Bi-lingualism at school a mistake ?

[ankhlet.06013gmail.06013com]

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

[all.013398in.013398one]

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)

[tamarind]

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.

[mrswongtuition]

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.

[rains]

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.

[watmekiasu]

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.

[daisyt]

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.

[skunk]

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.

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

Kidding....just a personal preference

[schellen]

daisyt:

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.

That's what I did for my own notes when I had to learn lots of yanyu, chengyu, etc in JC. It helped that I had friends who were better in Chinese and they were mostly from RV so I think they had experience with such phrases before. Although I was from NH, I don't recall having to learn all that though, surprisingly.

[tamarind]

[quote]
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.[/quote]They are still teaching HYPY before character recognition which is still a mistake. Once kids start learning Chinese using the wrong methods, then it will be very difficult to make them love Chinese. The best way is start with simple character recognition from a very young age. Nowadays many parents are sending their kids to Berries, they know their methods work.

Regarding the use of English to explain Chinese, there are many kids who are from Chinese or Dialect speaking families in the HDB heartland and it will not work for them.

skunk:

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

I agree. The best way is to put the kids in a school in China where no one knows how to speak English I am seriously planning to do so.

rains:

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.

I hope MOE can seriously review their policies. I believe the number of Singaporeans who grow up loving Chinese is getting fewer through the years.

Insider:

PS: I seriously hate 'crutches' and this HYPY when taught before Chinese Characters are like crutches. Learning HYPY is more for the purpose of checking dictionary and not for the purpose of what it is being used now. MOE people - what kind of brain???

That's exactly what I used HYPY for, check dictionary. How many P1 kids are able to check dictionary ? Even if they can check dictionary, do they know what they are looking for ? There are so many Chinese words which are pronounced in exactly the same way. I don't know what to say about MOE people's brains I think they are only concerned with implementing \"methods\" which they think are correct, but they don't check the results which their \"methods\" are producing.