narrativeautumn

LINK: http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2018&Itemid=195

I have just ended a one- year stopover in Singapore. Having worked there and personally witnessed the Lion City’s prosperity, I ended up feeling a need to find a missing piece to the puzzle of the place, wondering where the there is, as the turn of-the (20th) century American poet Gertrude Stein said of her native city. Like its invented Merlion, Singapore is neither one thing nor another.

English is the working language and the first language in all schools in Singapore. I personally have no objection regarding the importance of English and I am very fond of the language. When I was working there, I had been struggling to speak good English when everybody was speaking the clipped, fast-paced, slangy version, called Singlish.

Speaking good Mandarin wasn’t easy either, for not many Singaporean Chinese understand deep Mandarin. I was often confused by the conversations surrounding me, which I found to be English and Mandarin mixed together. Most of the speakers, whose native language was unknown to me, continually replaced Mandarin words when they were speaking English; when they were speaking Mandarin, they added English to better express themselves, if not to boast to others that they could speak English so that they would not be seen as new immigrants from China.

Today’s Singapore is one of the most competitive economies in the world and it strives constantly to be one of the greatest global cities, with its gleaming towers and its economic and technological accomplishments. It’s a very good place to work in and attracts expatriates from all over the globe. Despite the attractions it has shown to the world, however, when I observed the language usage of the people and noticed that mother tongues were losing their roots and giving way to Singlish, I started to feel very deeply that it was a city without a mother tongue. Mother tongue is one’s soul and it is often why certain races are respected.

After my stopover, I now have more respect for the Chinese from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong as well as Japanese and Koreans. Although their English proficiency is quite low as compared with that of Singaporeans, their love and effort to preserve their traditional culture is something hardly seen among Singaporeans.

East Asians are generally very proud of their mother tongues. When they fully master their mother languages, they connect themselves with their cultural roots and develop holistically as a successor of their culture and language or dialect. Their souls are enriched and strengthened by their culture. When I talk to my East Asian friends, I really admire them very much because I could feel that they have their own cultural soul.

Going back to my university days in Taiwan, I could remember clearly how Taipei displayed its soul even in small streets and old bookstores; contrarily, I could not sense anything pertaining to cultural soul, no matter how magnificent and shining the skyscrapers and shopping malls were in Singapore.

Singapore’s prosperity and economic progress could not change my feeling that it was a city without a mother tongue or a cultural soul. Perhaps this was the reason why many talented expatriates both from the East and the West come and go, for there is no position that suits them best in terms of cultural soul in Singapore, which belongs neither to East nor West.

Link

WE always lament the rising cost of living in the Klang Valley, yet some people get heavily into debt by buying expensive properties and cars that they can’t afford.

When asked why they did so, I was told that they want face and take pride in possessing expensive houses and cars, and therefore took up huge loans to own them. This reveals how much some of us suffer simply because we define success solely on the wealth we acquire.

Why must a successful person possess expensive properties and luxury cars to tell the world that he or she is doing well? We should learn from some luminaries who are living a simple life instead.

Paul Volcker, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board from 1979 to 1987, lived in a US$500-a-month tiny apartment with second-hand furniture when he was handling the US economy worth US$4.3tril back then.

Ma Ying-jeou, the current Taiwan president and former Taipei mayor, usually dines on cheap meals bought at the night markets together with his wife Chow Mei-ching.

His wife insisted on taking public buses to work as usual when Ma was elected the new president last year until she had no choice but to accept a chauffeur due to security reasons.

The late tycoon Wang Yung-ching of Taiwan spent every penny wisely and did not give more than enough pocket money to his children when they were studying in the US.

These rich and powerful people live a simple life despite their achievements. The “high achievement, low expenses” lifestyle is a concept worth promoting, for it is a financially and environmentally feasible concept.

YEOW BOON KIAT,

Petaling Jaya.

Link

WE are now rolling up our sleeves to brainstorm together on how to improve English. Besides calling for a review of the English curriculum, Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and his team have also visited Edith Cowan University in Australia, and the university agreed to help Malaysian teachers and students to improve their English proficiency. Other than these efforts, I think we should also encourage students to learn English online.

In the pre-Internet era, people had to spend money to obtain English learning materials like books, magazines, dictionaries, newspapers, movies and documentaries.

Students from poor families who did not have access to good libraries were usually lagging behind their peers who could afford all the above-mentioned English learning materials.

Today, the discrepancy between the haves and have-nots in terms of English learning has indeed been narrowed by the Internet as long as one has a computer and broadband.

For news, English readers can simply log on to news sites such as BBC, CNN, Asia Sentinel, Time and The Guardian to get a glimpse of what is going on around the world. For expanding vocabulary, we have options like dictionary.com, Longman dictionary online version and idioms.thefreedictionary.com. For listening, we have youtube.com and we can listen to great English speakers like David Cameron and Obama. And for improving one’s knowledge, we have wikipedia and wikihow; and for further learning, youtube.com/edu and scitable.com.

These websites are our treasures in English learning and it’s all for free. All these learning materials are indeed just a click away when we have computers and broadband. English teachers and lecturers should encourage students to fully utilise these free resources so that everyone could learn by themselves through the Internet.

Perhaps with stronger self-learning ability among students, the burden of educators would be relieved a bit.

YEOW BOON KIAT,

Petaling Jaya.

Link: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/8/4/focus/4446011&sec=focus

The Education Ministry has announced that Year Six students sitting for next month’s Primary School Assessment Test (UPSR) would have to sit for an Aptitude Test too. I have some reservations over the impact this additional test can have on our children.

The grading system for this particular test ranks from Very Good User (Band Six) to Extremely Limited User (Band One) like the Malaysian University English Test (MUET).

In other words, besides receiving grading for the UPSR examination subjects, the students would have to undergo another grading. Although the outcome of the Aptitude Test would not be included in the final result, I worry that this would become yet another labelling of the children.

The kids are graded for the subjects that they have learned at the primary school education level. Those who scored all As in the UPSR are often deemed bright or gifted. The more As they score, the more compliments, such as “smart” and “intelligent”, that they receive from society.

On the other hand, students who score less As or have none at all, would be referred to as “dull” or “stupid”, or even cursed as “idiotic”.

Imagine a group of students who have not done well in their UPSR examination and obtained moderate band in the Aptitude Test. How would they feel? Wouldn’t they feel like they would be labelled “stupid” by our education system and hence lose interest in their studies altogether?

Won’t they have a negative mindset from then onwards? Won’t this mindset then turn into a vicious circle in that if they still fail to get good results in secondary school, they will be even more demoralised?

I am quite sure that they would as I have personally been through this vicious circle when I was still in school.

A phobia for examinations haunted me throughout my schooling days until my very last exam in university. For me, examination is rigid and it can’t possibly reflect a learner’s progress.

My failure to do well in exams even prompted me to think negatively that examinations are merely part of a system that benefits students whose brains work like a photostat machine that copies and pastes everything from textbooks onto the test papers.

Those who fit this rigid system and score well were deemed “talented”, and for those who do not fit this system, have to forget about getting first class or second upper for their degrees (for their assignments score might not accumulate enough marks for an A).

As a person who have been through this phobia and earned negative remarks based on exams, I really do not wish to see our children suffer even more than I did.

Their sufferings will kill off their interest and creativity in studies.

YEOW BOON KIAT,

Petaling Jaya.

Link: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/7/21/focus/4355461&sec=focus

WE Malaysians have always been praised by foreigners because we can speak several languages and dialects.

Most of us are able to at least master basic English and a few other languages.

We like to boast before our Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese and Korean friends that our English is better than theirs.

We even like to make fun of their English pronunciation and we feel superior to them.

But what is there to boast when we are just speaking Manglish most of the time?

Many of us fail to improve our English because of a complacent mindset.

We ignore grammar and include lots of Malay and Chinese words such as lah, arr, hor or de instead of using standard English expressions to convey our thoughts and feelings.

We think this is fine as long as our Manglish is understood by others.

For a long time, we have been living in complacency while the standard of English in the North-East Asian region has been improving fast.

More and more professionals and graduates from that region have made efforts to enhance their English in native English-speaking countries and more and more of them are able to shine internationally.

Meanwhile we are still speaking Manglish like “you got see Ali arr?” “Got arr, you never see him mie?”

While our Asian counterparts are going the extra mile to master English, we may still be thinking our English is better than theirs.

In actual fact, the number of their professionals and graduates who are proficient in English may even exceed our population!

YEOW BOON KIAT,

Petaling Jaya.

Link: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/7/16/focus/4324851&sec=focus

The dispute of teaching Maths and Science in English has finally come to an end with the announcement by the Government to scrap the policy and revert back to Bahasa Malaysia. I would like to make some suggestions for our leaders and fellow Malaysians to brainstorm the issue.

When I was doing my degree in Taiwan, I used to work as a private English tutor. I always stressed on the importance of using the English language daily when I was tutoring. I asked my students in every lesson to tell me in good English what they had done or about any exciting event that had happened the previous week.

The idea is really simple. If your English is good enough, you should be able to say whatever you want to say in good English.

Don’t tell me that your English is good simply because you have memorised all the words in the Oxford dictionary.

Some of my students were studying engineering or mathematics using English textbooks. Even though they were able to understand well the theories in English, they hardly shared their daily life stories with me in good English.

This prompted me to ponder: do all the formulas and theories help one to write and speak in good English?

Shouldn’t we get back to the English language subject itself if we are to improve our English?
To be proficient in a language, one must read voraciously. We must nurture a good reading habit among our students, especially of English books.

Does doing all the calculations and exercises in Maths and Science in English help to improve English? I really doubt so.

I suggest that to improve the standard of English, all schools must organise English speaking day as often as twice a week. They can also set up an English chat room.

At secondary level, English literature should be included as part of the English lessons.

Last but not least, continue to improve the quality of English teachers.

YEOW BOON KIAT,
Petaling Jaya.

First world status: We’ve lost the race
Yeow Boon Kiat | Dec 16, 08 5:13pm

I left the country to further my studies in Taiwan in September 2003. During my five years of pre-university and undergraduate degree studies there, I was back home in Kuala Lumpur three times. After graduation, I was home for two months before starting my teaching career in Singapore.

Every time I travelled back home to KL from Taipei or Singapore, I was usually inundated with nostalgia but after a few days or weeks of my short stay, I will be inevitably struck by a strong desire to leave my darling KL and continue to build my career in foreign countries that practice meritocracy.

These two strong contrasting feelings – can’t wait to fall in love with KL again and can’t wait to say goodbye – have never failed to occur.

Whenever I am home, I just can’t stop comparing KL with Taipei or Singapore or other Asian cities. I think we have repetitively talked and argued about the same issues over and over again for more than a decade now (if not several decades) and I am very clear of what kind of stories our almighty leaders will come up with whenever they are facing any scandal or query.

I am wondering what a pathetic life our journalists and editors live – urging our leaders on the same matters for decades now and still dealing with the same problems again and again until today. Matters like more funding for Chinese and Tamil schools, equal rights for all and even on how the ‘owners’ of this land deserve more privileges and while the ‘migrant’ citizens don’t.

While arguing about the same matters over and over again, we still see the world through a pre-1997 Asian financial crisis Malaysian perspective.

Before 1997 Asian financial crisis, our country was in the world’s spotlight. We were deemed to be the role model for the developing world. South Korea successfully demonstrated to the world that they are qualified to be a First World country member after the Seoul 1988 Olympics Games.

Ten years after Seoul’s success, Malaysia was the next bright star of Asia with three major sports events for three consecutive years – the 1997 World Youth Cup (soccer), the1998 Commonwealth Games and 1999 Formula One Grand Prix. These three events were very successful and should have been good enough to pave the way for Malaysia to evolve into a First World country.

We seemed to have lost our direction after the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. To put it bluntly, we failed to improve after 1997 and yet we still live in our own dreamworld. We still see China and India as our ‘poor’ Third World neighbours despite all their hard work to catch up and we still refuse to recognise the great universities of China and India, which produce so many bright scholars.

With so many Asian countries still lagging behind us – Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Burma, Philippines, we are happy that we are better off than them. We, however, dare not look up to the stronger economies for we dare not face the very fact that the gap between us and Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan has widened to an insurmountable distance.

We dare not think globally – where is our position in the world economy? Where is our knowledge-based economy? Can we compete with the four Asian economic dragons? Do we work as hard as them? Can we compare our universities with the best ones in Asia? Do we still want to cheat ourselves that our economic ‘growth’ is merely the price increase of commodities (petroleum, palm oil) and not the workforce’s higher productivity and efficiency?

These are the questions that we dare not ask ourselves. It’s very true that every country has their own complacent citizens but it’s also equally true that it’s the non-complacent minds of the strong economies that save the day for their countries.

The Taiwanese corporate leaders work hard to keep their cutting edge in information technology after the rise of South Korea; the South Koreans are setting up more and more English language schools and are recruiting top scholars from the US to teach at their universities; Singapore continues to strive as a regional and world hub for as many fields as possible (trading, entrepot, sea and air transportation, academia, tourism, finance, medicine, etc) while China and India continue to liberalise their economies and are moving forward in technology with their strong academia and research abilities.

With the leaders in the seven most vibrant Asian economies are working harder in leading their respective economies to survive globalisation, our leaders are still mired in racial politics and arguing over the same matters for more than 10 years. And while we may blame our leaders, we Malaysians are also going on living with our complacent mindset.

With so many poor Asian countries taking ages to catch up with our level, we are still complacently satisfied with the position of being the developing world’s role model and happy to be behind Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and India.

We are happy because we ignore the truth that we can’t catch up with these top seven economies anymore and the others whose economic positions were previously behind us are working very hard to catch up with us. We are happy because we told ourselves we are not going to do as well as the top seven but at least we’ll be one of the best among the developing countries.

We are still happy and keep on telling ourselves that we are still doing very well and that is because we choose not to look at the truth surrounding today’s constantly changing globalised world.

We’re dealing with globalisation with a complacent mindset and ours is a perfect blend between two attitudes – the ‘refuse-to-change’ and ‘we-are-still-not-bad’.

When are we actually going to get rid of our complacent mindset and roll our sleeves up to face the true world?

Wednesday, Mar 26, 2008, Page 8

Kudos to Taiwan’s democratic system, which showed the world the essence of democracy in its 12th presidential election. I am glad that candidates of both sides were able to humbly accept the outcome of the election. I see this election as a victory for the Taiwanese people and the democratic system of this wonderful island, rather than seeing it as a zero sum political battle between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

As a Malaysian, I consistently support the democratic system, which allows the people to decide whom they want to put into office. Taiwan has become a role model in terms of democracy and it must keep this precious value to support democratization in Asia.

I have always hoped that the KMT and the DPP would prove to be equally competent and able to compete with each other healthily. Only with the competence of both sides will the people be able to choose their leaders.

I do not wish to see any side fall apart and let the other side become overwhelmingly strong. It would be frighteningly sad if the voters are left with an overwhelmingly strong side and an incompetently weak side — this would herald the death of democracy. To put it into baseball terms, I hope that the competition between the KMT and DPP is similar to that of the baseball teams of Taiwan and South Korea. I do not think baseball fans would want to watch a 9-0 game all the time.

I fully understand the feelings of the supporters of both sides. I sincerely hope that they will calm down after all the celebration and tears for the election. For the KMT, it’s their opportunity to prove their ruling ability to revive Taiwan’s economy amid the fear of the world economy’s downward trend; for the DPP, they still have the chance to be in office again, if they are able to rectify their mistakes and work harder to serve the people.

I think more young Taiwanese are colorblind in terms of politics and will only vote for politicians who are able to serve the nation well. The young voters are getting clearer that it’s ability that matters.

The Malaysian general election earlier this month, which saw five states fall to the opposition, has clearly indicated that racial politics is gradually fading away (albeit with all the difficulties and at a snail’s pace) in Asia. All Asian politicians must bear in mind that it’s meritocracy that counts in this globalized era. More people will cast their ballot by evaluating the candidates’ ability and accountability rather than basing their decision on which party the candidate belongs to and what their origins are.

Both parties must defend democratic values and stop all the unnecessary political disputes — Taiwan will improve, but only with a healthy democratic system.

Yeow Boon-Kiat

Kuala Lumpur

Lately the educational ministry has announced that the ministry will introduce Mandarin classes in National Schools (Sekolah Kebangsaan), in order to enhance the students’ language competitiveness in the rapidly changing global market in the 21st century. Credits should be given to the ministry’s global perspective, and I believe that every Malaysian is really forward to this new policy to succeed in our lovely multicultural and multilingual country because every language that Malaysians learn is an asset to the country.

When we have a goal, we will surely need to know what the best way to reach our goal is, say, if we want to build a nice house we will then need a good architect, good construction workers and good electricians to build up the nice house that we dream for. Same case goes for language education. The educational ministry is considering employing Chinese teachers from China to fill up the Mandarin teaching vacancies in national schools. It is really good if a small number of the Mandarin teachers in national schools, for instance, 10 percent out of the total Mandarin teachers are employed from China in order to foster better understanding and cooperation between China and Malaysia. Furthermore, Malaysian students would also have the opportunity to learn more about our neighbour in Asia.

However, things may not turn out what we expected it to be if we fill up all the Mandarin teaching vacancies in national schools by employing teachers from China. This is due to the fact that the teachers from China do not understand the multicultural and multilingual society in Malaysia. They do not know Bahasa Malaysia, nor do they know the norm and the unspoken ‘grammar’ of our society which comprises Malay, Chinese, Indians, Sabahans and Sarawakians. Some may argue that we could employ graduates from Beijing Foreign Studies University where Bahasa Malaysia courses are taught, but the point is that why do we have to employ so many foreign teachers when we have already had our local Mandarin teachers in place?

Malaysia is considered the country which has the highest level of proficiency in Mandarin other than Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. We have the largest number of Chinese language talents outside China within our country, and it is really a pity if we do not make good use of our local talents. Students in the private Chinese schools are the best assets in hand now. Many countries, namely US, UK, Germany, France, as well as Singapore and Thailand, our rivals in South East Asia, are competing to recruit Chinese language talents by all means. The Singaporean educational ministry has been visiting Taiwan every year to recruit Malaysian fresh graduates who majored in Chinese to teach Mandarin in Singapore. Isn’t it a grievance to know the truth that our Chinese majors in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong are working for Singapore, Thailand and other countries? Why have we been giving our trump cards to our rivals?

I hereby suggest that the educational ministry set up a condition for students who graduated from private Chinese schools- the Unified Examination Certificate (UEC or “Tong Kao” in Mandarin) holders and who are willing to teach Mandarin in national schools to get at least a credit for Bahasa Malaysia in SPM, a Band 6 for IELTS, or 580 for TOEFL, and of course, a credit for Mandarin in UEC examination. Three credits in three languages would be good enough to teach Mandarin as a second language. The ministry should set up a standard to let those UEC students know what the criteria to be a Mandarin in national schools is if the ministry is worrying about the BM and English level of the UEC students and Chinese majors. Closing the doors totally to the UEC holders and Chinese majors in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, whose certificates and degrees are widely accepted and recognised by most of the countries in the world, will only cause more doors opened with warm welcomes abroad.

Listen to our hearts; do we want to give up our trump cards in hand to our opponents? Or we make good use of our trump cards in order to foster our competitiveness in terms of multicultural and multilingual to service the biggest markets in the world, namely China, India, South East Asia and the English-speaking and Muslim worlds as written by Mr. Ye Lin-Sheng in his book, “The Chinese Dilemma”? Make the most of the resources that we have within the country to enhance our competitiveness in the global market, and strengthen our position as a vigorous multicultural country to service the world.

B.K.Yeow
(Department of Chinese Studies, National Taiwan Normal University)

P/S: Please take note that the New Straits Times editor editted my article and didn’t allow my sharpest questions to be seen on paper. It was published as “Teachers of Mandarin: Make Use of Local Resources” on Letters to the Editor column in 18 October 2006. This is the original article that I sent to NST.