Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew says the way in which Mandarin is taught in schools here is wrong.
Speaking at the official opening of the Singapore Centre for Chinese
Language, Mr Lee says the government has to change the way in which
Mandarin is taught in school.
And he says making it fun, is the way to go.
Claire Huang reports.
Capture the interest of the children.
This is Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's advice to all Chinese language teachers.
During the half hour speech, he recounted his insistence on bilingualism in the earlier years.
Mr Lee said it was this insistence that caused generations of students to be put off by the language.
"Any language in the world began with speaking and listening
and we started the wrong way. We insisted on "ting xie, me xie"
(memorising paragraphs of text). Madness! We had teachers teaching in
completely Chinese schools and they didn't want to use any English to
teach English-speaking children Chinese! Turned them off completely."
Mr Lee added that he's come to realize no one can master two languages at the same level.
He also said that languages are best learnt in a person's childhood.
Admitting candidly that he started on the wrong premise, Mr Lee said he's now trying to set things right.
And the right way to do it is to capture the interest of children.
"Use IT, use drama, use every possible method to capture the
interest of the children, and it doesn't matter what level they reach,
they will like the language, it's fun, and later on in life, they'd use
it."
The Singapore Centre for Chinese Language was set up in February to train Chinese language teachers.
It also includes research on how to make the language more appealing to an English-speaking audience.
And now, it will work with four local and overseas institutions to
offer degree programmes in teaching methods and curriculum design.
--938Live