Is Mother Tongue important?
As a full-time tutor, I often take on tuition assignments that cover English, Mathematics and Science, but very seldom for Mother Tongue. Whenever I ask parents why they do not want to get a Mother Tongue home tutor for their children, I will often get the answer ‘Mother Tongue is not important’.
Parents tend to rank the importance of a subject according to its weightage in schools. Generally, technical subjects like Mathematics and Science are perceived to be more important than language subjects as these subjects are the ‘scoring’ subjects. English is added into the package not only because it is one of the ‘scoring’ subjects, but also because it is the language medium used to teach all other subjects except Mother Tongue. This leaves Mother Tongue in an awkward position.
Language subjects used to be as important as technical subjects in the eyes of the education system and in that of the parents and students. But ever since the society becomes more and more English-oriented, people are slowly losing interest in and exposure to their Mother Tongue, which they deemed unnecessary.
The education authorities responded by changing the teaching approach for Mother Tongue, especially for the Chinese Language, to a ‘more enjoyable’ one, where students do not need to be worried about reading and writing the complicated Chinese characters at the beginning, and only need to focus on oral communication and word recognition.
Little did they know that not only does this encourage students to lessen their focus on Mother Tongue as a subject, it also prevents them from building a solid foundation in their Mother Tongue. As these students move from oral to writing stages, they realized that they have big shoes to fill within a short time. The steep learning curve further discouraged them from learning their Mother Tongue.
As time pass, students become more and more ‘westernized’. They have forgotten how to read or write in their Mother Tongue. Some Chinese students do not even know how to write their Chinese names! While this is a worrying trend, many parents chose to overlook this fact as they think that Mother Tongue is not crucial to their children’s future. However, many failed to realize that this is no longer true.
With the rising of China as a global power, many native Chinese are streaming into the rest of the world to work and to do business. As a result, Chinese is fast becoming an important language to learn when dealing with China companies. There is now increased demand for bilinguals who are good in both English and Chinese to do the necessary business translations. This used to be an edge that Singaporeans have over others. However, with the declining Chinese standards in Singapore and the increasing English literacy rates in China, native Chinese are fast overtaking Singaporean Chinese in terms of bilingual ability.
If our students continue to disregard their Mother Tongue, they will very soon be phased out of the race and eventually lose their competitive edge in the workforce. So, is Mother Tongue really that unimportant?
This article was written by Vivien. Vivien is a full time tutor who is teaching at the western area of Singapore. She taught English, Math and Science for Primary School student. If you are a parent who is looking for a full-time home tutor at the western area of Singapore, you may give us a call or submit your online home tuition registration. Our friendly staff will call you as soon as possible.
