;没有人规定钢琴应该要用手

It is not easy to say ‘clap your hands’ after hearing this armless man from Beijing play the piano.

These very words left me wondering Montessori’s words: “The hands are the intelligence of the mind.” With them, how else do we measure intelligence? By the spirit that causes the person to act.

Many expatriates who live outside their native environment can prove this theory to be true.  That you do not need a textbook or go to school to learn a foreign language, you just need to experience the language at the place where you work or travel. Young infants can speak by the age of 2 years old or earlier, well before they go to school to be taught to read. There are many ordinary people who will tell you they never went to school to study English but started to speak English in order to sell something, to serve somebody, or simply to communicate with people who only spoke English. Those who live in a multi-lingual community will also tell you the same thing abou their multi-lingual skills.

What these expats, young  infants and ordinary folks have in common is the the ‘surrender‘  factor.  They surrender themselves to the environment and allow themselves to be immersed in that language. They have inquiring minds and that in turn drive them to make connections with the language.

Here are some of my personal tips on how to learn a language naturally:

1. Study phrases in isolation without translating them after understanding its meaning.
2. Do not stop saying or using the same words you have learnt until they become as natural as your native language. You may only be saying Buenos Dias for months, but you will soon discover others will say Bien dia or Bueno tardes. The key is to seek familiarity with repetition. The more familiar you are with one or two words, the easier it is to notice new word combinations.
3. Listen once and use it often enough to discover the difference in sounds, intonations and way of pronouncing the words. Your goal is enjoy learning it. If repeating is boring, then you may have  a problem. How often do we say “I need to…” or “I want to…” or “I have to….” etc? We say them so regularly that we forget that they have become part of us.
4. Work with topics or subjects which you will definitely use in your conversations or dicussions on a daily basis. What is the point of learning words associated with driving when you don’t have to drive everyday or do not own a car?
5. Look for concrete objects around or near you, which you can point to and make connection between words and the objects. However,  I did try that method with my Arabic teacher once, and it was effective only when I had her to prompt me as we spoke. But as soon as she left my house, I totally forgot what I just used. The only way is to repeat step 3, 4, and 5 until my next lesson.
6. Live and let live. Mistakes are bound to surface when you attempt to string a few words on your own in a sentence. This may embarrass some adults but certainly not with young infants. In fact we are amused and entertained by their efforts to speak properly. Enjoy the journey and the progression from one phase to another overtime.
7. You can set targets but do not make deadlines. Enjoy the journey as the lessons unfold. When we learn naturally, the language should come to you. Of course, we can still seek help with others, refer to dictionaries, listen to the radio or read story books. Learning naturally doesn’t mean do nothing. It means you should feel comfortable to go about your normal activities even while you are learning something new.

The five good reasons:

1. We moved to a new apartment. The whole process took about 3 days but the lead up to the move, unpacking, rearranging and settling down have taken much longer. The waiting period after to completion is 6 months! Well we are finally in our new abode and I can now sit and write in peace, away from the main living room where I used to sit.

2. We went to Bali for our holidays. It was a short 4 days 3 nights trip. The highlight of the visit was definitely a tour of the Royal Palace called Puri Kaba Kaba which is said to have been built by a very renowned King  who owned the vast padi fields in that area. Puri Kaba Kaba is now home for the descendants of this royal family and we have been given royal treat during our visit with dances, food and a tour of the palace grounds.

3. The new school term began about 3 weeks ago. I have to play mum to my daughter and get her settled in her new school, new school uniform and books.  She cried after she returned home from school on her first day! “Teacher was very strict and was very angry with the kids.” “Oh dear.” I thought to myself. “Not a good way to start a new term, is it?” So I had to speak with the lead teacher (form teacher) and explained that she is a transfer student and is not expecting the welcome she got on her first day. All has gone well after speaking to the teacher, and she is now looking more relaxed and excited to be in school.

4. One of my siblings has to undergo a major operation, colonscopy. It happened on the day before my big  move . For those who do not know about the illness, let me tell you it is something you will have to deal with for a lifetime. When your intestine is perforated, it destroys the process of digestion. After surgery, you will still experience post-operative fever, inability to eat properly and so much pain from surgical wounds. It is worse than delivery by ceasarian birth; at least we (the mothers) can still eat and are expected to eat in order to breastfeed our babies. Your digestive system  is the tank that holds the oil which needs to start your engine. If your digestive system is messed up,, it is like having a broken oil tank, especially if it has leaked. Without lubricant or oil, machines cannot get used. If food is not consumed, the body cannot function. I ask for your prayers.

5. I have plantar fasciitis, a heel spur. It hurt so badly even when I sit down. So I am now on medication. The funny thing about this problem is, it stops hurting as soon as you start walking and blood starts to pump through the veins and muscles start to get used. But as soon as I try to get out of bed after laying down for hours sleeping through the night, the pain can be excruciating. Not a good way to welcome the morning, every morning. Sitting for long hours at the desk is also not good. So to help reduce the pain, I have to keep moving. If I keep moving, there is no way I can sit down and start writing. My solution? I start to exercise every morning, low impact workouts. Half an hour everyday on 6 different exercise stations. So far so good, I have managed to keep my weight down.

The Big Excuse?

The iphone apps. I am glued to my iphone (like the big mother elephant is to the little baby elephant) as it is the easiest device I can take with me around the house when I am sitting, eating or even just laying down in bed getting ready to sleep. And there is one particular app that keeps me away from opening my laptop. Wordwithfriends. The free version , even with the ads, offer so much entertainment for the mind, especially for those who love word games. I don’t know about you, but I have at least 3 iphone apps that give me word for word entertainment: Wordwithfriends, Scramble2 and Word Warp.

You’ve heard me. I enjoy what I do, blogging on childhoodspeech. But it has taken a back seat for the past few weeks. There are bigger tasks I have to take care of. It seems that I am hooked on to the iphone, but it is all for the good. I am pleased that I have completed my tasks. Am I ready now to update my blog. What do you reckon? I  completed this post in less than 10 minutes. And I used penzu for my draft too!

1. a good internet connection
2. headset with speaker and
3. a language partner

For this session, we are going to use a web based processor called the EtherPad . As Etherpad does not require prior signing up, you can invite as many people as you like to your public pad. My language partner was a native Beijing Chinese who happened to have contacted me to help him with his English Pronunciation.

My entries were highlighted in beige and his entries were in blue. It worked very much like a normal wordprocessing application except that we could both alter data simultaneously just as if we were in the same meeting room using a single whiteboard.

A chatroom widget can be seen on the right side which allows the other participants to raise questions or discuss on the side.

After the session closes, the participants can playback, fast forward or rewind the session to recap using a ‘Time Slider’ icon found at the menu bar. The session is also downloadable as HTML, public text, document or pdf format.

If you get disconnected, all you have to do is reenter the room again. It happened several times to my partner during our  session but he said it was due to his internet connection.

This site was introduced by Kwan Tuck Soon. Thank you for sharing.

It has since been announced by the Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr. Lee Hsien Loong, that there will not be any change in the weighting system. [2]

So why bring this issue of weighting to the table in the first place? At the outset, it is not Mother Tongue that gives the child a head start in his studies. We all know that. When a student fails his English language examination, he is doomed for the rest of his life at school. He can be great at Mathematics and Science subjects, but he gets nowhere near the next level without a pass in his English language; scoring D7 in English is worse than B4 in Mother Tongue. If you fail English, you fail as a student. If you fail your Mother Tongue Language, the system automatically kicks you out and into the less advanced group of students. Your child sees his grades and in the end he says, ‘I don’t like this subject?’. Any teacher will tell you, if you cannot win the hearts of the child to learn, you will never win their minds to learn it.

The working parents are also faced with the challenge to communicate only in English. The letters from the bank, bills and receipts are all printed in English. If you travel to Little India, Geylang Serai, Chinatown or Orchard Road on the train, passenger display screens in the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) stations are all written in English. When we tap the EZlink cards on those machines which seem to understand English, our balance is shown in numbers. Thanks for the invention of symbols and numerals, those who cannot read English is spared of the embarrassment of not understanding any English because the mind understands X means no entry or exit and a tick “✓” in green means ‘go or you are ok to go. A passenger who cannot read English is saved by just following others who go through the same route and listening to the friendly voices piping through public address systems speaking in four languages.

“Next station, Bishan Interchange. Passengers who are continuing their journey on the circle line please alight and transfer to Platform…..” If you do not understand the rest of the English used, at least you would have heard the name Bishan interchange. If it is your stop, you know you have to alight. Besides there are so many other passengers onboard you can turn to get directions from.

“对不起! Excuse me Miss ah. This one Orchard Lud?” (Singlish)

“Excuse me Miss. Is this Orchard Road Station?” (English)

“How come so long never come? Wait here for so long alleidy.” (Singlish)

“How come the bus is taking so long to arrive? I have waiting here for a long time already.” (English)

Highlighting the fact many Singaporeans speak Singlish (Singapore English) only results in young parents to keep encouraging their children to speak “better English” at home. Mother Tongue takes second place because it is not needed for them to cope with problem sums in Mathematics and Science experiments.

Children bring home lots of homework from school. It is so regular and constant that they cannot help but keep thinking only in English. Their jobs as students are done only when homework is finished. Children stay up every night finishing homework and preparing for the examinations at very young age, when they ought to be getting sleep. More homework means more time thinking in English. Parents are so anxious with their kids’ performance at school that they engage private tutors or send their kids to tuition centers, for English enrichment programmes. Again, more English is used.

Whenever Mother Tongue Language homework is brought back, it feels as if they have just fetched a distant relative from overseas at the airport.

Grandparents also start to join in the education process. When they take their grandkids to the playground, they too speak Singlish to their children. “If don’t speak English, dey don’t understand.”

Children learn very early at pre-school that of all the different languages spoken by people in Singapore, English is the most important.

Flashback: When Learning Was So Much Fun

When I was a kid, my neighbourhood friends do not speak English or Mandarin when we went out to play. together. We left our English at school. By interacting with other kids and their parents who do not speak English at home, we learn a few more words of Malay, Hokkien, Cantonese and Tamil. Our childhood is as colourful as the number of different languages we could speak and tease one another in.

Television, radio and the textbooks were our resources to get to know the English language better from home. Television programmes such as “Mind Your Language’, “Donny and Marie Show” and “The Brady Bunch” were great to watch because they showed native English actors and actresses. When the shows ended, we are back to speaking dialects and Mother Tongue with our parents and neighbours. We switched languages just as often as we transit from one activity to another. To get a storybook in English as a present is like receiving the Nintendo DS or Wii games.

At that time, my parents were already having issues with us speaking more English and Chinese (Mandarin and Hokkien) at home.  We did Mandarin! One could only imagine the frustration our parents felt when they had to deal with us in Malay. Thankfully, their spirits remained strong and they only spoke the language they know best, Malay. They left the teaching of these foreign languages to the others who know better.

What can we do to promote and encourage more people to speak in their Mother Tongue?

There can only be one answer. Start using the Mother Tongue more often and leave the English  to the schools and workplaces. Post your messages on Twitter, Facebook and on your mobile phones in your Mother Tongue. People from China post in Mandarin, people from India post in Hindi, people from Malaysia and Indonesia post in Bahasa Melayu and Indonesia respectively. So why won’t Singapore Malays, Chinese and Indians post in their respective Mother Tongue Languages?

When local Singaporeans post messages using their Mother Tongue, they make a mess of the language by typing in slangs, colloquial Singlish and acronyms.

“Cantik seh! Very de nice.”

“Wah! Where you got dat from? You come my house tonite sing want or not?”

Strangely enough, social networking is boosted because of such languages being used online. There is a sense of connection and belonging when you read your friends’ messages written in such a form. “From the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” Someone used to say this to me. That is so true with language. If you really need to make your point across, use the language that you are most comfortable with, not what people are most comfortable to listen to from you. At least if your language is broken, you still would have put your point across.

The wheel that spins to keep the social circle active is powered by the behaviour of the culture. It is what we do in groups. As individuals we are able to remove ourselves from behaving informally. Rather than writing in our Mother Tongue Langauges which we feel less confident in, we write in the English language which we have spent years studying and receiving certificates for passing it at schools.

Parents ought to encourage their children to continue speaking in their Mother Tongue Languages. In mixed marriages especially, it is important for the Asian spouse to uphold the roots of their native tongue by passing it down to their children at will. English is important but with language comes culture, and Asian culture is far too rich and remote to be described in just English language. There are many instances in Asian culture (food, fashion, style of doing things for business etc) that only Asian languages can be used to describe and explain.

[1] Google Results On This Topic : Mother Tongue Weighting in PSLE

[2]“Mother Tongue, the way forward”: Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong sketches out the Government’s thinking on the issue