That "English" topic

The dismal state of English seems to have finally prompted the government to take action. But what did they decide to do? Hire native English speakers to teach the students!

This has been all the furore in the Today papers. I’m not sure about the Straits Times forum pages, but in the you can read just a few of the letters here from the Todayonline webbie.

If anything, these native English speakers should teach the English teachers. Similar to one of the letters that appeared today, my story was that I grew up in an English speaking environment. My Chinese was very very jialat. It took a radio, 93.3FM and people like Jimmy Lin to make me pass my PSLE with an A.

Still, I remember that when I was young, I was taught how to pronounce individual letters. The sounds they made, and so no matter what word I saw, I would be able to string it together and get it right most of the time.

My parents listened to English oldies, I was sung nursery rhymes and songs to sleep. I was read English storybooks, and later developed in interest to read myself.

There was also Sesame Street and other cartoons that helped reinforce the language. It gave me material to talk to my parents about and so I could use the language. I don’t remember much about school, but I believe back then, the basics were taught such that at least everyone would have a good foundation – and not go straight into writing.

My English was never the best, but it was definitely better than average. I’m talking about grammatically. Don’t ask me about past present tenses or nouns - to me they’re just words in different forms. What I have is a command for English that allows me to comprehend, correct and converse. At least that’s what I think.

Definitely better than my Chinese which is limited to the karaoke room.

The English teachers now need to build a strong foundation in students. Once you have a really strong understanding of the basics, everything will build up on its own. Basic pronunciation from how each letter makes different sounds, the appropriate use of past and present tenses, and the formation of sentences.

No point building a vocabulary when you cannot string the words together coherently.
No point memorising whether a noun or verb comes first because it makes the learning rigid.

Little kiki’s been watching so much of cartoon network. Too much goes on on that channel. For commercials they sometimes have kiddy MTVs. That just takes the attention off the cartoon they are actually showing. The cartoons themselves have too many camera shots in one short scene. This promotes a short attention span too. (Mass Comm teach one.)

He doesn’t have the environment to practice and English we try to make him learn. He doesn’t watch more educational yet fun programmes like Sesame Street.

Once upon a time, my parents would bring us to listen to storytelling sessions at bookstores. These were free of charge.

Then there was the more expensive form of kids entertainment provided by Act3 which exposed me to stage arts. Fun and educational.

I was also privileged to be sent for a series night classes that was held in my neighbourhood primary school where they had specialised teachers give Spoken English classes. I never knew how much they cost, but I think they were subsidised. They taught us simply through games, reading, and correcting us when we made any mistakes. It was extremely fun and I looked forward to the classes every week.

Granted spoken and written English may not be entirely be the same, just as how the written language can have the informal and formal styles, but at least the foundation is laid down for tweaks here and there which would not damage the grammatical structure.

My parents liked to watch shows such as “Mind Your Language”, where in Singapore, they did a rip-off version on channel 8 – the one where Hossan Leong does that ‘W’ sign with his fingers and goes “WHATevaaaaa”.

Like what people have said about Singlish, there’s a certain form to it. You do not just put a “lah” behind every sentence and say it is proper Singlish. There is a certain structure we’ve managed to learn innately. English should be learnt something like that – where we use the language extensively (as we do now) but in the correct way. So much incorrect English surrounds us.

I remember I stopped reading the magazines Teens and Teenage precisely for this reason. I landed up editing their articles because of all the bad English I found. Trusted publications need to be more aware of the impact they can have on others, not only their content but other latent effects it can have as well.

Teachers and parents need to be fully aware of their impact whenever they use the language incorrectly. Finger pointing responsibility won’t get anywhere. Both parties need to make a conscious effort to get the kids back on track.

I say, the home is where it all starts. From young the kid should be conditioned to pick up the language. Regardless of language, the foundation is always built at home. When the child starts going to school, like someone suggested in the papers today, the child should be taught the very basics. Not every child grew up with the knowledge of the language being taught. This way at least everyone can get the basics right.

Once that is set, everything will fall into place automatically. Think about this like Maths and Science. Sure, I can’t say much about science since I suck at it, but it’s precisely because I didn’t grasp the fundamentals. For maths, you just need to know how the basics work. After that, no matter how twisted the question is, you’ll be able to solve it by applying the correct formula in its correct form.

There’re rules in every field. They should be learnt alongside application. No use learning the rules by memory because you won’t be able to apply them practically.