SINGAPOREAN students' proficiency in Chinese, spoken and written, has been on the decline ever since the language was reduced to a single subject on the syllabus. Nowadays, schoolchildren not only speak broken Mandarin but also write corrupted Chinese.
Seldom mingling with students before, I used to know little about their poor Chinese except from what I read in the press. I did not realise how badly they are learning and using the language until I have worked as a relief teacher for the past few months.
Despite nearly a decade's practice in the spoken tongue, many secondary pupils are unable to say a complete sentence in good Mandarin. They have to adulterate a Chinese sentence with words taken from English and Malay.
They cannot read well, because many characters and words they have learnt before are deleted from their memory. Nor can they write fluently, being unable to put down on paper words they still can say.
Their compositions would make the reader helplessly sad—— sketchy and hollow, full of mis-written characters and misused words, and poor in organisation and paragraphing. The writer himself does not know what he is writing about, leaving the reader in a fog about what the written stuff means.
In my composition class, I would be turned into a talking dictionary or an interpreter for the students who struggle to express themselves. Each time I assigned them to write a piece, I had to supply so many characters and words that the blackboard would fill up with tips I chalked on it. Sometimes I wonder how they managed to pass the Chinese subject in primary school.
Yet, incredibly, some did get an A for the language in their PSLE！ Should this trend be allowed to continue, one can hardly imagine that the Chinese culture can still be passed down. It can become so deplorable that, in the future, Singapore will have to depend on new Chinese immigrants to do business with China.
It is true that the government, being aware of the students' plight, has been making efforts to curb the decline in Chinese. Yet, a language is not something that one can master quickly and easily. It takes a lot of practice in listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Regrettably, with the dominance of English as the medium of instruction in Singapore, and with the growing popularity and worship of everything Western as found particularly in movies, songs, magazines and the Internet, anything related to the Chinese language has been marginalised.
“Why should I learn Chinese？” protested a primary schoolboy. “My Dad and Mum don't know it at all, but they still make lots of money！”
What a great influence money has on language learning！
Not that I am over-pessimistic. So long as proficiency in Chinese is not so lucrative as that in English, and Chinese remains less important as a medium of instruction, it is by no means easy to stop the decline in the language or make Chinese publications read more widely.
華文劣勢不易扭轉(zhuǎn)
新加坡學(xué)生的華文華語水平,隨著華文成為學(xué)校的單一科目之后便每況愈下?，F(xiàn)代的學(xué)生不但華語講得支離破碎,連華文也寫得一團糟。從前筆者沒什么機會接觸學(xué)生,他們的中文水平低落也只是從報章上得知而已。但是近幾個月來,筆者轉(zhuǎn)行當(dāng)代課老師,才真正了解到新加坡學(xué)生的華文程度差到什么地步。
很多中學(xué)生講了十年八年的華語,仍無法以純正的華語講完整的一句話。一句話里頭總是摻雜了英語單詞或馬來語詞匯。閱讀能力也弱,好多曾經(jīng)學(xué)過的字詞都忘得一干二凈,而講得出來的字又寫不出來。
作文更是“慘不忍睹”,篇幅短、內(nèi)容空洞、錯字連篇、詞不達(dá)意、條理不清、段落不明,寫的人不知所云,看的人一頭霧水。每每上作文課時,筆者就成了學(xué)生的活字典、翻譯員。不是夸張,每次給學(xué)生寫作文,黑板總是寫滿字詞。有時真的很懷疑他們的小學(xué)華文是怎么及格的。
當(dāng)中有的還在小學(xué)會考中拿過A呢！真是不可思議！如果繼續(xù)這么下去,真不敢想象中華文化以后要如何傳承?？峙聦砀袊?jīng)貿(mào)往來還得靠移民到新加坡的中國人呢！
我國政府雖然意識到學(xué)生的華文水平日益低落,也想方設(shè)法補救,但是語文這東西,并不是一朝一夕就能夠掌握得好的。多聽、多講、多看、多寫,缺一不可。無奈我國的教學(xué)媒介語以英語為主,加上西風(fēng)東漸和人們的崇洋心態(tài),西方的電影、歌曲、雜志和網(wǎng)際網(wǎng)絡(luò)等在本地大受歡迎。相比之下,華文產(chǎn)物只有靠邊站的份兒！
“我為什么要學(xué)中文？我爸爸、媽媽不懂中文,還不是賺大錢！”這是出自一個小四學(xué)生的口?？梢娊?jīng)濟利益對學(xué)習(xí)語文的影響有多大！
不是筆者過于悲觀,在華文的經(jīng)濟地位無法與英文并駕齊驅(qū),以及教學(xué)媒介語無法中英并重的情況下,要扭轉(zhuǎn)華文的低落水平和華文刊物少人問津的劣勢,談何容易。
Seldom mingling with students before, I used to know little about their poor Chinese except from what I read in the press. I did not realise how badly they are learning and using the language until I have worked as a relief teacher for the past few months.
Despite nearly a decade's practice in the spoken tongue, many secondary pupils are unable to say a complete sentence in good Mandarin. They have to adulterate a Chinese sentence with words taken from English and Malay.
They cannot read well, because many characters and words they have learnt before are deleted from their memory. Nor can they write fluently, being unable to put down on paper words they still can say.
Their compositions would make the reader helplessly sad—— sketchy and hollow, full of mis-written characters and misused words, and poor in organisation and paragraphing. The writer himself does not know what he is writing about, leaving the reader in a fog about what the written stuff means.
In my composition class, I would be turned into a talking dictionary or an interpreter for the students who struggle to express themselves. Each time I assigned them to write a piece, I had to supply so many characters and words that the blackboard would fill up with tips I chalked on it. Sometimes I wonder how they managed to pass the Chinese subject in primary school.
Yet, incredibly, some did get an A for the language in their PSLE！ Should this trend be allowed to continue, one can hardly imagine that the Chinese culture can still be passed down. It can become so deplorable that, in the future, Singapore will have to depend on new Chinese immigrants to do business with China.
It is true that the government, being aware of the students' plight, has been making efforts to curb the decline in Chinese. Yet, a language is not something that one can master quickly and easily. It takes a lot of practice in listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Regrettably, with the dominance of English as the medium of instruction in Singapore, and with the growing popularity and worship of everything Western as found particularly in movies, songs, magazines and the Internet, anything related to the Chinese language has been marginalised.
“Why should I learn Chinese？” protested a primary schoolboy. “My Dad and Mum don't know it at all, but they still make lots of money！”
What a great influence money has on language learning！
Not that I am over-pessimistic. So long as proficiency in Chinese is not so lucrative as that in English, and Chinese remains less important as a medium of instruction, it is by no means easy to stop the decline in the language or make Chinese publications read more widely.
華文劣勢不易扭轉(zhuǎn)
新加坡學(xué)生的華文華語水平,隨著華文成為學(xué)校的單一科目之后便每況愈下?，F(xiàn)代的學(xué)生不但華語講得支離破碎,連華文也寫得一團糟。從前筆者沒什么機會接觸學(xué)生,他們的中文水平低落也只是從報章上得知而已。但是近幾個月來,筆者轉(zhuǎn)行當(dāng)代課老師,才真正了解到新加坡學(xué)生的華文程度差到什么地步。
很多中學(xué)生講了十年八年的華語,仍無法以純正的華語講完整的一句話。一句話里頭總是摻雜了英語單詞或馬來語詞匯。閱讀能力也弱,好多曾經(jīng)學(xué)過的字詞都忘得一干二凈,而講得出來的字又寫不出來。
作文更是“慘不忍睹”,篇幅短、內(nèi)容空洞、錯字連篇、詞不達(dá)意、條理不清、段落不明,寫的人不知所云,看的人一頭霧水。每每上作文課時,筆者就成了學(xué)生的活字典、翻譯員。不是夸張,每次給學(xué)生寫作文,黑板總是寫滿字詞。有時真的很懷疑他們的小學(xué)華文是怎么及格的。
當(dāng)中有的還在小學(xué)會考中拿過A呢！真是不可思議！如果繼續(xù)這么下去,真不敢想象中華文化以后要如何傳承?？峙聦砀袊?jīng)貿(mào)往來還得靠移民到新加坡的中國人呢！
我國政府雖然意識到學(xué)生的華文水平日益低落,也想方設(shè)法補救,但是語文這東西,并不是一朝一夕就能夠掌握得好的。多聽、多講、多看、多寫,缺一不可。無奈我國的教學(xué)媒介語以英語為主,加上西風(fēng)東漸和人們的崇洋心態(tài),西方的電影、歌曲、雜志和網(wǎng)際網(wǎng)絡(luò)等在本地大受歡迎。相比之下,華文產(chǎn)物只有靠邊站的份兒！
“我為什么要學(xué)中文？我爸爸、媽媽不懂中文,還不是賺大錢！”這是出自一個小四學(xué)生的口?？梢娊?jīng)濟利益對學(xué)習(xí)語文的影響有多大！
不是筆者過于悲觀,在華文的經(jīng)濟地位無法與英文并駕齊驅(qū),以及教學(xué)媒介語無法中英并重的情況下,要扭轉(zhuǎn)華文的低落水平和華文刊物少人問津的劣勢,談何容易。