Bi-lingualism at school a mistake ?
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xuanting:
The strange thing is that if you play me a piece of music or ask me to sight-sing, I won't be able to reproduce anything close to resemblance. However, if you teach me a new word or phrase in a different language, I'll get it within a few tries. (But I'm bad at accents though.)schellen:
Hmm...if language learning is like learning to sing and my DH, sashimi, says that he learns cos he has a good ear....what does that make me? I speak English, Mandarin and Japanese, and very broken Hokkien and Cantonese. However, I am tone deaf.
So I'm wondering....how come I can do relatively well or top the class? :?
schellen, i think the singing comes in with the spoken part. -
skunk:
Ummm, that means that I have the genes, exposure and don't mind writing pages of Chinese characters to perfection (not so true, I feel like banging the wall when I had to write the characters hundreds of times the teachers demand in those days, and re-write Teng Qing for composition corrections :stupid: )... BUT I think it was my love and passion for the Chinese language and literature which were the KEY to be able to survive it all through the BILINGUAL tunnel.
i think it's more than that. I know of many ppl who grew up in Mandarin-speaking homes, watch Mandarin shows, speak Mandarin everyday, yet they fail their Chinese.....and English as well LOLall.in.one:
All languages are a use it or lose it thing.
So if you do not use it everyday, then eventually you will lose it
I do not use French on a daily basis, yet I routinely topped my French class, better than my classmate who had a French husband to practice with...
Language ability is mainly hereditary
WHY I love Chinese? It was my Chinese Teachers throughout my schooling years who inspired me. And truly, I can still remember the names of my Chinese teachers until today! :rahrah: -
Just wondering, how do you counter the negative effects of a language teacher so as to maintain a love for a particular language? Since it doesn’t look like the linguistic gene applies equally
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Frankly, I have no idea why I still love Chinese (score far better than English) even the drills were quite gruelling. Imagine we have to
memorise a whole book of proverbs (Cheng Yu), cannot remember if it were in the hundreds, including each
of their meaning, word by word. Maybe the teachers then were like the King who rules the world! hahaha. And we can only do as were told.
Perhaps it was the teacher's influence (their passion for the language
unknowingly permutated through to me) and the beauty of the language.
Somehow I only remembered my Good and Gentle teachers :love: as well as Good but Fierce teachers :!:, not the rest. The Good teachers are
the ones who can teach through actions (Shen1 Jiao4) on top of spoken words (Yan2 Jiao4). They will leave a life long impression on the kids. :celebrate:
(I also remember my Primary School English teacher fondly, just forgot their names liao! They really did a good job in laying a solid foundation for me) -
First of all, I want to say that bilingualism in Singapore has never been successful. I know many adults who went through our education system, but cannot listen, speak or read Mandarin properly. Note that MOE started teaching hanyu pinyin at P1 more than 30 years ago. Many adults also do not speak English very well. It is very very rare to find someone who is very good in both English and Chinese. Mainland Chinese and Taiwanese think our Mandarin is bad, and native English speakers cannot understand the way we speak English.
[quote]'I did not know how difficult it was for a child from an English-speaking home to learn Mandarin,' he said.
'If you are speaking English at home and you are taught Mandarin in Primary 1 by Chinese teachers who teach Mandarin as it was taught in the former Chinese schools, by the direct method, using only Mandarin, you will soon lose interest because you do not understand what the teacher is saying. [/quote]I disagree. The government should examine how Berries teach Chinese and learn from them. At the ages of 3, 4 and 5 years old, kids only learn Chinese characters. By 6 years old, kids already know enough Chinese characters to be able read simple story books and write simple sentences. Best of all, almost all the kids I know enjoy their classes in Berries. The large majority of these kids come from English speaking families.
Hanyu Pinyin is only taught at K2 level at Berries, after the kids have learned to read many Chinese characters. This is the correct way of learning Chinese. I have always thought that it is not right to teach hanyu pinyin before learning to read the Chinese characters. It is not correct to assume that most kids learn well using phonetic techniques like hanyu pinyin. I believe that many kids learn equally well by shape recognition. We just have to start teaching them from as young as possible. -
Em:
Just wondering, how do you counter the negative effects of a language teacher so as to maintain a love for a particular language? Since it doesn't look like the linguistic gene applies equally
Get another teacher who can inject love into the language. I only started to 'like' chinese when I was in Poly & went to Thailand to do missionary work. The kids there spoke Mandarin as the founder taught them from young. I had to force myself to use Mandarin during my 1 month stay there. -
tamarind:
I have always thought that it is not right to teach hanyu pinyin before learning to read the Chinese characters. It is not correct to assume that most kids learn well using phonetic techniques like hanyu pinyin.
Hi there tamarind,
I am with you on the hanyu pinyin way of learning Chinese. I thought it's the wrong approach to teach Chinese too. During my time, we were taught Chinese characters at P1 and P2 and hanyu pinyin only came into play at P3. I thought that's a better way of learning Chinese. Learning hanyu pinyin before character-recognition is a mistake. -
HYPY is slowly getting less emphasis in primary edu now. P1 students only learn HYPY during the 1st 2 terms. After that, the emphasis shifts to character recognition. I undertstand it was not the case a few years back.
A new approach that some schools are offering is the bi-lingual method of teaching mandarin. In other words, the teacher uses English to explain some words, phrases etc. It’s a gentle introduction to a new language. It would benefit those students who are totally lost when thrown into the deep end, resulting in many hating the language. The amount of English is slowly reduced until it is not use altogether by P3. -
watmekiasu:
A new approach that some schools are offering is the bi-lingual method of teaching mandarin. In other words, the teacher uses English to explain some words, phrases etc. It's a gentle introduction to a new language. It would benefit those students who are totally lost when thrown into the deep end, resulting in many hating the language. The amount of English is slowly reduced until it is not use altogether by P3.
In Sec 1, my dd's Chinese teacher taught them to write the meaning of the difficult Chinese words/sentence, in their own ways. It can be in English or any kind of drawings, as long as it can make them understand the meaning of that difficult Chinese words/sentence. -
watmekiasu:
i disagree with this method, I think that immersing someone in the deep end is a better way to teach someone how to swim....at most drown only lor LOL
A new approach that some schools are offering is the bi-lingual method of teaching mandarin. In other words, the teacher uses English to explain some words, phrases etc. It's a gentle introduction to a new language. It would benefit those students who are totally lost when thrown into the deep end, resulting in many hating the language. The amount of English is slowly reduced until it is not use altogether by P3.
Kidding....just a personal preference
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