} of languages

i cant concentrate on doing PW. haha. i've been slacking too much.... -_- i found an interesting blog while researching: click.

i think that blogger has a point. as in, sometimes english is considered the more 'high-class' language. even in my current school NJC, the more english-oriented people are the more 'elite' half of the school (the IPs). of course there are exceptions, but generally speaking, i think this is true.

and i also agree with the blogger that only addressing the needs of pupils who are having trouble with Chinese seems to be kind of ignoring the needs of other pupils who are having trouble with English. and the latter may form the majority, actually. when i was in IJ, i would have understood why MOE needs to relax the standards of Chinese. although we are not an 'elite' school, like RGS, IJ is a convent school so naturally we are more 'angmoh'. (although the school gets more and more ah lians with every new batch, in my opinion.)

anyway, but now that im in a... more secular (?) school, I can sort of see the true demographics of students in Singapore. when i can barely understand what goes on in class most of the time, because about 90% of students speak Chinese comfortably about 90% of the time, it feels almost ridiculous to know that the MOE are trying to help students cope with Chinese.

and im also starting to find my project work (even more) ridiculous. the truth is, sometimes its hard to find statistics that support our stand because statistics show that Mandarin is still the most spoken language at home. its hard to manipulate stuff like that to make it look like there is even a need to promote Mandarin. T_T

perhaps the biggest irony i face is when my group members talk in fluent Chinese while we are doing a project to revive the supposedly dying language.

its as though there's this picture painted by what the SMC and the MOE speeches tell me, and then there's the true picture that i see everyday.

haha. oh well. need to go back to do the actual PW now. sigh. =|

2006-10-08, 2:50 p.m..
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