English learning

English is my second language since primary school. Beatty is an “integrated” school, a new type of school after Singapore gained self-government from the British. “Integrated” in the sense that the school has both English and Chinese, sometimes Malay and Tamil stream students studied in one school with one common management. I was in the Chinese stream side of the “integrated” primary school.

The learning of English language was always tough as there was no environment for English learning even within the “integrated” school. Putting 2 different language stream students together under one roof did not mix them and create a melting pot. English was taught as a single subject in the Chinese stream. In addition, primary school students need to learn a third language, Malay – the National Language.

Most students in the Chinese steam did not take the learning of English seriously, so do the English teachers. Very rarely, one could find a student good in English or a good dedicated English teacher. Perhaps, this was due to the population boom as young population increased tremendously and the education infrastructure just found difficult to cope.

Learning English is just like a struggle, just to pass the examinations and tests and to avoid getting red marks. It is similar to our current students struggling with Chinese language and yet could not get the passing marks. What a reverse in Singapore education in a short time!

The situation of English learning did not improve even I entered into Whampoa. Whampoa is a pure Chinese secondary school and there were no English stream students. Whampoa was one of the pioneer Chinese secondary schools set up by the government to separate Chinese stream students from the traditional Chinese school run by clans or churches.

The government was not able to improve the English mastery in even government established Chinese schools. It did a failed experiment. New secondary one students attended Science and Mathematics lessons in English language. With a weak English foundation, both students and teachers (who used to give lessons in Chinese) could not handle well. On top of this, students also need to attend technical training (any two subjects from electricity, metal or woodwork) in the morning at another school.

The teaching of Science and Mathematics in English language finally shifted back to Mandarin at secondary three. However, the textbooks remained in English. Historically, using English textbooks for Mathematics and Science at Chinese schools (even for traditional Chinese schools) is a norm. This provided a great help for Chinese school students when studying engineering or science in the university. Chinese stream students scoring poor marks in English but getting distinction or good honours for B.Sc or B.Eng degrees were not uncommon. Perhaps, a little like students from China getting outstanding performance at our schools or universities now.

I only put in effort to seriously study English language when I was in pre-university, mainly because I wanted to go to university for further study. This was the first time in my life I was attending a tuition. I also began listening to BBC, a habit that I keep till now. The English tuition helped to strengthen my English grammar, vocabulary, written and comprehension. However, as there was a lack of speaking environment, the mastery of oral English was still poor. Only until I was enlisted into the Army, mixing around with ACS, RI boys then slowly, I saw the improvement of spoken English.

Despite of a better and improved command of English, English is always my second language. I have difficult in pronouncing some English words, understanding and spelling some English words (for example, science, history or literature terminology). It could be simply because I don’t have this domain knowledge in my data base!