STI: Second chance at second language

Feb 28, 2004

Second chance at second language
by Sharon Loh

MY DAUGHTER was four and a half when her lao shi came to tell me one day that she was at the bottom of her class for Chinese.

There were perhaps six children in her group and she was the least proficient of the lot, he said. He suggested that we started her on private tuition once a week.

Oh boy, I thought. Here we go. The poor kid's only four and she's already condemned.

But I meekly went home and, I'm ashamed to say, entertained the idea overnight.

Fortunately I came to my senses the next day. Private tuition for a preschooler? What nonsense.

I knew lao shi had the best intentions.

He was concerned that she would find Primary 1 a struggle, as she wasn't getting any exposure to Mandarin at home. So why not hire a private tutor?

But I couldn't do it. The prospect of improving her Mandarin could not outweigh the drudgery of tuition, week in and week out.

As a child, I had more friends than not who were shunted from one tuition class to another. Every time they whined, I would thank the good lord for my parents, who never felt it necessary to subject me to the torture.

My peers agreed this was exceptionally progressive.

But lao shi kept nagging at me to do something for Mei Ern (Alexis' Chinese name).

So this year, I started her in a weekly class with seven or eight children at a language school in Holland Road. In fact, I enrolled Isabel too.

It seemed nice. The teachers were perky and enthusiastic and they appeared to pass the time telling stories, doing art and craft and singing songs.

Sure, there were tears the first few weeks. My husband was also ambivalent, having grown up in a culture which believed that children should be children and not bogged down with schoolwork.

Let's just try it for a while, I pleaded. If you don't like it, we can stop.

Finally I raised the spectre of Primary 1 each time the kids protested and insisted they go. And the truth was, they confessed they actually enjoyed the classes once they were inside.

The Primary 1 threat wasn't just an excuse though. I wouldn't be putting them through this if it weren't for that bogeyman. Even now I am prepared to pull them out if they start hating it. Why start off on the wrong foot?

Last week, there was a report of a survey which found that the use of some English to aid Mandarin education at some schools had been a real confidence booster for the children.

In this bilingual approach, teachers and pupils are allowed to lapse into English during Chinese classes when they have to. It was introduced to make second language learning less arduous for children from English-speaking homes.

Almost half of all Primary 1 pupils now speak English at home, compared with 40 per cent five years ago, while the number of Chinese-speaking homes has declined from a peak of 69 per cent in 1989 to 50 per cent today.

The method, of course, created an uproar among some members of the Chinese community, who felt there was something inherently wrong in using one language to teach another.

The purists may have a point, but the trade off must surely be worth it, if the survey was right. It found that children began to relax and enjoy their second language classes more when they felt less intimidated.

I went to a mission school with a rock-solid foundation in English, but an equal reputation for being weak in second language.

Sadly, learning a second language was mostly a chore for me. I hated those dull and difficult lessons which centred so much around filial piety and patriotism.

So there was a terribly familiar ring when Alexis said one day that she 'hated Chinese'.

This was around the time that she was having difficulties with the language in school.

I, at least, could call it my mother tongue. My parents spoke Mandarin to each other, and we hung out with cousins who spoke very little English.

But for my children, Chinese is basically a foreign language and a challenging one at that.

Not wanting to overreact, I decided to give her time, and to trust her teacher.

Occasionally, we would play little games where they would 'coach' their foreign father in some Chinese vocabulary.

Today, she no longer complains about Chinese and will proudly read to me the words she's learnt. She has grown one year in physical age, and about 10 in confidence. That seems to have made the difference.

Of course, I think it's good for anyone to know a second language, for all sorts of reasons, including economic ones, and I wish now that I had been more motivated to work harder at mine.

But where I once worried about losing my roots, I have less and less of that anxiety the older that I - and I guess, Singapore - grow.

Being of mixed parentage and raised in such a cosmopolitan place, my kids have several cultures that they could claim. It's like globalisation has converged in their flesh and blood.

I know also that interest goes a long way in determining aptitude, even in adult life.

A school friend decided she had to improve her Chinese when she began work for a company with deep interests in China.

She enrolled in a Chinese university and immersed herself in the language for two years so that she could work efficiently in the country.

Recently, the company that she currently works for hosted some business associates from Shanghai. They looked all around their building of several hundred people, according to her, and decided that while they had Mandarin language speakers, she alone could speak the appropriate 'lingo' and the task fell to her.

I looked at my old friend, who had possibly the worst accent and least interest of all of us at school, and marvelled at what hard work and drive can achieve.

Maybe I will eat my words when they get to primary school, but what I can do for Alexis and Isabel is facilitate the chances for them to learn and not to kill their interest through over-zealous pushing.

The rest, really, is up to them.