why chinese laugauge is lousy in singapore.
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intro?Originally posted by men_@_arms:No i never went for any class there, only went for the open houses and course intro lectures, i am in your army remember? Anyway, what i meant was.. the NUS version of NTU's china studies thing.. same thing, the intro the lecturers gave was in English, even though it was for a Chinese course. I don't know what exactly the course was called.
Most of you are Chinese, how do you feel about your language Mandarin in Sg? DOes the political might/influence of China influence your perceptions/esteem about your own culture and language???
got this thing during the open house?
wat did they say?
and hor, wat is "NUS version of NTU's china studies thing"??? -
singapore chinese is not good. whatever study in secondary school (high chinese) already been taught in primary school or 1st year secondary school in m'sia. this is the fact!Originally posted by men_@_arms:No i never went for any class there, only went for the open houses and course intro lectures, i am in your army remember? Anyway, what i meant was.. the NUS version of NTU's china studies thing.. same thing, the intro the lecturers gave was in English, even though it was for a Chinese course. I don't know what exactly the course was called.
Most of you are Chinese, how do you feel about your language Mandarin in Sg? DOes the political might/influence of China influence your perceptions/esteem about your own culture and language??? -
I agree Singaporeans' Chinese language is not good. Both Chinese and English were my first languages when I attended primary & sec school in Singapore. Also, we spoke Chinese Mandarin and a little bit of dialect at home, so my Chinese was good. I am glad my parents sent me to a bilingual school because when I first came to the US, I had roommates from Taiwan, HK, M'sia, etc. and I didn't have problem communicating with them.
Some of my Taiwanese friends used to joke around and said Singaporeans' and M'sians' command of the Chinese language was poor. A lot of Taiwanese and HK people whom I met thought I was from Taiwan because I spoke clear Mandarin (with Taiwanese accent I picked up from my roommate and friends). My "mean" roommate even laughed at me when she saw me writing short-form Chinese characters as they use the traditional long-form one. I told her I might only write the short-form but I could read both the long- and the short- form.
When I came here, I was forced to speak either ALL English or ALL Mandarin. No mixed languages. Now I am teaching myself other east asian languages and I am glad I am procifient in Chinese as it really helps me learn the other languages more quickly.
I remember my mother was worried that my brother's Chinese was not good enough, so she made him take Chinese literature class when he was sec 3 or 4. -
i believe most of my friends have no problme in communicating in chinese. However, what i meant is like proverb... i'm glad that my chinese is good due to conservative family. I can read technical article e.g. physics, chemical in chinese.Originally posted by Shooting Star:I agree Singaporeans' Chinese language is not good. Both Chinese and English were my first languages when I attended primary & sec school in Singapore. Also, we spoke Chinese Mandarin and a little bit of dialect at home, so my Chinese was good. I am glad my parents sent me to a bilingual school because when I first came to the US, I had roommates from Taiwan, HK, M'sia, etc. and I didn't have problem communicating with them.
Some of my Taiwanese friends used to joke around and said Singaporeans' and M'sians' command of the Chinese language was poor. A lot of Taiwanese and HK people whom I met thought I was from Taiwan because I spoke clear Mandarin (with Taiwanese accent I picked up from my roommate and friends). My "mean" roommate even laughed at me when she saw me writing short-form Chinese characters as they use the traditional long-form one. I told her I might only write the short-form but I could read both the long- and the short- form.
When I came here, I was forced to speak either ALL English or ALL Mandarin. No mixed languages. Now I am teaching myself other east asian languages and I am glad I am procifient in Chinese as it really helps me learn the other languages more quickly.
I remember my mother was worried that my brother's Chinese was not good enough, so she made him take Chinese literature class when he was sec 3 or 4.
however, i realized the singapore chinese problem when i had 2 consultants from china. When they had casual talk with my singaporean collegues, our singaporean don't understand and complain their chinese very 'chim'. But for me, the words/proverbs used by them are considered to be commonly used in taiwan/china.
i think that singapore must catch up... parents should not be proud that their kids can speak good english. In current global village, multi-ligual kids will fare better than kids who only know English. -
had my primary and secondary school education in the 1990s - 2001.
scored A in Chinese ( not higher chinese) subject every year and im quite contented with how much chinese info we got to put into head to get almost 100 score in tests and exams. wat i did were reading newspaper Lian He Zao Bao often, watching Ch 8 News every evening, practise writing the chinese characters whenever a test comes up and memorising the chinese vocab handbooks.
i would say during my time ( those 10 odd years ) the chinese syllabus seems quite sufficient already, enough for me to absorb. if the MOE adds in more vocab words, proverbs / poems into the syllabus.. my 'normal' size brain wld tear apart.
i guess many singaporeans dont emphasize the importance of Mandarin/Chinese is partly due to the fact that all the subjects, except our mother tongue are written in english. If a student doesnt put more effort in the english subject, how the hell can he understand the english in the textbooks of other subjects eg science, or score in mathematics exam if he
dont understand the word problem?
hm.. continue later -
Actually i think the Mandarin's future is not that bright.Becoz English got only 26 letters,n they can combine with each others to form a new words.What u have to do is just to memorize the spelling.Whereas Chinese languages is very......"illusive'......i cant find a word to descibe it......But overall,i think Chinese language is harder than English as a whole.And also,different chinese characters got their own pronunciation,and some pronunciation are very weird.
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tts the essence and beauty of the language and culture.......Originally posted by drawer:Actually i think the Mandarin's future is not that bright.Becoz English got only 26 letters,n they can combine with each others to form a new words.What u have to do is just to memorize the spelling.Whereas Chinese languages is very......"illusive'......i cant find a word to descibe it......But overall,i think Chinese language is harder than English as a whole.And also,different chinese characters got their own pronunciation,and some pronunciation are very weird.
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i agree.
it would be more effective to be proficient in multiple languages.. like mandarin for us. but there is simply no motivation for student to master their mandarin, and the only reason why we concentrate on english are to understand the lessons taught in school. and for mandarin, for bowing down to china's economical influence. or at least thats the impression, its not even a cultural thing you know. they may say oh its for the culture of chinese in singapore, or to create such an asian identity, etc etc.
its just not going into the local student's mind, all they want to do is to pass their bloody tests and play neopets. who gives a damm about the culture as a whole.
ive been through this before, i can't exactly speak fluent english nor converse well in mandarin. i used to hate chinese, its so hard and it symbolises my constant failures in school. its like.. oh.. chinese.. sure fail one. forget it, i'll skip today's class. and my other subjest follows. even english, i only studied because i needed to pass my english exams during o lvls. you think i LOVE the english language? no way, tell em red coats to go home.
ill live, but its also true im neither proficient in both to being le natural. so i ended up mixing here and there and nowhere in between. unless there is some reason that i feel important to concentrate on one language like a speech or whatsoever.
its a fact, im sort of a product of that failed education system. sort of because i know what is wrong with me, and ill try to improve.. somehow. -
Well, I've been studying mandarin all my life and my standard currently sucks. Though it used to be very good when i was younger. My mum taught me and we conversed, I spent lots of time with my Chinese family in Sg and Jakarta. And studying was easier because we read lots of books in classes, we memorized the strokes and the han yu pin yin sounds of the characters. Through basic memorization and usage in life, i spoke it.Originally posted by Ito_^:i agree.
it would be more effective to be proficient in multiple languages.. like mandarin for us. but there is simply no motivation for student to master their mandarin, and the only reason why we concentrate on english are to understand the lessons taught in school. and for mandarin, for bowing down to china's economical influence. or at least thats the impression, its not even a cultural thing you know. they may say oh its for the culture of chinese in singapore, or to create such an asian identity, etc etc.
its just not going into the local student's mind, all they want to do is to pass their bloody tests and play neopets. who gives a damm about the culture as a whole.
ive been through this before, i can't exactly speak fluent english nor converse well in mandarin. i used to hate chinese, its so hard and it symbolises my constant failures in school. its like.. oh.. chinese.. sure fail one. forget it, i'll skip today's class. and my other subjest follows. even english, i only studied because i needed to pass my english exams during o lvls. you think i LOVE the english language? no way, tell em red coats to go home.
ill live, but its also true im neither proficient in both to being le natural. so i ended up mixing here and there and nowhere in between. unless there is some reason that i feel important to concentrate on one language like a speech or whatsoever.
its a fact, im sort of a product of that failed education system. sort of because i know what is wrong with me, and ill try to improve.. somehow.
In secondary school and JC I lost interest because of the way it was being taught in schools, kind of like what Ito_^: said about just passing tests. The teachers never bugged you to do better than a C6 as long as "you pass can oredi". All the teachers did was give you lists of Mandarin vocab (cheng Yu and Han Zi) and 4-8 letter worded phrases with cool hidden meanings (cheng yu), and they expected you to memorise them without explaining to you how to use such words to begin with. Loud reading was never encouraged nor were class discussions in mandarin. Borrowing books was a "protocol" the teachers got us to do mechanically, regardless of what we read, as long as we could submit a 50/100 passing book report, they were glad.
My only motivations to learn mandarin in high school was at first to integrate myself with local pp, who were mostly Chinese. But with me there was always the racial barrier and narrow mindedness of most locals to commune with different ppl.. So i guess i lost heart, and i said "fcuk attempting to learn it".
Now my motivation to learn it is simple: It's an asset rofl (YEs i ripped that out from an advert). And also because it is a challenge, just like reading and understanding the MADNESS of shakespearen language was for me.