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

A metaphor, or commonly known as a figure of speech, is used as analogy of ideas and objects. It usually begins by transferring the same word into a new sentence, the sense of which changes with the subject matter. By itself, the meaning of the word remains unchanged but it somehow transforms itself when used metaphorically.

Here are some examples:

1. The security guards are working around the clock during the elections.

2. This is a waste of time and money.

3. You can count me in. You can count me out.

4. She fought for him.

5. Are you out of your mind?

An Elaboration

From the above examples, words are ‘transferred to other apparently unrelated contexts’ to give sense, amply and articulate the expression. Simply put, metaphors allow us to create fresh expressions without inventing any new words, because the meaning of these words like ‘fought (past tense of fight), in, out, time and clock’ have already been defined. The is analogous to Mandarin characters which cannot be changed by adding or subtracting strokes to modify tenses. The English word ‘want’ is present but ‘wanted’ is past by adding ‘ed’. In Mandarin 要 (‘yao’) can only mean ‘want’. To use 要 in the past tense, you need to add time words like, ‘昨天、’刚刚‘ for yesterday and just now respectively. The English words that are used in metaphors do not change in their meanings but the sense of which they are used will be modified.

1. The security personnels are working around the clock during the elections. (They are working the whole day during the election.)

2. This is a waste of time and money. (Time is now a valuable piece of material that is tangible and can be perceived as concrete. “You will save time if you take the taxi home.”)

3. You can count me in. You can count me out. (You can include me in or out of what you are activity.)

4. She fought for him. (She loved him and therefore would stand by his side in times of his difficulties.)

5. Are you out of your mind? (Are you crazy? Are you sure of what you are doing?)

As you can see, using words in the right places where they don’t apparently belong help people to smartly articulate and express themselves in ways that allow them to become creative and innovative with languages.

How To Start Using Words As Metaphors?

You need to know only a few words to start using them as metaphors. When using metaphors, you have to keep the words in the context of their original definitions before you can transfer them out to be used in other metaphorical sentences. The reason is, people can only make logical connection to their original meaning. Only then can the new sentences be understood completely. “She is feeling down.” means “She is disappointed or sad.” Down is associated to a condition which is negative; it is the opposite of ‘up’.

Uses Of Metaphors

Metaphors make it easy for people from different cultures to connect with one another. If we discuss using only one language, we have to speak in simple basic sentences unless we have assessed each other’s language ability. When we start to use metaphors, we lead people to connect with us culturally and draw them closer towards our inner thoughts. We open ourselves to them.

A: “How are things with you?”

B: “It seems things are looking up, the first quarter report shows we have made some profits.”

“Looking up” is associated with a condition of positive, the opposite of negative.

Metaphors help people to revise, remember and recall words that are dormant in their vocabulary bank. It is good exercise to work with the same word because when used as a metaphor, the raw meaning of the word remains the same but the sense of which the word is used is modified. It makes memory work more fun

If you do not know how to use metaphors, it does not mean you are less fluent at the language.

You do not have to be disappointed because you didn’t know, “I am feeling down” means “I am sad or disappointed.” Like we have explained at the beginning, a metaphor is a word that is used to modify the sense in which the sentence is used, the meaning of which is modified but not changed.

Competency is the key to understanding metaphors, whereas fluency is a requirement to begin the works at understanding them. You can still be fluent in a language without knowing how to use metaphors at all.

First you need to exercise, your mouth. Relax your muscles around and inside your mouth by rolling your tongue, pucker your lips (wrinkle them), and blowing air in and out through different parts of your bodies (lungs, diaphragm, sides of your ribs, back of shoulders). Exercise regularly like you would if you go to the gym to have a full body workout. Focus on the small muscles around and inside your mouth that help you produce sounds people can hear. Stand up comedians, singers, actors and newsreaders get tired not because they have to use their hands and legs when they perform. They can tire because of using the muscles that produce speech.

Secondly, every language has a set of vowel and consonant sounds or beginning and final sounds (in Mandarin). If you fail to plan ahead before you speak, it can be quite damaging to your speech skills. Keeping in mind the intonation and phonetic rules, you may have to pause several times in between words in a sentence to hear yourself speak. The alphabets (huruf in Arabic), are the most important and a good grasp of how the sounds of each alphabet is made is very crucial to developing your fluency in speech.

Thirdly, master how to produce blending sounds in a word. For instance, “black” will blend “b and l” and “c and k”. If you speak too fast, you may not have pronounced the ending sound ‘k’ correctly and it’ll sound like blag. In Mandarin, you can find only a few consonants that make the final sounds of characters. Words like “bang1″ 帮 (help) with “ng” as final, “er” 二，而，耳, and “shan” 山，闪 are fairly simple to pronounce but can be tricky when you start to use the intonation sounds (1,2,3 or 4).  Practise Translating Now. In Spanish, you may also encounter different ways to say the vowel ‘a’ in nada and cama, the first ‘a’ is longer and the second ‘a’ short and sharp. Whether you are trying to speak Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin or English, blending the sounds of alphabets in a word make your speech clearer.

Remember these 4 key points:
1. Exercise
2. Alphabets and the sounds of the alpabets
3. Blending sounds
4. Beginning and final sounds (consonant and vowel sounds)

The labels on your food packaging, the names of the ingredients, and the subtitles of DVD movies you recently bought from the store last week, all give you clues on where to find a foreign language in your environment. It is the way you use the information that will transform you to become bilingual. Notice that I have just used 3 different languages for the same term “katak di bawah tempurong”. The trick to becoming a bilingual person is to seize the moment when it comes.

Example: A politician goes out to meet people in a community, majority of whom can only speak Mandarin. After his short speech in English, he steps out to shake hands with a few folks. His handshake was responded with a simple smile and “Xie Xie”. What do you think this politician will do? If he wants to continue getting support, he must at least respond in the same language right? He needs to switch to the native language. He has learnt a few words in Mandarin including how to respond with a simple “You’re welcome.”. So he says, ‘不客气！

Tip: A bilingual person starts his journey from learning to respond to need for communication in a language other than his native tongue.

What is native tongue? A native language is characterised by its layman, rough, raw and impromptu speech. You can create different sounds for the same word in your native tongue and it always seems to sound right and correct. You make no effort to correct your accent because everyone else in your circle especially those at home knows exactly what you say even though it is a simple, ‘Good’ that sounds more like ‘gud’ with an ‘uh’ sound. Your intonation is wrong? So what! You are still Chinese. You can’t roll your tongue to say the word, “Mari” or “Come” in Malay? Who gives any notice? You still eat chillies and will always be Malay. Being native is your prerogative to make mistakes and still get away with it. It is not a question of performance.

Who is considered bilingual? Being bilingual is a gift but like any gift it has to be developed and nurtured. That is because a gift of speech uses the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain used for processing information for long term memory such as languages. Like kids, we use fewer words than what we really know or have heard. Sometimes, it takes only a word like ‘roti’ to trigger our memory of our experience eating bread in India or the day when mum took you along to one of dinner parties at an Indian restaurant. Unless captured on video or camera, we only depend on our memory to capture images of our experiences.

To me, if you can mix a few foreign words here and there in a native sentence, making enough sense to create communication, you are well being on your way to becoming a bilingual person. The rest of your journey is really up to you. You can either choose to improve on those broken sentences to make well your language skill or continue to keep mixing languages together until you’ve learnt how to stop doing it through self-awareness. You may first say, “Want tea?” Next you may say. “You want tea?” Eventually, you will say, “Would you like tea?” You don’t necessarily have to speak two languages fluently to think like a bilingual person. You just need to try.

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