I have been teaching, or tutoring Chinese for more than a decade. Sadly, most of my students are very reluctant in learning Chinese, or even hate it to the bones. Why was that so? I have been asking myself this question long enough, and I DO have some thoughts after SOME researches.
After independence, Singapore government gave English Language, Mandarin, Malay Language and Tamil Language equal official status, which it did helped in achieving racial harmony as it is the most important value the government had ever secured. But, as Singapore had grown in a phenomenally rate, it gains its “Four Asian Dragons” status in merely 20 years after its independence, some aspects had strengthened in the expenses of some other aspects, unfortunately, Chinese was one of them.
20 years ago, when the population of Singapore was only 60% of what we have now, there were still many Chinese who were capable of both speaking and writing Chinese language as their families were still communicating in Mandarin or dialects with them. People who grew up in a dialect-speaking family tends to have a better grade in Chinese than those who don’t.
That is the first line of defense in mother tongue teaching, the FAMILY. Students nowadays do not speak much mandarin with their parents, or even grandparents. The grandparents indeed have to speak with the grandchildren in the language of their choice. In my experiences, rarely there are parents who show concern about the child’s Chinese learning because it was only English and Mathematic which matters in terms of getting into a better school.
It was not wrong, somehow. Parents do concern about how good the school is to the child. According to a survey done within Asia countries in 2016, parents from Singapore were the most willing to spend vast among of money for the children’s’ tuition, Mathematics being the first priority, and English ranked the second. There was an unnamed interview on why don’t they send children for Chinese tuition, one Chinese parent answered, “What for? Chinese doesn’t matter in their O levels. I don’t care if he fails, anyway we don’t speak Chinese at home. I don’t see the use of Chinese in university.”
That’s the problem we are facing. Chinese is not just a language. It is a culture, it is life. NOT A ACADEMIC SUBJECT.
Second line of defense, GOVERNMENT. Under the Bilingual Policy, all students are educated in English as their first language. The Ministry of Education delivered the policy to students in Primary and Secondary schools, not only wanting them to master English as their first language, they also have to learn their Mother Tongue as a second language. Depending on their races, students are offered Mandarin, Malay or Tamil. The education system aims to create a workforce that is bi-literate in English and students’ mother tongue, however, despite the efforts of bilingual policy, there has been a significant shift from the use of Mandarin to English within the Chinese community.
The usage of Chinese became more and more drifted away in the society due to the exponential growth of Singapore, both internal and external, while usage of English had brought much conveniences. Although our government had emphasized on bilingual policy, the effect was not significant until the last 10 years, when China started to raise. The younger generations started to realize the importance of learning Chinese; however, it was still a logical choice because Mandarin enable them to do business in China.
Most of the time when I ask my students why they dislike Chinese, the answers are always “Chinese is difficult”, “Chinese characters are hard to memorize”, “Teacher was boring”, etc. Well, they are not totally in blame. Though MOE tried to train as many Chinese teachers as possible, demands are always higher than what we had anticipated, therefore MOE had to rely on Chinese natives to fill the seats. Chinese natives have extremely good standard of Chinese by nature, but undeniably, some of them have issues communicating with students effectively as they are not able to help the students to understand phrases or words when they enquire due to insufficient corresponding English vocabularies in the teachers’ own dictionaries.
Another key factor for low interest in Chinese learning was the quality of LEARNING MATERIALS. Singapore’s Chinese textbooks suffered a drop of quality over years, why? Because MOE had been adjusting the standard of the learning material in the hope of making more PASSES. Try comparing the cover of a secondary science textbook with a Chinese one, you will probably understand what I mean. Furthermore, MOE created CLB (Chinese Language Basic) for the weaker students for the same reason, which in one way or another, pulled down the Chinese national standard.
How many of us will choose to take the stairs to the hilltop, over a gentle incline, if we were being told that reaching the hilltop is actually not a must? That’s where we are now.
Lastly, PUBLIC MATERIALS. As plenty of local Chinese dislike their mother tongue mainly because of the reduced exposure, the interest in reading Chinese books therefore decreases. That leads to the decreasing stock in bookstores as bookstores will only stocks books that SELL. Less Chinese books to choose will results in less exposure, creating a bad-cycle.
In addition, Chinese popular culture does not acquire enough support from the locals, most of the local writers concentrate their creation based on high-standard pure literature, and that constrains the readers to a small circle. This may keep the good standard, but it will be pinned to a very niche market.
Chinese is the world’s most used language; it is a fact that that we shouldn’t ignore. We need to change, to act and to improvise. In order to improve Chinese learning in Singapore, the government, writers and publishers will need to work together. May our children have a better Chinese learning environment. 华文万岁！
