Our Bilingual Education 40 years on

Was researching on language education and came across some old information, which was really interesting to read about 40 years later. I don't think I have seen it in the discourse on our bilingual education in recent times, even though old sources are often quoted. Maybe it's because this is dated in the years of transition?

1972. That's the time when they were still experimenting the change in medium of instruction. My dad had just graduated from high school, a year later than his peers, as he didn't make it through the first year he transferred to a full English medium program. Ironically, the switch was made under the recommendation of his teacher, who felt that the top student in the Chinese medium stream should be able to take handle it within a year and sit for his graduation examinations.

Anyway, that's another story. Here's the quote from a 2005 journal article. The writer was using it to explain the background of bilingual education in Singapore.

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first Prime Minister and currently Senior Minister, makes this clear (The Mirror 20 November 1972):

(1) When I speak of bilingualism, I do not mean just the facility of speaking two languages. It is more basic than that, first we understand ourselves . . . then the facility of the English language gives us access to the science and technology of the West. It also provides a convenient common ground on which . . .everybody competes in a neutral medium.

With the language [mother tongue: LW] go the fables and proverbs. It is the learning of a whole value system, a whole philosophy of life, that can maintain the fabric of our society intact, in spite of exposure to all the current madnesses around the world.

I remember when I was in Primary school, I was really looking forward to study option modules like Buddhism and Confucianism in school. Then when it was my turn to go to secondary school, Religious Studies were no longer part of the curriculum. Of course, the nation had some concerns about the effects of the implementation of these courses. Then, we still had a lot of fables and proverbs in our classes. As time goes by, there was feeling that imparting of values and philosophy of life has taken on a different form in our education system. Languages seem to be reduced to merely vehicles of information. Then we seem to have some problems with our language education and discussion were focused on how best to improve the teaching of English and mother tongues. In the discourse, the amount devoted to the teaching of culture and values were not aplenty.

Eventually, we have bi-cultural programmes in some schools. Then what about the other schools in the mainstream system? How should we maintain the fabric of our society? 2 horrid teen murder incidents recently sparked concerns about the values of our youth. Of course, not all our youth are inclined to such behaviour. 

It is really interesting to review some speeches from long ago. How has the discourse of a person changed over time? How has our concern of certain matters evolved over 40 years?  

Semantics in The Importance of Being Earnest

As seen from the title, this isn't going to be a typical show review. It is probably an amazement for myself, that I have not read the script of this famous play before.

Nonetheless, that being so, it called for an even greater surprise, as I analysed how Oscar Wilde actually constructed his play with a grand assembly of lines which exploited the use of implicatures. It was semantics at work! A quick glance of the lines in the first act would throw up numerous examples of how the Maxims of Quantity, Quality, Relation and Manner, as defined in Grice's Logic and Conversation, were being flouted to express the true meaning of the characters' words.

Such as:

Algernon. Got nice neighbours in your part of Shropshire?
Jack. Perfectly horrid! Never speak to one of them.
Algernon. How immensely you must amuse them! [Goes over and takes sandwich.] ......

Such is the beauty of natural language and the ability of human beings to exploit the figures of speech, that this play continues to be such a classic a hundred years on. Well, it sounds crazy to be thinking about semantics while watching a play but I simply can't help thinking about it, since our semantics group had such a vibrant discussion about it this afternoon!

Read this morning

The point of view of the present study is that one cannot understand the development of a language change apart from the social life of the community in which it occurs. Or to put it another way, social pressures are continually operating upon language, not from some remote points in the past, but as an immanent social force acting in the living present. ( Labov, 1963)

(Half) A Life Story and the Evolution of Language

It's like one of those days in China, where someone whom you catch a glimpse of every few days is one of the most important person in that field of studies in the world.

Went for a Lang Soc talk by Prof Jim Hurford without knowing who he is. (Opps!) But it was all fun again and I could see how the undergrads would really enjoy the Prof's lectures.

Prof Jim titled his story "Lucky Jim", after a supposedly famous novel, and used his life story as the parallel outline of the general linguistics field , the emergence of Evolution of Language as a field of studies and how the linguistics field has evolved in the last 45 years.

To demonstrate how lovely a lecturer he was, here's 2 pictures of what he did as an opener.

Prof Jim demonstrating how lectures were carried out in the past. He asked students to imagine lecturers writing all the logic statements in semantics line by line while they lecture. And how they had to copy furiously the spoken words from 2 hour lectures, in those days without any copier device.  

Prof Jim demonstrates how technology advanced and we moved into the OHP times.

Of course, he moved on to a ppt presentation later on. ( and oh, those chalkboards in this LT are controlled by automation buttons, so that you can lever them up all the way) . He told of days when they had no audio recording devices and all that you bring to the research field site to record the sounds of languages are your ears and your mouth, which were well-sync with the other research team members using Daniel Jones' Vowel Cardinal system, and the pen and paper for transcription...

I love it the way he told his story, as if he was narrating a folklore to his grandchildren, anecedoting it and drawing moral of the stories at the end of each section. His life was peppered with surprises as he took chances that came along and he made good out of them with some beliefs. Just to share some of his moral of the story here:

1. Learn all you can from other's work
2. Read widely outside your own subject and try to make connection
3. Teaching can interact productively with research
4. Don't always resist being pushed into things by other people. It can turn out well.

The last line seems to be speaking to me. I had heeded this kind of advice once and it led me to Edinburgh eventually, reading this subject, instead of translation. The second advice also serves as a good reminder for me, that while being out here for a year, I should do all the things which I didn't have time for back home.

More thoughts

If the last 2 posts have seem a little contradictory, they are in fact not. As said, I applaud the sociolinguists view of recognising the evolutionary nature of languages and thus the existence of varieties of languages. At the same time, because mankind has decided, with his ability to dwell deep into philosophical issues, to come up with Language Standards, therefore, the evolution of language and language varieties has become a more complicated issue than ever. The last post was about the usage of Chinese in Singapore and how certain translations (at this moment, it is restricted to nouns) have been replaced with some other places' standard overnight (or over a few days) in the media. I am not sure if I am right to view it in this way, but some part of the variety of Chinese that has been in existence in Singapore for as long as I have been reading and watching the news ( I haven't had time to do a research on terminology usage in our media, so I could only based it on my own experience) has been altered within a few days. Or perhaps, it is an attempt to alter some parts of our own variety. Now, that said, our variety of Chinese doesn't differ that much from the adopted standard. However, we have been keeping our localised terms and certain ways of expressions, which are unique to us, and are not ungrammatical. For this issue, I am talking about the written language.

In the case of the post about HK English and Singapore English, the case study used in the lecture was in fact about the written language too (HK English). However, probably in most situations, Singlish as Singaporeans understand it, is about the spoken language and is a creole based on a mixture of a few languages. Hence, there is a fundamental difference between the two issues.

Nonetheless, in both cases, I celebrate the recognition of variation and varieties.

Therefore, in the case of the Chinese used in media, I thought we should be more aware and proud of our grammatically correct local variety, since it is what most of the population who do understand Chinese have been using. In sociolinguistics view, it is the people who uses the language in that local context that bring about the variation over time. In my prof's book, this evolution has to do with identity building as well.

In the case of Singapore English, grammatically correct but varied use of the language should probably be accepted, as suggested by prof. So, it is probably fine to start a sentence with the word "Besides", instead of "Furthermore" or "Moreover".  However, in his case study, there were actually glaring grammatical errors which has been analysed as a feature of HK English, and suggested to be accepted as a variety. Perhaps, it is because HK English is not that complicated a creole or variety after all ? Since sociolinguists tend to examine languages in its spoken form, it seems pretty confusing to use the same yardstick on both spoken and written, creoles and parent languages. Unless we start to teach creoles in school ?

In conclusion, I do celebrate the unique heritage of the island I live on , and am proud of the varieties which have emerged in spite of our short history.        

               

翻译，统一翻译的若干问题。。。A Problem of Translation or Was it Transliteration?

来爱丁堡以前，发生了一件让我一直耿耿于怀的事。去年纽西兰之旅呆了3天的基督城，在一场7级地震后，突然不见了。随后，纽西兰也遭了殃，变成了新大陆，成了“新西兰”。问了两名算是知情的朋友，才发现尽管我们在很短的时间里囊括了很多的第一名，但我们还是原来那一个需要依附在他人认同上的小红点。

原本忙于学习，渐渐忘了此事。没想到近日课上讨论的课题、参与的讲座都涉及到了“语言与身份认同”的问题。再加上出国前和友人揣测，以后报道翁山淑枝的新闻时，是不是也需要跟着他人的标准把她称为“昂山素季”一事竟然很吊诡地发生了却没实现——她依然还是我们熟悉的“翁山淑枝”，这让我实在觉得既庆幸又迷惑。

上网找了一下，发现有人早已把此事写成文章。可能当天我刚好动身前来爱丁堡，所以一直没看到。
反正，在这里与大家分享吧：）

http://luochaoster.blog.hexun.com/56532979_d.html


后续：再让诸君想想，如果Christchurch是按照音译（或者可能是所谓的Transliteration转写法）被译成了“克莱斯特彻奇”，Mahathir “马哈迪”成了“马哈迪尔”，那为什么同一拨人翻译New Zealand 用的则是音译兼意译的“新西兰”呢？ ）

The Linguists' View of Languages is really different.

I learnt something in my lecture on Thursday afternoon. I have been reading diligently and have been applauding the linguists' view that there are no "good" or "bad" languages, that standard languages are man-made prototypes. I took a good two weeks to tune myself to the truth and the notion that spoken language existed long before the written, and no matter how long the chinese writing system has been in place, when one goes back to the history, the fact remains that in a time not so long ago, the tongues under the big umbrella of  the Chinese language family were really separate tongues. 想一想，秦始皇统一中原之前，谁都不是一家的？

I should have seen it coming then but it still hit me real hard when the proposition was presented in class. My Prof was using the case of HK English as an example to discuss the notion of World Englishes and language varieties.

It's a wonder...in the Linguistis' view of World Englishes, when grammatical mistakes are systematic enough, they are classified as a variety of English. I know we usually "discuss something", not "discuss about something" ; my teacher taught me long ago that it is "a bowl of noodles" not "a bowl of noodle". That was listed as a trait of HK English. I will probably accept "discuss about something" , but what about "have a close look TO Amah Rock", " multilingualism is need for a country" ? We have to draw the line somewhere, don't we?

On a facebook discussion later on, E reminded me that HK English and Singapore English are recognised as creoles, not standard languages. It was a good reminder. Perhaps that was why i thought that the Prof pushed it a bit too far in the lecture, when he asked those of us who teach, if we would mark the errors in the HK article wrong, or just leave it there and mark for content instead.

Some nodded their heads like me, while others shook theirs.

If one reads the grammar part of the wikipedia entries for HK English and Singapore English, one would easily understand my discomfort as a teacher. Prof said when he was in HK, he had to make some adjustment and decide that marking for content in his top HK students' assignments is more important. I agree with that. However, he didn't quantify the question he posted us and he didn't really take a stand when I posed the question of where to draw the line? I proposed that the ideology of just marking for content in the university is totally plausible but it may not be so for teachers teaching secondary and primary school kids.  Perhaps, I should have cited the example of how English teachers in Singapore uses a focused method of marking for either content or language only for some of the written assignments. Nonetheless, I didn't want to answer my own question, as I really wanted further views from Prof, and I wasn't sure if this methodology was applied in most of Singapore schools. Anyway, I did a bit of research when I was back and I really can't imagine Prof wanting to mark essays from Singapore students, written with that kind of grammar cited in the wiki page above.  

Certainly, I do understand that he was coming from a sociolinguist point of view that language varieties should be recognised as that was how languages evolved and how the Romance languages broke away from Latin. As a matter of fact, I rememberd clearly that afternoon in Beida, when my Prof in China told me that is nothing wrong with my sense of the language when I feel that the "蛮”in "满/蛮好的"could also be used to express negative terms, though older corpus showed that it is usually used with positive terms. She explained that language is always evolving and if in Singapore's context, we do say "蛮差的"， "蛮糟的"，then we can't say that it is wrong, because language usage is really 约定俗成, ie when things becomes a convention, it would eventually be deemed as acceptable. (a search online today, will probably show that the use of "蛮”has indeed evolved! ) 

In addition, it should be clarified that the examples given on the wiki page for Singapore English is actually more of Singlish. The linguists studies on Singapore English are more of what one gets from the HK English page, where we differ in our use of prepositions, articles etc. Nonetheless, I can't imagine how would he react if I try to submit my essay in overt Singapore English. Obviously, I ain't going to risk my marks. Never die before arh?  

The Power of Speaking Their Language

This semester was spent reading about language and how human beings use language to mark their identities, to use it to mark the in-group and out-groups and how language acts as a double-edged sword, giving people the legitimacy to unite as a nation or to dispell those who didn't speak the same tongue.

Obama's speech at the University of Indonesia was scripted with bits and pieces of Bahasa Indonesia. And from the video, it was clear how his near perfect pronunciation of that few Bahasa Indonesian won over his audience. Of course, his personal childhood ties with Jarkarta in the 1960s probably brought him some fans among his audience, explaining the wide cheers. Nonetheless, the decision to script his speech with Bahasa Indonesian, though it's probably not difficult to recall all these lexical terms, was a strategy, precisely due to the fact that it is all too known the kind of power language can bring about. In this case, it is clearly an attempt to show that the distance between us is not that great. (For a linguist's take on his speech, check out the language log article.)

Such is the power of language, that language learning, and foreign language learning, even if it is just at the conversational level, should really be an important part of our education. If not, we will simply lose out.

The Value of Language(s) Education

Just came across this interesting article amidst a very busy week (and more busy weeks awaits). The Chronicle Review published an article "The World Beyond Reach"   , questioning the logic and appropriateness of cutting advanced foreign language courses in the universities, as a means to minimize spendings. 

It has been 2 months since I re-immerse myself into the world of languages. People around me generally speaks and write 3 -4 languages. Sometimes, I get new friends who tries to speak to each other in classical Latin and Greek, or Japanese and Korean which they have learnt off books. And I have to remind myself that, I am in the linguistics school after all. I have not found the same enthuse in myself to try my hands at new languages yet, after failed attempts to master Japanese and Indonesian 10 years ago. But at least, it was really fun learning new languages and the experience helps me in completing my current readings. I could probably afford to try another sure to fail attempt at Russian or Spanish, I would love to, but I simply could not afford the time now. How pragmatic can one get?! As pragmatic as the university mentioned in the article?

I definitely see the value in learning new languages, at a conversational level. Perhaps I have been stuck too long in a system which requires me to be at my best for everything, such that efforts which would never lead to mastery are sometimes deemed as ineffective use of time. I seek to sit on both ends of the pole, where I would eventually be able to say that I am really good at something, while remembering that being able to try out everything at hands is a fortune in itself. So perhaps, I should really start learning my Russian characters, despite the busy schedule, just to get things going a bit!