Recently, there has been quite a debate going on over the teaching of Mandarin in Singapore, with less youths seeing the importance and the need to study Chinese. Minister Mentor Lee himself commented that nowadays, Mandarin had to be taught in such a way that it suited the youths, suggesting that an element of fun should be introduced into the current system of teaching. Be it Drama or Information Technology, teachers were advised to adapt their lessons to capture the interests of the student body. In addition, he noted that listening and conversation skills should be the primary focus before incorporating reading and writing into our education, reasoning that doing it the other way round or worse, together, could potentially put students off at a very young age. "Flexibility" in teaching Chinese was of utmost importance in this day and age.
Personally, I feel that changing the current system of studying Chinese will be similar to using a double-edged sword. This is due to the fact that while some students will benefit from the change, some would remain passive towards the Chinese Language and even take advantage of the system.
On the positive side, the transition of the education system from text-based to IT or Drama-based would grab the attentions of those eager to learn, giving them access to a greater basin of resources as well as articles written from the perspectives of intellectuals across the globe. This will undoubtedly contribute to their learning experience, expanding their intellectual horizons. Furthermore, introducing drama into the curriculum could help students gain more confidence in articulating their thoughts and words in Chinese, instead of using English in every circumstance.
On the negative side, this change would invite abuse from the students. As we all know, this the computer age, where the current generations of youngsters reign supreme. As a result, we know all the little tricks and tweaks to make our online venturing undetectable, which would give us the opportunity to cover up our history of computer gaming and idle social-networking when we were expected to do our work. The initiation of Drama in the Chinese curriculum could also have adverse effects. For example, students might fail to realise the point in participating in Chinese Drama and treat it as another one of the "useless and not counted in my academic score" activities in the curriculum. In turn, the new phase in teaching Chinese would just produce results similar or worse results than the current system.
In my opinion, students need to know the reason they are learning Chinese. If students think Chinese is useless, than no happen what new scheme is thought up by the ministry, no matter how interesting it might seem, it would all be for naught.
Understand our culture, embrace our heritage, glorify our language.
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