English Foundation
I met up with an editor the other day to discuss about the potential of working together for the book I'm trying to put together. Naturally, even though he was way older than me, I was the client, and for once in my life, it began to feel like I was talking business with him. He tried to convince me that he was suitable for the job by giving me his background, his experience and even emailing some of the stuff he had edited or were written about him.
I asked him about his interest in the English language, and he went on to explain how he had a good grounding since primary school. For in his days, the natural scholastic path taken by the better students were Pearl's Hill, Outram and Raffles. At that time, he had British English teachers who taught them subject-verb conjugation and all the technicalities of the English language that we are no longer familiar with today.
I'm not saying our local teachers are not good, but even during my primary school days, I didn't know what an adjective, verb and noun was until Primary 5. I'm not sure what it's like for the primary school children now.
"What have you been learning if not the basics?" was the question posed to us by my Primary 5 English teacher then, who was flabbergasted by the class's poor grasp of the language. Gee, I don't know, I learnt whatever the teachers taught me, and obviously, we weren't exposed to that in Primary 1.
After speaking to the editor, I envied him for the strong English foundation he received. For a big part of my adolescent years, I had wanted to be a writer, but I am disappointed at my own poor command of the language to think I'm even qualified. It's like you want to be a research scientist at Biopolis but only had combined science education. Sure, these days, you've got spell check and I could always employ an editor to help me clean up the grammar and sentence structure, but you can't have someone conjure up sentences for you to express what you wanted to say. A writer must have a good command of the language for effective communication of ideas, so there's no misunderstanding of expression. Like the whole Eat Shoots And Leaves example.
All the more it reinforced my belief that my child next time should be home schooled. A British teacher for English, a Beijing teacher for Chinese, a French teacher for French, a Japanese teacher for Japanese. The only concern I have with the whole home schooling idea is how the child will lack social interaction with kids his or her age, which is not healthy. I guess when I become a mom, there'd be many battles I'd have to fight -- breast milk or formula milk, single-ed or co-ed, jc or poly, local or foreign university and so on. Oh well, that will come later.
The editor told me that many of his classmates then will soon be gone, and I secretly worry if that meant the loss of a generation who had a strong grasp of the English language. I seriously doubt much of that has been passed on down to the later generations because based on my very general sweeping observation, teenagers nowadays are so used to using sms-msn language, I'm not even sure they can form a sentence to show the difference between active and passive voice.
Maybe the whole education system here needs an overhaul. And because we've already had generations of teachers who graduated without a good foundation of the language, the MOE should invest in bringing in language experts to train all teachers, or send them overseas for attachment. Because with a good command of the English language, it becomes easier to understand even Physics questions and Math problem sums. And when this batch of children eventually step into the society, not only will they be equipped with adequate writing skills, they will not have problems conversing with foreign clients and being understood clearly.
Then there is hope to eradicate the whole Singlish phenomenon.
Till then, we can only remain Uniquely Singapore.
I asked him about his interest in the English language, and he went on to explain how he had a good grounding since primary school. For in his days, the natural scholastic path taken by the better students were Pearl's Hill, Outram and Raffles. At that time, he had British English teachers who taught them subject-verb conjugation and all the technicalities of the English language that we are no longer familiar with today.
I'm not saying our local teachers are not good, but even during my primary school days, I didn't know what an adjective, verb and noun was until Primary 5. I'm not sure what it's like for the primary school children now.
"What have you been learning if not the basics?" was the question posed to us by my Primary 5 English teacher then, who was flabbergasted by the class's poor grasp of the language. Gee, I don't know, I learnt whatever the teachers taught me, and obviously, we weren't exposed to that in Primary 1.
After speaking to the editor, I envied him for the strong English foundation he received. For a big part of my adolescent years, I had wanted to be a writer, but I am disappointed at my own poor command of the language to think I'm even qualified. It's like you want to be a research scientist at Biopolis but only had combined science education. Sure, these days, you've got spell check and I could always employ an editor to help me clean up the grammar and sentence structure, but you can't have someone conjure up sentences for you to express what you wanted to say. A writer must have a good command of the language for effective communication of ideas, so there's no misunderstanding of expression. Like the whole Eat Shoots And Leaves example.
All the more it reinforced my belief that my child next time should be home schooled. A British teacher for English, a Beijing teacher for Chinese, a French teacher for French, a Japanese teacher for Japanese. The only concern I have with the whole home schooling idea is how the child will lack social interaction with kids his or her age, which is not healthy. I guess when I become a mom, there'd be many battles I'd have to fight -- breast milk or formula milk, single-ed or co-ed, jc or poly, local or foreign university and so on. Oh well, that will come later.
The editor told me that many of his classmates then will soon be gone, and I secretly worry if that meant the loss of a generation who had a strong grasp of the English language. I seriously doubt much of that has been passed on down to the later generations because based on my very general sweeping observation, teenagers nowadays are so used to using sms-msn language, I'm not even sure they can form a sentence to show the difference between active and passive voice.
Maybe the whole education system here needs an overhaul. And because we've already had generations of teachers who graduated without a good foundation of the language, the MOE should invest in bringing in language experts to train all teachers, or send them overseas for attachment. Because with a good command of the English language, it becomes easier to understand even Physics questions and Math problem sums. And when this batch of children eventually step into the society, not only will they be equipped with adequate writing skills, they will not have problems conversing with foreign clients and being understood clearly.
Then there is hope to eradicate the whole Singlish phenomenon.
Till then, we can only remain Uniquely Singapore.
posted by Me at 10:18 am
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