GROWING up Peranakan, the languages I learnt were English and the Malay-based Peranakan patois. Instead of learning Malay as a mother tongue, my mother felt it would be better if I studied Chinese.
While I started out eager and enthusiastic, I found myself floundering because my teachers spoke no English, which in effect meant they could not teach me.
They 'translated' Mandarin words into Mandarin, assuming that I should be able to get it. Little has changed since, judging from my nephew's experience.
Enrolling in expensive tuition and learning by rote were how I managed to pass. Like many of my peers of my background, I expended most of my studying effort on Chinese. The O-level distinction I got was due to luck rather than a true grasp of the language because by no stretch of the imagination am I competent in Chinese.
By contrast, my friend's six-year-old daughter is topping her class in Chinese in a British school. She loves the language because her teacher is effectively bilingual and imaginative.
The bilingual policy is not the problem. Its implementation is. My IQ was not deficient because I aced my subjects and was a Humanities scholarship holder. But the study of Chinese as taught in our schools almost defeated me. Without my excellent and dedicated private tutor, I would not have survived our system. How many of our Chinese teachers are bilingual in English and Mandarin? The failure of generations of Chinese Singaporeans to master Chinese is not the failure of students, but of the teachers.
Josephine Chong (Ms)
