The English language & the education system in Singapore

I love it when my readers ask very interesting questions which I can then turn into a post like this. Belle Summer asked: Do you have any suggestions on how to improve the general standard of English pronunciation especially for young children? I find it easier to learn the correct pronunciation of Chinese words because we are taught hanyupinyin in school. I wonder why we are not taught the English equivalent, International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), in school. Of course, we have even better resources today. There are smartphone applications that provide audio pronunciation guides of words. Children are often taught phonics in preschools. Hopefully this helps to raise phonemic awareness although phonics is still not a great way to learn proper pronunciation.

Thank you for the question. I write this as an uncle of a 9 year old nephew who is really struggling with English despite the fact that his mother (my sister) speaks English flawlessly. You know, when I was a teenager, my peers and I predicted that the next generation will not be able to speak their mother tongue and Singapore would become monolingual in English - we were wrong and my nephew is living proof of how totally salah our prediction was. Let me first analyse why children like my nephew struggle with English.

Why do some Asian people struggle with English?

Firstly, he speaks like everyone around him - his father, his grandparents, his classmates, his teachers all have a Singaporean accent and mispronounce words the same way. The kid simply mimics the way others around him talk and who could blame him for that? The kid isn't able to distinguish between the kind of Singlish one uses in informal company and the standard English he is expected to deliver for his exams. If he sounds just like everyone around him, he isn't even aware that there is a problem with his English. Well, until his uncle who lives in England comes along and he tells me I speak like an Angmoh.

Secondly, his teachers in his primary school speak with a Singaporean accent the same way my primary school teachers spoke with a very Singaporean accent. If his teachers are incapable of sounds in English like the TH digraph, how are they expected to teach their students how to speak English correctly? Can you imagine having a driving instructor who cannot parallel park or do a three point turn? No, but such is the situation in Singapore. We have English teachers who may be capable of grammatically perfect English, but they still have a very strong accent. It may be extremely un-PC to criticize anyone for their accent, but in the case of an English teacher, you risk the English teacher passing on his/her strong accent to the students and the teacher has the responsibility to teach English to a high standard.

Do you realize how important the role of the teacher is?

I once ran a mock oral exam with my mother (a retired primary school teacher) for my nephew - the test was to see if he could read a short passage out aloud. My mother gave my nephew a 7/10 and I gave my nephew a 2/10 - and my mother was aghast at how strict I was. Every time my nephew mispronounced a word, I would note down which word in the passage he mispronounced and goodness me, by the time he got through that short passage, I swear my page was wet with ink. He messed up close to 80% of the words - which is why I had to give him a 2/10 which reflected the amount of words he did get right. My mother clearly didn't hear many of his mistakes as she would make exactly the same mistakes my nephew would make. My mother worked for almost 40 years as an English teacher in Singapore and that was the standard of her oral English - so her students would be making the same kinds of glaring mistakes she was making with her bad pronunciation.

Thirdly, the way the examinations are structure, the emphasis is always on written English and the oral exam is not important at all. Singaporean students are given so many tests all the time but are usually given no more than 1 or 2 oral exams a year. Why? That has got to change.

Lastly, I'd like to deal with the irony that my sister speaks flawless English but refuses to do anything to do about her son's rather bad English. I think her opinion is that the poor kid is already criticized by his father for not doing better at school, kena tekan by the teachers at school for not being good at English and even his peers at school think he speaks English badly. So she would gladly ignore the (quite glaring) errors he makes in English and just play the role of the doting, loving, kind mother who is always ready to give praise and approval rather than be harsh, demanding and critical. She speaks to him in standard English and he would reply in broken English and I'd be the only one who would correct him - no one else would. I suppose I can understand where my sister is coming from, she's like, "alamak tolong lah, please lah - give the poor kid a break lah, he is still so young and people are all so critical, please think about his feelings each time he gets criticized and corrected."

My sister is ignoring her son's rather poor grasp of the English language.

Okay, so what can we do about the situation? How can we raise the standard of English? Where do I begin? Is this mission impossible? Well, please allow me to make a few simple suggestions.

1. Start with the teachers

Yup, the teachers need to take responsibility. There are just too many Singaporean teachers out there speaking English with a very strong accent. Look, you wanna have a strong accent - go do something else. Be a nurse, be an architect, be an accountant, be an engineer, be a chef, be a fashion designer, be a physics teacher, be a maths teacher - no one will give a shit about how strong your accent is. But if you wanna be an English teacher, then damnit speak proper standard English. I blame the MOE for the lack of quality control - English is the language of instruction in our education system and is the language of business in Singapore. How is it therefore possible that the MOE has had a shocking lack of quality control?

I can tell you why - this is because the people at the top of the food chain in the MOE all speak English with a very strong accent. They are selfish and self-centred and imagine that the world revolves around them and are too arrogant to admit that there is something wrong with the way they speak English. So they use themselves to set the benchmark and that is why the benchmark is so ridiculously low in Singapore. It takes a visionary to raise the bar, set a new high standard and say, "that's what we should aspire to, we've got a lot of hard work to do, we've got a long way to go but we're going to work hard". That has got to be better than setting the benchmark very low and then congratulating yourselves by saying, "yeah we're doing great as we've met all our targets". The benchmark in Singapore is just too freaking low, it's a joke.

Every school should have at least one English language teacher who is capable of standard English RP - yes I am talking about sounds like the notoriously difficult TH digraph which tend to confuse all non-native English speakers (and some native English speakers too). It is not rocket science really, it just takes time and effort to understand the common mistakes made by Singaporean speakers and deal with them.

2. Educate the parents

There has got to be a wider understanding of the purpose of speaking English well. Parents need to understand why they need to do this and even if they cannot speak English themselves, they should at least help their children learn how to speak it properly. I think the worst situation is when some Singaporean parents speak English really badly and instead of using their mother tongue with their children, they speak broken English with their children and then the kid shows up at school speaking that same kind of broken English. That's when the poor teacher has the unenviable task of having to undo all the damage the parents have inflicted on their children. Aiyoh.

Are you doing your child 's education more harm than good?

I know this sounds terribly harsh - but parents who are not confident in English should avoid using English in front of their children altogether. It is one thing for you to have a conversation with your mates in Singlish, but do not confuse your children with non-standard English. Besides, Singaporean parents should realize that speaking English well is not about acquiring an Angmoh accent, it is simply sounding educated and intelligent, like a person who understands the language s/he is speaking - rather than being an inarticulate person who is struggling to get the right words out.

3. Encouraging the right attitude amongst Singaporeans

Ultimately, a lot of this depends on whether or not the student is willing to put in the hard work to improve his English. A problem we have in Singapore is that people are just too bloody negative and pessimistic. When someone makes an effort to improve his/her English, we label them as pretentious and fake - as if the genuine Singaporean is an inarticulate idiot who struggles even with basic English. Talk about self-hatred, good grief, Singaporeans don't realize how they are projecting their intense self-hatred onto others who do make an effort to try to improve themselves. Oh Singaporeans, why do you hate yourselves so much?

When you call someone fake or pretentious for trying to improve his/her English, the message you send out is this: "oh stop trying to improve yourself, you know you are stupid, you know you cannot improve your English, so why are you even trying? Why don't you just stay stupid and ignorant like the rest of us who are not trying to improve ourselves because we accept that Singaporeans can never speak English properly."

Many Singaporeans have given up themselves. 

Singaporeans have got to get over this defensive stance and this chip on their shoulder. I remember what my former colleague Simon said to me - now Simon is Taiwanese but spent most of his life in America. So Mandarin is his first language and he is equally fluent in American English. He told me, "Singaporeans claim to be bilingual but the truth is that they struggle in both English and Mandarin. I struggle to understand a lot of Singaporeans when they try to speak English because of their accent. When they try to speak Mandarin, good grief, I swear 8 year old kids in Taiwan speak better Mandarin than Singaporeans who have been learning the language for over 10 years in school. It's not that I want to be critical, but the moment I voice this opinion, rather than acknowledge any shortcomings in your education system, Singaporeans get so critical and they often tell me that Taiwanese people struggle with English - and I'm like, so?  I never said they did. Two wrongs don't make a right. I tell you though, at least Taiwanese people are fluent in one language, Singaporeans seem to be only fluent in Singlish and nothing else."

You cannot start to learn until you humble yourself to the need to learn. If you take this, "what is wrong with the way I speak you fucking racist, you jiat kentang fucking fake wannabe go suck some angmoh cock you chao cheeby fucker" attitude (I swear I am not exaggerating, that is the kind of language you will see in Singaporean social media) - if you think there's nothing to be improved, then you will never improve. You know the saying, you can bring a horse to water but you can't make it drink - so even the best teachers and programmes in the world would be useless if Singaporeans are simply not prepared to try to improve their English.

Okay, how do you react to someone who's trying to improve their English but fails big time with embarrassing consequences? I think we can be quite cruel as a nation - that's why we laugh at the character Barbarella of the Noose (Michelle Chong, you're brilliant) - clearly Barbarella would like to speak with an American accent but she misfires on so many levels and the harder she tries, the worse the results. Sadly, the message is this: if you can pull off a convincing RP, then we might let you get away with it, but there's no room for failure. If you try and fail, we're going to be really cruel towards you. Yikes.

4. Those of us who can....

Now I would never ever correct the way another Singaporean speaks English in person (well apart from my nephew) - I can't imagine the kind of offence that would cause given how sensitive it is. I would probably just ignore the broken English and speak in the same kind of Singlish to make the other party feel comfortable (or just switch to Malay or Chinese). Certainly, there are some Singaporeans who obviously speak English better than others - but we would never try to pass that knowledge on to those who struggle with English. So why is this such a big Singaporean social faux pas?

Now imagine if we all helped each other rather than put the onus on the MOE to change the situation. Imagine if people were asking for help with their English from their peers instead of being defensive about the way they spoke English. Imagine if Singaporeans knew they wouldn't get a negative reaction if they politely corrected their friends' English. This would mean allowing a change to happen a lot more quickly, rather expecting the government to fix the problem from the top down. Nice idea - but this will never ever happen in practice. Not in Singapore.

That's why if you met someone like the fictional character of Barbarella in Singapore, well, nobody would even attempt to correct her English which is salah on so many levels. People would bitch about her, criticize her, insult her - but how many people would be willing and able to sit down with someone like that and actually sort her out? Actually many Singaporeans could - but they won't. It's just not in their nature - it's more in their nature to say, "I don't wanna kaypoh, none of my business" and look the other way.

Where does that leave us? Well, no nearer to a situation I'm afraid, I think Singaporeans are way too insecure and defensive to go for option 4 which is probably the easiest and fastest way for us to improve the standard of English on the whole as a country. And even if options 1 and 2 were implemented, the attitude problem as outlined in option 3 would stand in the way of any real progress.

Now I know Belle Sunshine asked a question specifically about helping young children improve their English pronunciation, but I am addressing the issue more generally about the entire population rather than specifically about young children. Young children have parents and other family members they interact with - if you only teach young children how to speak properly, I can guarantee you that their parents will undo all the good work the teachers have done and infect their children with their broken English and bad pronunciation in no time at all. No, you need to look at the bigger picture and deal with the society as a whole, rather than just the very specific cohort of "very young children".

I hope that helps. Do you agree? Is it possible to raise the standard of English in Singapore when even politicians like Seng Han Thong speak broken English? Like dude, the guy is a freaking PAP MP and he can't even string together a basic sentence in English - like how hideously bad is his English? If even your politicians can't freaking speak English, is it fair to expect students to speak proper English when your MPs can't? Do you have any better ideas? How can we address this issue? You know the drill, leave a comment. Thanks - take it away Munah & Hirzi...