RE: Chinese Standards Should Not Be Dropped

To the Straits Times:

Dear Sir / Mdm,

I am writing to express my opinion on the issue of Chinese Learning. I understand that MM Lee Kuan Yew has recently expressed his regreat regarding the issue of Chinese Learning, that he did not take note to make Chinese Learning fun and as a result, many have totally turned off the language.

MM Lee feels that the learning of Chinese should start with speaking and hearing the language, instead of the old way of memorizing words without understanding them. His opinion seemed to have triggered a series of comment calling for chinese marks to hold a lesser percentage in PSLE examinations.

Chinese learning standards should not compromised. It seems that the people are avoiding the issue that their children are weak in the subject, and are compromising on the problem by lowering the mark percentage, rather than find a way to tackle the problem.

The government and people's "solution" to the problem is to lower the standards of Chinese. But is we constantly compromise and lower the standard of Chinese, wouldn't the next generation chinese standards constantly drop. Every generation would then see a great gap in chinese standards. By then, the students with lower standards would even find the easy syllabus difficult and turn off the language.

Chinese language is the same as English language. Every language has to be put in sufficient effort to master it. Vocabulary is difficult, but necessary. The students would find the vocabulary they learn in Primary School extremely handy when they need to use them in future essays, reports, especially when China, as we all know, is a global market of rising dominance.

Why does the government leave out the compromising of standard on the English part? As I know, may are also struggling with English.

If the reason is because more and more students are from English-speaking family backgrounds, then maybe the first stage of speaking for the Chinese part that the parents did not do should be done in Pre-school learning, like nursery and kindergarden. The government should make sure pre-school education includes the basic foundation of the speaking of Chinese language. It would be too late to do it in Primary School.

The current module, I think, is already very simple and insufficient, it is would be too simple and severely insufficient if we do the basic speaking foundation in Primary School. In Primary 1, we just have to learn hanyupinying, and in Primary 2, just a few simple words.

What the government, I think, needs to do is not compromise on the difficult vocabulary learning part, and change the module to a more oral speaking learning, if the main concern is rather that students turn off the language. Teachers can make the students understand the meaning of the vocabulary before requiring them to memorize, so the students would know when and where to use the particular word. This is different from plain, boring memorizing without understanding the meaning.

Apart from making lesson interesting by cutting away the most essential vocabulary learning, I feel that there are probably other ways to make the lessons interesting. Many teachers are adopting online E-learning as a more interesting and appealing alternative to teach vocabulary. They design fun games they would attract the students to play, but the content of the game is learning, for example, some new vocabulary or sentence structure.

At the end of the day, the students learn the same things they would learn in a boring lesson, and at the same time, they bring back a simple message - learning chinese is fun, I like chinese, I am looking forward to the next, fun chinese lesson. In addition, because the learning process is fun and interesting for the children, they can also not only memorise but also learn the meanings behind the words better and faster.

At the same time, I hope the government would also not leave out the oral speaking part because this, no doubt, would be a inevitable part of the students life in teh future as they grow up, but it is best to have a healthy balance of oral and vocabulary. Vocabulary should, I think, should still be the top priority, like in other any languages. I hope alternative solution to make lessons interesting to the students can be adopted. Thank you.

Yours Faithfully,
Jonah Heng