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New emphasis will help shift focus from passing tests to making language relevant to daily life
By Amelia Tan
SCHOOLS would have failed in their jobs if after 10 years of mother tongue language lessons, students are put off from actually using the language.

Their focus will need to shift from teaching students to pass a test, to getting them to use and appreciate the language, suggested Education Minister Ng Eng Hen at Ngee Ann Polytechnic on Thursday, when he addressed teachers at their annual work plan seminar.

'Put simply, we want our students, after all the effort in learning mother tongue languages for 10 years or so, to use it and better still, read the newspapers and books in their mother tongue languages because they have cultivated an interest,' he said.

A change in teaching methods is needed to make this happen because students have limited exposure to their mother tongue languages at home, now that more homes use English.

Mother tongue lessons in primary schools take up about an hour a day, or 20 per cent, of curriculum time. At home, 70 per cent of those aged between seven and 14 spend an average of half an hour to two hours surfing Internet websites which are mostly in English.

Even the profile of mother tongue language teachers has evolved as more come from bilingual backgrounds. Currently, 70 per cent of local Chinese-language teachers learnt English as a first language, up from 27 per cent in 2000, noted Dr Ng.

He related a conversation with a parent to illustrate the impact of Singapore's evolving language environment. The 40-year-old man told Dr Ng that he grew up in a Mandarin-speaking environment and studied in a school where his own father was a Chinese-language teacher.

As a result, he continues using Mandarin daily in conversations with his wife and reads Chinese-language newspapers, books and the classics. But somehow his interest in the Chinese language has not been passed on to his five-year-old son, who does not like using the language.

The father suggested to Dr Ng that mother tongue languages be taught in a way that is both fun and relevant to daily life, in order to interest youngsters.

Dr Ng asked if such an approach would upset his son's grandfather. 'He replied honestly, that what mattered to him was that his son would learn to use the language and like it,' said Dr Ng.