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Saturday, June 24, 2006

It has become more apparent that Singaporeans are poor in their English. The latest evidence comes from the announcement that more “native-speakers” may be roped in to teach the students, in an attempt to salvage the situation. This move seems to carry a hidden meaning that Singaporean teachers are second-class in their English command, and that it would only serve better to have native tongues to educate us.

Honestly, I do welcome it. Not because I agree with the hidden notion, as it is totally untrue. Native speakers aren’t synonymous with professional English speakers, as there are no lack of cases that show otherwise, and also, their command of the language may be largely affected by their unique cultures, habits and lifestyles. Just like the way Singaporeans speak singlish, which is a disgraceful subset of the language. But on the other hand, we must also knowledge the fact that being native speakers, these foreigners have a much higher-level of exposure to the language, compared to the typical bilingual Singaporean. Being well-versed in both our own mother-tongue and English, the reduced exposure we have in both languages have made us just “half-past-six” in both. Hence we see “Speak Good English Movement” (SGEM) and “Speak Mandarin Campaign” ongoing simultaneously. This month also marks the “Malay language month”, and malay language is encouraged to be used in sms-es and blogs. Look at how multilingualism has affected the general standard of the English Language. Hence, having more native-speakers to teach English may increase the depth of the knowledge being passed to the students, thereby making them more competent speakers and writers.

Since I’m on this topic, let me just relate an experience that affected my class (Navy course) this week.

It was a Wednesday, and we requested for a nights-out for the day, since our class had performed relatively well, and we’ve been doing loads of saigang. The nights-out was approved by our course-commander (similar to a form teacher). Then, just an hour before we book out, we got the news that the OC (similar to a principal) had cancelled our nights-out, because he overheard some of us speaking in Mandarin.

That was pretty infuriating. Firstly, we speak Mandarin during private conversations with our closer-bonded friends, not during formal sessions. Don’t we even have that freedom? Secondly, isn’t it human nature to converse more often in your mother tongue, or rather, your native language, since that has been the norm for so many years? Thirdly, the OC himself isn’t doing what he preaches about having an English-environment so that other non-Chinese friends can understand. He openly speaks Hokkien (even in front of us), and worse, he even displayed a racist side of him once this week, perhaps even unknowingly to himself. To me, he has never set a good example and will never gain my respect.

And, to reiterate his “passion” about an English environment, he came to our classroom and wrote “ENGLISH ENVIROMENT”. Look carefully, he spelt “environment” as “enviroment”. That’s not the only mistake. Somewhere else on the whiteboard, there was “arguement” instead of “argument”.

Get him a native-writing teacher perhaps?

人生是黑白的.
6:26 PM <3

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