By Goh Chin Lian
USING English to teach Chinese has proven to be effective for children from predominantly English-speaking homes.
So, teachers should not be hung up on whether it is taboo to use a mix of English and Chinese for these children, Education Minister Ng Eng Hen said on Saturday.
He also revealed that a task force is due to make proposals soon on how this group of children can be taught the language.
'We think we've to make certain significant changes,' he told reporters after a conference on dyslexia, adding that parents would be given ample notice of the changes.
As for worries that Chinese standards would slip, Dr Ng pointed out that the education system allows children who are able to pursue the language at a higher level to do so.
'It's not that you have one method that you can teach the whole population,' he said, suggesting different strokes for different folks.
Read the full story in The Sunday Times.
Only "genius" and "professor" would be able to teach both languages at the same time.
Just desperate to enter China market segment - money, money, money - this is a money world.
Totally speechless.
Jiang hua yu, jiang hua yu...
I was totally aghast when I read the news. Why don't they use Mother Tongue to teach English? There are also students who are proficient in their Mother Tongue yet struggle with English Language. I just thought that EL lessons should be pure EL and MT lessons be just confined to using our own MT. At the very least, respect the language by itself. The students may grow up thinking it's okay to mix speaking English with MT or worse still, replace MT words that they are unsure of in the exams with EL words.
Originally posted by Audi:I was totally aghast when I read the news. Why don't they use Mother Tongue to teach English? There are also students who are proficient in their Mother Tongue yet struggle with English Language. I just thought that EL lessons should be pure EL and MT lessons be just confined to using our own MT. At the very least, respect the language by itself. The students may grow up thinking it's okay to mix speaking English with MT or worse still, replace MT words that they are unsure of in the exams with EL words.
Nt exactly a bad thing.
My mum last time used chinese to teach me ang moh so that i could comprehen ang moh better.
Last time i tried using ang moh to teach chinese to my peers, and to a certain extend it works.
I guess it is all about how are u going to teach it.