The English teaching debate continues

Ever since the government put the idea of employing native teachers to teach English in the pipeline, responses to it have been published in the newspapers. One gives a refreshing perspective to the usual responses of local teachers being just as good in it.

It makes people see that just as we look to China as the centre of Mandarin and employ teachers from there to teach Mandarin to our students, it's also all right to shift this perspective to the English world. I've been guilty of closing my mind to this equal perspective.

It also goes on to mention that standard Mandarin was advocated by the ban on dialect and so standard English should be similarly promoted by prohibiting Singlish. This is something I agree with. English is an international language and interaction with its speakers from other countries may be hindered, by each country's dialects, when they are included as part of communication. Accents are already difficult enough to get past in order to clearly comprehend what different speakers convey. This topic in itself is controversial. Dialects and accents give regional identity to the cultures but also adversely affect standard English.

Yet another response poses more questions to this prevalent topic. Is grammar pertinent to learning it? I did talk about this in an earlier entry. I think that the answer to this is affirmative. Without learning the proper grammar, how can we say that we've truly learnt English? We would then just be stringing words together without any coherence and the level of comprehension would be affected. Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunction, interjections and the like not only add more colour to language descriptions but more importantly, also form the building blocks of the language and its comprehension. Hence it is essential that they are taught though they may be rigorous and boring to absorb. It is not so much the meanings of such terms that should be imparted but the examples of such terms, since it is those that are used in the communication of language.

Is a language learnt better when used as the medium of instruction? Yes, language should be used as the medium of instruction, since oral fluency is part of mastering a language. It may be initially difficult for foreign students, as the medium of instruction back in their own countries may differ but they'll gradually get better in it with time.

Does the family environment affect the learning of a language? It definitely does. I am blessed with visionary parents who instilled the love for reading in me since I was young and encouraged me to pursue this liking in the form of a Hons degree in Lit. English fills almost every part of our house on a mostly daily basis as well.