaps we should stop just tinkering with teaching Chinese as a second language in our schools but seriously consider bringing back Chinese schools into our Education system. Let the parents have their choice.

This will truly raise the standard of Chinese in these schools and bring about excellence in the students proficiency, instead of the high level of mediocrity in the current system.

Without sacrificing their proficiency in Engliah to try to improve on their Chinese in the current school system, those students who are weak in Chinese can also excel in English.

Whilst it is important to know Chinese to trade and do business with the Chinese, there would be those who may not have to use the language at all in their business if they are trading with non Asian countries.

If the need arises, I am sure those not speaking the language will learn it. See the number of caucasians in China who can speak Mandarin far better than many Singaporeans now.

By: Serene Tong

Serene Tong — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:27:11 +0000

I totally agree that Chinese had to be taught differently especially since kids these days are being raised in English speaking environment and also that they are to speak english at all times unless they are having chinese period.
During my time (primary school), I took Chinese as a first language and I totally enjoyed the lessons. I remembered in primary 1 and 2, we will write xi zi and every word, we will write a full page. During primary 3, we had to learn han yu pin yin and i love it, we were taught which alphabet to place the biao dian fu hao on through a song which i can still remember. Moreover, the test papers and assessment papers we do will always contain a section of gai zheng chuo zi, and I think this helps as we are able to distinguish the actual chinese words to be used in the sentence. I remembered that bookshops used to sell some chinese moral story books which contain some comprehension questions behind to check our understanding and it also contains explanation of some difficult words but I can’t find such story books anymore which is a pity as I wanted to purchase them for my children.

By: tere

tere — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 08:01:52 +0000

I’m not Chinese but I would like to speak about the article. It’s also a problem in our country wherein most of the people could not speak well/fluent in their mother tongue. It may be because of English. It has been used already by many countries in the world. English is the language of the world. If one knows how to speak or converse in English, he/she will be able to compete…I got your point when you say that Chinese Education is deteriorating…However,it is still important to learn and improve Chinese as national language, very important..this way, a citizen has shown love for his/her country…and appreciated his/her culture.

By: btan

btan — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 03:23:52 +0000

It is difficult to justify learning Mandarin from the cultural point of view because many of us are descendants of southern Chinese who speaks a myriad of different, so called, dialects, which linguists said is the wrong classification. Languages like Cantonese, Hokkeins, Teochews, Hakkas, Hainaneses are really languages which got surpressed. So from a cultural point of view, we should learn our southern mother tongue instead of Mandarin.

Mandarin should be learn for economic reasons and no more.