Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore: Concerns and Visions 9811511489, 9789811511486

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Kaycheng Soh

Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore Concerns and Visions

Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore

Kaycheng Soh

Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore Concerns and Visions

Kaycheng Soh Singapore Centre for Chinese Language Nanyang Technological University Singapore, Singapore

ISBN 978-981-15-1148-6 ISBN 978-981-15-1149-3 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1149-3

(eBook)

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Foreword

In 2009, the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language (SCCL) was opened by the then Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew to provide quality training for Chinese Language teachers as well as research into the teaching and learning of the Chinese Language in a bilingual environment. Over the past ten years, SCCL has conducted numerous practice-oriented in-service courses on teaching approaches and pedagogy. More recently, a quantitative research programme was launched to equip teachers in conducting this type of research. To date, the Centre has produced a reservoir of research-based instructional materials for use by students in the classroom and monographs on teaching methodologies for teachers. New research and development projects are being conceptualized. Important research output of the SCCL researchers has been documented in two earlier monographs: Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore: Retrospect and Challenges (2016) and Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore: Efforts and Possibilities (2018). While the former is a collection of articles related to SCCL’s earlier phase of research, the latter is to commemorate SCCL’s 10th Anniversary. It presents field-tested innovative ideas of curriculum and pedagogies which deserve large-scale application and further verification in the schools. The present publication comprises a collection of essays by Dr. Soh Kaycheng who is currently Research Consultant to SCCL and editor of the earlier monographs. In this new collection, Dr. Soh shares his concerns and visions with regard to the teaching of Chinese Language in Singapore, first taking into consideration its complex language environment, and then, pointing the way to future possible practices and research. In 2018, Dr. Soh was conferred the Eminent Scholar title by the Centre for his contribution to research over the past decades. This publication is yet another instance of his academic output in research, covering topics such as bilingualism, the development of teacher creativity, world university rankings, and comparison of

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international scholastic achievement. I sincerely hope this new publication will generate further conversations on the teaching and learning of Chinese Language in a bilingual context and spark new interest in research in this significant emerging phenomenon. Singapore Centre for Chinese Language, Singapore, Singapore Lee Kuan Yew Fund for Bilingualism, Singapore, Singapore

Peng Ho

Foreword

This is the third book under the general title Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore. The first with the subtitle Retrospect and Challenges covers what has taken place in the past and what may be done in the future. The articles therein deal with topics such as teaching methodologies, teachers’ ICT and assessment literacy, and their perceptions of social status and job satisfaction. It ends with discussions on the issues of code-switching and teaching of culture. The second with the subtitle Efforts and Challenges presents research efforts of the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language researchers, covering curriculum and instructional materials, teaching of spoken and written Chinese, and assessment literacy, with some innovative ideas trialed in the school context. This third publication with the title Concerns and Visions differs from the previous volumes in two ways. While the previous ones are collections of articles by many SCCL staff, the present one has Dr. Soh as the sole author. Secondly, and more importantly, it covers a wide spectrum of issues relevant to the teaching of Chinese Language in the Singapore context, that is, the “big picture” problems which hitherto are seldom discussed. Topics dealt with in this collection of essays include culture-based and values-oriented teaching, linguistic and pedagogical aspects, cognitive and affective factors, and forecast and future directions. Obviously, these topics are more theoretical though not less practical. And, because of this, Dr. Soh does not claim to have made the last say but alludes that the topics call for further exploration, discussion, and even experimentation. In this third book, Dr. Soh displays his strong belief in supporting discussion with statistical data. In a very real sense, this approach is rare in this area of work. In this manner, Dr. Soh demonstrates his role as the Centre’s Research Consultant who is entrusted with the not-so-easy responsibility of infusing greater research rigour through the application of measurement and statistical concepts and techniques into the research done at SCCL.

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I believe that, with Dr. Soh’s judicial combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches in preparing this collection of essays, it will generate more discussion on the various aspects of the teaching of Chinese Language, not only in the Singapore context but beyond, where the Chinese diaspora is. Singapore Centre for Chinese Language, Singapore, Singapore

Foo Suan Fong

Preface

This publication is a sequel to two earlier volumes, Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore: Retrospect and Challenges (2016, Springer) and Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore: Efforts and Possibilities (2018, Springer) which report the views and research output of researchers at the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language. However, this third volume differs from the earlier two in that it is a collection of essays by the author. It differs also in that it is not a monograph, in its strict sense, as the topics are diverse and do not form a cohesive theme although they all pertain to aspects of teaching of Chinese in the Singapore context. Notwithstanding this limitation, the essays are organized under a few broader threads. First is the relation between Chinese Language and culture. In the recent years, second language teaching community recognizes the close link between language and culture and encourages reference to and even infusion of culture into language teaching. The essays in Part I: Chinese Language Teaching and Culture deal with conceptual and practical issues of linking language teaching to culture in the teaching of Chinese Language in the context of Singapore as a multiracial society. It is a truism that Chinese characters (Hanzi) are at the root of difficulty of teaching Chinese Language, not only in Singapore but anywhere on earth because of its orthography. The first essay in Part II: Teaching and Learning of Hanzi looks into the development of Chinese character lists and the efforts to quantify the difficulty levels of Hanzi. The next essay presents a local exploration in indexing Hanzi with implications for the development of course materials. This is followed by an essay on memory strategies, largely based on psychological theories and memory experiments which suggest possible effective learning of Hanzi. Part II ends with a report on exploration of readability formula for Chinese as a second language against earlier studies in which Chinese is a first language. Language learning is intimately influenced by modes of assessment, teaching approach, home support, and attitudes. These four aspects of teaching approaches are discussed in the three essays forming Part III: Cognitive and Affective Aspects of Chinese Language Teaching. The first discusses the needed changes in assessment ix

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and the bilingual approach and the possible benefits of changing. The second is a projection of Chinese as the major home language in the near future and the need to revive it. Part III ends with a discussion of the effect of language attitude and its measurement. Seen in a dynamic language context of Singapore, Chinese Language interacts with English and results in interlanguage among the students. And, as more foreign students come to Singapore, the classroom is becoming more diverse in language. This implies a situation for effective use of interlanguage and even translanguaging to maximize language resources. This is discussed in the first essay of Part IV: About the Future. Besides, there are many relevant and long-standing questions pertaining to the teaching of Chinese Language in Singapore. These call for thoughtful discourse and systematic empirical research. The questions are expounded in the second essay in Part II, which ends with a discussion of a proposed conceptual model of interdisciplinary research on Chinese Language teaching. All in all, the questions, approaches, and issues of Chinese Language teaching discussed in this collection of essays may be peculiar to Singapore because of her changed and changing language environment, curriculum innovations, and pedagogical practices. They may also be of interest to Chinese Language teaching communities in other countries, where similar problems and difficulties are being experienced. These essays were written over the past decades for different purposes at different time; some are public talks and others academic discourses. The varied quality among them is therefore easily detected. And, for the same reason, the academic practice of citation and referencing is not strictly adhered to in some of the essays. For this, the indulgence of the academically oriented readers is requested; and, it can be safely assumed that they are able to recognize the research base of the ideas presented, as understandingly and aptly commented by a perceptive reviewer, “What is presented is mostly musings, rather than grounded research (without minimizing that he clearly is speaking from a wealth of research)”. For intellectual honesty and humility, it is admitted that the views shared in this publication are subject to personal limitations, and not all readers will agree with all of the ideas therein. Nonetheless, if it generates further discussion with greater depth, the publication has served its purpose. I am thankful to the reviewers for painstakingly providing perceptive feedback and useful suggestions that help to make the publication more readable than it originally is. Needless to say, any remaining errors and omissions are my responsibility. Singapore, Singapore

Kaycheng Soh

Contents

Part I 1

2

3

Chinese Language Teaching and Culture

Language Learning and Culture Teaching: Culture in Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Two Definitions of Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cultural Dimensions and Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Second Language Teaching and Culture Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Problems for Teaching Culture in Language Lessons . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 3 3 5 7 8 8

Culture-Based and Values-Oriented Language Instruction: A Proposal for Consideration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Culture Learning as a Secondary Objective of Language Curriculum . . . . Cultural Lessons in Primary School Chinese Language Textbooks . . . . Culture-Based Language Curriculum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Multiculturalism Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Duo Vadis? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

9 10 11 13 17 17 18 19

Enhancing Culture Learning in Chinese Language Curricula: Some Preliminary Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Expected Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Implementation Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Practical Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

21 21 22 22 23 25 25

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Part II

Teaching and Learning of Hanzi

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Chinese Character Lists: Development, Uses, and Limitations . . . Functions of Character Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chinese Character Lists in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chinese Character Lists in Singapore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Limitations of Character Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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29 30 31 35 36 38 38

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Difficulty Index and Ease Index of Hanzi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Is Chinese Language Really Difficult? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Are Hanzi Not Difficult? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Precedence to Learn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Precedence Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Secondary Analysis: Difficulty Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Follow-Up Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Readability Formula for Chinese as a Second Language . . . . . . . . Readability Formulas for English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Readability Formula for Chinese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Statistical Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Correlations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Multiple Regression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Verification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Discussion and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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51 51 53 54 54 55 55 55 57 58 59 60 62

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Strategies for Preventing Orthographical Errors: What Psychology of Learning Suggests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Confusing Hanzi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Psychology of Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Psychological View of Orthographic Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prevention and Correction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

63 63 65 66 68 70 70

Contents

Part III 8

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Cognitive and Affective Aspects of Chinese Language Teaching

Two Needed Changes in Chinese Language Teaching: Assessment and Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Assessment for Learning: What Educational Research Suggests . . . . . Approach to the Teaching of Chinese Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bilingual Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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75 76 80 81 84 85

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The Need to Revitalize Chinese Language in Singapore . . . . . . . . . 87 Language Loss in the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Determining Language Loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 The Price of Language Loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Changing Language Trends in Singapore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Reversing the Trend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

10

Attitudes Toward Chinese Language: Its Measurement and Uses . . . What Is Attitude? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Measurement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reliability and Validity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Uses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Part IV

105 106 106 108 109 110 110

About the Future

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Forecasting the Future of Chinese Language in Singapore . . . . . . Transfer or Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interlanguage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chinese Language of Singapore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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113 113 115 115 118 118

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Ten Questions About Chinese Language Teaching in Singapore . . Question No. 1: What Are the Standards to Be Attained? . . . . . . . . . . Question No. 2: How Much Time Is Available for Learning? . . . . . . . Question No. 3: What Are the Emphases in Teaching? . . . . . . . . . . . Question No. 4: What Is the Content to Learn? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Question No. 5: Are the Teaching Methods Effective? . . . . . . . . . . . . Question No. 6: Is the Assessment Appropriate? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Question No. 7: Is There Sufficient Opportunity for Practice? . . . . . . Question No. 8: What Is the Students’ Motivation? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Question No. 9: Is Student Motivation Strong Enough? . . . . . . . . . . .

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121 122 124 126 128 130 132 134 136 137

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Question No. 10: Are There Family and Societal Supports? . . . . . . . . . 139 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 13

Research into Teaching of Chinese Language in Singapore: From Students to Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Basic Sciences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Needed Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teachers’ Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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143 144 145 146 149 149 150

Epilogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Part I

Chinese Language Teaching and Culture

Chapter 1

Language Learning and Culture Teaching: Culture in Language

This article first discusses the contribution culture teaching can make to language teaching. It then presents practical suggestions for incorporating culture into the teaching of Chinese Language. Examples for current textbooks are used to illustrate the approach.

In this small town, I am afraid you cannot find much culture. She is studying Japanese language and culture.

Two Definitions of Culture These two sentences use the word culture somewhat differently. In the first, culture refers to music, art, literature, dance, architecture, etc. In this sense, culture is defined narrowly as high arts. In the second, culture includes those high arts plus the life styles, common practices, and faiths of a specific group of people. Culture is defined broadly to reflect how people live, believe, and behave. Where there are people living, and living in different styles, there are cultures. Different peoples have different ways of living, and this encompasses the meanings they put into what they do and what they have. For example, people attribute meanings to colours; to Chinese, red signifies prosperity and all the good things in life and black things that are unfortunate and bleak. The Chinese way of life is full of symbolisms which are expressed in many forms of folk arts, such as calligraphy, knots, faces (of Peking opera characters), martial arts, lanterns, jades, paper-cutting, couplets, etc.

Cultural Dimensions and Elements Culture is also defined in terms of values. For instance, Hofstede (1980) defines national cultures are differing in such dimensions as power distance, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation. Differences in these © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Soh, Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1149-3_1

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1 Language Learning and Culture Teaching: Culture in Language

cultural dimensions have been found through extensive research that they are predictive of productivity. The cultural dimensions have also been found to correlate with administrative styles of school administrators (Soh 2017). The table below shows the different profiles of cultural dimensions of American, China, and Singapore (Hofstede, 1980). Cultural dimensions of America, China, and Singapore

America China Singapore

Power distance 40 80 74

Individualism 91 20 20

Masculinity 63 66 46

Uncertainty avoidance 46 40 54

Long-term orientation 29 118 16

Sorce: Hofstede (1980)

The profiles in the diagram below show clearly the differences and similarities among the three countries. Firstly, America and China are obviously different in power distance, individualism, and long-term orientation; they are, however, similar in masculinity and uncertainty avoidance. Secondly, it is interesting that Singapore, being a Westernized country in the East, is similar to China in power distance, individualism, and uncertainty but differs from China somewhat in masculinity and long-term orientation. 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 Power distance

Individual-ism

America

Masculinity

China

Uncertainty avoidance

Long-term orientaon

Singapore

The culture of a people can be seen from another angle. There are many ways a culture can be described or represented. However, a concise description is in terms of three elements. First is the perspectives of a people. This includes how they see things, what they require, and their values. Second is their practices, including their custom, rituals, rules, and habits. Then, third is their products such as the tools and

Second Language Teaching and Culture Learning

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inventions which are in fact the artefacts resulting from their work and life. It is worthy of note that the three elements of a culture are related and not separated. What a people expect or value leads them to behave in a certain manner and value certain things and behaviours, and to effectively promote or enforce such valued objects and behaviours, they produced certain tools or artefacts. It is a cliché to mention the three great inventions of ancient China—the compass, gunpowder, and block-printing. Such early inventions can be expected to have no small impact on Chinese life since these came into being. They are a source of pride of the Chinese people so much so that practically no language textbooks will miss them. In fact, imperial examination for selecting high-level public officials should be added to the list, as this Chinese invention of the Sui Dynasty (581–618 AD) has had great influence on the public officers systems of many centuries from mid-Tang (618–705 AD) onward until it was abolished in 1905 in the modern China. The system is seldom mentioned in language textbooks as a great Chinese invention, perhaps because of the tendency to focus on concrete products more than abstract systems in the discussion of culture. Nonetheless, this invention is a great one in that it became a life focus of Chinese scholars. It is a great invention in that it influenced not only countries near China (i.e. Japan and Korean) but also countries far away such as India and England.

Second Language Teaching and Culture Learning In the recent years, the second language teaching community over the world has recognized the close relation between language teaching and culture learning. The basic tenet is that language is a vehicle of culture and that culture is the basis of language. It also recognized that not every idea can be translated between languages, for instance, jokes and idioms which are heavily culture-loaded. These give rise to the study called pragmatics—how people use language to express and communicate effectively. The aim of teaching language in conjunction with its culture is (1) to concretize the language the students learn, (2) to strengthen the students’ motivation to learn the language, and (3) to let students have authentic experiences related to the language. In view of these objectives, Chinese Language texts can be broadly classified as (1) culture-based and (2) non-culture-based. The first type of texts refers directly to some people or event of the past and is therefore closely related to the ancient culture of China. For instance, the Chinese Language textbook for Secondary 1 Express Stream includes such topics on Self-recommendation of Mao Sui hh毛遂自荐ii, The Trick of the Vacant Castle hh空城计ii, and Wang Xiji and the Fan hh王羲之题扇ii, all of which relate to ancient stories. On the other hand, a topic like Work Hard and There Is Hopes hh努力, 就有希望ii has nothing to do directly with the past, but it is

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1 Language Learning and Culture Teaching: Culture in Language

meant to promote long-term orientation and reflects the value to be inculcated in the students. It can be turned into a culture-based lesson with some creativity on the part of the teacher. Teaching Non-Culture-Based Texts Non-culture-based texts can be expended to include some cultural elements during the lessons. This is done by incorporating cultural knowledge and follow-up activities. The lesson begins with the traditional focus on learning the language features such as vocabulary, sentence structures, and grammar. After this, it extends to consider culture and values. Thus, teaching is not the problem, it is the content. Take, for example, the text of Work Hard and There Is Hopes hh努力, 就有希望ii describes how a Singaporean entrepreneur took the business of Chinese pao-ping (薄饼, something with wraps of mainly vegetables) to the world and started up a multimillion business. The main message for the students is to work hard and do not be put off by initial failures. And, since pao-ping is a traditional food of Chinese, the origin of it is related to Chinese festivals, its invention has a story, and there are variants of it. There are similar food from Korea, India, and Middle East that can be compared. For follow-up activities, the students can go to the Internet to read more about pao-ping, collect pictures of it, learn to make it, visit the factory, draw up a list of its ingredients, find out the nutrition values, etc. Teaching Culture-Based Texts Since the text makes direct reference to cultural events, these and the relevant values become the main focus of the lesson, with language features as the secondary focus. Those follow-up activities are equally applicable to allow students to experience the culture through authentic learning. For example, the lesson Wang Xiji and the Fan hh王羲之题扇ii will take the students to find out the historical background of the calligraphy master, the values of helping people, the different styles of Chinese calligraphy, the different types of fans in China and Japan, and the museum collections of Chinese fan in other countries. As for follow-up activities, the students will go to the web to read more, they will make their own fans and then draw and draw on these (like what Wang did), and they can learn to sing the song Ten Fans and learn the elegant fan dance. A topic more suitable for primary students is Chopsticks (筷子, kuaizi). Students can learn about the story of its invention, the proper way to hold a pair of chopsticks, the manner to observe when using a pair at dinner, and the differences of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean chopsticks. They can also learn songs about chopsticks and dance using chopsticks and about the custom of presenting the newly-wed couple chopsticks. Many language features can be learned alongside these activities in a psychologically nonthreatening atmosphere. Co-curricular Activities It has been suggested that a closer link should be forged between Chinese Language teaching and Chinese-based co-curricular activities such as Chinese orchestra, Chinese calligraphy society, Chinese dance troupe, and others (Soh 2016). These activities afford great opportunity for the students to get familiarized with different Chinese high arts as well as the relevant language features.

Problems for Teaching Culture in Language Lessons

7

Take, for example, the The Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto hh梁祝协奏曲ii which is an evergreen in modern Chinese music. The secondary students can be introduced to it (or they already are familiar with it) through a music appreciation lesson. Through it, they learn the relevant language: the story behind the piece, the names of musical instruments, and the ways to describe the music and moods. These can be followed by reading up on the imperial examination (科举, keju) and compared this with the national examinations and public service system of today. A question can be asked on why the girl Zhu Yingtai (祝英台) had to disguise as a man to take part in the imperial exam, followed by a discussion on the gender inequality and marriage system of the ancient China. And, of course, a discussion can follow on the transport systems of the ancient China, too. All these will allow the students to learn about Chinese culture in an interesting and pleasant manner, and, when comparisons are made with the modern days, learning may become even more meaningful, since the ancient practices are contrasted with the present-day experience of the students. In so doing, teaching and learning will be consistent with the Vygotskian concepts of scaffolding and social learning.

Problems for Teaching Culture in Language Lessons Teaching Chinese culture in Chinese Language lessons is not without problems. There are three such problems deserving exploration. Teachers It is a truism that to teach Chinese culture, the Chinese Language teachers need to have the relevant knowledge and, perhaps, even skills (e.g. folk arts). As most young Chinese Language grew up in a system which treated Chinese Language almost pure as skills and unrelated to Chinese culture, they need to first learn about it before they can teach it. This needed preparation is not different from preparing lessons of other topical content. For instance, to teach the lesson Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata hh贝多芬的月光曲ii, a lesson in primary textbook, the teacher needs to read up on the topic. Likewise, to teach the lesson Wang Xiji and the Fan hh王羲之题扇ii, the teacher needs to familiarize with Chinese calligraphy and its styles and masters. Thus, teaching Chinese culture as part of teaching Chinese Language does not add to the preparatory work. Look at this positively, the teacher will become more cultured for doing so over a period of time. And, this is consistent with the traditional belief that teaching and learning mutually enriches (教学相长, jiaoxue xiangzhang) or in modern terms life-long learning. Time The follow-up cultural activities need some time in the classroom for demonstration and sharing, although much of them can be done outside class time by the students with proper scaffolding and guidance. If the school administration sees the value of teaching Chinese culture as part of Chinese Language, some non-culturebased lessons can be replaced by culture-based lessons, written or adapted by the teachers. Besides, there is a provision for school-based curriculum with some hours in lieu of the normal lessons; thus, culture-based lessons can be developed to make

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good use of the time allowed. Moreover, if the instructors of Chinese-related co-curricular activities (e.g. Chinese orchestra instructors) can be enlisted to help and work with the Chinese Language teacher, this will provide additional time in which the cultural elements and values can be incorporated. Methods Culture-based Chinese Language lessons need not be teacher-centred beginning with the teacher introducing the topic. Students can be given prepared worksheets which guide them to do some preparatory work for an upcoming lesson. For example, they can be given the URLs to read up on a cultural topic on the Internet, printed notes, and selected library books. They can even be given guidance to search for relevant information, again, from the Internet. These turn the lesson from the traditional one into blended learning and flipped teaching.

Conclusion If language and culture are so intimately linked to each other, it does not make sense to treat them with total separation in language teaching. This goes for Chinese Language as it does for other languages. There are ample articles on the Internet advocating the teaching of culture as part of second or foreign language teaching. To incorporate culture elements into language lessons may appear to be an additional responsibility (or burden), but as this article attempts to show, it is just like teaching any other non-culture-based language lesson. The advantage of fusing language and culture is to make the language lessons more meaningful, relevant, and interesting, and this will enhance the effectiveness of language teaching per se. This is possible because, when culture and language are fused in language teaching, culture has a dual function, first as a vehicle for the language skills (just like in non-culture-based lessons) and at the same time serving as the content of language lessons. Note: This article is based on a lecture delivered at the Forum on Language Learning and Culture Teaching: Rejection or Fusion, held in connection with the Tenth Anniversary Celebration of the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language, 2018.

References Hofstede, G. (1980). Cultural consequences: International differences in work-related values. Beverly Hill, CA: Sage. Soh, K. (2016). Teaching Chinese culture in Singapore schools. In K. Soh (Ed.), Teaching Chinese language in Singapore: Retrospect and challenges. Singapore: Springer. Soh, K. (2017). Finland and Singapore in PISA 2009: Similarities and differences in achievements and school management. In K. Soh (Ed.), PISA ranking: Issues and effects in Singapore, East Asia and the world. New Jersey: World Scientific.

Chapter 2

Culture-Based and Values-Oriented Language Instruction: A Proposal for Consideration

A proposal is made to forge a closer relation between the teaching of language and culture with a view to inculcate desired values. It is argued that language and culture are so intimately linked that they are mutually supportive.

I would like to begin this proposal with two quotes from Prof. Stephen Krashen: “Acquisition requires meaningful interaction in the target language - natural communication - in which speakers are concerned not with the form of their utterances but with the messages they are conveying and understanding.” Stephen Krashen “... ‘comprehensible input’ is the crucial and necessary ingredient for the acquisition of language.” Stephen Krashen

In these quotes, I have highlighted first meaningful interaction and next comprehensible input. I would also like to take the liberty, if Prof. Krashen does not mind, to expand interaction to include bilingual interaction and input to include not only linguistic input but also substantive input, that is, content. A scenario first. Before the Chinese New Year, couplets and Chinese characters symbolizing luck and prosperity written on red papers pop-up everywhere. Xiaoming sees in a food court where the big black character 福 ( fu, fortune) written on red paper is pasted on the wall, but conspicuously upside down. So, he laughs at it. What Xiaoming does not know is that pasting 福 upside down is the correct way; it signifies “福到”, meaning “fortune has arrived”, playing on the homonyms 到 (arrive), and 倒 (upside down). Here, Xiaoming knows the language, but does not know the culture.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Soh, Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1149-3_2

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Culture Learning as a Secondary Objective of Language Curriculum The learning of language skills is the primary goal of language instruction and the learning of culture is secondary. This approach tacitly assumes that students need to master a language up to a certain level before they are able to learn the relevant culture. In this sense, language is a necessary tool for learning culture. For example, the 2015 Syllabus Chinese Language Primary (Ministry of Education, 2014: 8–9) specifies the three overall objectives thus: Develop language abilities: Language abilities are the core competencies by which students communicate, including the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and habits in listening, speaking, reading, composing, oral interaction, and written interaction. Cultivate humanistic literacies: Humanistic literacies are important for the students to develop, as these help the students acquire positive and active optimistic sentiments and morality, including values, Chinese culture, social knowledge, care and concern, and global awareness. Foster general competence: General competence enables students to acquire, construct, and apply knowledge, be able to analyse and solve problems, including abilities of thinking, self-directed learning, interaction, management of emotions, using information technology, and cross-cultural communication. For Malay MTL for primary schools, the objectives as specified in the syllabus (Malay Language, Teaching and Learning Syllabus, Primary One to Six, Ministry of Education, 2014) are: 1. Berkomunikasi secara efektif dalam bahasa Melayu dalam kehidupan seharian dan alam pekerjaan; 2. Memahami dan membina jati diri melalui penghayatan yang mendalam tentang budaya, tradisi, sastera dan sejarah; dan. 3. Berhubung dengan masyarakat Nusantara dan dunia yang bertutur dalam Bahasa atau budaya yang sama. When translated: 1. Communicate effectively in Malay in everyday life and working environment. 2. Understand and develop identity through deep appreciation of culture, tradition, literature, and history. 3. In relation to the community and the world speaking the language or the same culture. And it is safe to say that the same is for Tamil (Tamil Language 2015 Syllabus, Primary). Obviously, culture learning is explicitly assigned a position secondary to language learning. However, in recent years, the close relation between language and its culture is recognized. For instance, Chen and Zhan (2014): 59) assert that “language is a

Cultural Lessons in Primary School Chinese Language Textbooks

11

representation and carrying form of a national culture, it is impossible to really learn the language of a nation well without knowing the culture thereof”. In like vein, Omer and Ali (2011: 258) argue that “in language education field, education applied only by considering linguistic perspective would be insufficient just like the comments about noticeable portion of the iceberg”. The call for teaching culture while teaching language, especially for foreign language teaching, is not new, as evidenced by studies in Australia, Europe, and the United States over the past 20 more years summarized by Kramsch (2013). In short, language learning needs be supported by culture learning, or learning language needs a cultural context. In this sense, culture becomes a tool for learning language. In spite of such strong advocacy, culture learning remains secondary to language learning.

Cultural Lessons in Primary School Chinese Language Textbooks It has to be acknowledged that culture learning, secondary though, has not been totally neglected in language instruction. For instance, Wu (2011) analysed fifth and sixth grade Chinese Language textbooks in use during 2006–2009 in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan (Table 2.1). The author concluded, thus: . . . a common purpose embedded in all the Mandarin Chinese reading curricula is the development of an individual’s virtues and character. In all four areas more than 20% of the lessons focus on the importance of virtue and character building (what is sometimes known as moral education), which is the core of the Chinese Confucius culture. Despite differences in colonial and political history and ethnic composition, these areas share a deeply rooted Chinese culture (Wu, 2011: 78).

Table 2.1 Distribution of lessons in reading textbooks by topic Chinese traditional culture Local-/cultural-specific essay Legendary story Nationalism-/patriotism-related text International culture Virtue/character building with life lessons Role model Developing one’s ability in learning Developing a static taste (e.g. nature, art) Global (postmodern) issue Other topics Total number of lessons Source: Wu (2011, Table 2: 76)

China 2 8 0 19 8 23 10 14 20 6 6 116

Hong Kong 4 7 3 3 4 19 5 11 8 6 6 76

Singapore 1 1 3 7 3 16 1 11 1 1 1 45

Taiwan 8 8 0 0 5 22 4 5 12 6 6 76

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Table 2.2 Percentages of culture-based lessons in Chinese Language textbooks

Primary 1 Primary 2 Primary 3 Primary 4 Primary 5 Primary 6 Median

1979 4.2 37.5 44.4 75.0 27.5 37.5 37.5

1993 30.0 35.0 30.6 40.6 16.7 34.4 32.5

2002 56.3 40.6 47.5 55.0 34.4 50.0 48.8

2007 43.3 50.0 40.0 15.0 58.3 65.0 46.7

Source: Ng (2015, Table 4: 16)

Likewise, Ng (2015) analysed four sets of Chinese Language textbooks for primary students in use during 1979–2007 in Singapore schools (Table 2.2). The percentages of culture-based lessons vary from as low as 4.2% (Primary 1, 1979) to as high as 75% (Primary 4, 1979). As shown by the medians, in 1979, an average of 37.5% of the lessons were culture-based. There was a slight drop to 32.5% in 1993. However, in 2002, the percentage increased to 48.8% and then dropped slightly to 46.7% in 2007. The trend suggests that cultured-based lessons gained importance over the past 30-year period, with an increase of about 10% over the years. Of late, Cao and God (2017) analysed four sets of Chinese Language textbooks used in Singapore primary schools. These were compiled and published by the Ministry of Education and can therefore be expected to have followed closely the specified objectives of the Chinese Language syllabuses of the time. The changes in percentages of culture-based lessons may also be seen as reflecting the changes in official view of the importance placed on culture learning within the context of language learning. The authors adopted Gonzales’s (1974) scheme and classified the cultural topics into seven categories (Table 2.3). For instance, deep culture refers to “conscious awareness such as assumptions, expectations, attitudes, values, and beliefs that influence behaviors,. . .relationships, communication, time, power, problem-solving” (Brake, 2017). In the textbooks analysed, deep culture is expressed through traditional and contemporary stories. Other cultural levels are exemplified under Topics. As can be seen in Table 2.3, cultural topics increased from 12% in 1986 to 29% in 1994 and remained about the same (27%) in 2001. However, 2009 saw a decrease by half down to 14%. In terms of specific cultural categories, greater emphasis on deep culture and historical culture is found in the 1994 and 2001 textbooks and greater emphasis on formal culture, human values, and language communication in the 1994 textbooks. Notably, topics related to situational culture (i.e. products) were found only in the 1986 textbooks but not then after. Such fluctuations could well be a reflection of the relative emphasis on cultural instruction vis-á-vis language skills in language education policy at the various points of time. It is interesting to note that the percentages of culture-based lessons changed from 12.0% in 1986 to 29.0% in 1994 and maintained around that level until 2009 in which the percentage dropped to 14.0%, almost back to square one, so to speak.

Culture-Based Language Curriculum

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Table 2.3 Numbers of culture-based lessons in four sets of Chinese language textbooks Cultural level Deep culture

1986 3.96

1994 7.25

2001 7.02

2009 5.18

Formal culture Historical culture

3.12 3.84

4.64 7.25

0 16.47

2.38 3.78

Humanistic values

0.36

1.45

0.54

0.56

Language and communication Situational culture Total number of lessons Lessons of cultural content Average cultural lessons per year Percent of cultural topics

0.36

8.41

2.97

2.1

0.36 260 31.2

0 216 62.6

0 200 54.0

0 297 41.6

5.2

10.4

9.0

6.9

12.0

29.0

27.0

14.0

Topics Traditional stories, contemporary stories Customs/arts, historical sites Historical personalities, technological invention Fables, philosophical arguments, fairy tales Idioms, poems/rhymes, tongue twisters, riddles, raps Products

Note: Cao and God (2017). Numbers of lessons recalculated based on the original table

Moreover, throughout the four sets, traditional and contemporary stories generally reflecting deep culture maintained at the highest level among the seven cultural levels, with some fluctuation. Moreover, the numbers of culture-based lessons vary from 5.2 to 10.4 per year. Notwithstanding the changes over years, it is evident that culture-based lessons have had a place in primary school Chinese Language textbooks here in Singapore. A pertinent question to ask is whether the proportions of such lessons are sufficient or adequate to help in the attainment of the cultural objective as stipulated in the relevant syllabuses, secondary though it may be.

Culture-Based Language Curriculum Culture traditionally takes a second seat in Singapore’s Chinese Language curriculum, as evidenced by the two analyses cited above (Cao & God, 2017; Ng, 2015). Thus, language learning is the ultimate goal and culture learning is only a tool—a vehicle to carry the linguistic features and substantive content. This relative priority of language seems to be a common feature of language curriculum, probably due to the common belief that students need to master a language before they can use it to learn culture of that language. What if we were bold enough to reverse the priority, making culture learning primary and language learning secondary? This seemingly radical approach does not necessarily denigrate language learning as unimportant but lends language learning a

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richer and more meaningful context and, perhaps because this reversal, greater effectiveness. We need to realize that a language lesson has no content of its own, unless we are talking about linguistics; but, linguistics is not what language textbooks are about and definitely not what students are expected to learn at the school level. If, as shown above, language textbooks have up to 50% (Ng, 2015) or just 30% (Cao & God, 2017) of culture-based topics, does this mean the remaining 50–70% have nothing to do with culture in any sense? The answer is, “It depends”; it depends on how we define culture. Very often, the word culture makes us think of art which includes music, art (painting), literature, etc. as in such a sentence as “You won’t find much culture in this sleepy little town, I’m afraid” (Cambridge Dictionary, http://dictionary.cam bridge.org/dictionary/english/subculture). In contrast to this narrow definition, culture also means “the way of life, especially the general customs and beliefs, of a particular group of people at a particular time” as in, for example, “She’s studying modern Japanese language and culture” (Ibid.). In the broad definition, culture is how people live. The National Centre for Cultural Competence, USA (Goode, Sockalingam, Brown, & Jones, 2000; cited in Omer & Ali, 2011: 258), defines culture more formally and comprehensively thus: An integrated pattern of human behavior that includes thoughts, communications, languages, practices, beliefs, values, customs, courtesies, rituals, manners of interacting and roles, relationships and expected behaviors of a racial, ethnic, religious or social group; and the ability to transmit the above to succeeding generations.

Language textbooks have culture-based lessons, the content of which is related to or “borrowed from” science, art, literature, histories, personalities, etc. The remaining lessons about daily events are usually considered as non-culture. But, if we adopt the broad definition of culture, it can be argued that all language lessons are culture-based in nature to varying degree, albeit implicitly, and they have inherent values messages. Take, for example, a lesson on a party celebrating a little girl’s birthday. It describes the jubilant gathering of family members and friends and the ubiquitous birthday cakes, candle-blowing, song-singing, gifts, and photo-taking. It is likely to be classified as a non-culture lesson. But, in fact, it has cultural and values messages about the cultural practices and values of family life, parental love, friendship, rituals, and social etiquette, except that these are not made explicit in the text. Surely, we can think of other non-culture lessons which have hidden elements of culture and values. Incidentally, celebrating young children’s birthdays is part of the present-day Western culture; perhaps, the lesson needs to be balanced by one on a grandparent’s birthday celebrated in the traditional Eastern manner, to highlight the difference between the two cultures and bring in an element of respect for the aged. Take another example. Through a lesson introducing a piece of Chinese orchestra music (say, the Butterfly Lovers Concerto), students may learn the following: 1. Deep culture: The classical story, individual feelings, and relationships and the exam system.

Culture-Based Language Curriculum

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Table 2.4 Comparisons between conventional and culture-based language curricula Aspect Objective Primary objective Secondary objective Context Nature of language learning Learning environment Approach to learning language Language instruction Organization of language Language learning awareness Operation Learning materials Textbook Participation Practice Classroom activities Responsibility of teacher Affection Emotional response

Conventional

Culture-based

Language knowledge and skills Cultural knowledge and skills

Cultural knowledge and skills

Learning in contrived situation Artificial Intentional

Acquisition in natural situation Natural Fortuitous

Explicit Systematic Conscious

Implicit Contextual Subconscious

Contrived Language features Passive mainly Drill in imagined context Language exercises Teaching language

Real-life, culture-relevant Cultural knowledge Active mainly Use in reality context Cultural activities Cultivating cultural awareness

Tense, anxious, worrying

Relaxed, enjoyable, pleasant

Language knowledge and skills

2. Language and communication: Adjectives describing the different moods of the music and human feelings, names of musical instruments, adjectives and sentence structures for describing musical moods, etc. 3. Humanistic values: Discipline, perseverance, leadership, and collaboration expected of orchestral musicians. Thus, language texts in fact have two functions: (1) the traditional function as a vehicle for linguistic features (vocabulary, sentence structures, grammar) and (2) as a conveyor of culture and values. With these two functions, the difference between culture-based and non-culture lessons is a question of explicitness. For communication, students learn language relevant to the cultural activities. And, for acculturalization, they learn culture, values, and language all at the same time. If this argument is accepted, we then already have culture-based (and values-oriented) language curriculum in place, without acknowledging it. At this juncture, it may be useful to make explicit comparisons between the conventional language-based and the proposed culture-based curriculum. Table 2.4 highlights the different aspects of the two curricula. As time does not permit elaboration on each of these contrasts, a few key ones will be highlighted. It is assumed that in culture-based lessons, students will learn in a relaxed, enjoyable, and pleasant atmosphere, in comparison with the tense, anxious, and

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worrying conventional language lessons. They will actively participate in the relevant cultural activities, in a reality context, and learn language implicitly as a by-product. However, such learning does not mean language learning is unplanned and left to chance. On the contrary, language features are carefully chosen for relevance and learnability. In other words, cultural learning and language learning are two sides of the same coin of language lesson, with different focuses at different point of time during the instructional process. In short, the two aspects are meshed together. It is a common misgiving that culture is difficult for children to learn until they have mastered the relevant language. However, if it is defined broadly as integrated pattern of human behaviour, then culture is learnable to school children. We are reminded by Benjamin Bloom thus: After 40 years of intensive research on school learning in the United States as well as abroad, my major conclusion is: What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn if provided with appropriate prior and current conditions of learning. (Benjamin Bloom Quotes, http://www.azquotes.com/author/31395-Benjamin_Bloom: Emphasis added.)

An example may make this clear. Many young children learn to play the piano (hopefully they enjoy doing this), and they also learn some rudiments of music along the way, picking up concepts and terminologies here and there relevant to the pieces they learn to play. If they enjoy learning to play the instrument, that is their primary learning, and the theory of music elements are secondary (accidental). Likewise, many children learn drawing and painting and enjoy doing this, and they at the same time learn some relevant technical terms along the way, perhaps, not intentionally but as part of the cultural activities. Analogously, in culture-based language lessons, students will learn the cultural content (knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours) as the primary objective and learn the relevant language features at the same time accidentally as the secondary objective. Of course, not all culture-based lessons require such action as playing a musical instrument or painting a picture. Many of the culture-based lessons involved cognitive learning – learning to know, like, and appreciate the cultural achievements and practices. For example, the origins, practices, and social significance of many festivals are cultural knowledge to be learned by listening, talking, watching, reading, and even doing. These also provide opportunities for learning the relevant language in a concrete and quasi-realistic context. What about co-curricular activities? These afford us with ample opportunities for culture and values learning as well as language learning, although it does not seem to have been capitalized, because of the almost exclusive emphasis on acquiring and displaying of skills, techniques, and products, especially through various forms of competition. The potential benefit of integrating language curriculum and relevant co-curricular activities has been discussed elsewhere (Soh, 2016) and will not be elaborated further here. In sum, by focusing on culture learning, language learning will become more meaningful, authentic, and situational. At the same time, students will be exposed to culture and acquire relevant values. As the crèche goes, this is killing two birds with

Duo Vadis?

17

one stone. And, it is encouraging that recent research has shown that by focusing on culture, language learners become better motivated (Doganay & Yeergaliyeva, 2013; Omer & Ali, 2011) and more enthusiastic. The effectiveness of language learning is thus enhanced. It has to be admitted that some of the comparisons in Table 2.4 could be false dichotomy and the differences are a question of more or less rather than all or none.

Multiculturalism Context Needless to say (still has to be said), ours is a multicultural nation, and the culturebased language curriculum ought to be also multicultural. Thus, each Mother Tongue Language (MTL) curriculum will share some selected cultural content of the other two MTLs. This is to ensure students will not only learn about their own culture but also cultures of others so as to develop mutual understanding, appreciation, and respect, thus laying the foundation for interethnic harmony that is critical and vital for the cohesiveness and sustainability of a multicultural Singapore. In Singapore, ethnic-related festivals have been celebrated and enjoyed by all ethnic groups. However, such topics deserve in-depth study than mere introduction, for better appreciation of their significance of the relevant values which transcend the surface meanings. For instance, the Chinese Dumplings Festival (Duanwu Jie) is not only an occasion for enjoying rice dumplings but a tribute to the patriotic poet Qu Yuan (339/340-278 BC) of the Warring Era. Here, patriotism and loyalty transcend time and ethnic boundary and are for Singapore as a nation. Surely, similar festive stories of this nature are to be found in the Malay and Indian cultures. Besides festivals, some other aspects of the three cultures deserve consideration so that the three culture-based MTL curricula have a judicious balance of specific cultural content. Readily come to the mind are the art, dance, architecture, literature, customs, and other social practices. In this regard, it is worthy of note that multicultural education has a positive effect on adolescents’ interethnic attitudes (Verkuyten & Thijs, 2013).

Duo Vadis? By way of summary, this proposal for MTL curriculum has made the following propositions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Reprioritize the goals to emphasize cultural learning. Increase culture-based topics in the language textbooks. Emphasize culture (and values) learning in the instructional process. Link linguistic features with cultural content. Balance across ethnic cultures.

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Doing these does not mean throwing away the extant curriculum. The shift of goal priority and the attendant modifications are for greater relevance, richer content, and more effective learning of both culture and language, in the multicultural context of Singapore. Hopefully, redesigning the language textbooks and reorientating the instructional emphasis, a better balance between culture learning and language learning can be attained. The desired outcome is that students not only learn the language skills, as they traditionally have done, but also acquire cultural knowledge and values in the same process. If this proposal is considered viable and promising, what then are the necessary follow-up actions? Without going into details (which need be worked out by relevant people), it is readily appreciated that the syllabus, textbooks, and assessment will need modifications to focus on the learning of culture, values, and language features with judicious balance to ensure that all three elements are taught well and learned effectively. Relevant print and nonprint resources need be made readily available to teachers and students when the learning needs arise. Relevant co-curricular activities need appropriate co-ordination with the formal language lessons for mutual support (Soh, 2016), for the activities to be truly co-curricular. I have not forgotten teachers, the most critical element in effective culture, values, and language learning. Teachers are the catalyst to hasten the process of interaction between the curriculum and the students for effective learning to happen. For a culture-based values-oriented curriculum to be successful, the teachers need to be familiar or to familiarize where necessary with the cultural content and the attendant values, for the very simple reason that teachers cannot teach what they do not know and not enthusiast about. Thus, MTL teachers need to acquire more cultural knowledge and even cultural skills (e.g., learn to paint, act, dance, or play a musical instrument). The end result is that MTL teachers become cultured persons and serve as models to their students.

Conclusion I remember. In my school days (i.e. more than half a century ago), practically all language lessons were culture lessons, because, at the end of a lesson, my teacher would asked, “What values have you learn from this story/essay”? This turned all language lessons into lessons of civics, citizenship education, moral education, or social emotion education. And, this approach truly reflects the traditional belief, “Texts are vehicles of Ways” (文以载道). Note: This is a revised version of Keynote Speech delivered at the Symposium on Innovative Teaching and Learning of Mother Tongue Languages (MTL) 2018 organized by the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University on 8 March 2018.

References

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References Brake, T. (2017, Oct 4). Surface and deep culture differences. Country Navigator. Retrieved from https://countrynavigator.com/blog/expert-view/surface-and-deep-cultural-differences/. Cao, Y., & God, P. H. (2017). A study on the content of Chinese traditional culture in Singapore primary textbooks from 1986 to 2009. Journal of Chinese Language Education, 15(1), 1–14. (In Chinese). Chen, L. H., & Zhan, Y. M. (2014). Application of language strategies to culture-based language instruction. Studies in Literature and Language, 9(1), 57–61. 10.39684153. Doganay, Y., & Yeergaliyeva, A. M. (2013). The impact of cultural based activities in foreign language teaching at intermediate (B1) level. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 89, 7334–7740. Gonzales, J. M. (1974). A developmental and sociological rationales for culture-based curriculum and cultural context teaching in the early instruction of Mexican-American children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA. Goode, T., Sockalingam, S., Brown, M., & Jones, W. A. (2000). A planners’ guide, infusing principles, content and themes related to cultural and linguistic competence into meeting and conferences. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Centre for Child and Human Development, National Centre for Cultural Competence. Kramsch, C. (2013). Culture in foreign language teaching. Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research, 1(1), 57–78. Ministry of Education. (2014). 2015 syllabus Chinese language primary. Singapore: Curriculum Planning & Development Division, Ministry of Education. Ng, T. C. (2015). Spanning over thirty years: The design framework of Singapore primary school Chinese language texts and the systemic change. In C. L. Tan (Ed.), In-depth teaching: Teaching practices and reflections of Chinese language master teachers in Singapore. Taipei: WanJuanLou Books Co., Ltd. (In Chinese). Omer, K., & Ali, D. (2011). The effect of cultural integrated language courses on language education. US-China Education Review, 8(3), 257–263. Soh, K. (2016). Teaching Chinese culture in Singapore schools. In K. Soh (Ed.), Teaching Chinese language in Singapore schools: Retrospect and challenges. Singapore: Springer. Verkuyten, M., & Thijs, J. (2013). Multicultural education and inter-ethnic attitudes: An intergroup perspective. European Psychologist, 18(3), 179–190. https://doi.org/10.1027/1016-9040/ a000152. Wu, Y.-J. (2011). Comparing the cultural contents of mandarin reading textbooks in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. Journal of International Cooperation in Education, 14(2), 67–81.

Chapter 3

Enhancing Culture Learning in Chinese Language Curricula: Some Preliminary Thoughts

As an expansion of the previous articles, this article discussed the expected benefit, problem, and possible solutions in teaching Chinese culture as an integral part of Chinese Language lessons.

The learning of culture has been a secondary goal in language curricula for Mother Tongue Languages (MTLs; second languages). For this reason, MTL textbooks naturally have only a small portion of lessons with cultural content. As a language itself has no content of its own (other than linguistic features and rules), most language texts use other kinds of content to teach the language, and such content is mostly not specifically culture-based but presumably relevant to the student’s daily life and language needs. In recent years, it has been realized that to learn a language well, it should be based on its relevant culture, and the infusion of cultural content into language teaching is found to have made learning more meaningful and hence more effective, besides better student motivation. It is therefore a logical extension to re-prioritize the goals of MTL curricula by making culture learning its primary goal so that students learn a MTL via engaging culture learning (Soh, 2018), to be further enhanced by coordinated co-curricular activities.

Expected Benefits As is readily appreciated, cultural content lends language texts with cognitively concrete and socially relevant knowledge, and this makes MTL learning more personally as well as socially meaningful to the students. And, meaningful and comprehensible input is a necessary condition of effective language learning (Krashen, 1985). In other words, cultural content facilitates MTL learning. Moreover, cultural content can always serve as a link to the teaching and learning of coveted values which are the third goals of MTL curricula.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Soh, Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1149-3_3

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Enhancing Culture Learning in Chinese Language Curricula: Some. . .

Table 3.1 Possible cultural topics for upper primary and lower secondary classes Cultural components Symbolisms Inventions Traditional stories Arts Celebrations

Language Architecture Values Relations

Suggested topics Twelve zodiac animals, paper-cutting (剪纸) Paper, gun powder, printing, compass Mengjiangnu (孟姜女), Liang & Zhu (梁祝) Fans, embroidery, calligraphy, paintings, martial arts, music (Malay and Indian art forms to be included) Chinese New Year, First Full Moon (元宵), Dumplings Festival (端午节), Mid-autumn Festival (Malay and Indian festivals to be included) Couplets (对联), lantern riddles (灯谜), cross-talk (相声) Great Wall, Temple of Heaven (天坛), The Canal (运河) Kindness (仁), righteousness (义), propriety (礼), intelligence (智), trustworthiness (信) Family, nation

Moreover, cultural content affords the opportunity to make comparisons between one culture with its past as well as with other cultures and thus facilitates the development of critical and creative thinking which is an essential twenty-firstcentury skill. Furthermore, research shows that learning about the cultures of other ethnic groups promotes positive interethnicity attitudes. In sum, there is much to gain by focusing more on culture learning in the teaching of MTL.

Topics For a culture-based language curriculum, the first requisite is a set of chosen topics. There are many lists of components of culture, varying from five (Barkan, 2012) to as many as ten (Spiegelman, 2014). However, for a development project, such academically oriented schemes need not be followed. Instead, the topics will be those related to knowledge of various components of Chinese culture which will lead to the learning of relevant social, moral, and aesthetic values. Possible topics for upper primary and lower secondary classes are suggested in Table 3.1; actual content will have to be decided by the development team.

Implementation Problem It has to be recognized that, at this point of time, totally culture-based MTL curricula, although sounds logical, will face practical difficulty in their implementation because of the long-established second-language teaching tradition that focuses on the training of linguistic skills. Even if the concept of culture-based language

Practical Solution

23

curriculum may be acceptable at the theoretical level, it takes a long time to revamp the extent of MTL curricula and even longer time to retool the teachers and re-orientate the public. Hence, an interim measure that is practicable is needed to enhance extent MTL curricula with more lessons of cultural nature.

Practical Solution At this point of time, a practical approach is to encourage MTL teachers to teach more culture lessons than those already available in the MTL textbooks in use. For this to have a positive impact, several conditions need to be present. Instruction Time At present, MTL curricula allow a portion of instructional time for school-based lessons. The time can be used for more culture-based texts and related activities. In addition, schools need be encouraged to replace a specified proportion of the textbook lessons with culture-based texts. Culture-Based Texts These have to be specially prepared with reference to carefully selected themes that present a balanced combination of various cultural components, including thoughts, practices, beliefs, values, customs, courtesies, rituals, manners of interacting and roles, relationships, and expected behaviours (Goode, Sockalingam, Brown, & Jones, 2000). Some texts will be used to teach knowledge of “culture as high arts” (Cambridge Dictionary, http://dictionary.cambridge.org/ dictionary/english/subculture) and cultural symbols (Foo, n.d.). Besides the cultural content, the texts as an instructional device need be appended by two types of questions. Firstly, there are the usual language and comprehension questions for assessing the extent with which the students have learned the linguistic features and understood the content. Equally important if not more so, there are questions that promote thinking about proper and relevant behaviours and values as well as encourage comparisons with the past and other cultures. The texts will also suggest some further activities (see Engaging Activities) which will consolidate what has been learned through them and encourage further independent learning such as projects. The phases of learning are depicted below.

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Enhancing Culture Learning in Chinese Language Curricula: Some. . .

Moreover, a teacher’s guide has to accompany the culture-based texts for two reasons. Firstly, MTL teachers, due to their own education in the past, may not have sufficient relevant cultural knowledge relevant to the texts; and, secondly, they need guidance and tips on how to conduct culture-based lessons and the related activities. For example, British Council’s (n.d.) website SchoolsOnline presents lesson plans for teaching the following topics of Chinese culture to young students: Counting in Chinese. Introducing Yourself. Likes and Dislikes. Giving directions. Name of the Zodiac Animals. Match Dishes with their names. Food Vocabulary. A good local example like this is Come, Let’s Celebrate! Preschool Teaching Activities and evaluation for Festivals of Singapore [Preschool] (Cheng, Tan, & Zheng, 2017) which provides such pedagogical knowledge of traditional Singapore festivals for preschool teachers. Supporting Materials Much of the cultural content introduced in the culture-based texts will involve many images of relevant activities and artifacts. These, understandably, are costly to produce or reproduce. Fortunately, many of these are available on the Internet and in library collections. What is needed then is a list of such resources to direct the teachers to where these are readily accessible for use in the classroom. Engaging Activities Although culture-based texts present cultural content like the usual language texts, they also serve as launching pads for further activities through which the students learn more about culture in an active and interesting manner. Students in the same class need not do the same activities; on the contrary, different students should be organized for different start-ups (before text-reading) and followups (after text-reading) with consideration for their language proficiency and interest. For example, Radel (2018) suggests the following activities for the study of different cultures: Cultural Books. Cultural Foods. Decorating Traditions. Cultural Games. Cultural Traditions. Research Project. Cultural Customs. Family Heritage. Needless to say, more activities can be added to this list. Teacher Readiness MTL teachers have been trained to teach language skills but not culture. The teaching of culture-based texts requires them to have sufficient

References

25

pedagogical knowledge, that is, knowing the cultural content and how to teach it. However, in recent years, MTL teachers have been moving away from a teacher-centred approach by employing more student-centred learning activities in their lessons; a refresher training course with demonstration and discussion of alternative learning approaches will be sufficient to reorientate them to culturebased teaching.

Conclusion If it is recognized that MTL teaching needs to play an active role in teaching culture and its related values; short of an overhaul of the current MTL curricula, it is more practical to consider and implement interim measures such as those suggested above. With an added emphasis on culture, MTL learning will be made more concrete and meaningful and, for this reason, more effective and, perhaps, also more enjoyable to both the teachers and the students.

References Barkan, S. E. (2012). Sociology. Retrieved from https://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/sociol ogy-brief-edition-v1.1/index.html. British Council. (n.d.). Chinese Language and culture Teaching Resources. Retrieved from https:// schoolsonline.britishcouncil.org/classroom-resources/year-of-the-sheep/teacher-resources. Cheng, W.-N., Tan, C. L., & Zheng, Y. (2017). Come, let’s celebrate! Preschool teaching activities and evaluation for festivals of Singapore. Singapore: Singapore Centre for Chinese Language. Foo, S. F. (n.d.). Chinese cultural symbols and core elements (中华文化符号与核心要素)。 Power-point presentation. Personal communication. Goode, T., Sockalingam, S., Brown, M., & Jones, W. A. (2000). A planners’ guide, infusing principles, content and themes related to cultural and linguistic competence into meeting and conferences. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Centre for Child and Human Development, National Centre for Cultural Competence. Krashen, S. (1985). Language acquisition and language education. San Francisco: Alemany Press. Radel, K. (2018). Different countries and cultures. HotChalk, Concodia University. Retrieved from http://lessonplanspage.com/sslaocicountriesandculturesideas18-htm/. Soh, K. C. (2018). Culture-based (and values-oriented) mother tongue language curricula: A proposal. Keynote speech presented at the Symposium on Innovative Teaching and Learning of Mother Tongue Languages, 8 March 2018, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Spiegelman, P. (2014). 10 elements of great culture. Retrieved from http://blog.smallgiants.org/10elements-of-great-culture.

Part II

Teaching and Learning of Hanzi

Chapter 4

Chinese Character Lists: Development, Uses, and Limitations

The development of Chinese characters (Hanzi) lists in China is traced. The compilation of Chinese character lists in Singapore is highlighted. The uses and limitations of such lists for textbook writing are discussed.

It is a truism that the root problem of learning Chinese Language lies with its orthography. As there are thousands of individual Chinese characters to learn, remembering them is no small challenge. Many Chinese characters have the same pronunciations, and their word meanings depend on the difference in the 4 tones of Mandarin. Moreover, some Chinese characters look alike, and a missed, mis-formed, or misplaced stroke (even a dot) changes the meanings (e.g. 大, 太, 犬, 尤, 龙). To prevent such difficulty, it is logical to begin with Chinese characters which appear more often in texts. This gives rise to the efforts in compiling lists which sequence Chinese characters in terms of frequency of appearance in samples of texts. The term word list has been used for quite some time for compiled lists of Chinese characters. However, in recent years, Chinese Language scholars (e.g. Pang, Pan, & associates, 2010) have been debating about the difference between, and therefore priority of, a word-based teaching (词本位教学) and a character-based teaching (字本位教学). It is true that Chinese characters form the basic building blocks of the language, but combinations of them forming words (词) appear more often in Chinese texts. There are also such classifications of single-character words (单字 词) versus multicharacter words (多字词). In view of these, it may be logical and reasonable for Chinese characters to be subsumed under words. However, as lists have been compiled with Chinese characters as the basic unit, it is more appropriate to refer to them as Chinese character lists, at least for the purpose of discussion in this essay. It is a common and tacit assumption that texts written using those Chinese characters appearing earlier in Chinese character lists are easier than those using later-appearing ones. And, it is a common practice that such lists are used as criteria for evaluating texts intended for instructional purposes. It is also often claimed that, if students have learned, say, the first thousand or so Chinese characters of a certain list, they should be able to read with understanding, say, 95% of commonly found © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Soh, Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1149-3_4

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texts in Chinese. In short, frequency of appearance is equated with readability. Obviously, such an assumption ignores the effects of other aspects of the language and its comprehension; and this issue is more fully discussed in Chap. 7 later.

Functions of Character Lists Culture The functions of character lists can be seen from two perspectives: time and space. From ancient time till now, many Hanzi appeared and later disappeared. Those available today are intellectual heritage and are therefore part of the cultural heritage. For this reason, even if it is just a single Hanzi, it is worthy of preservation. China is a vast country, and it is natural that different places produced different Hanzi, which reflect the regional subcultures coded in Hanzi. However, from the educational perspective, there is no enough time and reasonable need to expect the younger generations to learn all the 50,000 Hanzi. Therefore, only part of these will be taught to students so that they have a shared tool for communication. In this sense, character lists serve the function of standardizing the teaching of one important aspect of Chinese Language. On the one hand, the character lists help to ensure common experience among the students, and on the other hand, they prevent students from learning those Hanzi they hardly will need to use. If we compared the classic Essay of Thousand Chinese Characters hh千字文ii with any present-day Chinese Language text, the difference between the past and the present of Chinese Language will become obvious, and such difference will point to which Hanzi students need to learn today. Therefore, the character lists have an instructional function. Perhaps, they should be referred to as instructional character lists to differentiate them from those compiled for the purpose of cultural preservation. Textbooks Character lists are an important tool for textbook writing as the writers need to know which of the Hanzi are to be learned and learnable; they provide boundaries. For instance, the 2000–3000 Hanzi in Singapore’s character lists represent the total of Hanzi students of primary and secondary levels need to learn over 10 years, as seen by the education authorities. As different countries have different needs, they need different character lists, although there are overlaps. Moreover, students of different ages have different abilities; some Hanzi are not learnable if presented too early. There is the problem of learnability. Most word list present Hanzi in sequence of frequency and thereby assumed that those appearing more often are more learnable. This is not totally unreasonable, but it is also not totally reasonable. Whether a Hanzi is easy or difficult depends on its complexity in terms of components (the number of parts) and structure (the way the parts are arranged), besides frequency and, moreover, its meaning (concrete or abstract). These characteristics of a Hanzi can be expected to affect its teaching and learning and deserves further discussion.

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31

Teaching Another function of character lists is to have control over teaching. Generally, Chinese Language teachers’ knowledge of Hanzi is not limited to those found in the textbooks, and enthusiastic teachers may tend to overteach and unheedingly bring into their lessons some Hanzi which the students are not expected to learn. Such well-intentioned supplements will cause unnecessary difficulty in learning Chinese Language. A long-term effect of overteaching is that students find it overly difficult to learn and may thereby lose interest in the language, to the contrary of the teachers’ good will. Teachers who wish to use supplementary reading materials need to be cautious, making due consideration for the character lists. Assessment Another function of character lists is assessment. Generally, in-school assessment is based on textbooks used in the school. So, the achievement tests assess the students on what they have or have not learned from the textbooks, and therefore the content is circumscribed. However, large-scale national examinations assess language abilities beyond the textbooks and are proficiency tests. The two types of tests may appear to be the same, but, in fact, achievement tests test what goes into the textbooks to see how much the students have learned. On the other hand, proficiency tests test what goes beyond the classroom to see whether the students are able to apply what they have learned to solve problems. Since proficiency tests are not based on textbooks, character lists become important for ensuring the students are not assessed beyond their levels. In sum, character lists play important roles in teaching, learning, and assessment. Without them, the teachers, students, and education authorities will be quite lost as to learning outcomes and their assessment.

Chinese Character Lists in China Modern Chinese Common Word List hh现代汉语通用字表ii As early as 1952, the PRC Ministry of Education released a word list which listed 1500 Chinese characters (hereafter Hanzi) for use in the efforts to upgrade the Chinese Language proficiency of the population. This implies that a Chinese who have learned the 1500 Hanzi were considered literate. Thereafter, the Working Committee on Language and the Ministry of Education released several word lists of modern Chinese, expecting to meet the needs of language teaching, dictionary compiling, machine processing, and information processing. The 7000-word Modern Chinese Common Word List was published in 1988. It replaced the 1965 version of Common Hanzi for Printing which has 6196 Hanzi. This became the standard for printing, recovering the 15 irregular Hanzi in the First Batch of Irregular Hanzi hh第一批异体字整理 表ii. Thus, the Modern Chinese Common Word List became the authoritative reference for Hanzi then. Hanzi for Usage Level and Testing hh汉字应用水平等级及测试大纲ii The PRC Ministry of Education and the National Working Committee for Hanzi compiled this in 2006, and from 2007 onward this was put to trial and it specifies three levels. It

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4 Chinese Character Lists: Development, Uses, and Limitations

was used to assess the ability of those who have completed at least secondary education in reading public media materials. Specific criteria include the conformity to official standards for orthography and pronunciation, accuracy in discriminate and use of standard Hanzi. The 5500 Hanzi in this word list are classified into three tables with consideration of the frequency of use and the kind of users. List of Common Standard Hanzi hh通用規範漢字表ii In 2001, the PRC Ministry of Education and National Working Committee on Language jointly compiled this list of common Hanzi and named it List of Standard Hanzi, later renamed as List of Common Standard Hanzi. Eight years later, in 2009, an invitation for comments was made. This list incorporated the 1955 List of First Batch of Different Styles Hanzi, 1964 Total List of Simplified Hanzi, 1988 List of Frequently Used Modern Hanzi, and List of List of Common Modern Hanzi. In its compilation, consideration was accorded to the then current usages. The list was officially launched in 2013 and became the standard of Hanzi used in the society; with its release, the earlier lists ceased to be used. There are 8105 Hanzi in this list and they are divided into three levels: Level 1 has 3500, Level 2 has 3000, and Level 3 has 1605. Hanzi in the first two levels are meant for publishing, dictionaries, and data processing. Those in the third level are surnames, names of personalities, names of places, technical terms, and Hanzi used in the classic Chinese (文言文) in primary and secondary language textbooks. The abovementioned lists were compiled to meet the needs of the changing Chinese society over the years. There are also some lists for internationalization and the need of foreign learners of Chinese Language. First Grade Reading Word List hh一级阅读字表ii This list has 1440 basic Hanzi which are considered as needed for reading original Chinese texts related to daily life. Foreigners who have learned these Hanzi will be able to read Chinese magazines and applied texts. Allanic (n.d.) compiled this list to help Westerners learn Chinese Language so that they can independently comprehend materials beyond language courses. The first table in this list is based on the Chinese scholar’s 1998 analysis. The list covers the corpus of the Internet magazine Chinese Digest 1991–1998 with a total of 1,178,283 Hanzi in all the articles. There are 5764 different Hanzi. It was claimed that a foreign student who learned the most frequently used 1300–1500 Hanzi should be able to read with understanding 93–95% of texts. Chinese-Korean Common Hanzi List hh中日韩常用汉字表ii This list includes 808 Hanzi commonly used in China, Korea, and Japan and is therefore meant for foreign learners of Chinese Language. In 2010, the president of the People’s University, Prof. Ji Baocheng (纪宝成), suggested that a word list of commonly used Hanzi in the three countries be compiled. He saw such Hanzi as a shared treasure and hoped that the compilation would help in promoting communication among people of the countries. It was claimed that people who have learned the 808 Hanzi would be able to communicate even if they do not speak the languages. Scholars working under Prof. Ji took 3 years to complete the compilation. They

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made references to the PRC’s Modern Common Chinese World List, Japan’s List of Common Hanzi, and Korean’s Basic Hanzi for Education. Of the 808 Hanzi, 801 appear in Modern Common Chinese World List, and the remaining seven are less common. For Japan, 710 of the 808 are found in Educational Hanzi, and 98 are found in List of Common Hanzi. As for Korea, 801 of the 808 are for lower secondary and 7 for higher secondary. The Hanzi are presented as a whole as well, printed in old Hanzi (繁体字). There are tables comparing the simplified and old Hanzi with 550 without the two forms, and 540 are written in the same manner in the three countries and about 200 which are written differently. With the help of this list, young people of the three countries are said to be able to communicate by writing. The list makes it convenient for travel and interaction and promotes collaboration among the youths of the countries. Hanzi 800 hh汉语800字ii This is a Hanzi dictionary compiled by Wu (2012) and published in Australia. It includes 800 Hanzi, with a translation and index in English. It allows for Hanyu Pinyin search and includes combination of single Hanzi into words (词语) and phrases (短语). It is meant for beginners. Throughout the history, how many Hanzi are there indeed? The early Chinese dictionary Kanxi Dictionary hh康熙字典ii has 47,000 Hanzi. The later Chinese Language Grand Dictionary hh汉语大字典ii has 54,000 Hanzi. The 1994 Chinese Thesaurus hh中华字海ii has more than 86,000 Hanzi, much of which are in ancient Chinese, but only about 10,000 are modern Hanzi. As would be expected, these Hanzi will have different frequencies, and their coverage is shown in Table 4.1, with most of them having a frequency of 2400 or below, and those used more frequently represent only 0.1%. The most frequently used 1000 Hanzi cover 90% of those used in modern Chinese (白话文). With so many Hanzi around, how many does a person need? Obviously, this depends on the person’s stage of learning and the need of his job. Li (李宇明, 2004) looked into dictionaries of varying sizes since 1954 and concluded that between 3000 and 3600 Hanzi are needed for instructional purposes, between 6000 and 8000 for public media, and 15,000–29,000 for large dictionaries and book series (see Table 4.2).

Table 4.1 Coverage of Hanzi

Series no. 1000 2400 3800 5200 6600

Coverage (%) 90 99.0 99.9 99.99 99.999

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4 Chinese Character Lists: Development, Uses, and Limitations

Table 4.2 Changes in lists of Hanzi Year Word list Basic modern education (3000–3600) 1954 Word Recognition and Proper Pronunciations 2500 Word List hh识字正 音 3500 字表ii 1965 Common Word List hh常用字表ii

1984

Unified New Characters for Six-Year Primary Textbooks hh六年制小学语 文课本统编教材生字表ii 1988 Modern Chinese Common Characters List hh现代汉语常用字表ii News and publications (6000–8000) 1965 Common Chinese Orthography for Publications hh印刷通用汉字字形 表ii 1976 Frequency Table of Hanzi hh汉字频度 表ii 1981 Collection of Hanzi Codes for Information Exchange, Basic Collection hh信息交换用汉字编码字符集基本 集ii 1985 Combined Hanzi Frequency Table for Social Sciences and Natural Sciences hh社会科学自然科学综合汉字频度 表ii 1987 1986 News and Information Flow Frequency hh1986 年度新闻信息流 通频度ii 1988 Modern Chinese Common Characters List hh现代汉语通 用字表ii

Number 3559

Chinese Grand Thesaurus Editorial Office

3100

Beijing City Education Bureau, Primary and Secondary Textbooks Editorial Office People’s Education Publishers

3189

3500

National Working Committee and National Committee on Education

6196

6376

PRC Ministry of Culture and PRC Committee on Chinese Characters Innovation 748 Engineering Task Force

6763

National Standards Bureau

7754

Beijing Aerospace College Computer Division and Chinese Characters Innovation Office

6001

Xinhua Technical Office

7000

National Task Force for Language and PRC News and Publications Bureau

Grand dictionaries and book series (15,000–29,000) Qing Four Stores of All Books (excluding 27,160 Dynasty primary texts) hh四库全书ii(不含小 学类) Modern Four Sections of Magazines (exclud- 28,222 ing primary texts) hh四部丛刊ii(不含 小学类) 1979 Thesaurus hh辞海ii 14,872 – Thesaurus of Chinese Language hh汉 29,000 语大词典ii Source: Li (2004)

Compiler

– – – –

Chinese Character Lists in Singapore

35

Chinese Character Lists in Singapore With the implementation of a national curriculum in the late 1970s, all students in Singapore schools learn English Language which is also used as the medium of instruction for all other subjects. Chinese Language is taught as a second language (not in the linguistic sense) to ethnic Chinese students. It was then felt that there was a need to specify those Chinese characters students need to learn by introducing a Chinese character list; this also served, tacitly, to prevent teachers from overteaching that would make unnecessary demands on students’ time and effort. To meet such a need, it is natural and efficient to adapt a Chinese character list originally developed by Chinese scholars for students in China. Since the first release in Singapore of the Simplified Hanzi, there were three revisions. The 1969 list contains 502 simplified Hanzi which includes 11 simplified Hanzi peculiar to Singapore, 38 Hanzi different from those of PRCs, and 9 of which the radicals are not simplified for the Singapore version. Later on, the 1974 Simplified Hanzi List includes 2248 Hanzi (Xie, 谢世涯, 1998). Wang (王惠, 2006) analysed 203 texts for Singapore’s primary school Higher Chinese Language and Express Chinese Language courses. There are 2090 Hanzi in the Higher Chinese Language texts and 1832 in the Express Chinese Language texts. When combined, there are 2158 different Hanzi, and the two sets of textbooks share 1764 Hanzi (82%), with 326 being unique to Higher Chinese Language and 68 unique to Express Chinese Language. The analysis show the 760 Hanzi covering 90% of the two sets of textbooks. When the coverage is 95%, there are 1069 Hanzi, and it takes 1632 Hanzi to cover 99%. At the secondary level, there are four Chinese Language courses. The Higher Chinese Language has 3474 different Hanzi, Express Chinese Language 2937 Hanzi, Normal Chinese Language 2781 Hanzi, and Normal Technical Chinese Language 1996 Hanzi. The four courses together have 3648 different Hanzi, and they share 1826 Hanzi. The author (Wang, 2006: 346) concluded, thus: When compared with the basic language education in the mainland China, there are 1000+ Hanzi less at the Singapore primary level, equivalent to primary 3–4. At the secondary level, the difference is smaller; Higher Chinese Language has 3553 Hanzi and this is equivalent to what is covered in the nine-year free education. On the other hand, Express Chinese Language has only 3029 Hanzi, equivalent to the primary level in China.

Lately, in 2007, a revised Chinese character list for the primary school was released. It contains 1600–1700 Hanzi as recognition vocabulary (课标认读字) and 1000–1100 writing vocabulary (课标认写字) students need to be able to write. As commented by Dong (2012: 101), there is in the new list an increase in the former and a decrease in the latter, thus reflecting the emphasis on more recognition than writing. As shown above. Character lists vary tremendously in the numbers of Hanzi included and the special registers covered. They were compiled with specific language educational goals in view, and they are updated now and then as time

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4 Chinese Character Lists: Development, Uses, and Limitations

passes by. Nevertheless, they have to serve specific purposes of which language education is one, though not the only one.

Limitations of Character Lists Space As discussed above, character lists have important functions. But, they also have limitations. China is a vast country in terms of space and population. The spoken languages vary tremendously and are even mutually unintelligible, and Hanzi is the tool by which the country is united because there is only one writing system, that is, sut ong wen (书同文), in spite of the large variety of spoken languages (always referred to as Chinese dialects, a term which not all linguists agree when used in this context). Thus, Hanzi becomes the common goal of learning over the huge space of China. However, outside the Mainland China, the Chinese diaspora covers practically the world. For geographical, economic, and cultural reasons, there are various needs and characteristics, and therefore, there are different expectations where learning Chinese language is concerned. For this reason, PRC’s character lists are not totally relevant to the needs of ethnic Chinese outside China; these need be adapted, supplemented, or even redesigned. This is a limitation of the character lists. Take Singapore for example; the Hanzi character lists needed for writing textbooks were adapted from the PRC’s character lists, with specific variants needed in the Singapore context. Before the 1980s where Chinese schools existed, the China-based character lists were relevant as the students in such schools learned Chinese Language as a first language. After the 1980s when the unified system of education was implemented, the students learn Chinese Language as a second language; the Hanzi character lists for the different levels of education need to be modified to be in line with the expected standards for the language. Time Time is another constraint of character lists. For instance, from 1954 to 1988, a new Hanzi word list appeared almost every 10 years. One reason is the changed needs of different time periods. A telling example is the introduction of chemistry as a field of study into China during the late nineteenth century. At that time, Xu Shou (徐寿) and Fu Yalan (傅兰雅) jointly translated the textbook The Original of Chemistry hh化学鉴原ii, and they used same-sounding Hanzi for the gases such as 绿气 for chlorine and 淡气 for nitrogen. This was considered unsatisfactory, and there were scientists who thought chemistry should have its own Hanzi, and for this, new ones were created, for example, 氯、氢、氮、氨、烷、烯、炔、醛、羰、 羟、巯、羧, etc. The great Chinese literary giant Lu Xun (鲁迅) voiced vehemently against this, but history proved him wrong. The influence of the computer is a recent example. Such terms as 鼠标 (mouse), 输入(input), 打印 (print), 波特 (portal), 磁碟 (disc), 软件 (software) and their likes use existing Hanzi in a new context; the Hanzi are old, but the meanings are new. Seen from this perspective, character lists need to be revised and modified as new

Limitations of Character Lists

37

concepts and technologies develop. This is necessary to prevent the language from becoming archaic and lose its utility. When time and space are taken together, the limitations of character lists become even more obvious. For example, Chinese Language in Singapore schools is learned as a second language (or rather, at a level of second language), and the previous character lists need to be adjusted to be congruent to the expected standards. Although it is needed not to be reduced to 800 Hanzi like that for secondary students in France, perhaps, a word list of 1500 Hanzi is to be considered. This is an instance of time and spacing affecting the usefulness of character lists. Text Selection Usually, character lists present Hanzi in terms of frequency with those frequently used appearing first. Thus, which Hanzi comes earlier depends on the selection of texts used for word list compilation. This is another limitation. Language learning (or education as a whole for that matter) is future-oriented, preparing students to read and communicate in the future. This tacitly assumes that the newspapers, magazines, and literary works will be their reading materials in time to come. This brings about three problems. First, the currently available newspapers, magazines, and literary works may change over time rendering what the students learned now useless, say, 15 years later. Second, are the selected newspapers, magazines, and literary works representative of what the students should read, now and in the future? Third, newspapers, magazines, and literary works are reading materials for adults, and they may and may not be relevant to the students’ current learning and personal needs. Again, these are limitations worthy of pondering. Coverage Character lists compilers invariably make a claim such as “those who have learned the Hanzi in this wordlist will be able to read 90% of the commonly found texts”. This assumes that the selected newspapers, magazines, and literary works are commonly found. More critically, such a claim equates word recognition with reading comprehension and neglects the relations between stand-alone Hanzi and continuous texts that use them. Such elements as words (Hanzi compounds), phrases, sentences, and the substantive content which together lend meanings to text are inadvertently or intentionally overlooked. Hanzi are strong in word-forming, that is, combining two or more Hanzi to form a word (词) which may have the same or different meanings. For example, the Hanzi 大 (large, big) has a word-forming index of 49.3, indicating that it can be combined with about 50 other Hanzi meaningfully. Moreover, when the same two Hanzi are combined but in different sequences, this produced different words, for example, 房 产 (property) when reversed becomes 产房 (maternity room) and 国王 (king) when reserved becomes 王国 (kingdom). A few more examples are 放下, 故事, 队友, 人 家, 放开, 关闭, 糖果, 牛乳, etc. Thus, word recognition is not the same as reading comprehension. This is a limitation of character lists. To read with understanding, recognizing Hanzi is not sufficient; it requires subject or content knowledge. This is illustrated by an example here. Take the word (a statistical term) 标准差 (standard deviation) which is defined as “标准差是最常使用作为测量一组数值的离散程度之用” (Standard deviation

38

4 Chinese Character Lists: Development, Uses, and Limitations

is frequently used as a measure of the dispersion of a set of values). The definition of 23 Hanzi covers a wide range, from primary one to six, as shown in the table below. Definition of standard deviation in Hanzi 标

准

差

是

最

常

使

用

作

为

测

量

一

组

数

值

的

离

散

程

度

之

用

6

2

3

1

1

2

3

1

1

1

4

2

1

2

1

3

1

1

3

5

3

2

1

As can be seen from the table, of the 23 Hanzi defining standard deviation, ten are from primary one, five each from primary two and three, and one each from primary four, five, and six. If word recognition is equated with reading comprehension, then, primary three students who have learned 20 of the 23 Hanzi should more or less understand the term. This is doubtful. In fact, the definition is pitched at primary five or six, according to the Corpus-based Resource Platform for Chinese Language (Lin et al. 2015). When set against secondary two texts, there is only one Hanzi not in the word list at that class level. This suggests that the definition will only be understood by secondary two students, just considering the Hanzi used and not considering the concepts involved in this simple technical term. Obviously, oft-made statements by word list compilers such as “people who have learned the Hanzi in this list will be able to read 90 percent of the common found texts” have questionable validity.

Conclusion As alluded to at the beginning of this article, Chinese character lists have many important functions where the teaching of the language is concerned. Their influences on curriculum design, textbook development, and classroom teaching may not be in the consciousness of Chinese Language teachers in the classroom, but their importance is definite. Moreover, as a field of Chinese Language research, the compilation of Chinese character lists demands clarity in conceptualization of language learning, the careful selection of texts for inclusion. Nonetheless, there is a need for awareness of limitations. There is no doubt that Chinese character lists are useful and needed, but they are also limited by region, time, text, and other relevant conditions. These factors need be given due consideration when using character lists for whatever purposes.

References Allanic, B. (n.d.). 补充对外汉语教学大纲的空白 : hh一级阅读字表ii及说明. http://www.fb06. uni-mainz.de/chinesisch/Dateien/hanzirenzhi_papers_allanic.htm. Dong, Y. 董亚茹. (2012). 新加坡小学华文字频分析. 罗福腾主编(2012). hh新加坡华文教材新 视角ii. 新加坡新跃大学. 103–122页. Li, Y. 李宇明. (2004). 规范汉字和规范汉字表 hh中国语文ii, 2004 (1): 61–69.

References

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Lin, J.-Z., Zhao, C.-S., Ang, S.-C., Goh, H.-H., & Wong, C.-H. (2015). Development of corpusbased resource platform for Chinese language teaching in Singapore. Journal of Chinese Language Education, 13(1), 1–15. Pang & Pan & Associates. 彭泽润、潘文国等. (2010). “词本位”还是“字本位”有利于汉语语言 学?通化师范学院学报, 第9期. Xie, S. 谢世涯. (1998). hh新加坡与中国调整简体字的评骘ii. 汉字文化国际学术研讨会. 北京 师范大学汉字与中文信息处理研究所、辽宁人民出版社联合主办, 1998年8月9–11日. Wang, H. 王惠. (2006). hh新加坡华语教材用字的频率与分布ii. A quantitative analysis on the Chinese characters in Singapore textbook corpus. Journal of Chinese Language and Computing, 16(4), 239–252. Wu, J. (2012). Essential Chinese dictionary for Australian students: 800. Network Educational Australia. http://www.network-ed.com.au/essential-chinese-dictonary-for-australian-students800-9789814410281.

Chapter 5

Difficulty Index and Ease Index of Hanzi

Two exploratory studies on quantifying the difficulty and ease of Hanzi are reported. As the studies used only the first 100 Hanzi of a word list, possible full studies are recommended.

Is Chinese Language Really Difficult? To assess the difficulty of a language, one objective and trustworthy method is to use the time required of a learner to reach an expected standard. This is the method employed by the America’s Foreign Service Institute which prepares official personnel for working in foreign countries. It was found that, to reach the Third Professional Level in oral and reading proficiencies, different languages required different learning time. For English-speaking learners, mastering English-related European languages (e.g. Danish, Dutch, and Spanish) required 575–600 h, but mastering Asian languages (e.g. Chinese, Korean, and Japan) required 2200 h. These figures are for motivated adults who have a specific goal to learn foreign languages and may and may not be applicable to unmotivated youngsters. However, Ashley Wagner (2011) who worked for the Oxford Dictionary was of the view that a new language is not difficult to learn if the learner is really interested and learning Chinese Language is just like learning any other language, requiring time and effort. In her view, although there are 80,000 Chinese characters (Hanzi, hereafter), a learner needs to learn not more than 3500 usually, and learning 1000 will equip the learner to read 90% of modern Chinese texts. She further pointed out that although the four tones of Chinese Language pose a challenge to foreign learners, the contexts in which Hanzi are used help in comprehension. As for the difficulty in writing Hanzi, she believed that typing on the computer would solve the problem. In sum, Wagner did not see Chinese Language as a more difficult language to learn than other languages. Whether Chinese Language is really difficult to learn, views obviously vary. Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that Chinese Language is more demanding in learning (and remembering) and the root cause lies with its orthography, that is, how Hanzi are written. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Soh, Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1149-3_5

41

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5 Difficulty Index and Ease Index of Hanzi

Over the years¸ Chinese Language scholars have been trying hard to find solutions to the relevant problems. They adopt different perspectives and make different suggestions; some look into the complicated structures of Hanzi whereas others ineffective methods of teaching. But, a consensus is yet to be attained. Zhou (周健, n.d.) attributes the problem to the large number of Hanzi to be learned, their complicated structures, and the large number of strokes in many Hanzi. In his view, although there are rules for constructing Hanzi, these are not strong and consistent, giving rise to many combinations of the same or similar pronunciations and meanings. Besides, inadequacy in teaching is due to the teachers’ poor understanding of the nature of Hanzi, the relation between written and spoken Chinese, lack of knowledge of the student’s learning processes, and insufficient familiarity with teaching strategies. Obviously, the problem of teaching and learning Chinese Language is not a simple one. Wang (王平, 2010) stresses the importance of the teachers’ knowledge of the components of Hanzi, because components are the basic elements of Hanzi. Therefore, according to the author, teaching effectiveness can and should be enhanced by paying attention to the components and structures of Hanzi. Wang further suggests that those Hanzi to be taught to students need be organized in accordance to their cultural backgrounds and classifications (e.g. related to human beings, related to animals, etc.). Moreover, components should be the point of entry for teaching Hanzi so as to capitalize on intuition, interests, and cognition. Richardson (2015) points to the fact that remembering Hanzi is a great challenge to foreign learners and that language specialists have for years been trying hard to find new ways and tools to make it easy, including the use of modern technology. However, Richardson also points out that an age-old method that helps memory has been neglected or forgotten, that of Mnemonics, that is, using Hanzi to be learned to create stories. And, he cites Dr. James Heisig who was a philosopher who lived in Japan, and he needed to learn Hanzi (Japanese Kanzi). Over a few days, Dr. Heisig read about the history and thesaurus of Hanzi and started to write stories using the Hanzi, and, within a month, he mastered 1900 of them. Richardson believes that the mnemonics of story-writing should be popularized. To illustrate, he uses three Hanzi (夕, 名, 铭) to write a simple story. He further points out that this age-old method is consistent with some modern experiments of language learning such as elaboration, organization, and rehearsal, in the context of information processing. In contrast with Richardson’s attempt of going back to the past, Zhou (周上之, 2010) introduced a new method. The author selected 500 commonly used Hanzi from a dictionary and then created 2361 Hanzi by slightly modifying their components. These cover all the 2205 Hanzi of the first three levels of the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK, 汉语水平考试). Later, he used the 500 Hanzi as the core for teaching Chinese as a foreign language and covered 2905 Hanzi. On the other hand, Ding Chongming (丁崇明, 2010) suggests that Hanzi should be classified into two groups according to the objectives of learning: those need be recognized but not to be written and those need be recognized as well as written. Moreover, they should be learned in connection with meanings and use of Hanyu Pinyin. Likewise, Haung (黃沛榮, 2010) also emphasizes teaching Hanzi as words

Are Hanzi Not Difficult?

43

(词本位) and giving precedence to listening and speaking skills. The author also stresses that students should be taught first those frequently used and most useful words but not isolated Hanzi. In the hierarchy of text-paragraph-sentence-wordcharacter-component-stroke, word (i.e. combination of Hanzi) is to be the point of entry, learned orally first and used immediately. The author, however, cautions that teaching Hanzi as words has it shortcoming since not all Hanzi forming words are important. For instance, 谢谢 (xiexie, thanks) as a word is learned first, but 谢 as a single Hanzi paired with other Hanzi may be difficult to incorporated into the text, e.g. 謝罪 (xiezui, pardon), 謝幕 (xiemu, curtain call), 婉謝 (wanxie, politely decline), and 辭謝 (cixie, politely refuse). Some scholars conducted experiments to study factors affecting the learning of Hanzi. Liu (刘丽萍, 2008) summarizes such studies and finds some studies showing the influence of the number of strokes important but other show no such influence and all the more so where foreign adult learners are concerned. The author concludes that the number of strokes alone does not totally account for the difficulty; other factors such as the number of components, familiarity of the components, and the structure and the balance of structure all have their effects. This being the case, the number of strokes and the structural pattern may have different effects on first and second language learners. Using 30 foreign students as the subjects, the author’s experiment shows no influence of number of strokes and structure on Hanzi learning, but the interaction (combination) of these two language features have some influence, though not strong. Moreover, when writing from memory, Hanzi with more strokes are found to be written less accurately; Hanzi with an up-down structure are remembered better than those with left-right structure. Obviously, when teaching Hanzi, a number of strokes and structure (positions of component) need be given due consideration. Are Hanzi really difficult? The answers vary. Ji (季凡, 2013) discussed this from both the positive and negative standpoints. Positively, the author believes that commonly used Hanzi and those with pictorial structures are easier to master; therefore Hanzi are not difficult. However, the present writer is of the view that in Singapore, the teaching of Chinese Language has been much influenced by Western approach to second language learning which emphasizes audiolingual primacy; the teaching of Hanzi tends to neglect its visual nature. These created the impression that Hanzi are difficult since it does not always provide accurate aural cues for pronunciation. On the other hand, orthographic errors are common, and this does not support the argument that Hanzi are easy.

Are Hanzi Not Difficult? Ouyang (欧阳贵林, 2010) is of the view that the problem of Hanzi learning is peculiar to adults outside China. This implies that learning Hanzi is not a problem to children within the country. According to Ouyang, the problem does not arise from Hanzi but is due to lack of understanding of the rules of their formation,

44

5 Difficulty Index and Ease Index of Hanzi

inappropriate thinking of teacher, and mistaken methodologies. In short, in his view, there is no systematic and scientific theory for combining shapes (components) for the teaching of Hanzi, nor are there methodologies to progress from simple configuration to complex structure in a graduated manner and even no exercises for analysing and understanding the orthographical principles. The author contrasts the methodologies of English and Chinese. He also feels that teaching Hanyu Pinyin too early will not enhance the learning of Hanzi and, on the contrary, will create an undesirable resistance to learn Hanzi. Although it is common to see Hanzi as difficult, there are opposite views among the Chinese scholars too. The former President of the Beijing Language University Prof. Lu (吕必松) led a team of more than 20 experts in a discussion and petitioned to save the teaching of Hanzi from increasing negligence. They called for developing a language theory of teaching Hanzi and creative methodologies (Guangmin Daily, 2008). Prof. Lu acknowledged that he himself once considered Hanzi as being difficult but changed his mind after years of research and believed that the view was not substantiated but harmful and misleading. In that meeting, many practical examples were offered by the participating experts. For instance, Dai (戴汝潜) reported that after 1 year of experiment, students learned 1931 Hanzi, equivalent to four times of 452 Hanzi expected before the national new curriculum was introduced and two-and-a-half times of the 800 Hanzi expected in the new curriculum. The author cited a case study of an intellectually challenged youth whose parents sent him to school without any hope of learning. One year later, to the parents’ delight, he learned more than 450 Hanzi. In another project, Zhang (张关照) reported that a research of 10 years showed that preschool children and foreigners were able to learn 2500 commonly used Hanzi within 8 years. Besides, by using the 48-Hour Speeded Chinese Language hh48小时 汉语速成ii of the Beijing New Asia Institution for Advanced Studies, nine foreign students aged 6–18 made impressive progress. They attended classes for 2–3 weeks, 12 h each week. At the end of 2 weeks, they were able to recognize about 120 Hanzi, with the best students recognizing more than 200 Hanzi and more than 400 words (Hanzi compounds) based on those Hanzi. This is a Chinese Language course developed by Professor Lu, integrating Chinese linguistics with an emphasis on radicals of Hanzi, and its target learners are English-speaking adults. The participating experts agree that the difficulty of Hanzi is due to inadequate understanding of theory about Hanzi, leading to inadequate methodologies. The teaching of Hanzi follows the language theories of the West, where the languages are sound-based, and copies their methodologies and models. To the experts, this is analogous to walking with a pair of unfitting shoe. They emphasize that Hanzi are meaning-based and the Western theories would not help in understanding how Hanzi could be best taught. They admit that there is an urgent need to create new theories and methods for effective teaching of Hanzi. Prof. Lu then points out two basic problems of teaching Hanzi. Firstly, Hanzi has less (when compared with English) elements to understand, model, and remember; there are only 24 different strokes, 120 non-character components, and 2500 commonly used Hanzi. Secondly, the demand for understanding, modelling, and

Precedence to Learn

45

memory is relatively small; most Hanzi are in the forms of pictographic (象形, xiangxing), inferential (指事, zhishi), implicative (会意, huiyi), and shape-sound (形 声, xingsheng); and research has shown that the pictographic Hanzi are the easiest to learn and remember. Of course, Prof. Lu and his associates were speaking from the perspective of Chinese as a first language, and students in China are immersed in a language environment in which learning is inevitable and natural. Are their views applicable to students who learn Hanzi in a different kind of environment? This is worthy of further investigation.

Precedence to Learn As the studies cited above show, the question of whether Hanzi are really difficult may not have one definite answer, as many factors beyond Hanzi need be considered, such as the background of the learner, the orthography of the language compared, the method for learning them, etc. However, within the corpus of Hanzi, it should be possible to arrange the Chinese characters in terms of ease of learning and quantify such quality. In fact, Hanzi lists, discussed in the previous article, are de facto attempts of achieving this. Although the studies reviewed above do not give a definite answer to the question of whether Hanzi are difficult, Hanzi teaching has to go on, and it cannot wait for the answer. This gives rise to three practical questions: (1) How many Hanzi students need to learn? (2) Which are the Hanzi to learn? And, (3) which Hanzi they are to learn first? Many Chinese character lists may help answering the first two questions as such lists are usually based on reading materials students are likely to come across. They provide a good reference and are almost the only help available to textbook writers. The lists invariably arrange the Hanzi in sequence of frequency, and the sequence is taken to be the precedence of learning. However, the lists may not be compiled solely for instructional purposes but probably also or even more for cultural preservation so that they are not lost due to development over time. And, besides word frequency, other features of Hanzi need be considered as they may influence effectiveness of Hanzi teaching, features such as number of strokes, complexity of structure, similarity in pronunciation, closeness of meaning, etc. These are information not covered in Hanzi lists. Total reliance on frequency as a criterion of precedence may miss out important factors where learning is concerned. There is therefore a need to find a way to index the precedence of learning to avoid total reliance on frequency.

46

5 Difficulty Index and Ease Index of Hanzi

Precedence Index Recently, Chen (陈之权, 2015) criticized the over-reliance on frequency as the precedence to learn for teaching Hanzi. The author is of the view that language features such as the possibility of combining with other Hanzi (构词力), number of components (部件数), and number of strokes (笔画数) need be taken into consideration. Using the information in the Corpus-based Resource Platform for Chinese Language of the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language (Lin et al. 2015), Chen then created a Precedence Index (优学指数) to demonstrate the procedure using the first 100 Hanzi Singapore students are expected to learn. Each Hanzi is assigned to one of four grades for a language feature, and the average of the four grades is the Precedence Index. For example, the Hanzi 好 (hou, good) has six strokes and is assigned a grade of 3 for the number of strokes; this is a medium grade for strokes. That particular Hanzi has two components of 女 (nu, daughter) and 子 (zi, son) and is therefore assigned to grade 2 for components. This Hanzi is found to combine with other Hanzi to form words and is therefore assigned a grade of 1 for word combination. The average grade for 好 is therefore 2 ¼ (3 + 2 + 1)/3. For another example, the Hanzi 说 (shuo, talk) has 9 strokes, 4 components, and 23 associated words. It therefore has an average grade of 3 ¼ ((4 + 4 + 3)/3 ¼ 3.67, disregarding the decimal values. With considerations for frequency and rate in text, Chen then proposed a Precedence Index using the following formula: Precedence Index ¼ Average grade  frequency  rate in text Using 好 and说 as examples, their Precedence Indices are calculated as shown in Table 5.1. As can be seen in the proposed formula, although Precedence Index depends on frequency to some, it also considers rate in text and not totally on frequency. This is an innovative deviation from the convention of total reliance on frequency as indexing Hanzi learnability. Its further development is to be watched.

Secondary Analysis: Difficulty Index Secondary analysis is reanalysing extent data using an alternative analytical technique or approach to gain alternative or new insights. Chen’s (2015) data for the 100 Hanzi were reanalysed by the present writer for this article. Table 5.2 shows the Table 5.1 Examples of Precedence Index 好 说

A (average grade) 2 3.67

B (frequency) .41427 .50363

Source: Chen (2015: Table 2)

C (rate in text) 55.50 58.11

D ¼ (A  B  C) Precedence Index 45.98 107.31

Secondary Analysis: Difficulty Index

47

Table 5.2 Intercorrelations of four language features (N ¼ 99) Strokes Components Words Frequencies

Strokes 1.00

Components .65 1.00

Words 2.32 2.36 1.00

Frequencies 2.24 .13 .22 1.00

Note: Coefficients in bold are statistically significant (d.f. 97, p < .05, two-tailed) Table 5.3 Result of factor analysis

Strokes Components Words Frequencies Total variance explained

Factor loadings .838 .829 .654 .445 50.4%

注:KMO MSA Statistic ¼ .614

intercorrelations among four language features of strokes, components, words, and frequencies. These are the 99 Hanzi of Chen’s 100th Hanzi, minus 的 which is an outlier having a Precedence Index of 1046.89; it is followed by 是 with a Precedence Index of 350.21. As shown in Table 5.2, the correlation between strokes and components is high r ¼ .65, while all the other correlations are low or moderate and mostly negative. Difficulty Index Factor analysis (因子分子) was run to generate a Difficulty Index for each of the 99 Hanzi. The Difficulty Index is the factor score which indicates the relative influences (contributions) of the four language features of the Hanzi concerned. A higher Index denotes greater difficulty to learn. Factor analysis is a statistical technique which organizes variables into smaller number of groups in accordance with the intercorrelations among the variables. The resultant groupings of variables are called dimensions or factors. These are organizations of variables at a higher and more parsimonious level showing a clearer pattern of correlations, thereby facilitating understanding of the relations among variables. When the 99 Hanzi from Chen’s (2015) list were factor-analysed, only one factor resulted. As shown in Table 5.3, Strokes and Components have very high factor loadings indicating that they are the most influential among the four features. At the same time, words and frequencies have moderate and negative factor loadings, indicating that these have weaker influences and negatively at that. These indicate that a Hanzi with more strokes and components is more difficult to learn. At the same time, a Hanzi with more connections with other Hanzi and higher frequency is easier to learn. The result of factor analysis makes sense in two ways. Firstly, a Hanzi with more strokes and components has greater demand on the mind and is therefore more difficult to learn and remember; and, secondly, a Hanzi with more associations with other Hanzi and appearing more frequently has more associated meanings and

48 Table 5.4 Examples of Hanzi with Ease Index

5 Difficulty Index and Ease Index of Hanzi Hanzi Ease Index Easiest 10 Hanzi 人 2.78 一 2.75 不 2.39 子 2.19 大 1.91 上 1.70 了 1.55 心 1.45 下 1.24 小 1.20 Most difficult 10 Hanzi 前 1.11 就 1.18 得 1.27 都 1.63 说 1.68 然 1.77 新 1.85 最 2.01 想 2.01 能 2.07

Rank order 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

chances of encounter. Thus, using the factor analysis results, a formula for Difficulty Index is proposed here: Difficulty Index ¼ :838  Strokes þ :829  components  :654  Words  :445  Frequency The formula shows that the four features have different influences on ease in learning; large numbers of strokes and components make the Hanzi more difficult to learn, but more connection with other Hanzi and appearing more frequently make it easier to learn. These together indicate that relying solely on frequency (as has customarily been done when Hanzi lists are used) to determine ease of learning will miss important influential conditions. Moreover, the total variance explained is only 50.4%; this indicates that there are other features that need be considered when deciding whether a Hanzi is difficult or easy. Since the unexplained variance is a sizable 49.6%, this indicates that further research is needed to find other features which determine the difficulty or ease of a Hanzi. Ease Index To create an Ease Index for each of the 99 Hanzi, its Difficult Index was multiplied by 100 and the sign reversed, so that a large Ease Index indicates that the Hanzi is easier to learn. Table 5.4 shows the ten Hanzi with the highest Ease Index

References

49

and another ten with the lowest Ease Index; these are, respectively, the easiest and the most difficult ones among the 99 Hanzi analysed. A cursory look at these 20 Hanzi shows that the two lists are visually quite different. In fact, the first ten easiest Hanzi have an average Ease Index of 1.92, while the most difficult ten have an average Ease Index of 1.66.

Follow-Up Studies Precedence Index (Chen, 2015) and Ease Index are two different new concepts of the ease (or difficulty) of Hanzi. At this point of time, they are both exploratory though promising. They both attempt at summarizing the complex conditions which make Hanzi easy or difficult to learn by taking into consideration more features than merely frequency which has traditionally dominated the scene where learning precedence of Hanzi is concerned. Moreover, they are couched in the Chinese as a Second Language context of Singapore. Admittedly, further work is needed as the two indices are limited to the most frequent 100 (99) Hanzi.

Conclusion The present study covers only 100 Hanzi which are supposed to be the easier, and it is exploratory in nature to find out the workability of both indices. The results look promising and, of course, a much wider coverage of, say, 1500 most commonly used Hanzi is necessary for a definitive conclusion. Further studies could include teachers’ views and students’ achievement for validation purposes. Traditionally, Hanzi lists have been used as almost the only tool for deciding the ease of learning of Hanzi, and they depend almost entirely on frequency. However, as this study shows, there are more features than just frequency influencing the ease of Hanzi and hence the precedence to learn. Chen’s (2015) Precedence Index and the Ease Index of this analysis are two possible approaches to include other features which may be just as important as frequency, if not more so. This being an exploratory study, the best conclusion is that more research is indicated.

References Chen, C. 陈之权. (2015)。从新加坡学生日常使用汉字字频谈新加坡华文课程与教学规划 (第 一稿)。第六届 “汉字与汉字教育” 国际研讨会。中国: 浙江外国语学院, 2015年7月8–9日。 Ding, C. 丁崇明. (2010). 非汉字全汉语学习者胆子学习的教学策略. How westerner learners discover the world of written Chinese. http://www.fb06.uni-mainz.de/chinesisch/211.php. Guangming Daily. 光明日报 (2008 年11月17日)。汉字难学否?专家有新说. http://culture.peo ple.com.cn/GB/22219/8349157.html.

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Huang, P. 黃沛榮。(2010). 字詞本位的中文教學法. How westerner learners discover the world of written Chinese. http://www.fb06.uni-mainz.de/chinesisch/215.php. Ji, F. 季凡. (2013)。汉字是容易/难学的文字。语言文字网. http://www.yywzw.com/n1669c152. aspx. Liu, L. 刘丽萍. (2008)。笔画数与结构方式对留学生汉字学习的影响. 语言教学与研究, 第1 期, 89–96. Lin, J.-Z., Zhao, C.-S., Ang, S.-C., Goh, H.-H., & Wong, C.-H. (2015). Development of corpusbased resource platform for Chinese language teaching in Singapore. Journal of Chinese Language Education, 13(1), 1–15. Ouyang, G. 阳贵林. (2010)。解汉字 “难学” 百年之谜, 创汉字 “易学” 最终方法. http://www. hezi.net/He/HeMa/HTML/HanZi_Problem_Analyse_Solution.htm. Richardson, T. W. (2015). Chinese character memorization and literacy: theoretical and empirical perspectives on a sophisticated version of an old strategy. How Westerner Learners Discover the World of Written Chinese. http://www.fb06.uni-mainz.de/chinesisch/225.php. Wagner, A. (2011, December 22). How difficult is it to learn Chinese? Oxford dictionaries, language matters. http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/12/how-difficult-is-it-to-learnchinese/ Wang, J. 王平. (2010)。汉字部件认知与对外汉字教学. How westerner learners discover the world of written Chinese. http://www.fb06.uni-mainz.de/chinesisch/228.php. Zhou, J. 周健. (n.d.). “汉字难学 “的原因. hh汉字教学理论与方法ii. http://www.pcerc.org/ HJZHY/HJ804/HJ804_01.htm. Zhou, Z. 周上之. (2010)。对外汉字500字教学法. How westerner learners discover the world of written Chinese. http://www.fb06.uni-mainz.de/chinesisch/234.php.

Chapter 6

Readability Formula for Chinese as a Second Language

Using a sample of texts from Primary 1 to Secondary 4 Chinese Language textbooks currently in use in Singapore schools, a readability formula was developed through multiple regression analysis. The possible uses of the formula are discussed.

The previous two articles explore the methods Hanzi can be quantitatively indexed for difficulty in learning. It is readily appreciated that when Hanzi are stringed together forming texts, there are additional language features which influence text readability—the degree a text can be read by the intended reader with ease and understanding, in short, comprehension. Beyond the difficulty of the Chinese characters used to write a text and besides the substantive content of it, whether the text can be read with understanding by its readers also depends on its language features such as vocabulary and sentence structures. Generally, when a textbook writer writes, he strives to match the language demand of the text by controlling vocabulary and sentence structures with the assumed proficiency level of the intended readers. Well-intended though this is, such control is subjective and it relies largely on the experience of the writer. Therefore the match between the language demand of the text and the proficiency of the intended readers may not be as close as desired. Thus, a more objective approach to the problem of readability arises, and readability formulas have been developed as a possible solution.

Readability Formulas for English Readability formulas for English cover a long period of time and are many. From the Flesch Reading Ease of 1948 to the Strain Index of 2006, there are no less than 23 different formulas (Bravos, 2010). These formulas share a common notion that readability depends on various language features and they use these as predictors of readability via the statistical technique of multiple regression. For instance, the Flesch Reading Ease formula looks thus: © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Soh, Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1149-3_6

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Reading Ease ¼ 206:835  1:015  average sentence length  84:6  average syllables In this formula (a multiple regression equation), for English texts, 1.015 indicates that the shorter the sentences, the easier the text. Likewise, 84.6 indicates that text with less syllables is easier. The number 206.835 is an intercept (a fixed number or constant) common to all texts to be evaluated for readability. The Flesch Reading Formula classifies English texts into seven levels, reversely with higher score indicating greater ease and vice versa. For example, a score of 90–100 denotes “very easy” and 0–29 “very difficult”. The Strain Index uses a much simpler approach. To assess readability, take the first three sentences, count the total number of the syllables, and divide the total by 10. If the ratio is 5.1 or lower, the text is said to be easy. At the other end, a ratio of 15.3 and above denotes high difficulty. Another example is the Spache Reading Formula which considers sentence length and two other language features. It is readily appreciated that longer sentences and more unfamiliar words make texts more difficult. And, the formula is: Grade ¼ 0:659 þ 0:121  average sentence length þ 0:082  unfamiliar words=text length The differences among the readability formulas reflect, in the first place, the conceptualization of readability of the formula designers. This also means it is not easy to assess text difficulty. One obvious reason for such differences is the text samples used to create the formulas. It is critical that the samples represent the kind of texts the target readers frequently come across. With so many readability formulas available, a pertinent question is whether they yield consistent assessments of the same text. To verify, the present writer input The Emperor’s New Clothes (the famous story by Hans Christian Anderson) into the seven different web-based readability formulas at Readability formulas http://www. readabilityformulas.com/freetests/six-readability-formulas.php and the results are these: Flesch Reading Ease: Very easy Gunning Fog: Fairly easy Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: Sixth Grade The Coleman-Liau Index: Seven Grade The SMOG Index: Sixth Grade Automated Readability Index: Fourth-fifth Grade Linsear Write Formula: Seven Grade Obviously, the results are not exactly the same among the seven formulas. They, however, are close though varying from the fourth to seventh grades, and the text is therefore suitable for upper elementary students.

Readability Formula for Chinese

53

To create a readability formula, Klare (1974–1975) suggests the following six steps: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Select as the criterion many texts with varied content and difficulty. Objectively identify a few language features. Count the number of each language feature and evaluate their correlations. Select language features that are more highly correlated. Apply multiple regression and create the formula. Use texts other than those used above to ascertain readability.

The present study follows the above steps to create a readability formula for Chinese texts used in primary and secondary schools in Singapore. Note that in the Singapore context, Chinese Language is, for administrative reasons, designated as a second language, indicating that the expected standard is lower than the language learned as a first language in, say, China; however, how much lower and at which class level remain a question for empirical research.

Readability Formula for Chinese Readability formulas for Chinese are relatively rare. An earlier example is Yang’s (1971) doctoral dissertation at the Wisconsin University. It includes language features such as the proportion of difficult words, number of sentences, and average strokes of Chinese characters. Later, Sun (孙汗银, 1992) created a formula for Chinese as a first language, using average number of strokes, proportion of difficult words, average number of characters per sentence length, and average number of words per sentence. Like for English, the question is what are the factors that affect readability of Chinese texts? The answers vary and different researchers have different views. Wang (王蕾, 2008:51) integrated the research findings of studies spanning from 1971 to 2005 and concluded that there are five readability predictors for Chinese text: average number of strokes, word frequency, number of words, average number of characters per sentence, and sentence length. However, for Chinese as a second language, Wang (2008:50) pointed out, thus: In the realm of teaching Chinese as a Second Language, although in the 1990s, there were people in Singapore who used readability formulas to assess text difficulty, there is still a lack of more objective readability measure for Chinese texts. There is a dearth of relevant studies in this regard and research findings for Chinese as a Second Language is much less than those for Chinese as a mother tongue.

More recently, Song et al. (宋曜廷等人, 2013) selected 386 Chinese texts for various class levels as learning data and conducted two analyses using stepwise multiple regression and support vector machine. They then used another 96 texts as testing data to verify the obtained formula. As the stepwise multiple regression shows, important predictors of readability include number of difficult words,

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proportion of simple sentences, proportion of concrete words, and pronouns. On the other hand, support vector machine shows that important predictors are number of difficult words, number of two-character words, total number of characters, and median strokes. By comparison, stepwise multiple regression has an accuracy rate of 55% and support vector machine 73%. Moreover, both methods are more accurate for lower than higher class levels. The study reflects the benefit of using more recent technology, and its further development is to be awaited. Studies of Chinese readability are even rarer in Singapore. Chia and Soh’s study (谢世涯与苏启祯, 1992) involved pre-university students who completed tests of character recognition, fill-in-the-blank, selection of idioms, and cloze procedure. The substantive content was news in local newspapers. Multiple regression shows that, of the total comprehension variance, 29% was accounted for by number of characters, 23% by number of words, and 5% by number of idioms. The remaining 43% was unexplained and could well be attributed to the students’ life experience, cultural knowledge, reading skills, test-taking attitude, etc. Of course, this awaits further investigation. Those studies summarized above deal with Chinese as a first language in the past. Today, in Singapore schools, English is taught at the first language level taking up about 85% of curriculum time, and Chinese taught at the second language level has a share of about 15%. This being the case, the extant Chinese readability formulas are not suitable for text assessing purposes as Chinese Language has its local characteristics in terms of vocabulary and sentence structures. The need to develop a readability formula in the Singapore context for Chinese as a second language is readily appreciated.

Method Data The data came from primary and secondary Chinese as second language textbooks for ten class levels, from Primary 1 to Primary 6 and from Secondary 1 to Secondary 4. Those for the Secondary 1 to 4 are for the Express Stream which represent the great majority (about 80%) of secondary students in the Singapore system. For each class level, seven texts were randomly selected from the textbooks for the development of the readability formula (providing learning data) and another three for verification of the prediction using the formula (as testing data). In short, using the concept of machine learning, there are 70 texts for learning and 30 for testing. The texts were input into the Corpus-based Resource Platform for Chinese Language Teaching in Singapore (Lin, Zhao, Ang, Goh, & Wong, 2015) of the Singapore Centre of Chinese Language. For each text, the outputs are eight language features, including the number of Chinese characters, number of different Chinese characters, number of words, number of different words, number of whole sentences, number of subsentences, maximum sentence length, and average sentence length.

Results

55

Statistical Analysis Multiple regression was employed, with the original grades of the texts as the criterion and the language features described above as predictors. The original grade levels of the texts were used as the criterion on the ground that, in the development of the textbooks, trial run and subsequent revision are a normal practice to ensure suitable text difficulty commensurate to the intended grade. As would be expected, not all the eight language features mentioned above will show predicting power of text readability. Therefore, through sequential analyses, language features found to be effective predictors were retained for the construction of the readability formula.

Results Language Features Table 6.1 shows the descriptive statistics for the texts for the ten levels. Generally, the values of the language features increase with grade as they would be expected. And, Table 6.2 shows the increases between consecutive levels. As shown therein, on average, the numbers of Chinese characters increase by 73, of different characters by 28, of words by 47, and of different words by 25. At the same time, the numbers of whole sentences increase by only three, but of subsentences by eight, and maximum sentence length increase by three characters but average sentence lengths by two characters. In sum, the difficulty level of the texts seems to vary more with vocabulary than with sentence structure. However, it is of note that the standard deviations indicate that the increases are far from being uniform with much larger increases for some levels and much less for the others; this is especially conspicuous for vocabulary. It is interesting to find out how the increases in vocabulary vary with level. As can be seen in Fig. 6.1, for vocabulary, the variations form a zigzag line instead of a straight line which would be expected had the increase been uniform between consecutive levels. It is also of note that between Primary 6 and Secondary 1 is a particular large increase and the obvious drop from Secondary 3 to Secondary 4. These suggest that Primary 6 students graduated to Secondary 1 will have a much higher hurdle to cross, and Secondary 4 students will find little challenge when they move from Secondary 3.

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Table 6.1 Language features Pr 1 Pr 2 Pr 3 Pr 4 Pr 5 Pr 6 Sec 1 Sec 2 Sec3 Sec 4

Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD

C 58.8 18.9 104.2 16.4 206.6 33.8 243.2 21.7 349.4 10.2 420.6 41.7 601.0 74.8 632.0 113.9 719.4 102.4 716.0 105.7

DC 35.6 9.7 55.9 13.5 103.4 14.6 123.1 13.0 174.7 10.3 194.4 25.6 253.0 25.7 281.3 26.7 304.3 35.9 291.0 42.9

W 42.7 14.1 76.8 15.0 149.0 26.7 172.6 19.0 267.1 88.6 290.2 31.6 403.6 68.3 427.1 96.9 478.3 84.7 467.0 81.1

DW 29.5 8.5 47.7 12.2 87.7 14.7 102.6 11.3 145.7 11.4 164.4 22.4 224.3 26.9 246.1 35.3 266.7 39.6 258.3 46.0

WS 5.3 2.1 7.5 1.7 12.0 2.8 13.4 2.3 16.2 2.5 21.0 4.1 29.3 9.1 28.6 9.4 28.7 5.6 28.9 8.0

SS 10.1 3.1 14.8 3.6 29.3 5.6 32.8 5.1 43.5 4.7 53.7 6.9 73.0 18.9 73.1 24.6 86.1 15.2 78.9 14.7

MSL 18.3 5.0 21.4 4.5 33.6 9.0 37.9 7.5 46.1 6.3 45.2 7.0 41.7 5.2 52.3 8.4 52.6 7.5 49.1 7.2

ASL 11.5 2.7 14.4 3.2 17.8 3.5 18.5 2.3 21.9 2.5 20.7 3.5 21.6 4.4 23.0 3.7 25.3 2.5 25.8 5.1

Note: C number of Chinese characters, DC number of different Chinese characters, W number of words, DW number of different words, WS number of whole sentences, SS number of subsentences, MSL maximum sentence length, ASL average sentence length Table 6.2 Differences between consecutive levels Pr1 to Pr 2 Pr2 to Pr 3 Pr3 to Pr 4 Pr4 to Pr 5 Pr5 to Pr 6 Pr6 to Sec1 Sec1 to Sec2 Sec2 to Sec3 Sec3 to Sec4 Mean SD

C 45 102 37 106 71 180 31 87 3 73 54

DC 20 48 20 52 20 59 28 23 13 28 22

W 34 72 24 95 23 113 24 51 11 47 40

DW 18 40 15 43 19 60 22 21 8 25 20

WS 2 5 1 3 5 8 1 0 0 3 3

SS 5 15 4 11 10 19 0 13 7 8 8

MSL 3 12 4 8 1 4 11 0 4 3 6

ASL 3 3 1 3 1 1 1 2 1 2 2

Note: C number of Chinese characters, DC number of different Chinese characters, W number of words, DW number of different words, WS number of whole sentences, SS number of subsentences, MSL maximum sentence length, ASL average sentence length

Results

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200 150 100 50 0

Pr1 to Pr 2

Pr2 to Pr 3

Pr3 to Pr 4

Pr4 to Pr 5

Pr5 to Pr 6

Pr6 to Sec1

Sec1 to Sec2

Sec2 to Sec3

Sec3 to Sec4

-50 C

DC

W

DW

Fig. 6.1 Inter-level increases in vocabulary Table 6.3 Correlations of class level and language features Level C DC W DW WS SS MSL ASL

Level 1.00

C .96 1.00

DC .96 .99 1.00

W .92 .98 .96 1.00

DW .95 .99 .99 .97 1.00

WS .83 .92 .89 .92 .92 1.00

SS .90 .97 .94 .96 .96 .96 1.00

MSL .80 .77 .81 .77 .78 .63 .72 1.00

ASL .77 .69 .74 .64 .70 .41 .58 .82 1.00

Notes: (1) C number of Chinese characters, DC number of different Chinese characters, W number of words, DW number of different words, WS number of whole sentencesm, SS number of subsentences, MSL maximum sentence length, ASL average sentence length. (2) All coefficients are statistically significant ( p < .05, two-tailed)

Correlations As prediction depends on correlations, it is useful to first look at the correlations between the criterion (level) and the eight language features. As shown in the first line of Table 6.3, the correlations vary from r ¼ .77 (ASL) to r ¼ .96 (C, DC) with a median of r ¼ .91. With such high correlations, all eight language features could be good predictors. This also shows the existence of multicollinearity among the

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Table 6.4 Forward stepwise multiple regression Adjusted R-square Increase in variance explained Intercept DC ASL SS C DW

Model 1 .920 .920 .379 .028 (0.92) – – – –

Model 2 .937 .017 .450 .009 (0.81) .108 (0.21) – – –

Model 3 .940 .003 .058 .012 (1.07) .086 (0.17) .023 (0.23) – –

Model 4 .943 .003 2.162 .022 (0.74) .074 (0.14) – .011 (0.91) 2.026 (20.79)

Notes: (1) DC number of different Chinese characters, ASL average sentence length, SS number of subsentences, C number of Chinese characters, DW number of different words. (2) Coefficients in parentheses are standardized regression coefficients (beta) which indicate the relative predicting power

predictors (language features) when used to predict the criterion (class level). Thus, not all eight language features are needed to construct the readability formula. At the same time, the correlations among the vocabulary measures (C, DC, W, and DW) vary from r ¼ .96 to r ¼ .99 with a median of r ¼ .98, and those among the sentence structure measures (WS, SS, MSL, and ASL) vary from r ¼ .41 to r ¼ .96 with a median of r ¼ .68. And, the correlations among the eight predictors vary from r ¼ .64 to r ¼ .97 with a median of r ¼ .85.

Multiple Regression As alluded to earlier, since the correlations with the criterion are all high, it is difficult to identify the most predictive language features. This being the case, it is prudent to let the data tell its story, so to speak. Therefore, a forward stepwise multiple regression was run. For this, the computer selects the predictor which explains the most of criterion variance first and then the next which explains the most of the remaining variance and so forth. This process is repeated until the additional variance explained is minimal. Table 6.4 shows four models obtained. To begin with, Model 1 includes DC (number of different Chinese characters) which predicts 92.0% of the criterion variance. At the end, Model 4 which predicts 94.3% of the criterion variance includes DC (number of different Chinese characters), ASL (average sentence length), C (number of Chinese characters), and DW (number of different words). This indicates that almost all the criterion variance is explained by four of the eight language features as predictors. Note that three of these four predictors are vocabulary measures and only one is a sentence structure measure. With reference to the results of Model 4, the readability formula can be written as follows:

Results

59

Readability ¼ 0:163 þ 0:011  C þ 0:022  DC þ 0:074  ASL  0:026  DW Using this formula, 94% of the total variance of the text level is predicted by the four language features. Note that number of different words (DW) has a negative coefficient indicating that texts with more words are easier to read with comprehension. However, the coefficients in the above formula are unstandardized, which are used to estimate the readability of the text, but these coefficients do not tell the relative predicting power of the predictors. For instance, in Model 4, ASL seems to be slightly more than three times as powerful in prediction as DC when the ratio of the unstandardized coefficient is 3.4 (¼0.74/0.22), while in fact DC is slightly more than five times as ASL, as indicated by ratio of the standardized coefficient of 5.3 (¼0.74/0.14). Therefore, to evaluate the relative predicting power, it is necessary to look at the formula in its standardized form below: Standardized readability ¼ 0:911  C þ 0:744  DC þ 0:141  ASL  0:792  DW Using standardized coefficients, the above formula indicates that C (number of characters) is the most predictive, followed by DC (number of different characters), and then ASL (average sentence length). The fourth predictor DW (number of different words) has a negative coefficient and is as predictive as DC. Since readability here is indexed as class level, the higher the coefficient, the more difficult the text will be. Thus, a text will be made more difficult by more individual Chinese characters (token, text length), more different characters (type), and longer sentences; but, more different words (combinations of characters) will make it easier. The last point makes good sense since longer text with more different characters and longer sentences will be more demanding to the students, but this will be moderated by having more different words (characters combined), thus indirectly reducing the demand of the characters and enhancing the text with greater meaningfulness.

Verification As indicated earlier, the readability formula was constructed by using seven texts at each class level; these are for learning. For each level, there are three texts reserved for verification (testing). Using the formula obtained, levels were estimated for the testing texts. Table 6.5 shows the predicted levels for the 30 texts reserved for testing. As can be seen therein, for the primary texts, the results are consistent with the expectations. The 18 testing texts were estimated by the formula as suitable for their original class

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Table 6.5 Levels of testing texts Level 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Level in the Corpus-based Platform 1 2 3 4 5

Class level Primary 1 Primary 2 Primary 3 Primary 4 Primary 5 Primary 6 Secondary 1 Secondary 2 Secondary 3 Secondary 4

Predicted level (rounded) 1.20 (1) 2.08 (2) 3.40 (3) 3.89 (4) 5.34 (5) 5.90 (6) 7.78 (8) 8.28 (8) 9.38 (9) 9.31 (9)

levels (Primary 1 to 6). This indicates that the readability formula works very well at the primary levels. However, for the secondary texts, those for Secondary 1 (Level 7) were estimated as more difficult than intended; in other words, the formula predicts that these are more suitable for Secondary 2 (Level 8). At the same time, those for Secondary 4 (Level 10) were estimated by the formula as more suitable for Secondary 3 (Level 9). These discrepancies are not unexpected in view of the irregularity observed earlier (Fig. 6.1) where there is a much bigger gap between Primary 6 and Secondary 1 and a drop from Secondary 3 to Secondary 4 in the vocabulary measures. Thus, the formula needs be used with caution when predicting readability at the secondary levels. However, if Secondary 1 and 2 are combined as one level and Secondary 3 and 4 as another, as is done in the Corpus-based Resource Platform for Chinese Language Teaching in Singapore (Lin et al., 2015) used to analyse the language features, the prediction is then accurate.

Discussion and Conclusion By way of summary, this exploratory study uses current textbooks as a source of data to construct a readability formula for Chinese Language as a second language for primary and secondary schools in Singapore. The resultant readability formula uses three vocabulary measures and one sentence structure measure to predict the suitable class levels. It works consistently for primary texts but somewhat less discriminative for secondary texts. An advantage in using extant textbooks as the source of text difficulty data is that the levels of the texts have already been established in the development stage before publication. It is a normal practice in Singapore, perhaps also elsewhere, that texts to be used by students are given trial run to verify their suitability in terms of language demands and gradation. Thus, the levels of such texts can be safely taken for granted

Discussion and Conclusion

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as having been ascertained. However, this can turn out to be a limitation since all texts are for instructional purposes and reading materials not for this purpose are not included (such as children literature and newspapers). Therefore, whether this obtained readability formal will work beyond textbooks remains to be studied independently. In the obtained readability formula, vocabulary measures, especially the number of different characters (type, text length), play a major role in prediction. While it makes sense that more different characters used will make greater demand on reading, this could have been a built-in feature of the texts used. Had the sentence structure measures been wider and more varied, these language features should be able to play a more prominent role in the formula. Thus, independent studies using texts with more variation in sentence structures are indicated. The finding that more different words (character compounds) make texts easier is interesting. This suggests that when two texts are of the same length (number of characters, token, or length), the one with more different words (type) will be less demanding since, in Chinese, words are normally made up mostly of two known characters. In other words, using known characters to form words makes for easier reading. This has implication for the teaching of Chinese to make use of known characters as words instead of introducing many new characters. This also implies that vocabulary control by using Hanzi lists alone when writing instructional texts has its limitation since such lists treat Hanzi in isolation and ignore the contribution of combined Hanzi (i.e. words). For example, 东 and 西 have different meanings as compared with 东西 when these are combined as a word. It is a common practice in teaching Chinese Language for the teachers to select reading materials (e.g. newspapers or story books) beyond the textbooks for their students to read in and outside the classroom. For this purpose, the teachers needs be able to assess the readability of the chosen reading materials before using them. Here, the obtained readability formula will be of great help to the teachers to make sure that the selected reading materials are close enough to the reading levels of the target students. Finally, it is also necessary to point out that the obtained formula is based on texts for Chinese as a second language. This makes the formula useful not only to Singapore but also other countries over the world where Chinese Language is learned as a heritage language. And, of course, whether it is also suitable for Chinese as a first language remains to be investigated. Up until today, Hanzi lists seem to be the only device to help Chinese Language textbook writers control the language demands and ensure vocabulary control in terms of readability. The use of a readability formula to check the demands of the written texts provides necessary additional mechanism for better control of text readability. Acknowledgement The collaboration of Dr. Lin Jinzhan (林进展博士), Head of Research, Singapore Centre for Chinese Language, in the selection and analysis of texts is greatly appreciated.

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References Bravos, K. (2010, January 14). Readability Tests and formulas. Ideosity. http://www.ideosity.com/ ourblog/post/ideosphere-blog/2010/01/14/readability-tests-and-formulas Klare, G. R. (1974–1975). Assessing readability. Reading Research Quarterly, 10(1), 62–102. Lin, J., et al. 林进展、赵春生、洪瑞春、吴福焕、王志豪 (2015)。基于语料库的新加坡华文 教学资源平台开发。hh华文学刊ii, 13(1), 1–15。 Song, Y., et al. 宋曜廷, 陈茹玲, 李宜宪, 查日龢, 曾厚強, 林維駿, 張道行, 張国恩 (2013)。中文 文本可读性探討: 指标选取。模型建立与效度验证。 hh中华心理学刊ii, 55(1), 75–106. https://doi.org/10.6129/CJP.20120621. Soon, H. 孙汗银 (1992). hh中文易懂性公式ii. 北京师范大学硕士学位论文。 Wang, L. 王蕾 (2008)。可读性公式的内涵及研究范式 —兼议对外汉语可读性公 式的研 究 任务. hh语言教学于研究ii, 第 6 期, 46–53。http://jwc.tsu.edu.cn/sdqcg/lunwen/08/2008/ 2008_06_07.PDF. Xie, S., & Su, Q. 谢世涯与苏启祯 (1992)。认字辩词与于都理解能力. hh语言教学与研究ii, 第 4期, 128–140. Yang, S. J. (1971). A readability formula for Chinese language (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin).

Chapter 7

Strategies for Preventing Orthographical Errors: What Psychology of Learning Suggests

The difficulty in learning and remembering Hanzi are discussed with reference to the psychology of learning. Memory strategies which may help in effective learning and remembering are suggested.

Many Hanzi look alike and thus cause confusion in writing, for example, 伞 (san, umbrella) and 命 (ming, life) and 歇 (xie, rest) and 喝 (he, drink). The following joke was downloaded from the Internet: 小明经常把伞写成命。 有一天下雨, 他没带伞, 于是让同学捎了一张便条给他妈妈。小明是这么写的: 妈 妈, 我没命, 回不了家, 请帮我把命送来。 Xiaoming always mixes up 伞 and 命. It rains heavily and Xiaoming does not bring an umbrella with him. He asks a classmate to pass a note to his mother. Xiaoming writes: Mama, I don’t have life, cannot go home, please bring me life.

Confusing Hanzi A joke is a joke, but it is common that students write Hanzi wrongly. This happened in the past, it happens nowadays, and will happen in the future. In fact, from the historical perspective, many Hanzi were used interchangeably in the ancient classics as borrowed words (通假字), but they can be seen as errors today. What are these borrowed words? Why did students make such mistakes? Most of the borrowed words are not really borrowed but are alternatives between the past and the present, using different Hanzi to express the same meanings. For example, the ancient Hanzi 共, 知, and 锡 (respectively mean supply, intellect, and endow) are written nowadays as 供, 智, and 赐. As Hanzi evolve over time, some complicated Hanzi are carved or written with simplifications, and some easily mixed up are written with extra strokes to avoid confusion. These are intentional; the writer knows what he does, and the reader also knows the intended meanings. So, these should not be taken as errors. As time © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Soh, Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1149-3_7

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passed by, the wrong writing is accepted due to common usage through the process of consensus (约定俗成). However, if students write 共给, 知慧, and 赏锡 but not 供给, 智慧, and 赏赐, the teacher will mark them as errors. Our concern here is why students make those mistakes that they make. Are there some ways we can prevent such errors from occurring? And, how to correct them when they do occur? Many Chinese Language scholars in China have been grappling with the problem, and their views are highlighted here as these may help in understanding the problem experienced by Singaporean students. Ma (马精君, n.d.) analysed primary students’ errors and their possible causes and concluded that the errors as due to inappropriate word recognition and inadequate word meanings. Students’ errors show up as having additional strokes, missing strokes, and unacceptable changes to the structure or component. Errors occurred when pronunciations were mixed up, similar shapes were taken as equivalents, and there are irregular substitutions. The author offered three reasons: (1) the student’s low cognitive ability, (2) negative transfer of training, and (3) too many Hanzi looking alike. To prevent confusion and errors, Ma suggested the following: 1. Emphasize the first impression by making clear the components, structures, and meanings of the Hanzi to be learned. 2. Consolidate learning by writing from memory and checking against the textbook. 3. Develop the habits of correct writing and following standards and the need of correct writing. In the article What Shall We Do When Children Keep Writing Wrongly? On the Chinese Lizhi Net, the anonymous author (2015) differentiates between error in formation (错字)and error in meaning (别字) and pointed out that erroneous writing of Hanzi peaks at primary three and thereafter tapers off in primary four and five. To the author, errors are due to the complexity of Hanzi and the large number of homonyms (same-sounding) ones and, at the same time, primary students are not disciplined, inattentive, and muddled in thinking. It is suggested that the students’ attention need be drawn to the characteristics of the structure of Hanzi through differentiating the leading sound (声母) and the ending sound (韵母), highlighting the meanings of radicals (the meanings of components), encouraging creative memory (associative thinking), and spiral revision (revising at regular intervals and reading beyond the textbooks). Haung (黄宝成, n.d.) suggested four steps for correcting writing errors. First, pronounce correctly to avoid mixing up because of similar shapes. Next, understand word meanings to strengthen memory. Then, differentiate the differences in shapes. And, finally, consult a dictionary when coming across unfamiliar Hanzi. In another article Exploratory Discussion on Primary Students’ Writing Errors, the author (Anonymous, n.d.) is of the view that the error students make fall into three categories: (1) same-sounding characters (同音字), (2) multiple-meaning characters (多义字), and (3) like-shape characters (形似字). There are also subjective and objective reasons for the confusion. Subjective reasons include weak cognitive ability (paying attention to isolated figures and not seeing the relations

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and characteristics), poor comprehension (intuitive thinking, lacking in emphatic recognition and accumulative experience), and underdeveloped emotion (lack of self-control). As for prevention, the author suggested (1) correct pronunciation, remember the shape, making use of the shape to guess the pronunciation; (2) discover regularities among Hanzi by analysing, contrasting, identifying radicals, and grouping; and (3) develop good thinking habits of careful observation, self-check, timely correction, and frequent use of dictionary. Wang (王佳作, 2010) in Useful and Useless Writing Errors pointed out that Hanzi are meaning-based but they have many strokes and complex structures, thus causing confusions and errors. Among Hanzi, there are so many with similar sounds, shapes, and meanings, lacking a scientific and reasonable symbolizing system, thereby giving rise to confusion and making writing difficult. Besides, according to Wang, Hanzi have gone through a long history of evolution, and many of the ancient ones are still in use. Moreover, the calligraphy and seal carving ignore standardization and contribute to the confusion. For subjective causes of errors, the author was of the view that interference in thinking, remembering, attitudes, and habits all contribute to errors. The author further pointed out that errors made by adults cause embarrassment and poor quality of texts, and those made by students lower the standards of their writing. However, Wang also sees writing errors in a positive light as these urge scientists to study the psychology of writing errors, expand the views, and develop the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language and even study how to use erroneously pronounced Hanzi (puns) for advertisements. The authors of the articles summarized above all have their views on the causes and cures of wrongly writing Hanzi. They basically see the problem as having objective reasons inherent in the writing system itself and subjective reasons within the Hanzi learners. However, the present writer sees the problem basically as a psychological phenomenon and will discuss it from this perspective.

Psychology of Learning Learning theories attempt at explaining how learning takes place. Seen from the perspective of behaviourism, from Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning to Skinner’s Operant Conditioning to Thorndike’s Association, theories were expounded for a hundred years. The earlier theories are based on experiments involving animals, dealing with simple learning of signals (a bell rings or a light switched on) and are limited when it comes to human learning which is much more complex. Slowly, cognition and constructionism take over the arena. And, with the interest in cognition and constructionism, it looks outdated to talk about association. Granted that, it has to be recognized that not all human learning is complex and needs be explained with reference to the newer concepts of cognition and constructionism, because some learning is still associative in nature. Moreover, for parsimony, if a

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phenomenon can be explained by simpler theorization, there is no need to invoke more complex one. Therefore, simple association theories can still enhance understanding of the simple learning process such as recognition of Hanzi. This view is found in articles summarized below: Behaviorism considers learning as basically an association between stimulus and response. For this reason, the success of a learner depends on the ability to respond to an incoming stimulus. . .Behaviourists see all learning as formation of habits, that is, the ability to sort out the unorganized responses to match the stimulus by way of conditional reflect so that it become an orderly association in the mind. (Zhu 朱善萍, n.d.) Associationists consider learning as building connections of experiences through a simple process of associating. Obviously, the basic tenet of this view is the association between the stimulus and response, condition and action, and nodes of a semantic network. From this viewpoint, when an association is built between the stimulation and response, learning has taken place. (Wang 王佑镁 & Zhu 祝智庭, 2006)

Word recognition, irrespective of the language concerned, can be considered as a simple associative learning in language. Therefore, invoking a simple learning theory to explain it should suffice, and this is consistent with Occam’s razor which requires the simplest explanation of scientific phenomena and avoids making complex hypotheses. For learning a Hanzi, the student needs to associate its three elements, that is, its sound, shape, and meaning. This is essentially associative learning. When the three elements of a Hanzi are combined, there are six associations to be made by the students: Stimulus See the shape See the shape Hear the sound Hear the sound Think of the meaning Think if the meaning

Response Produce the sound Think of the meaning Produce the shape Think of the meaning Produce the sound Produce the shape

The above associations take place in the mind of the students, but, in real-life teaching, the teacher provides the stimulus and the student the response. Of course, subsequent to learning, the student may provide the stimulus for himself, for instance, when he is reading storybooks or writing a composition.

Psychological View of Orthographic Errors Hanzi is the root source of its difficulty to learn: one shape has many sounds, one sound has many shapes, one shape has many meanings, many shapes look alike, etc. All these create problems for learners leading to pronunciation, recognition, and

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writing errors. What does psychological learning suggest for preventing and correcting such errors? Seen from the perspective of learning theories, confusion has to do with (negative) transfer of learning, that is, the effect of prior learning on later learning. If prior learning has a facilitative effect on later learning, positive transfer has taken place. On the other hand, when prior learning causes difficulty for later learning, negative transfer (interference) has happened. Thus, whether positive or negative transfer occurs, it depends on the relation between prior and later learning. Positive Transfer Generally, prior learning has a positive effect on later learning if the learner is to produce a similar response to a similar stimulus, for example, 同---tong2 铜---tong2 桐---tong2 The three Hanzi looks rather similar (all having 同 as a component on the same side), and they are to be pronounced in the same way (tong2). This makes it easy for seeing the shape, pronounce the sound. Some Hanzi look different but have the same or highly similar pronunciations. For such Hanzi, positive transfer can also take place, making learning easy. For example, 童---tong2 统---tong3 痛---tong4 Positive transfer facilitates learning, making pairing of similar shapes and sounds easier and save time and energy for the learner. There are many examples of positive training in daily life. It is easier for a cyclist to learn to ride a motorcycle because the experience of balancing the body and controlling the vehicles are about the same and he does not have to learn everything all over again. For learning in the classroom, many similar Hanzi, words, concepts, and even formulas (e.g. sentence structures) appear in different texts, and positive transfer can take place. In Chinese Language teaching, the components method (部件教学) makes use of known parts (many of which are in fact Hanzi students have previously learned) is an application of positive transfer. It breaks down a complicated Hanzi into its components thereby reducing the demand on the mind when learning. Learning may thus become easier, more pleasant, and effective. Negative Transfer This is just the opposite of positive transfer when prior learning makes later learning more difficult. When the same or highly similar stimulus have to be matched with different responses, negative transfer is likely to occur. For instance, a cyclist learning to ride a motorcycle may continue to paddle when this is not necessary for the latter. For another example, a pair of twin sisters looks so much alike that the parents punish the wrong girl and friends call them by the wrong names. In both cases, the similar stimuli (e.g. bicycle and motorcycle) expect different responses (e.g. actions of paddling the bicycle but not the motorcycle).

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Negative transfer occurs in language learning, too. For example, when the teacher asks the students to write from memory two Hanzi pronounced as xiang4jiao1 (橡 胶, rubber), some students may write 香蕉 (xing1jiao1, banana) if they do not pay attention to the difference in tone. Likewise, when the teacher expects (欲望, desire) for yu4wang4, some students may write 渔网 (yu2wang2, fishing net). In such cases, similar sounds are to be matched with different shapes. Moreover, when learning Hanyu Pinyin, some sound symbols can be quite confusing, because the same signs are voiced differently in English as they are in Mandarin, such as g, j, q, and x. Many Hanzi have the same sounds, and this gives rise to confusion (negative transfer or interference). Understanding transfer of learning (both positive and negative) may help teachers to prevent errors and correct them when they occur.

Prevention and Correction When the teacher asks her students to write the Hanzi for tong2, the three Hanzi that come to the minds of them may be 同, 铜, and 桐. But, which is the one the teacher expects?

WRQJ

਼˛ 䬌˛ Ẁ˛

In this case, all three Hanzi are correct responses, and the students have no way to tell which the teacher expects. If she expects 桐, then 同 and 铜 will be marked as wrong. This is not fair to the students as they are in fact not wrong. If the teacher asks for tong2xue2—tong2 (同学 classmate—同), the students most likely will write 同, as 铜学 and 桐学 make no sense. Here, the additional information of 学 contextualizes the expected 同. From the learning theories perspective, tong2xue2 and tong2ban2 are different stimuli, and they should bring about different responses, thereby avoiding the possibility of negative transfer. For another example, 密 and 蜜are always mixed up; students write 蜜蜂 as 密封, 密蜂, and 蜜封. These are also cases of negative transfer. Here, students are expected to write different Hanzi for the same sounds. To prevent or correct the errors, additional information in the form of meanings is needed because the addition of meanings changes the nature of the stimuli, so that the similar sounds now have different associations. Here, the critical elements are the lower parts of the two Hanzi, 蜜 and 密, the former is associated with insect (虫, chong) and the latter with mountain (山). Then, 蜂 is associated with insect (虫, chong), thus highlighting that when writing for mifeng as the name of an insect, it must have Hanzi with虫. Yet another example is 瓣 (ban4) and 辩 (bian4). Although they sound differently, they look so much alike and can get confused easily. To prevent confusion, contextual information is needed. For effective teaching (and memory), 瓣 should be associated with petal (花瓣, hua1ban4) which later becomes melon (瓜, gua). Then,

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辩 should be associated with debate (辩论, bian4lun4) which involves talking (言, yan2). In sum, for Hanzi that sound or look alike and are therefore easily confused, the teacher needs to make them sound and look differently so that they become different stimuli, by providing additional contextual information, usually their meanings. Examples like those shown above are negative transfer, showing the ill-effect of prior learning on later learning, but the fact is that later learning can retrogressively influence prior learning. For instance, the students have learned 蜜 of 蜜蜂 correctly. In a text learned some time later, there was 密封 which sounds like 蜜蜂, and the students became confused, mixing up 密 and 蜜. This is a retrogressive negative transfer. Before learning 密封, there was only 蜜蜂, and there is no way it can be confused, but now with 密封 and 蜜蜂, confusion may arise because the same stimulus (same sound) is expected to have different responses. Such confusion is a natural phenomenon in the learning process and the students are not to be blamed for it, but the teachers have the responsibility to prevent the confusion from occurring, armed with the knowledge of transfer of training (which has two directions, positive and negative). From these examples, we can derive a few guidelines from the learning psychology to prevent and correct errors in word recognition, with the view of helping students learn Hanzi more effectively. Guideline 1: Accept Students’ Orthographical Errors as Normal In the process of learning, the students’ past and present experiences will interact, giving rise to possible positive and negative transfer. Teachers need to accept such transfer as natural happenings. Teachers regard negative transfer as mistakes made by the students, but this may be due to the nature of the Hanzi and therefore do not hold the students responsible but find ways to help them. Guideline 2: Orthographical Errors May Be Due to the Systems of Writing Hanzi The three elements of shape, sound, and meaning of Hanzi interact, but the rules are far from being perfect. When students make orthographical errors, it is likely that the students apply the rules taught by the teacher when the rules are not applicable. Guideline 3: Remember That Confusion May Be Caused by Expecting Different Responses to the Same or Similar Stimulus As alluded to above, rules of Hanzi are not perfect, and confusion is bound to happen when students have to make different responses to the same or similar stimulus. When teaching potentially confusing Hanzi, draw the students’ attention to the parts that cause errors, by highlighting the critical element and providing additional contextual cues. This is a case where prevention is better than cure. Guideline 4: Do not Teach Potentially Confusing Hanzi Together Because such Hanzi are potentially confusing, some teachers with good intention teach them together and remind the students not to be confused. Such advice always backfires, resulting in having the students confused. It is better to teach them one at a

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time in proper contexts where a potentially confused Hanzi has many other associations to support its learning (differentiation). Guidelines 5: Teach a Potentially Confusing Hanzi in a Word to Change Its Visual Cue Potentially confusing Hanzi should be taught together with other Hanzi as a word (Hanzi compound) so that the visual cue is easily differentiated and the meaning is distinct. When paired with another Hanzi, the potentially confusing Hanzi looks quite different, thus preventing confusion. Guidelines 6: Emphasize Meanings, Provide Contexts, and Highlight the Relevant Radical Some Hanzi are confusing because they have the same or similar sounds and shapes. However, the meanings are unique mostly, and these provide a mechanism to avoid orthographical errors. Highlighting the different parts and the different radicals also draws the student’s attention to the differentiating aspects of Hanzi. Guideline 7: Create Opportunities for Contrasting and Analysing Hanzi By contrasting and analysing the components and structures of potentially confusing Hanzi, what the students have learned can be consolidated. As Confucius says, Revision brings new understanding (温故而知新). Regular revision by contrasting and analysis reduce the chances of being confused; it also helps the students to remember better.

Conclusion This article discusses orthographical errors from the perspective of learning psychology, transfer of training in particular. Just for the fun of it, try to read the following and see if you can get the meanings out of it: 行行行, 行行行, 行行行行行行行。 Without a context, this is a difficult and confusing task. The Hanzi 行 here has two sounds xing2 and hang2 and three meanings 行走 (walk), 行业 ( jobs), and 行 (capable). Given these clues, how would you read it with meanings?

References Huang, B. 黄宝成. (n.d., 年代不详)。h怎样纠正错别字i。hh华语网ii。Retrieved from http:// www.thn21.com/base/zi/15754.html. Ma, J. 马精君. (n.d., 年代不详). hh小学生常见错别字的原因分析及改善策略ii. Retrieved from http://www.xzbu.com/9/view-6751274.htm.

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Wang, J. 王佳作. (2010). h错别字 “有害” 和 “有用” i. hh语言文字网ii。Retrieved from http:// www.yywzw.com/n1637c152.aspx. Wang, Y. 王佑镁, 祝智庭. (2006)。h从联结主义到联通主义: 学习理论的新取向i. hh中国电化 教育ii, 总第230期, 5–8. Zhu, S. 朱善萍. (n.d., 年代不详)。h行为主义与认知主义学习理论在中学英语教学中的揉合i. 南京师范大学。江苏省中小学英语教学网。 Retrieved from http://www2.njnu.edu.cn/wy2/ My%20Webs/talk11.htm. 作者不详. (2015)。h孩子老写错别字问题怎么办i。原载于hh中华励志网ii。Retrieved from http://www.yljnet.com/article/hai-zi-lao-xie-cuo-bie-zi-wen-ti-zen-yao-ban.

Part III

Cognitive and Affective Aspects of Chinese Language Teaching

Chapter 8

Two Needed Changes in Chinese Language Teaching: Assessment and Approach

Assessment for learning and bilingual approach to teaching Chinese Language are identified as the two needed changes in the Singapore context. The possible benefits of such changes are discussed with reference to feedback function and students’ language background.

Chinese Language has a unique position in Singapore where about three quarters of the population are ethnic Chinese. Up till the end of the 1970s, there were English schools and vernacular schools (i.e. Chinese schools, Malay schools, and Indian schools). Since the introduction of the national united curriculum, all schools have the same curricular structure. By this it means all subject are learned through English except the Chinese, Malay, and Indian (Tamil). The languages were then referred to as second languages and were hence taught at a lower level, said to be 2 years lower than the first language. These were later officially referred to as Mother Tongue Languages (MTLs) and were assigned between 15% and 18% of the curriculum time for formal instruction. In schools, the students naturally have little or no opportunity to use the MTLS in lessons taught in English. English gradually replaces MTLs as the main home languages (Ministry of Education, 2011), and this trend can be expected to influence parents and students where motivation to learn MTLs is concerned. As Chinese thus has decreasing opportunity of being use in the society, family, and school, increasing difficulty in its learning among ethnic Chinese students is a natural outcome. And, this can be expected to increase the difficulty in teaching experienced by Chinese language teachers. Over the past 50 years, there have been several official reviews of the teaching of Chinese Language as efforts to seek solutions to the problems of learning difficulty. The Chinese Language curriculum was diversified, and lower-level programmes were specially designed to match with the language abilities of students with weaker Chinese proficiency. However, the instructional problems do not seem to go away as a result of such curricular adjustments. And, the changing environment of the students is illustrated in the two examples below. Firstly, the Ministry of Education (2004, p. 52, Table 1) surveys show a declining trend of Chinese as main home language. As shown in the table below (Table 8.1), © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Soh, Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1149-3_8

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Table 8.1 Percentages of languages used by students and their parents at home English Chinese English and Chinese

Primary 2 25.7 37.3 33.0

Primary 4 23.5 44.8 27.4

Primary 6 21.5 44.1 29.6

Secondary 2 24.4 50.2 21.8

Secondary 4 17.6 59.1 19.6

Source: Ministry of Education (2004, p. 52)

there were lower percentages of younger children who spoke Mandarin at home with their parents; 59% of Secondary 4 but only 37% of Primary 2 did so. At the same time, English was the main home language for 18% of Secondary 4 students but 26% of Primary 2 students. Moreover, while 20% of Secondary 4 students spoke both English and Mandarin at home, 33% of Primary 2 students did so. No doubt, curricular innovations always require revision of curricular standards and examination formats as these specify the expectations for the students and concretize the objectives students are to attain. Language curriculum can be seen analogously as a hardware, and its modification has to be based on empirical evidence and informed opinions. In comparison, teaching methods are the software which are much less specific to describe. Revising the hardware focuses only on the input and output of the teaching and learning process; they represent the beginning and ending of a production model which neglects or overlooks the throughput that takes place in between them. The throughput is a mysterious black box, that is, activities which take place in the classroom. Of course, this is not a problem peculiar to the teaching of Chinese Language but all other subjects. It is for this shortcoming that Black and Wiliam (1998), of the London Institute of Education, called the education community of the world to pay more attention to the black box because it is where learning happens or does not.

Assessment for Learning: What Educational Research Suggests Wiliam (2007) stressed the importance of students’ achievement. He criticized the United Kingdom and the United States for failure in this regard, “. . . until recently, we have been looking for an answer in the wrong place”. He further compared three approaches to raising students’ achievement levels in terms of cost-benefit, and the analysis is shown in Table 8.2. As shown in Table 8.2, when class size is reduced by one-third, student achievement gained by 4 months and this costed £20,000; this is tantamount to £5000 per month’s gain. By raising the teachers’ knowledge, it is possible to raise the students’ achievement by 2 months and the cost was not estimated. In contrast, by training teachers to use formative assessment (or assessment for learning), it was possible to raise the students’ achievement by 8 months per year and the cost was only £2000

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Table 8.2 Costs of improving learning

Reducing student enrolment by one-third Increased teachers’ knowledge Formative assessment

Months progress per year 4

Cost per classroom per year £20,000

Cost per classroom per month £5000

2

?

?

8

£2000

£250

Source: Wiliam (2007), Table 1

per year, or £250 per month. This is obviously a much economical cost for improvement of students’ achievement, only 5% of the cost of reducing class size. Reducing class size has often been suggested as a way to raise student performance. However, Hattie’s meta-analysis (cited in Soh 2010b) of many studies of the effect of reduced class size on student achievement shows an effect size of d ¼ 0.21 for this strategy. This effect size is small by Cohen’s criterion. If the class size is reduced down to individualized instruction (practical one teacher for one student), the effect size is a trivial d ¼ 0.14. At the same time, a common belief is that the more knowledgeable the teachers, the better the student achievement. This seems reasonable, but Hattie’s (2009) meta-analysis shows that the effect size for training teachers has an effect size of d ¼ 0.11 indicating a rather weak training effect, and the effect size of training teachers to raise student achievement has a trivial effect size of d ¼ 0.09 which is best ignored. Thus, from these results, reducing class size and retraining teachers do not work as effective strategies to raise student achievement. Understandably, teachers who are highly knowledgeable will find it difficult to teach students who lack relevant background knowledge and are at a lower level of language proficiency, as compared with those of the teachers. On the other hand, the students find it difficult to understand the teachers and what they teach them. In other words, if teachers teach at their level, it is above the head of the students, and this brings frustration to both parties. Moreover, the cost to raise the teachers’ knowledge is expected to be high. Thus, Wiliam (2007) suggested the third method of changing the teachers’ approach to assessment from summative assessment of learning to formative assessment for learning. This is expected to be of low cost yet effective in raising student performance. It is to be noted that the change is not only in the assessment but, in fact, the teaching itself. The above summarizes research conducted in England and America without specifying which subjects were involved. Nonetheless, what has been reported and suggested seem to be applicable to the teaching of Chinese Language and are worthy of consideration. Assessment for Learning of Singapore in the past minimize its impact in the toward assessment since

Assessment played a critical role in the education system and still does, although there have been attempts to recent years. Much of teaching and learning are geared the outcomes are used for selection, channelling,

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certification, and accountability. Assessment results are used for curricular revisions, but this will benefit only the future students—the present batch of students will not benefit from the revisions in time. In recent years, teachers have been reminded to provide timely feedback to students through what is called assessment for learning (or formative assessment), as contrasted with assessment of learning (or summative assessment). In this regard, the evidence comes from the research of Black and Wiliam (1998) and Heidi, Du, and Wang. For instance, in the study of Heidi et al., Primary 3 and 4 students who got in-time feedback scored better than those who did not, and the effect size is a large d ¼ 0.88. Wiliam (2007: 8) integrated studies and concluded that, by using assessment for learning, students showed considerable and stable progress. Such a conclusion collaborates with Hattie’s meta-analysis (2009) which reports an effect size of d ¼ 0.90. Although these studies were not conducted for Chinese Language, it can be safely predicted that similar results will be obtained if they did. Therefore, besides keeping assessment of learning (or summative assessment) for administrative purposes, Chinese Language teachers need to learn how to use assessment for learning as a strategy to improve their students’ learning by giving them timely feedback so that they are duly encouraged as well as, where necessary, correct in good time. The feedback function of assessment for learning has been emphasized; there are, however, other functions which are of educational values (Cambridge Assessment International Education, 2017). These include helping students focus on the aim of learning, take responsibility of learning, connect assessment and learning activities, and support students to become confident, reflective, innovative, and engaged. Assessment of Learning From the instructional point of view, assessment of learning does not provide feedback in time to be helpful to the students. As alluded to above, assessment of learning has its administrative functions (e.g. selection, channelling, etc.). As such, it has also a motivational function, although this should not be emphasized because of the possible ill-effect. However, there are three aspects for which attention is needed: structure of the test, nature of test items, and the reliability of scores. A Chinese Language test (or examination paper) usually has several sections (or subtests) for assessing different language skills. The more sections there are, the more variety the skills, and this affects the reliability of the test as a whole. If testing time is fixed, more sections mean less time and less items for each section, and the scores will be less stable. Thus, when the subtest scores are summed up for a total score, it will accumulate more statistical error (i.e. fluctuation, no mistake). It is reasonable to have different subtests for assessing different skills, but this pays a price of lower reliability. Some subtests are variants of the same ideas. For instance, to assess word meanings, the items may take the form of multiple-choice, true-false, fill-in-theblank, and sentence making. These four item types may be useful during the teaching process to differentiate different levels of understanding word meanings, serving the purpose of formative assessment. However, for summative assessment, one of the

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four types may suffice to enhance the assessment results with higher reliability, which is important for administrative decision-making. It is also necessary to watch out for confounding effect. For instance, Chinese Language tests for comprehension have two different formations, the reading comprehension (阅读理解) which uses multiple-choice items and questions and answers (理解问答) which require the students to write their own answers. In this case, while the multiple-choice items assess purely the ability to read a passage with understanding, the questions and answers items required writing and thus are confounded and not pure. It is not unlikely that some students who understand the texts are penalized for their weakness in written expression; this raises the issue of validity when the score does not truly reflect the ability tested. For another example, the oral listening test requires students to listen to a recorded passage and then respond to multiple-choice questions with the options printed. In this format, the score for listening is confounded with reading. In other words, when there is a confounding factor, the score has lower validity and hence does not truly reflect the skills to be assessed. The above examples show that the mixture of confounding item types, although providing variety, is in fact a mix-up of assessment for learning (where different item formats are necessary for the subtle differences in skills) with assessment of learning (where scores of a more global nature is needed). This also shows that the diagnostic function of assessment for learning is confused with the accountability of assessment of learning. Chinese Language assessment basically assesses oral and written skills. Oral assessment motivates students to develop listening and speaking skills, and its weighting reflects its relative importance vis-à-vis written skills in the test as a whole. In recent years, oral skills have received more attention and hence are given more weights. This is accompanied by a reduction of the weight and, hence, emphasis on written skills. In short, there is a greater emphasis on oral communication in a social context. However, when two scores for two subsections of a test are added to arrive at a total score, there is a statistical problem which is always oblivious to the statistically uninitiated: when two scores from two different distributions are added together to form a total score, the score from the wider distribution automatically carries more weight in the obtained total and vice versa. When the written scores are given a weight of, say, 70% and the oral scores correspondingly a weight of 30%, the written sub-scores have much more room to vary and hence naturally have a much wider spread, reflected in a much greater standard deviation (a statistical indicator of score dispersion). Correspondingly, the oral sub-scores have a small standard deviation indicating their much narrower dispersion. Thus, when the two sub-scores are summed for the total scores, the oral sub-scores may not function in a way commensurate with its 30% but much less. When this happens, the weights intended for the two sub-scores do not work as expected. In this case, the students’ final results may totally depend on the written sub-scores, and the oral sub-scores may be nonfunctioning, although they still play a role in motivation since the public does not know this statistical pitfall. To offset this problem, the two sets of sub-scores need be standardized to the same mean and the

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same standard deviation, only then they can be weighted and added to derive the total scores for decision-making. This is a technical problem which is not widely known, but it is there nevertheless, and it cannot be lightly dismissed if the assessment is to work as intended. Obviously, the assessment of Chinese Language as currently practised has some conceptual and statistical problems as discussed above. These needs be rectified in the future if assessment is to properly serve the teaching of the language.

Approach to the Teaching of Chinese Language For political, social, and economic reasons, Singaporean students need to master English. Chinese Language as a standing-alone subject is consistent with this survival need. Although there have been suggestions to teach other subjects such as history and civic education using Chinese Language, this has not been actualized as a normal practice. Chinese Language is assigned between 15% and 18% of curriculum time, and this is similar to most other subjects, and yet the students seem to be not doing well in Chinese Language. It may be inferred that the problem in learning Chinese Language does not lie with instructional time but some other conditions such as the syllabus, teaching, and assessment. Firstly, as a standing alone subject, Chinese Language does not get the support and reinforcement of other subjects taught in English. For instance, Chinese words would not appear in other subjects, whereas many English words do. Even within Chinese Language textbooks, words do not reappear enough as desirable because of the large number of Hanzi to be learned. This creates an impression that Chinese Language is learned only to be examined and has no other uses. It can be expected that this is detrimental to the students’ motivation to learn Chinese Language. From the perspective of memory psychology, the repetition problem is crucial. For example, the Primary 1 texts have 653 Hanzi made up of 206 different ones (types), but 74 appear only once, 47 twice, 21 thrice, 25 four times, and 39 five or more times, and more of less the same patterns are found for the higher levels (Dong, 2012: Table 5). When Hanzi do not reappear enough, the memory is episodic, and the information is isolated and engraved in the context of learning (texts) and not semantic which requires sufficient repetitions to be decontextualized, that is, detached from the specific context of original learning. To avoid the constraint of episodic memory, the teachers need to create opportunities for students to apply the learned Hanzi in contexts other than the original one and to allow them to use them in some new and interesting ways. Interesting Teaching Over the years, teaching methods for Chinese Language have been criticized as being dull, uninteresting, and archaic. More specifically, they are said to be relying too much on repetition and drills. Admittedly, this is due partly to the traditional belief of practice makes perfect and partly because there is yet to be systematic research results for creating effective approaches and methods,

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let alone empirically based theories for teaching. When compared with other subjects, Chinese Language is lacklustre. However, in the recent years, Chinese Language teachers have incorporated modern technologies into the learning of the language, thus catching up with other subjects. More interesting modes of learning and teaching aids also come to the scene. The effects of such innovations are something to watch in time to come. One common problem faced by students is that they have difficulty remembering the Hanzi when these are needed in assessment and composition writing. Obviously, the student need to learn some good techniques of memory, and here, theories and results of psychological experiments may help, and Chinese Language teachers need to be familiarized in this regard. Since Chinese Language came from China, it is natural to look toward China for effective teaching methods. However, research in Chinese Language teaching tend to focus on Chinese linguistics more than on language teaching. Moreover, even if there are some research with an orientation to language teaching, the students in China learn Chinese Language in a very different language environment when compared with students in Singapore, and hence the transferability of the research findings is doubted. The problems faced by Singaporean students in learning Chinese Language may not be those faced by students in China. Some Chinese scholars believe that the problems are foreigners’ problems. Thus, Singapore may well be the first country which studies the problems of learning Chinese as a second language in situ, and the research findings may benefit the Chinese diaspora at large. Many Chinese Language teachers in Singapore have conducted small-scale action research involving their own students. The findings of these can be integrated through metaanalysis for wider circulation.

Bilingual Approach The term bilingual approach has been varied. Most common in the United States, it means teaching the same content twice using different two languages, usually English and a native language (e.g. Spanish), on alternate days or sessions. Another form of bilingual approach is to use textbook of a subject (say, mathematics or biology) in one language and conduct the lesson using another language. Some Singapore schools did this before the implementation of a national unified curriculum prior to the 1970s. A third possibility is to use one language to help in explaining new and unfamiliar vocabulary. This is the “L1 in L2 teaching” issue in the pertinent literature. The present discussion focuses on this last bilingual approach. As a recent example, Zhao and Macaro (2014) involved 148 Chinese undergraduates in their teaching experiment. The students were divided into three groups: (1) L1 use, (2) L2 only, and (3) no vocabulary focus. In the first group (L1 use), the target vocabulary was taught through the L1 (Chinese). In the L2 only group, the target vocabulary was taught only through English. In the third group (control), there was no vocabulary intervention. Results show that students in the control group

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underperformed. Comparing the first and second groups, the students who received explanations in English only did not do as well as the students who were taught the vocabulary through their L1. This indicates that using L1 (Chinese) to explain vocabulary in L2 (English) did have its instructional advantage. Lately, Ma investigated different functions of L1 use in a beginner English class for 17 adult migrants in Australia. Results show that the teachers used L1 (Chinese) mainly for eliciting answers, giving classroom instructions, and explaining meanings. At the same time, learners used L1 to ask questions, to give responses when they lacked the necessary skills in the target language, and to offer peer assistance. The use of L1 in L2 teaching (i.e. the bilingual approach) has been a controversy for the past decades. However, Pan and Pan (2010) summarized relevant articles appearing in the years 1981 to 2009. They concluded that the use of L1 in FL classrooms is justified, but none of its supporters endorsed its unlimited use. Based on the views of experts, they advised that L1 should only be used to help construct knowledge in the target language, facilitate interpersonal interactions, and increase efficiency. Pan and Pan concluded that research studies have revealed that L1 is not only an efficient learning tool but also a useful teaching method if pedagogical activities are well designed. They also pointed out that students use L1 to facilitate their process of comprehension and to reduce insecurities that may arise from their limited language proficiency. They saw students’ L1 as an overwhelmingly powerful tool that should neither be denied nor abandoned in foreign language classrooms. The authors’ views are resonated by Cambridge.org/betterlearning (2019), which discusses the L1-in-L2 issue; thus: It would be wise, however, not to get too carried away. English-mainly is generally a better rule of thumb than English-only, but, clearly, blanket acceptance of L1 use in English classrooms is no better than blanket banning . . . . The question of how much L1 use, and of what kind, is appropriate in any teaching context can only be answered by careful consideration of that context by the teacher. (Emphases added)

In the Singapore context, English is designated as the first language and it is L1 (home language) to a large proportion of students. For these students from Englishspeaking homes, Chinese Language is de facto their second language (in the linguistic sense) although they are ethnic Chinese. As reported by the Ministry of Education (2011), English was the main home language of 28% of Primary 1 entrants in 1991, and the figure was 59% in 2010. With an average increase of 3% per annum, the figure is extrapolated to be 86% now (2019). This changing trend in home language poses a challenge to the teaching of Chinese Language. For learning any language, moving from the known to the unknown is a fundamental principle. From the psychological perspective, this is capitalizing on positive transfer of training. To students who speak English as the main home language, they have already learning many English words in lessons of English Language and other subjects. When they learn Chinese Language, such background knowledge can be an asset that facilitates conceptual understanding. If Chinese Language teachers make proper use of such knowledge, the students need not learn the concepts all over again but learn the labels of the known concepts, that

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is, the corresponding Chinese words. For example, to explain the Hanzi公平 (gongping, fairness), if the teacher uses Chinese Language, she will have to say something like “公平的意思是平等和公正” (gongping means equality and unbiasedness). In this case, it is assumed that students know already the concepts of equality (平等, pingdeng) and unbiasedness (公正, gongzheng). Most likely, doing so is using more difficult and unfamiliar words to explain an easier word. On the other hand, students would have played games in which they had to be fair. This being the case, if the Chinese Language teacher makes use of the students’ experience and tell them that 公平 means fairness in English, the students should be able to understand it right away. This principle has been explicated years ago by Soh (1981, 2010a).

As the diagram shows, if the Chinese Language teacher uses the direct method, she will have to take the students through A-B-C, A being the Hanzi 公平, B the explanation given by the teacher “公平的意思是平等和公正”, and C the student’s idea of fairness. This is in fact a monolingual approach to vocabulary learning where students learn every concept anew as if they have no relevant experience. On the other hand, in the bilingual approach (i.e. making use of English to help in the learning of Chinese), the teacher will take the students through the route of A-C-D. Since C is already in the mind of the students due to past experience in life and English, this is a shortcut, making use of the known and thus bypassing B. This will be a time-saving approach which also has the advantage of psychological safety since the students make use of what they have already learned. Although sentence structures in English and Chinese are different in some cases, there are also similar or same structures which can be positively transferred in the learning of Chinese Language using a bilingual approach. Of course, sentence structures in English are more flexible than in Chinese. For instance, the word yesterday can only be placed at the beginning of a sentence in Chinese, but it can legitimately appear in several positions in “I bought a new lap-top”.

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However, Chinese Language teachers do not seem to welcome the bilingual approach, especially if they are not familiar with English. This is understandable since it cause difficulty in the process of teaching and also is psychologically stressful. Nevertheless, for the younger Chinese Language teachers who are graduates of local universities, this should not be a problem to them. Interestingly, the present writer came across young Chinese Language teachers discussing teaching of Chinese Language speaking English! A concern is that the bilingual approach may turn Chinese Language lesson into translation lessons. This is a legitimate worry. Related to this issue is the preference for the direct or audio-lingual approach, the sense of language superiority, and the teachers’ own bilingual proficiency. Thus, Chinese Language teachers expect students to switch off their English when learning Chinese. For the psychological perspective, this is almost asking for the impossible. Even if the students refrain from using English overtly, it does not mean they do not use English covertly in the mind. Moreover, recent research using fMRI shows that when a bilingual is thinking in one language, the other language is also invoked in the brain. To avoid turning Chinese Language lessons into translation lesson, the teachers need to make judicious judgements during teaching and, more importantly, invite students to response in Mandarin after understanding word meanings.

Conclusion While seeking solutions to the problems of Chinese Language teaching, it has to be noted that the problems do not totally lie with the language as commonly assumed. The problems are more pedagogical in nature. In short, it may even be said that Chinese Language has no problem, but its teaching has many problems, that is, not a question of what to teach but how to teach. The Chinese Language curriculum in Singapore has gone through several revisions and diversifications, with the aim to make it suited to the students’ varied abilities. Nonetheless, there is a limit to which this can be done, and the logical extreme is individualized instruction, which defeats the purpose of having classes and schools to educate the young collectively and cheaply. Analogically, compare restaurants. The ingredients they use may be the same coming from the same sources, but their popularity with patrons depends on the culinary skills of the chefs. It is not what they have that makes the difference, it is what they do with what they have that does. Curriculum modification alone is not going to solve the problems of the teaching of Chinese Language in Singapore schools; it must be accompanied with changes in assessment and approach, because these influence how the students process the incoming language information when learning the language. In recent years, teaching in the classroom has been compared with activities in a black box, and the emphasis is rightly on providing timely feedback to the learners

References

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and making good use of the background knowledge they already possess. Besides these, there seem to have no other more effective ways. The story below may be apt to conclude this essay: A man came out of a cinema and was going to his car. He then realized that he has lost the car key. So, he quickly went to search for it under the street lamp. A passer-by asked why he did not go into the cinema for it. “It is brighter here,” he replied.

References Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2). Cambridge Assessment International Education. (2017). Assessment for learning. Retrieved from https://www.cambridgeinternational.org/Images/271179-assessment-for-learning.pdf. Cambridge.org/betterlearning. (2019, February). The use of L1 in English language teaching. Cambridge University Press. Dong, Y. 董亚茹 (2012)。新加坡小学华文字频分析. 罗福腾编 (2012)。hh新加坡华文教材新 视角ii. 新加坡新跃大学。 Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analysis relating to achievement. London: Routledge. Ministry of Education, Singapore. (2004). Report of the Chinese language curriculum and pedagogy review committee. Singapore: Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education, Singapore. (2011). Nurturing active learners and proficient users. 2010 Mother Tongue Languages Review Committee. Singapore: Ministry of Education. Pan, Y.-C., & Pan, Y.-C. (2010, July/December). The use of L1 in the foreign language classroom. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 12(2). Soh, K. C. (1981). Code-switching of primary school children (Unpublished PhD thesis, National University of Singapore). Soh, K. C. (2010a). Bilingual dual-coding and code-switching: Implications for the L1 in l2 learning. Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching, 1(2), 271–296. Soh, K. C. (2010b). What are the chances of success for my project? And, what if it was already done? Using meta-analyzed effect sizes to inform project decision-making. Journal of Educational Research, 25(1), 13–25. Wiliam, D. (2007). Assessment for learning: Why, what, and how? An inaugural professorial lecture at the Institute of Education, University of London. Zhao, T., & Macaro, E. (2014). What works better for the learning of concrete and abstract words: teachers’ L1 use or L2-only explanations? International Journal of Applied Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijal.12080.

Chapter 9

The Need to Revitalize Chinese Language in Singapore

The proportion of Primary 1 students who speak Chinese as the main home language declined over the past two decades. It is forecasted that the language will ceased to be the main home language in about 20 years. The need and the ways to reverse the trend are discussed.

Language loss is a phenomenon of practical concern to traditional language communities and of academic interest to language researchers. Language loss has resulted in communication gap between generations and a sense of loss in culture (Hinton, 1999). Over the years, a similar phenomenon has been observed in Singapore, and it is the focus of this article to forecast what may happen to the Chinese Language (referred to officially as a mother tongue) among Singaporean Chinese vis-à-vis English. This is a phenomenon similar yet different from language loss experienced in other countries, including America, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. This article will take a brief overview of language loss in the world and then looks into the situation of Chinese Language in the Singaporean Chinese community. However, it is necessary to point out a different use of the term language loss in this article, although the process of losing is the same and the processes of revitalization are likely also the same as described in the pertinent literature. The term in its usual definition means a language disappears from the world because of non-use or having no user at all. In the context here, the term has a much limited scope in that the effect happens to a much circumscribed locality, that is, the language ceases to be used in Singapore but is still being used elsewhere.

Language Loss in the World How severe is language loss a problem in the world? According to MIT’s Indigenous Language Initiative (n.d.), there are 6000 oral languages in the world, and only 10% of these are predicted to continue existing by the end of this century. America has 165 native languages, and 74 (45%) of these have already disappeared, with another © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Soh, Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1149-3_9

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58 (35%) spoken by less than 1000 and another 25 (15%) spoken by between 1000 and 10,000, and there are only 8 (5%) spoken by more than 10,000. A similar trend was observed in America’s closest neighbour, Canada (Prodanovic, 2013). In 1996, Canada had 50 native languages, but only 3 have sufficient number of speakers for them to be deemed safe. During the 30 years between 1951 and 1981, the percentages of native languages as mother tongues dropped from 87.4% to 29.3%. Seen from the world’s perspective and according to the National Geographical Society, one native language disappears in every 2 weeks, and this means by the year 2100, almost 3500 such languages will have no speakers (Solash, 2010). However, to verify the prediction of language loss, the American National Scientific Fund sponsored a 3-year project, and the report, The Catalogue of Endangered Languages, concluded that the problem is not as severe as has been suggested. The study predicts that one language is lost in the world every 4 months but not 2 weeks. The new statistic is much smaller than previously reported (Oppenneer, 2015). Yet, the project leader Lyle Campbell argued, this is nothing to celebrate as the figure is still very disturbing. Derhemi (2002: 152) defines endangered language as a language that may soon vanish, ceasing to be used as a vehicle of communication and perhaps even disappearing completely from human history. Moreover, endangered language has been studied with different perspectives—sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, and educational. Having reviewed the pertinent literature, the author (2002: 159–160) further advised that researchers of linguistic endangerment and language policy have to face up to the complexity of the phenomenon of language attrition and loss, looking into not only the many functional, structural, and cognitive aspects of language itself, and the strong influence of extra-linguistic processes all deeply different from each other, but also the implications of values, ethical stands, political advantages and disadvantages, social and civil responsibilities, sentimental positions, and even the ability to follow a dream. In like vein, She (2002) concludes that research on language endangerment shows that the social status and prestige of endangered minority languages are one of the most important forces in the process of attrition and maintenance, depending on a complex set of economic and cultural factors, reflecting the power relations among the communities of speakers involved. The author further points out that it is important to the linguistic attitudes of the community members as such attitudes have historical and cultural origins and relate directly to the prestige of language. Similarly, Mufwene (2002: 175–176) points out that shifting to a particular language is typically associated with particular benefits to be derived from its usage, especially economic benefits; otherwise, speakers stick to the languages they have traditionally spoken, although they may learn another one for interaction with outsiders. The author further points to the fact that linguists have typically bemoaned loss of linguistic, especially typological, diversity. Rarely have they focused on speakers themselves in terms of motivation and the costs and benefits to them in giving up their languages.

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Table 9.1 Fishman’s graded intergenerational disruption scale Level 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Description The language is used in education, work, mass media, government at the nationwide level The language is used for local and regional mass media and governmental services The language is used for local and regional work by both insiders and outsiders Literacy in the language is transmitted through education The language is used orally by all generations and is effectively used in written form throughout the community The language is used orally by all generations and is being learned by children as their first language The child-bearing generation knows the language well enough to use it with their elders but is not transmitting it to their children The only remaining speakers of the language are members of the grandparent generation

Determining Language Loss Related to language loss is language vitality, operationalized by the number of active users of a language, and language researchers have proposed various ways of indexing it (Dwyer, 2011). For example, Fishman (1991) designed an eight-level scale, the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GID; Table 9.1) which is based largely on the numbers and types of speakers. On GID, the highest grade (1) denotes the use of a language in school, workplace, media, and governmental organizations, and the lowest grade (8) signifies that a language is spoken only by grandparents. Thus, in terms of GID grading, Grades 1–3 deal with domains of language use, Grades 4 and 5 focus on written language, and Grades 6–8 focus on intergeneration transmission of language. Moreover, in Fishman’s scheme, a language graded between 1 and 6 is considered as being maintained, and Grade 7 denotes the beginning of language loss. In fact, Grades 5 and 6 signify the precursor of such loss, even if the speakers are yet to shift their language from the domains of usage. Fishman’s GID was later modified by the UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage Unit (2003), resulting in eight sets of five-point subscales, with the exception of subscales 2 and 3 which use the number of speakers. The UNESCO scale covers (1) intergenerational transmission; (2) number of speakers; (3) number of speakers as a proportion of the total population; (4) current domains of use and trends; (5) new domains and media responses; (6) language education materials; (7) attitude of governmental and education institutions, including official status and uses; and (8) attitude of the language community. The eight subscales each has its own focus. Take intergenerational transmission as an example, the highest Grade 5 denotes that a language is transmitted from the older to the younger generation and is safe, being used by both adults and children. The next lower Grade 4 denotes that a language is unsafe, being used by all children but only in certain domains. Next, Grade 3 denotes that a language definitely is endangered, being used by the father and his older generation. Lower even, Grade 2 denotes severe crisis, with the language being spoken only by the grandfathers.

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Further down is Grade 1, critically endangered, the language is spoken by only a small number of people and mainly grandfathers. The lowest is Grade 0 where the language has no speaker at all; the language is completely lost. Obviously, the UNESCO scheme considers not only the number of speakers but also other conditions evaluated by the other seven subscales. This shows that language loss is not simply a question of number of speakers but has other relevant considerations.

The Price of Language Loss Linguists and anthropologists begin recently to understand the ill-effects of language loss in the communities concerned (Woodbury, 2012). Whether the loss comes from within or external to the community, it nevertheless hurts social identity. As human culture, spirit, and wisdom depend on language, once a language is lost, these experiences require to be recoded in another language if they are to be preserved. Linguistic research has shown that tradition is lost consequential to language shift, even if social identity remains. Although some people believe that language loss is unavoidable for the society to move on and social cohesiveness is to be promoted, these do not necessarily need to result in language loss or shift, but can be attained through the learning of a second or even third language. Fillmore (1991: 343) warns that what is lost is no less than the means by which parents socialize their children. More specifically, this means that when parents are unable to talk to their children, they cannot easily convey to them their values, beliefs, understandings, or wisdom about how to cope with their life experiences. Of late, according to Languages Around the Globe (2012–2015), there are several hot spots of language loss. These include Southeast Asia, Mexico, New Guinea, and Siberia but most visible in North America and Australia. It further points out that language loss brings with it loss in culture and history and hurts individual and community’s sense of identity, depriving them not only of the past but also their future. The experience of America and Australia shows that language and cultural loss is accompanied by social ills such as crime, drug abuse, alcoholism, home violence, child negligence, suicide, and serious health problems. Although correlations do not necessarily mean cause-effect relation and the social ills may and may not be the direct effect of language loss, the possible indirect effect cannot be ruled out. Moreover, research has shown that many useful medical and scientific information coded in the endangered languages are lost with language loss.

Changing Language Trends in Singapore Singapore has a rather complex linguistic environment because of her population structure. Of the population, there were 74% Chinese, 13% Malay, 9% Indian, and 3% Eurasian and others (Department of Statistics, Singapore, 2015). The Malay

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Language is the national language, and there are four official languages (i.e. Chinese, Malay, Tamil, and English), but English is the administrative language. Needless to say, within each of the three ethnic languages are their respective variants or dialects. For instance, the more popular Chinese dialects include Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, Hakka, and Hananise (Lee, n.d.). Thus, for societal cohesiveness and national identity, there is therefore clearly a need for some mechanisms to connect the varied linguistics groups, not only between ethnicities but also within each of the ethnic community. Prior to the 1965 Independence, there were colonial government’s English schools which took in students of all ethnicity and a few English schools established by the Chinese community. Other than these, the vernacular schools then were established and supported by their respective communities and attended almost exclusively by children of the respective ethnicity. This latter group of schools were “left alone” by the colonial government where medium of instruction and curriculum were concerned. Thus, the vernacular schools went their own ways. For instance, in the then Chinese schools, history and geography were about China but not Singapore. In the early years of independence, this continued for some time until the education authorities began effort to localize the curriculum content and established integrated schools which housed students from two or even three ethnic groups under the same roof, studying similar curriculum but still in different languages. The aim obviously was to promote interethnic interaction among the students and thereby forged a common identity of being Singaporean, thereby diluting the ethnic differences. Then, the newly independent Singapore faced two fundamental problems: economic viability and inter-ethnic harmony. As these are matters of survival, they have implications for education. To solve these problems, English was seen as a necessary tool for economic development and connection with other countries, and it is also seen as a lingua franca to facilitate interethnic communication. With these as the basic tenet, a unified curriculum and school system were implemented in 1978, and the vernacular schools ceased to exist thenceforth. Henceforth, English becomes the medium of instruction for all subjects except the ethnic languages which are taught as stand-alone subjects taking up about 18% of the curriculum time. There is a major change which can be expected to have impact on the vitality of the three ethnic languages. English Language In a compact pint-size multiple society like Singapore, what happens in one ethnic community is most likely to spread to other ethnic communities. As Fig. 9.1 shows, when English is increasingly used as the main home language in the Chinese community, it also increased likewise at about the same rate, as indicated by the two parallel lines, in the Malay and Indian communities, though somewhat slower in the latter. As shown in Fig. 9.2 (Ministry of Education, 2011), for Primary 1 students in Singapore schools, English as the main home language increases from 28% in 1991 to 60% in 2010 for Chinese students (i.e. an increase of 42% in 20 years or 2.1% per year). For Malay students, English as the main home language increases from 4 to

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Fig. 9.1 English as the main home language (1991 to 2010). (Source: Ministry of Education, 2011) % 80.0 70.0 60.0 50.0 40.0 30.0 20.0 10.0

Year

19

80 19 81 19 8 19 2 83 19 84 19 85 19 8 19 6 87 19 88 19 8 19 9 90 19 91 19 9 19 2 93 19 94 19 95 19 9 19 6 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 0 20 6 07 20 08 20 09

0.0

English

Mandarin

Chinese Dialects

Fig. 9.2 Primary 1 students’ main home languages (1980 to 2009). Source: Ministry of Education, 2011

38% in the same period (i.e. an increase of 34% in 20 years or 1.7% per year). During the same period, for Indian students, English as the main home language began with 49% and ended with 58% (i.e. an increase of 9% or 0.5% per year). The much flatter line of increase for Indian students, when compared with Chinese and Malay students, indicates a much slower increase in using English as the main home language in the Indian community. This is due, partly at least, to the higher starting point for Indian and may be accounted for by the fact that relatively

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greater proportion of the older generation of Indian Singaporeans served in the colonial government and subsequently in the Singapore Government where English is the working language. Mandarin and Dialects English is the lingua franca to promote interethnic cohesiveness in Singapore. By the same token, Mandarin is seen as the lingua franca to promote cohesiveness of the various Chinese dialect groups. It is also believed that learning to speak dialects will overburden children and thus curtailing the effectiveness of bilingual education. Hence, the Speak Mandarin Campaign was first introduced in 1979 with the following objectives (Promote Mandarin Council, 2015): • To simplify the language environment for Chinese Singaporeans. • To improve communication and understanding among Chinese Singaporeans. • To support the bilingual education policy. As Fig. 9.1 (Ministry of Education, 2011) shows, 35 years after its introduction, the campaign has been very successful in that Chinese dialects have practically ceased to be the main home language of the Chinese Singaporeans. When parents register their children for Primary 1 admission, they indicate which language they use as the main home language. Although this does not preclude the use of other languages in the family, the main home language is the one parents explicitly and actively teach their young children. As can be seen from Fig. 9.2 (Ministry of Education, 2011), the Δ line shows that Chinese dialects have declined from 62% in 1980 to practically 0% in 2009. The rapid drop occurred for the first few years after the campaign was introduced, from 60% in 1980 down to 20% in 1985. Thence, the percentages gradually reduced to close to 0% in the following years. Language researchers were interested in the outcome and implications of the campaign. Teo (2012) analysed the slogans used in the campaign from 1979 to 2004, using the approach of critical linguistics and Halliday’s systemic-functional grammar. Teo pointed out that the slogans showed a power imbalance between the government and people, and even smack linguistic chauvinism, without a shared responsibility. Xie (1994) reviewed the success of the campaign of its first 15 years and raised four implications for Singapore; thus, 1. As the younger generations will not be able to speak the Chinese dialects, the language wealth built over the past hundred years is regrettably lost. 2. Chinese dialects are continued to be used by Chinese in the mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao. Singapore has one channel of communication less to relate with Chinese in other places. This is inconsistent with the goal of Singapore to build an economic network overseas. 3. Chinese Singaporeans will be unable to appreciate various art forms of Chinese dialects. This is inconsistent with the goal of becoming a cultural centre of the world and a centre of Chinese culture. 4. Chinese culture has been transmitted by the older generation to the younger one using Chinese dialects. The older generation loses this ability with the

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disappearing of Chinese dialects. Moreover, a communication barrier is built up across generations. Ng (2014) surveyed a representative sample of 126 dialect speakers. They used Chinese dialects for communication: with parents 58% and with close friends 62%. With colleagues or classmates, 57% used English, but 75% used Mandarin in food centres and 61% used English in shopping centres. Obviously, Chinese Singaporeans are versatile in languages and use them differentially depending on the circumstances. Ng also observed the following attitudes: 1. 83% like to speak Mandarin, and 81% believe that their children should speak Mandarin. 2. 96% recognize the advantage of speaking Mandarin in business transaction with China. 3. 87% consider Mandarin as the mother tongue of Chinese Singaporeans. 4. 48% believe that Mandarin will gain social status in the future. 5. 87% consider English to be more important to Singapore. Ng concluded thus, in public, most Chinese Singaporeans have given up on dialects and turned to Mandarin and accepted the campaign, and their attitude toward dialects is ambiguous. Although Mandarin is seen as having an advantage in business with China, English is seen as the mainstream language. The cultural significance of Chinese Language has been emphasized repeatedly, but the younger generation see English having greater economic value than Chinese. To them, Chinese is just an examination subject, and their motivation to learn it is weak. The success of the campaign manifested in yet a different way. As can be seen in Fig. 9.2, while the percentages decreased for dialects, the percentages for Mandarin appreciated concurrently. This is shown by the ○ line therein. Specifically, Mandarin speakers increased from 28% in 1980 to 70% in 1988, a gain of 42% in 8 years with an average of 5.3%. In the same period, dialect speakers reduced by 51% with a year average of 6.34%. More importantly, while Mandarin speakers increased, so did English speakers in the family. This is shown by the ◊ line in Fig. 9.1. English speakers increased from 10% in 1980 to 21% in 1988 with a year average increase of 1.4%. This shows that the Chinese community became more bilingual as time passed by. However, this encouraging trend did not sustained for long, as the percentage of Mandarin speaker began to dip from 1990, thus cancelling out the positive effect of the campaign. Between 2006 and 2008, at the National Institute of Education, Aman, Vaish, and Bokhorst-Heng (2006) conducted the Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore 2006. The title may give the impression that this is a full-scale national survey, while it in actuality involved only Primary 5 students. The sample is well structured to match the population of schools, although it is oversized at N ¼ 716, when N ¼ 381 suffices to represent a cohort of about 50,000 such students (The Research Advisor, 2006). Notwithstanding this, the findings are illuminating and interesting. For linguistic ecology at home for Primary 5 students, Mandarin is spoken by 25% in multilingual home and 18% in monolingual homes. At the same time, the

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corresponding figures for English are 36% and 18%. Thus, the total for speaking English at home among the Chinese students is 54%, and only 43% spoke Mandarin (Aman et al., 2006: Table 1). These findings are consistent with the trends indicated in Fig. 9.2 where English has overtaken Chinese as the main home language. However, the survey shows encouraging positive attitudes toward mother tongues languages. Specifically, as shown in Aman et al. (2006: Table 2), among the Chinese students, 60% endorsed “I would take MT classes at school even if it was not compulsory”, 71% “I like studying my MT”, 73% “Speaking in my MT makes me feel more Chinese”, and 93% “I wish I could speak my MR better”, although there is a disappointing 42% for “I enjoy reading in my MT when I have free time”. It is worthy to note that the use of English and mother tongue is associated with socioeconomic status (SES) where, among the Chinese students, Mandarin is spoken by 71% of low SES and English by 78% of high SES (Aman et al., 2006: Table 4). In view of the trends noted above (in Figs. 9.1 and 9.2) and the comments by the cited authors, it may be said that Chinese Language (together with Malay and Indian) is being endangered and on the verge of language loss, if the trend continues and nothing is done to reverse it. As shown in Fig. 9.2, between the years 1989–2009, the average yearly decrease is 1.5%. When extrapolated from this, it takes 27 years for Mandarin to reach 0% as the main home language in Chinese families, that is, in the year around 2036 (or less than 20 years from now). The question now is how to revert the trend, if so desired.

Reversing the Trend Language Revivals Language loss is not inevitable. America’s experience shows that many native languages were saved or revitalized through various programmes and projects, including informal gatherings, bilingual classes in schools, and immersion programmes within and outside schools. Although such programmes have encountered problems of resources, there are successful cases. There are examples beyond the American shore. The best known revitalized language is Hebrew. It almost totally disappeared but is now the national language of Israel. The Spanish language Catalan was banned at one time and revived with the change of political regime. New Zealand revived Maori language through language nests, and it is now learned in schools as well as communities. These together show that language loss can be reversed by enthusiastic users and scholars (Haynes, 2010). Since 1980, some Anglo-Americans moved that English be protected and legitimized as America’s national language. Crawford (1996) held the opposite view that it is not English that needed protection but the minority of languages of America. He pointed up that many of the minority languages had so few speakers that language loss was a crisis. Besides, a symptom of language loss is that the younger generation prefer to speak a different language than their own, usually the mainstream language. Native languages are used less and less often in places like churches, cultural celebrations, schools, and homes. And, above all these, parents are not teaching

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their children native languages. As pointed out by Crawford, linguists do not pay sufficient attention to language loss, and there is a lack of theoretical understanding of this phenomenon. Based on his research on American language policies and visits to various regions, Crawford (1996: 47–58) suggests the following seven hypotheses: 1. Language shift is very difficult to impose from without. 2. Language shift is determined primarily by internal changes within language communities themselves. 3. If language choices reflect social and cultural values, language shift reflects a change in these values. 4. If language shift reflects a change in values, so too must efforts to reverse language shift. 5. Language shift cannot be reversed by outsiders, however well-meaning. 6. Successful strategies for reversing language shift demand an understanding of the stage we are currently in. 7. At this stage in the United States, the key task is to develop indigenous leadership. In his conclusion, Crawford argued that language revitalization has traditionally relied on teachers and educational institutions; best qualified though they may be, more active involvement of the communities is needed. Thus, Crawford puts the responsibility of language revival squarely on the shoulder of the relevant communities which have the moral obligation to sustain their endangered languages. This is a view which not everyone may agree since there are external factors contributing to language loss. It by and large makes sense that the relevant communities have a critical role to play to sustain their own languages, for instance, by having parents persistently teach their children to speak the languages, disregarding the external influences. How to Move from Here? International comparative studies of student achievements have shown Singapore doing very well. From Harvard, Dixon (2005) pointed to the 1999 Third International Math and Science Study—Repeat (TIMMS-R) which involved Secondary 2 students. In this survey, Singapore topped the list of 38 participating countries in mathematics and came in second in science. However, only 27% of Singapore’s students spoke the test language (English) at home, whereas at least 80% of students in other countries did so. Similarly, in 2001 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) involving 35 countries, Singapore’s Primary 4 students did well and were comparable to their counterparts in eight countries such as Scotland and New Zealand. However, only 43% of Singapore’s students spoke English at home. It may be concluded that Singapore schools have been very successful in the teaching of English. If the students were grouped by their home language, the effect of it begins to show. In 2009 Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) which involved 65 countries, Singapore’s Secondary 2 students secured the fifth place for reading (in English), after Shanghai, Korea, Finland, and Hong Kong, the students of which were tested in their respective media of instruction (OECD, 2010). However,

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for Singapore, students who spoke the test language (English) at home scored a mean of 561, while those who did not speak English at home scored a mean of 503; there is a difference of 58 points between the groups, and the difference is slightly more than half a standard deviation on the PISA scale (Soh, 2014). If the achievements of the students can be taken as an indication of the country’s development potential, these findings suggest that Singapore’s language policy has produced the desired premium. Dixon (2005: 628–630) also pointed out that Singapore’s bilingual education policy and system seem to be based on the following six hypotheses and match well the accepted wisdom about language learning: 1. Beginning a second language early leads to higher proficiency. 2. Home language development is not academically helpful to development of English language skills. 3. More time devoted to learning a language will result in greater proficiency in the language. 4. Learning to read both an alphabetic and a logographic writing system is more difficult than learning to read in two alphabetic languages. 5. Ability to learn more than one language is related to general education achievement. 6. Maintaining the ethnic language will protect ethnic identity, a sense of “rootedness”, and cultural values. In his conclusion, Dixon opined that Singapore’s experience, being consistent with the instrumental nature of language and the view of sociolinguistics, has evidenced that it is possible for students to achieve by using a language not of their own. Whether the same will be true elsewhere, the author was not certain. Moreover, he asked the following questions (p. 632) pertaining to the future: 1. Will Singapore become more of a monolingual English-speaking country, with mother tongues reduced to a school subject only? 2. Will Chinese dialects and Indian vernaculars disappear altogether or enjoy a symbolic revival? 3. Will a shift to English dominance impair the transmission of traditional values to the next generation? These are questions pertinent enough to deserve careful consideration, and they resounded some of the questions asked earlier by Xie (1994). It may be too early to answer these questions, but going by the experiences of other countries, especially America and Australia, the answers seem obvious. Of course, the endangered languages of America, Australia, and New Zealand are the native languages, but this is not the case of Chinese Language in Singapore. The goal of using English as the lingua franca is to promote interethnic cohesiveness in Singapore. And, it is readily appreciated that such cohesiveness is vital to Singapore as a multi-ethnic nation. According to a joint research by Aripin (2013), OnePeople.sg and the Institute of Policy Studies surveyed 4000 Singapore residents. The study found half of them did not have a close friend of a different ethnicity. This

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was considered normal since there were about 75% Chinese in the population, and it would be quite a challenge for the other 25% to make friend with them. The survey also found 25% of the respondents seeing discrimination in the workplace, and 70% agreed that ethnicity and religion should not be conditional to job application. More importantly, 70% acknowledged that they had not experienced any interethnic tension and agreed that co-existence was a good thing. The situation in Singapore was deemed encouraging when compared with Australia and Hong Kong. Besides, 90% were agreeable to have neighbours, colleagues, and employees of a different ethnicity, and 33% would be willing to have a life partner of other ethnicity or religion. All in all, the survey results evidenced a high degree of interethnic cohesiveness in Singapore. Language and religion are closely related, and language policy can be studied from the religious perspective. Koh (2015) pointed out that although Singapore is a small country with a small population, it has the most varied religious environment. While there is no dearth of religious discords in the world at this time, Singapore enjoys religious harmony, and this is seen as the greatest achievement since independence in 1965. Koh commented that this achievement does not come by easily and it is attributable to the relevant policy, laws, and customs. From a legal perspective, he sees Singapore as having the contribution of the following institutions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Secularism. Freedom of religion. Free speech and religious harmony. Maintenance of religious harmony art. Inter-religious organization.

In sum, with the student achievements in international studies and interethnic cohesiveness, the bilingual education policy of Singapore has been very successful in attaining the nation’s goal decided upon at the time of independence. It has harvested the desired cognitive and affective effects. However, where language loss is concerned, as shown in Table 9.1, Chinese dialects score 7 or even 8 on the Fishman scale and 1 or 2 on the UNESCO scale. This means Chinese dialects have lost its function in the family and is severely endangered. As for Mandarin, it also scores 7 or 8 on the Fishman scale and 3 on the UNESCO scale. In view of these and considering the experience of language loss of other countries, two critical questions arise: 1. Does Singapore accept the trend, the probable final state, and the consequences? 2. What needs be done to arrest the declining home languages and even revitalize them? Because of the population structure of multi-ethnicity, Singapore has the vision of becoming a harmonious nation. If the trends depicted in Figs. 9.1 and 9.2 continue, Singapore may ultimately become an English-speaking monolingual society. Then the costs of cultural loss consequential to language loss as found in other countries will have to be accepted. And, this may not be what Singapore desires.

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As for how to prevent languages from total disappearance, UNESCO’s endangered language (UNESCO, 2015) suggests: The most important thing that can be done to keep a language from disappearing is to create favourable conditions for its speakers to speak the language and teach it to their children. This often requires national policies that recognize and protect minority languages, education systems that promote mother-tongue instruction, and creative collaboration between community members and linguists to develop a writing system and introduce formal instruction in the language. Since the most crucial factor is the attitude of the speaker community toward its own language, it is essential to create a social and political environment that encourages multilingualism and respect for minority languages so that speaking such a language is an asset rather than a liability.

Chinese Language in Singapore is not a native language, unlike ethnic languages in America and New Zealand. However, UNESCO’s suggestions have a lesson for Singapore. In other words, to maintain Chinese as the main home language of Chinese Singaporeans, the family is the first place to start the effort, and parents should encourage their children to speak the language and teach them where and when necessary. This is too obvious but is overlooked. Family Chinese Singaporeans are using less and less Mandarin as the main home language to communicate with their children. Like in other countries with language loss, the parents’ logic is very simple: since English is the medium of instruction, help children learn English well so that they can achieve in school, so that they have an edge in study now and career in the future. This emphasis on instrumental motive is not unusual. However, as evidenced by the various international achievement studies like TIMSS, PIRLS, and PISA, Chinese parents can afford to trust their children’s English learning to the schools and need not teach it at home, and this will allow Chinese to become the main home language. In other words, parents need to change and emphasize identity and integrative motives for learning Chinese. There are successful cases of revitalizing endangered languages. Examples include Ainu of Japan, Barngarla and Kaurna of Australia, Maori of New Zealand, Chochenyo and Wampanoag of America, Cornish and Manx of Britain, and Sanskrit of India. The languages may not be familiar but Hawaiian, Hebrew, and Latin should be. English replaced the native languages on six of the seven islands in Hawaii, but in recent years, these have been revived through schools and media and even newspaper. The revival of Hebrew is well-known. The language ceased to be used two millenniums ago until it was revitalized by a linguist-cum-editor, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, in the nineteenth century. Hebrew was considered archaic, impractical, and even too religious. Today, it is used daily by nine million people and an official language. It is also being learned by many Jews outside Israel. From these examples, language revival can be done, but it needs will and effort of people who care. School Does this suggest that English should be abandoned in programmes for language-minority children? In America, Fillmore (1991: 346) emphatically answers, “Not at all. The problem is timing, not English”. She instead advocates that the children need English, but they should first attain enough stability in their

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native languages to handle the inevitable encounter with English. In a later paper, Fillmore (2000) makes the following suggestions: • Teachers can help parents understand that they must provide opportunities to attain a natural command of the first language in the home, whether or not it is supported in school. • Teachers and parents should be aware of the traumatic experiences children may be undergoing as they try to fit themselves into the social world of the school. • Teachers and parents need to work together to neutralize some of the negative forces that operate on children in our (American) society. • Teachers should help parents understand that the only way ethnic languages and cultures can survive in societies like the United States is through community action. To revitalize Mandarin, collaboration with the schools is needed. This has to do with content of the Chinese Language courses. Transmission of traditional values is one of the three objectives of the curriculum. Because of this, Chinese Language textbooks naturally turn to China’s ancient history and personalities. Although the intention is good, this dissociates the learning materials from the learner cognitively and emotionally, and they find it difficult to relate with the archaic content, thus taking a toll in their interest and achievement. On such a problem, linguists at the Aston University (n.d.) pointed out, if a language focuses on the past, parents are not likely to raise their families using it and that is why native languages disappeared. With some sense of humour, the Aston researchers stress: No one is actively campaigning for languages to die, but sometimes well-meaning policy makers can unwittingly aid the process. By using funding to promote ‘minority’ languages as part of a bygone era, for example, these languages are in danger of going the way of the steam train or the horse cart. They are seen by young people as lacking relevance, and whilst campaigns might help build an image which can be exploited by the tourism industry, the language itself might lose its status as a contemporary means of communication. (Emphasis added.)

The Aston researchers believe that advertisements, music, and art are important channels that help modernizing language and provide communities to communicate. They further believe creativity is the best solution to human problems and creativity is not likely to flourish in a monolingual society. If the advice is worthy of note, Singapore’s Chinese Language materials need to modernize and judiciously reduce ancients events and personalities which students find difficult to understand cognitively and to relate emotionally but use more modern examples, even imagined ones as long as they convey the message of, say, patriotism, filial piety, or other values. Moreover, by tradition, Chinese Language textbooks tend to value literature and have a bias toward emotional and lyrical works. This disadvantages the learning of the language, as literature is not everyone’s cup of tea (even for adults) and is more demanding in terms of language finesse. This imperceptibly makes Chinese Language more difficult to learn, and the learning becomes unrelated to the students’ daily life. This implies that the choice of

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topics needs to consider the nature of them so as to encourage students read and write more factual essays. In sum, to make students love learning Chinese Language, when teaching comprehension and writing, due consideration needs be accorded with the students’ modern-day life and reality. Society Once, a friend from Hong Kong asked, “What if all Singaporeans speak only English?” This unexpected question made me dumb fold. Exactly, what are the pros and cons of being a monolingual society? From the Singapore perspective, economic benefit and social harmony need be considered. This is an impossible experiment to Singapore, but she can learn from the experiences of many other countries. Spoonley (2014), hailing from New Zealand, pointed out that in Australia, Canada, Israel, and New Zealand, there are at least 25% of immigrants in their respective populations. Diversification has advantages as well as disadvantages as shown below. Advantages • Studies find a diversity dividend of higher productivity and innovation for regions and cities with large immigrant populations. • Diversity creates an environment for the crossfertilization of ideas that contributes to creativity and innovation. • Investments and increased local aggregate demand created by diversity encourage product and process innovation. • Superdiversity reflects and contributes to new global connections and a local or international cosmopolitanism.

Disadvantages • Superdiversity challenges the assumptions and practices of a shared civic culture and citizenship and raises concerns about social cohesion. • Anxieties about the growing diversity of labour markets and communities have been associated with discrimination and antiimmigrant politics.

Many language revitalization efforts unanimously emphasize the important role of the family and the community. Any language which is not used at home and in the community gradually disappears. Of course, modern technology enables preservation, for example, the use of Latin in the films Sebastiane and The Passion of Christ and even Harry Potter in Latin and ancient Greek (Wikipedia, 2015), but they are more for preserving the heritage, valuable to the museum, and novelty. Fishman (1991, 2001) suggested an eight-step scheme for language revitalization and emphasized the earlier steps, starting with adults mastering the revived language, creating a community of speakers, encouraging its use in informal gathering and in the families, etc. up to the final step of using it in higher education and government. Fishman’s scheme is systematic and places its premium on the family and community. This may be alright for the American communities with endangered languages. However, in Singapore where people more often than not look toward the leadership of the government, Fishman’s bottom-up approach may and may not work, and the answer will come only at the end of trying. However, Crystal (2000) mentioned six factors that decide the success or the lack of it of language revitalization: • Increasing the prestige, wealth, and power of language speakers. • Giving the language a strong presence in the education system.

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Giving the language a written form and encouraging literacy. Accessing to electronic technology. Stronger emphasis on descriptive linguistics and fieldwork. Building a rounded “revitalization team”, involving a broad range of community leaders, teachers, and other specialists as well as linguists.

For Chinese Language in Singapore, most of the above conditions exist, albeit in varying degrees. Whether the language is able to escape the ill-fate of disappearing depends on how the community see the languages and what it does or does not do.

Conclusion Native and minority languages in America, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and other countries face the risk of language loss. There is, however, a subtle difference in that Chinese (and Malay and Tamil) is not a minority language in the usual sense. Even if English replaces Chinese as forecasted, the language is not going to disappear from the earth because there are much more people speaking it beyond Singapore. As gathered from the current situation (Figs. 9.1 and 9.2), the loss of the Chinese Language in Singapore seems inevitable, although using English as the main home language need not mean complete loss of it. It is worth repeating that, as alluded to at the beginning of this essay, language loss as used here refers to a language disappearing from Singapore although it continues to be spoken elsewhere, for instance, Chinese Language in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and even the United States and United Kingdom. Due to natural limitation of being a pint-size country, Singapore has no other way but to look beyond her shore and connect with the world. In this case, for economic reasons, English will definitely give Singapore an edge. However, learning from other countries’ experiences of language loss (accompanied by the associated social ills) and their efforts and outcomes of language revitalization, for Singapore, loss of Chinese Language may not be inevitable if the people do the necessary to arrest the declining trends. Mufwene (2002: 179) cited countries, for instance, Taiwan, which have succeeded in appropriating the Western capitalist economic system without losing much of her Chinese culture and language. It is obvious that other countries could have taken that path, and it should help to know why they did not choose to do so. This is a lesson for Singapore to consider.

References Aman, N., Vaish, V., & Bokhorst-Heng, W. (2006). The sociolinguistic survey of Singapore 2006. Singapore: Nanyang Technological University, National Institute of Education, Centre of Research In Pedagogy and Practice.

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MIT Indigenous Language Initiative. (n.d.). Language loss. Retrieved from http://web.mit.edu/ linguistics/mitili/language%20loss.html. Mufwene, S. S. (2002). Colonisation, globalisation, and the future of languages in the twenty-first century. International Journal on Multicultural Societies, 4(2), 162–193. Ng, C. L. (2014). A study of attitudes towards the Speak Mandarin Campaign in Singapore. Intercultural Communication Studies, 23(3), 53–65. Retrieved from http://web.uri.edu/iaics/ files/NG-Chin-Leong.pdf. OECD. (2010). PISA 2009 results: What students know and can do (Student performance in reading, mathematics, and science) (Vol. 1). Paris: OECD. https://doi.org/10.1787/ 9789264091450-en. Oppenneer, M. (2015, August 31). Status of the ethnosphere: New statistics about language loss across the world. Ethnos Project Blog. Retrieved from http://www.ethnosproject.org/status-ofthe-ethnosphere/. Prodanovic, K. (2013, October 16). The silent genocide: Aboriginal language loss FAQ. Retrieved from http://www.terry.ubc.ca/2013/10/16/the-silent-genocide-aboriginal-language-loss-faq/. Promote Mandarin Council. (2015). Speak Mandarin campaign: About the campaign. Retrieved from http://mandarin.org.sg/en/about. Soh, K. (2014). Test language effect in international achievement comparisons: An example from PISA 2009. Cogent Education, 1, 955247. https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2014.995247. Solash, R. (2010, February 19). Silent extinction: Language loss reaches crisis levels. Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty. Retrieved from http://www.rferl.org/content/Silent_Extinction_Lan guage_Loss_Reaches_Crisis_Levels/1963070.html. Spoonley, P. (2014, May 1). Superdiversity, social cohesion, and economic benefits. IZA World of Labour: Evidence-based Policy Making. Retrieved from file:///F:/2/Articles%20awaiting% 20readings/superdiversity-social-cohesion-and-economic-benefits.pdf. Teo, P. (2012). Mandarinising Singapore: A critical analysis of slogans in Singapore’s ‘Speak Mandarin’ campaign. Critical Discourse Studies, 2(2), 121–142. Retrieved from http://www. tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17405900500283565. The Research Advisor. (2006). Sample size table. Retrieved from https://www.research-advisors. com/tools/SampleSize.htm. UNESCO. (2015). What can be done to save a language from disappearing? Endangered Languages. Retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/endangered-languages/ faq-on-endangered-languages/. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. (2015, September 10). List of revived languages. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revived_languages. Woodbury, A. (2012). Endangered languages. Linguistic Society of America. Retrieved from http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/endangered-languages. Xie, S. Y. (1994). Singapore’ speak Mandarin campaign: Success and reflection. Paper presented at the Fourth Conference on the Teaching of Chinese Language, organized by the Promote Chinese Education Society, Taiwan, 27–30 December, 1994. 新加坡华语运动的成就与反 思。本文发表于第四届华语文教学研讨会, 台湾世界华文教育协进会主办, 1994 年12 月 27 至 30 日.

Chapter 10

Attitudes Toward Chinese Language: Its Measurement and Uses

Students’ attitudes toward a language have been found to be related to their achievement in it. A Likert-type scale for measuring students’ attitudes toward Chinese Language was designed. The scales have shown reasonably high reliability and validity and can be used with confidence by teachers and researchers.

Nowadays, conducting an action research project to raise student performance is common among Chinese Language teachers in Singapore schools. Teachers are naturally concerned whether their students have indeed gained from such projects. Although successful projects are something to celebrate, less successful ones are common, due to many conditions such as small group size, short duration, weak intervention, and inadequate measurement. The focus of such projects is usually improvement in language abilities, but attitudes toward Chinese Language is often another focus, maybe secondary. The students may not have gained cognitively but improve affectively. From the psychological perspective, students becoming more positive in their attitudes toward Chinese Language are as valuable as an outcome as gaining in language abilities; a positive attitude can be expected to have a motivational effect in the long run. Hence, a good measuring tool for gauging students’ attitudes toward Chinese Language is of value to the teachers. Chinese Language teachers generally believe that the student’s attitudes toward the language have influence on their achievement. In fact, attitude has always been invoked as an explanation of lack of achievement when students do not do well. It can be argued that even if the students do not improve their achievement now, their improvement in attitudes may ultimately lead to improvement in achievement in the future. Thus, cultivating a positive attitude toward Chinese Language should go hand in hand with enhancing their language skills. This means that attitude toward Chinese Language is both a means to better achievement and, at the same time, an end in its own right. If this is indeed the case, the teacher then needs to understand what attitude is and how it can be measured.

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Fig. 10.1 Three aspects of attitude

What Is Attitude? From the perspective of psychology, attitude toward Chinese Language has its attitudinal object such as Chinese Language, the teacher, and the learning activities. Toward these the students may have emotional reactions, and the reactions may be positive or negative, manifested in approaching or avoidance. Such emotional reactions have their cognitive roots due to knowledge and experience. Understandably, proper knowledge and positive experience bring about positive attitude and vice versa. People like what they do well and dislike what they do not. Therefore, if students find Chinese Language difficult, they are not going to like it, and their attitudes toward things Chinese will be negative. Attitude is not only the result of knowledge and experience, it also has action tendency. In other words, attitude has a motivational function. Positive attitude leads to positive actions like seeking more contact (approaching), and negative attitude leads to avoidance or rejection. If students’ experience with Chinese Language tells them that it is not difficult and is interesting, students will like to learn it and like things Chinese. Therefore, in the teaching of Chinese Language, let the students feel good about the language and themselves which will result in a positive attitude toward it, making them like it, and motivating them to learn it. In sum, experience, attitude, and action are mutually reinforcing as depicted in the diagram (Fig. 10.1). The implication is that Chinese Language teachers need to teach in such a way that their students feel good about the language and themselves as learners.

Measurement Hart’s (1981) theory posits five conditions of motivation: (1) like challenging tasks, (2) curiosity and interest, (3) independent attempts, (4) independent judgement, and (5) internal standard of success. Among these, the first three deal with motivating forces and the last two learning outcomes. Following Hart’s theory, Soh (1993) designed a scale for measuring attitudes toward language learning. This article

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Table 10.1 Attitude toward Chinese Language scale When learning Chinese Language, do you have these feelings? Do you do these? 1. When I come across difficult Chinese characters, I practise until I have learned them well 2. Although Chinese homework is not easy, I still like it

Factor loadings 0.77

3. When Chinese Language teacher points out my mistakes, I listen carefully 4. I work hard on Chinese Language homework to get high marks 5. Some Chinese characters are difficult; I practise hard to learn them 6. I like to help classmates learn Chinese Language

0.75

7. When the teacher points out my mistakes in Chinese Language homework, I like to correct them 8. When the teachers explain Chinese words, I listen carefully

0.71

9. I listen to Chinese Language carefully so that I will not miss out anything the teacher says 10. Before the Chinese Language teacher tells us about upcoming assessment, I have already prepared for it 11. I like Chinese Language teacher talking to me about my homework

0.70

0.75

0.73 0.72 0.71

0.71

0.70 0.67

Hart’s conditions of motivation (1) Like challenging tasks (3) Independent attempts (2) Curiosity and interest (5) Internal standard of success (1) Like challenging tasks (3) Independent attempts (1) Like challenging tasks (2) Curiosity and interest (2) Curiosity and interest (3) Independent attempts (5) Internal standard of success

extracts the parts relevant to Chinese Language learning and motivation. This may facilitate exploration by Chinese Language teachers who are interested in this aspect of teaching. In the process of designing, there were 19 items dealing with feelings about language learning and 11 items about actions, totalling 30 items. Each item asks about the frequency of feelings or actions: always (4), mostly yes (3), mostly no (2), and never (1). The draft version was tested on 123 Primary 5 students from a school which was strong in Chinese culture. There were 55% girls and 45% boys. For English Language, 55% of the students scored Band 1. For Chinese Language, 45% scored Band 1. Mandarin was the main home language for 79%, and 87% claimed that they were good or very good in Chinese Language. Students’ responses to the 30 items were factor-analysed, and the results are shown in Table 10.1. As shown, 11 of the 30 items form one factor, and the factor loadings are far above the conventionally expected 0.3, indicating that the items are conceptually close to one another. With reference to Hart’s (1981) five conditions of motivation, the 11 items in Table 10.1 can be considered as distributing them, thus (1) like challenging tasks, three items; (2) curiosity and interest, three items; (3) independent attempts, three items; (4) independent judgement, no item; and (5) internal standard of success, two items. Thus, the scale seems to have stressed more on the first three conditions— taking up challenges, curiosity, and independence.

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Table 10.2 Internal consistency reliabilities Criterion grouping Boys Girls High Chinese achievement Medium and low Chinese achievement High self-evaluation Low self-evaluation Sample as a whole Table 10.3 Covariation between Chinese Language achievements with attitude

Class A C E F

Cronbach’s alpha coefficient 0.90 0.91 0.86 0.92 0.90 0.91 0.91

Means of attitude scores 40.3 38.9 38.1 30.8

Reliability and Validity There are several methods of evaluating whether assessment is reliable. Here, internal consistency was considered. This method evaluates whether the items forming a scale are measuring about the same attitude. Table 10.2 shows the Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for different subgroups of gender, achievement level, self-evaluation, and the sample as a whole. It can be seen therein that all the alpha coefficients hover around 0.90 which by convention are high. This shows that under different conditions, the scale yields highly stable scores for attitude toward Chinese Language. Validity indicates the extent with which test scores truly reflect the ability, attitude, or habits measured. As shown in Table 10.3, there is a positive relation between attitude and achievement: students with higher achievement are expected to have high attitude scores and vice versa. As shown in the table, this is indeed the case—where the achievement decreases from A to F, the attitude scores decrease in tandem. Besides, boys scored on average 34.8 and girls 38.9 on the attitude scale. Such gender difference is consistent with the commonly observed difference in language between the genders where boys tend to score lower in language. Moreover, when the students were divided into highs and lows according to their then recent assessment, the higher achieving students scored 39.2 for attitude, whereas the lower achieving ones scored 34.7. Yet another validity evidence is the relation with home language, where students whose main home language was Mandarin score 37.8 for attitude, while those whose main home language was not Mandarin score 34.1. Finally, students who self-evaluated more favourably scored 38.7 for attitude, while those self-evaluated less favourably scored 36.1. Although these differences may not be large, they are in the expected directions.

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By way of summary, there are evidences showing that the 11-item scale for measuring attitude toward Chinese Language is highly reliable, and the scores are valid in various contexts. Therefore, the scale can be used with confidence for research and instructional purposes.

Uses The scores obtained by using the scale may be used for several purposes. It is worth repeating that a positive attitude (as represented by feelings and actions) has a motivating effect on learning, in this case, Chinese Language. Therefore, while trying to raise the students’ achievement in the language, it is also necessary to develop a more positive attitude toward it. Item Response After administration of scale, percentages can be calculated for each item separately. The groups can then be compared by way of effect sizes. As illustrated in Table 10.4, for the first four item of the scale, the experimental group scored higher than did the comparison group. For item 1, the experimental group scored 42% greater than did the comparison group, and the difference has a large effect size of 0.84, according to J. Cohen’s criterion. For item 2, the difference in favour of the experimental group has a medium effect size of 0.52. Item 3 shows a small effect size in favour of the experimental group. However, the effect size is trivial for item 4, and the groups are to be taken as having no difference. As the items are couched in behavioural terms (what the students did), these imply the specific actions on the part of the students to be encouraged or developed subsequently. Comparisons by items suggest specific follow-up action on the part of the teacher (i.e. to cultivate certain student behaviours) and have therefore a diagnostic function indicating where attention is needed. However, it must be admitted that the findings at the item level may be less reliable (stable) and hence need be taken with due caution. Table 10.4 Comparisons of experimental and comparison groups by percentages

Item 1. When I come across difficult Chinese characters, I practise until I have learned them well 2. Although Chinese homework is not easy, I still like it 3. When Chinese Language teacher points out my mistakes, I listen carefully 4. When I come across difficult Chinese characters, I practise until I have learned them well

Experimental group % (N ¼ 35) 62

Comparison group % (N ¼ 32) 20

Difference 42

Effect size 0.84

71

45

26

0.52

50

40

10

0.20

58

50

8

0.16

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Table 10.5 Comparisons of experimental and comparison groups by means

Attitude toward Chinese Language

Experimental group (N ¼ 35) 32.8 (5.2)

Comparison group (N ¼ 32) 28.6 (6.3)

Difference 4.2

Effect size 0.67

Scale Response This refers to the use of the total scores of all 11 items of the scale as a whole. Had a student chose always for all items, he would get a score of 44. On the other hand, a student who chose never for all items would get a score of 11. In short, the possible scores range from a low 11 to a high 44, and most students will score somewhere in between these. Table 10.5 compares the experimental and comparison groups on their respective means. As shown in Table 10.5, for the 11-item scale as a whole, the experimental group scored an average (mean) of 32.8, with a standard deviation of 5.2. In contrast, the comparison group scored a mean of 28.6 (standard deviation 6.3). Thus, the former score is 4.2 higher than did the latter. The difference of 4.2 has a corresponding effect size of 0.67, which is medium in magnitude, showing a more positive attitude toward Chinese Language among the students of the experimental group. This may confirm that the teacher’s effort in improving the students’ attitude has been rewarded.

Conclusion Students’ attitude toward a subject, in this case, Chinese Language, can be expected to influence their learning and hence achievement. Positive attitude is not only a means to an end but is an end in itself. Therefore, when conducting an action research as an effort to improve student learning, it is necessary to pay due attention to the inculcation of positive attitude. In this regard, the scale discussed in this article may meet the need of Chinese Language teachers for a usable, reliable, and valid measuring tool. Note: This article is an adaption of the one published in the Journal of the Singapore Chinese Secondary Teachers’ Association, Zhongjiao Xuebao, 36, 31–37.

References Hart, S. (1981). A new self-report scale of intrinsic versus extrinsic orientation in the classroom motivation and informational components. Developing Psychology, 17(3), 300–312. Soh, K. C. (1993). Measuring motivation to learn Chinese and English through self-reported feelings and behaviours. Singapore Journal of Education, 13(1), 88–94.

Part IV

About the Future

Chapter 11

Forecasting the Future of Chinese Language in Singapore

Languages interact and result in interlanguage which has traditionally been seen as being sub-standard. This article discusses the relation between Chinese Language of Singapore and the Standard Chinese of the PRC with references to globalization and modern technology.

The oral and written language output of students in Singapore learning Chinese Language as a second language always shows some irregularities when checked against the Standard Chinese of China. They are commonly referred to English-style Chinese, assuming the interference of English. From the psychological perspective, these are the outcomes of transfer of training when students apply English language features onto Chinese Language. By the standard of Standard Chinese, the students have made errors in their Chinese output. However, when seen from the perspective of localized Chinese, it is yet an agreed form of Singchin (just like Singlish) to guide Chinese Language teachers in Singapore (Lin, 2002). While the concept of Englishes, referring to the great variety of English over the world, has been accepted (Horobin, 2018; Kachru, 1992) by the linguistic community, a similar concept of Chinese Languages has emerged only recently and is yet to be as widely accepted. There are a number of studies on Singaporean students’ errors in Chinese Language conducted by researchers at the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language (e.g. Cui, Liang, & Xie, 2011; Cui, Zhao, & Xie, 2012; Gao & Wu, 2011; Yang, Cui, & Xie, 2012). These studies mainly take a contrastive analysis stance and focus on the language errors per se, tracing the probable causes of the errors observed.

Transfer or Errors From the psychological perspective, when students learn two languages concurrently, transfer of training is inevitable. This is a natural effect of learning, and the effect of transfer may be positive and may also be negative, depending on the similarity or difference between the two languages. For instance, a student may write in Chinese Language “*哪里你要去?” He did that because he has learned in © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Soh, Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1149-3_11

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English “Where are you going to?” The error in word sequence (or sentence structure) is attributable to his knowledge of the structure of questions in English. This application of knowledge where it is not applicable results in a negative transfer of training, usually considered as an interference in linguistics. Transfer of training is inevitable, and it is the economy of learning. For instance, for a person who has learned to drive a car of a certain model, he need not learn all over again when he switches to another model. Many of the driving skills he has acquired driving the old car can be transferred to driving the new one. This is positive transfer, and it saves time. When learning two languages, much of what is already learned in one can be applied to the other, capitalizing on positive transfer of training, especially in the learning of word meanings and, often time, sentence structures as well. Unfortunately, as errors are more visible and therefore easier to be detected, negative transfer in language learning has been unduly exaggerated, leading to the misconception that learning one language is always detrimental to the other language. In fact, research shows that children do make intra-language errors which have nothing to do with the second language they are learning. For example, children learn that, in English, ed is added to the end of a verb when describing a past action, so they write goed, eated, singed, and the like. Because of such natural phenomenon, teachers who are unaware of it expect students to switch off the other language when learning another. This commonsensical expectation turns into a classroom rule by which students are forbidden to use another language in language lessons; students are fined or punished for violating such a rule. The rule may even be practiced at the school level. However, recent research of adults using fMRI shows that when bilinguals are responding in one language, their second language is activated in the brain, that is, automatic translation happens (Perfetti et al., 2007). It is interesting that, if the stimulus words are emotionally neutral or positive, the unconscious mental process of automatic translation is more active (Kan & Thomson-Schill, 2005; Wu & Thierry, 2012). Although studies such as these used words as the stimulus, the effect can be expected when more complex language features are involved. This implies that language teachers have to accept the fact that cross-language interaction is natural and cannot be avoided in bilingual learning. On the contrary, the teachers should turn what seems to be a disadvantage into an advantage by making good use of the students experience in another language. If you cannot beat them, join them. This seems to be a practical advice. If negative transfer is inevitable, what attitude should Chinese Language teachers hold? Corder (1967) and Selinker (1972) suggested that they should see errors in a positive light and try to understand them, because such interlanguage errors have their regularity and are not random. The teachers may be able to derive some principles of handling them in terms of teaching or correction strategies. This takes us to the question of interlanguage.

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Interlanguage Although Larry Selinker (1972) is not the person who first coined the word interlanguage, he is certainly the person responsible for the popularity of the concept. Selinker theorized that in the process of becoming bilingual, there is a stage where the person mixes features of his two languages so much so that it seems that a new language which is somewhere in between the two has emerged, hence interlanguage. At the individual level, the interlanguage has its own rules just like other languages, and it is a language in transition. Moreover, interlanguage is an individual phenomenon which varies from person to person, and it may disappear as the person progresses toward attainment of the second language, but the time this happens depends on the individual. If the person does not make continuous progress in the second language, the interlanguage may then fossilize, keeping the erroneous features and becoming an inferior variety of the second language. Moving from interlanguage to second language may not be linearly graduated. Lightbown (1983) found learners of English as a second language who have mastered correctly the -ing ending made mistakes later and then recovered from it. This cycle of correct-incorrect-correct is puzzling. One reasonable explanation is that the bilingual learners first use a formulaic approach memorizing the rule and apply it correctly but rigidly without making a mistake. They then generalize the rule to all situations and thereby make mistakes. Finally, they notice that there are exceptions to the rule and avoid applying it, thus making no mistakes. If the teacher accepts the concept of interlanguage and recognizes this as a transitional language, with patience and guidance, the student will ultimately reach the second language proper. If the teacher is not too anxious to have the students reach this stage and see interlanguage as a necessary transition, the student will not be unduly pressured. However, in the reality of school, if the teacher does this, she may be accused of being lax and does not correct student immediately or in good time. This is a blame any teacher cannot withstand. How can it be done so that the teacher is not blamed for tolerating interlanguage? This calls for the understanding of the school leaders so that the professionals and the administration share a common view.

Chinese Language of Singapore When students learn two languages concurrently, interlanguage is to be expected as a passing phenomenon, and errors are to be tolerated for the time being but corrected sooner or later. This means at any time students will show their interlanguage, in this case, Chinese Language of Singapore variety which has features of both Chinese Language and English (though not necessary in English). The question then is how we shall see such transitional language.

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If the Standard Chinese of China is adopted as the yardstick of the appropriateness of Chinese Language produced by Singaporean students, much of it may be considered as inappropriate. The question is: Is it a language full of errors or is it just a variety of the Standard Chinese? Variety, as the name implies, is a variation. For example, Theme and Variations is a musical form which usually begins with a statement of a melody followed by its variants. All such variants are different from one another, yet they have reference to the original melody. Such variations are not considered errors; on the contrary, they are welcome as they bring in many interesting features. In this case, variety is not erroneous. From such a perspective, English of America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are derivations or variants of Standard English (if there is one such standard). Each of these Englishes has its special features which deviates from English of England, and they are acceptable and not considered erroneous. In Singapore, there is Standard Singapore English which is not the same as Singapore’s colloquial English or Singlish. In fact, there are a large number of variants or variety of English (Fan, 2003), and these all deviate from the Standard English to a large or small extent in vocabulary, sentence structures, and, perhaps most prominently, pronunciations. Likewise, outside China, the Chinese Languages of Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Indonesia are all variants of Standard Chinese each with their own peculiar features. This question is worth exploring further with reference to interlanguage. As defined by Selinker, interlanguage is idiolect of the individual who will grow out of it if he continues to learn. But, when a large number of students make the same kind of errors (or variants), would not that become a norm and be normalized? And, as time passes by, will the erroneous forms get fossilized and become a pidgin and, furthermore, become a creole in the next generation? Originated from the sixteenth century of Italy, the linguistic purism or linguistic protectionism considered a language has only one authentic version which should be the standard, model, or specification. It is supposed to be pure and hence to be upheld as the only accepted standard. This approach is always supported by scholars and language colleges and endorsed officially by the government. The objective of such an approach is to ensure communication among a large number of users, the so-called democratic purism. An example is the Standard Chinese sanctioned in 1923 by China’s Ministry of Education at the Fifth Meeting of the National Language Unification Committee, which decided that the pronunciation of Beijing Mandarin was to be the standard for modern Chinese Language. The objective of a standard language may also be for enabling communication among different language groups within a country, the so-called unifactory purism. An example is the policy of Singapore to have Malay as the National Language and four languages as the Official Languages (Chinese, Malay, Tamil, and English) with English as the Administrative Language. Irrespective of the complexity of language environment, linguistic purism hopes that the language is passed down with no changes generation after generation. In this

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view, changes are seen as pollution, errors, and sub-standard. However, as the society progresses, new concepts emerge, and new terms are needed and hence created. The expectation of no change is not only unrealistic but also counterdevelopment. For instance, many of the words commonly used today are not found in the dictionaries of the old days. Besides, as countries interact, new terms or expressions are adopted. For instance, “烟士披里纯” (inspiration) and 和“歇斯 底里” (hysteria) were at one time popular in modern Chinese literary works, and instead of “早安” (the traditional greeting in the morning) now, people say “早上好” (literal translation of good morning) and not forgetting “黄金时间” and “第一時 間”, a concept and translation of prime time. In fact, many Chinese words commonly accepted as being Chinese are borrowed from Japanese in the late Qing Dynasty, such words as 哲学 (zhexue, philosophy), 社会 (shehui, society), 垄断 (longduan, monopoly), 权威 (quanwei, authority), and many others, according to Shen Xilun (沈锡伦, 2004). If language does not change and is not allowed to change, then we will have to write in Shakespearean style, thus: What did thoust f’r breakfast? (What did you have for breakfast?) ‘tis going to raineth. (It is going to rain.)

Likewise, Chinese Language around the years of the May the Fourth and Chinese Language today are not exactly the same in vocabulary and syntax, not to mention the difference between the classical Chinese (文言文, wenyanwen) and modern Chinese (白话文, baihuawen). In short, language has never stand still; it changes with time to meet the need for new ways of communication. Although the language environment of Singapore is complex, internal influences are not strong. Malay and Tamil have some influence on Chinese Language, especially in terms of borrowed words related to food, such as 米暹 meesiam (酸 辣米粉汤), 罗惹 rojak (辣味冷拌), 帕拉他 roti prata (印度煎饼), and the like, and these are more at the oral level than in written form. At the same time, English has a greater influence on Chinese Language, not only orally but also in writing. Singaporean students learn two languages at the same time, and they strive to master information communication technology; therefore, the greater influence of English is expected. This means changes in Chinese Language in Singapore are inevitable. Words that are not meeting the present-day communication needs will become obsolete due to infrequent use, and new ones will emerge to facilitate communication. Thus, in the long run, what will Chinese Language of Singapore look like? Will it become a mixed language so different from the Standard Chinese that non-Singaporeans will not be able to understand it? At this moment, it cannot be denied that Chinese Language of Singapore shows some differences from the Standard Chinese, but the differences are not too great. But how much differences are there remains to be objectively and empirically studied. Years later, will it become a pidgin beyond recognition? It is worth keeping an eye on it. Optimistically, the standard of education of Singapore is high. This is evident in international achievement surveys such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science, Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, and Programme for

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International Student Achievement (Soh, 2013). Although higher education of Singapore is not leading the world, it however is at the top of Asia (Soh, 2012). All these studies considered English as the language of interest, and they show that Singaporean students are highly proficient in English. This being the case, the probability of English and Chinese of Singapore becoming pidgins is foreseeably low and, in the long run, not likely becoming pidgin or creole. As languages interact, it is inevitable that there is mutual influence. However, it is natural that Chinese Language of Singapore models on Standard Chinese of China and, therefore, whatever changes in the latter will ultimate impact on the former. Thus, in spite of some differences, they will be largely the same, and those minor differences should be acceptable and not be seen as language pollution. A more fundamental question is: Will Standard Chinese of China have major changes in view of the powerful influence of the modern technology? The rapid development of modern technology has notably affect the vocabulary and styles of expression of languages in the world. Standard Chinese is not likely to be an exception. Nonetheless, Chinese orthography is a safety valve for Standard Chinese, and it is unlikely to be influenced as much as English (Su, 1996:185), and the influence will be limited to translation of some technical terms originated from the West and not the language as a system. Inferred from this, as long as there are no drastic changes in Standard Chinese, then Chinese Language of Singapore will also not have much changes.

Conclusion When students learn two languages concurrently, the languages interact and result in positive and negative transfer. This is natural and unavoidable for the simple reason that the languages exist and use one and the same brain. This is not a linguistic phenomenon but a psychological one (Yu, Chang, & Jiang, 2012). Even then, appropriate teaching is able to minimize negative transfer and allows the language to maintain their main features. To this end, linguistics needs to highlight the differences and needs psychological aspiration to suggest effective prevention.

References Corder, S. P. (1967). The significance of learner’s errors. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 5, 161–170. Cui, J., Liang, H., & Xie, Y., 崔娇阳、梁辉扬、谢育芬. (2011). 新加坡小学生作文中的方位结 构使用特点及成因分析, 发表于 “面向多元需求的国际汉语教育” 国际学术研讨会, 中国: 上海。 Cui, J., Zhao, C., & Xie, Y., 崔娇阳、赵春生、谢育芬. (2012). 新加坡小学生作文中的虚词特 点, 发表于第十届国际汉语教学学术研讨会, 中国: 杭州。 Fan, L., 樊丽霞. (2003). 英语传播地域变体研究, 中国:青岛海洋大学硕士论文。

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Gao, H., Wu, F., 高花、吴福焕. (2011). 新加坡小一学生华语口语语法偏误分析, 发表于第二 届 “华文作为第二语言之教与学国际研讨会”, 新加坡。 Horobin, S. (2018). The English language: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kachru, B. (1992). World Englishes: Approaches, issues and resources. Language Teaching, 25, 1–14. Kan, I. P., & Thomson-Schill, S. L. (2005). Conceptual processing in Chinese-English bilinguals: An fMRI study of cross-language conceptual priming. (Brief report). In J. Cohen, K. T. McAlister, K. Rolstad, & J. MacSwan (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism (pp. 1131–1138). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Lightbown, P. M. (1983). Exploring relationships between developmental and instructional sequences in L2 acquisition. In H. G. Seliger & M. H. Long (Eds.), Classroom-oriented research in second language acquisition (pp. 217–243). Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Lin, W., 林万菁. (2002). hh语文研究论集ii, 新加坡: SNP出版私营有限公司。 Perfetti, C. A., Liu, Y., Fiez, J., Nelson, J., Bloger, D. J., & Tan, L.-H. (2007). Reading in two writing systems: Accommodation and assimilation of the brains’ reading network. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 10(2), 131–146. Selinker, L. (1972). Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 10(3), 209–232. Shen, X., 沈锡伦. (2004). hh中国传统文化和语言ii (增补本), 上海: 上海教育出版社。 Soh, K. C. (2012). World university rankings: What is in for top ten East Asian universities. New Horizons in Education, 60(2), 36–50. Soh, K. C. (2013). Finland and Singapore in PISA 2009: Similarities and differences in achievement and school management. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 44(3), 455–471. Su, X., 苏新春主编. (1996). hh汉字文化引论ii, 南宁: 广西教育出版社。 Wu, Y. J., & Thierry, G. (2012). How reading in a second language protects your heart. The Journal of Neuroscience, 32(19), 6485–6489. Yang, J., Cui, J., & Xie, Y., 杨军平、崔娇阳、谢育芬. (2012). 新加坡小学生华文写作中动宾 词(配搭 V+N) 问题的语料分析及其教学启示, 发表于 “面向跨文化学习者的中文学与教: 挑战与突破” 研讨会, 中国: 香港。 Yu, L., Chang, H., & Jiang, M., 俞理明、常辉、及姜孟. (2012). hh语言迁移研究新视界角ii, 上 海:上海交通大学出版社。

Chapter 12

Ten Questions About Chinese Language Teaching in Singapore

This article raises ten questions pertaining to various aspects of the teaching of Chinese Language in the Singapore context. Issues such as objective, instructional approach, and assessment are discussed.

Since the late 1970s, when the unified national curriculum was implemented in Singapore’s education system (Goh, 1979), reviews were conducted intermittently about the teaching of Chinese Language. Simple questions appeared in the local press, discussed, and then forgotten. Complex questions related to curriculum and textbooks have repeatedly been officially reviewed (Lee, 1999; Ministry of Education, 2011; Ong, 1992; Wee, 2004). For more information on the several reviews, see Ng (2016). With the untiring efforts, exploration, and search of the past 30 years or so, those questions should have been answered. However, the questions seem to be flies in the summer—they did not go away. So, what has actually happened? Could the questions not be answered once and for all? Although the questions have been discussed and reviewed, they nevertheless reappeared just the same. Trying to solve the problems related to the teaching of Chinese Language in Singapore is like trying to describe the elephant in an Indian fable—partially correct but much remains unknown. In surrounding Chinese Language teaching in Singapore, there are many questions awaiting answers: its functions, social status, academic standards, teaching methodology, etc. Official reviews, public’s suggestions, parents’ complaints, students’ blames, and teachers’ calls for help, all these appear now and then, and there seems to be no end. The ten questions discussed in this essay came about as the concerns of the present writer over the years. They are certainly not systematic, although they might be dealt with here in a more or less logical sequence. As a matter of fact, any discussion on language teaching problems is essentially a discussion of the psychology of learning. Without reference to psychology of learning, the effort is fruitless, even if one argues that Chinese is a unique language. The problem of teaching Chinese Language does not lie in the language per se but in its teaching, which lacks knowledge based on empirical research but relies mainly though not exclusively on common sense and subjective preferences. Admittedly, © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 K. Soh, Teaching Chinese Language in Singapore, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-1149-3_12

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this psychological perspective reflects a personal preference, if not bias, due obviously to the present writer’s training in educational psychological and measurement. Needless to say, other perspectives are just as legitimate.Beyond the psychology of learning, language curriculum and its implementation are closely related to politics, economics, and the society. Therefore, to study language teaching problems, attention needs be paid to the influences of these factors. But, in so doing, the effects of student factors tend to be overlooked or even ignored. However, in the end, the success of reform in language teaching is to be evaluated in terms of student learning—what have they learned and how do they perform. In short, student achievement is the acid text of language teaching reform. Since language teaching is such a complex matter related to fields the present writer is not familiar with (i.e. politics, economics, and sociology), this essay will discuss the problems from the perspectives of educational psychology and measurement. It is hoped that specialists in other fields who are interested in language and language teaching, Chinese Language especially, will explore the issues from their specialized perspectives, as their informed discussion will certainly enhance a better and more comprehensive understanding of the problems.

Question No. 1: What Are the Standards to Be Attained? When discussing language teaching, levels or standards refer to the student’s abilities at the end of a specific period of learning. This may be relative or absolute. A relative level (or standard) describes the student’s knowledge and ability of a language with reference to a specific language. For instance, in Singapore, Chinese Language is studied by most students at the second language level, that is to say, most students in Singapore schools need to attain a level lower than the first language (of, say, students in China). A question arises as to how much lower Chinese as a second language (CL2) is vis-à-vis Chinese as a first language (CL1). A common conception is that CL2 is lower than CL1 by a 2-year difference in terms of level or standard. A digression is necessary here to clarify terminology as some common terms, when used administratively in Singapore, deviate from their linguistic definitions, and scholars outside Singapore may find these conceptually confusing. Chinese Language has been referred to as a second language and later Mother Tongue Language. Following such terms as defined in linguistics, second language is applicable only to those Singaporean Chinese students whose home language is English (mostly); such students represent a large proportion of the student population and are on the increase in view of the trend of main home language of Primary 1 new entrants (Ministry of Education, 2011). On the other hand, Mother Tongue Language is applicable only to those students whose home language is Mandarin or one of the Chinese dialects such as Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, or Hainanese (even this last point can be questioned as these are mutually unintelligible, although they share highly similar syntax); there is also a large proportion of students fitting

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this definition. Thus, be it second language or Mother Tongue Language, the term is true only to some but not all ethnic Chinese students. When it is said that “Singaporean students learn their mother tongue as a second language”, it sounds oxymoronic to linguists and language researchers, although it is well understood by Singaporeans. For proper description which does not confuse, it may be necessary to go to the older generations and call Chinese Language an ancestral language (which sounds rather archaic) or a heritage language (the latter a term commonly used nowadays in the literature and especially in the United States). Such terms will be correct irrespective of the home language. There is also a common misgiving to the term second language when it is misinterpreted as of a lower or inferior grade when, linguistically, it merely denotes a language, the learning of which starts later in life, usually when entering formal schooling. It is true that the expected standard (or level) of a second language is usually lower than that for a first language in the same school curriculum, but it is also true that an individual student can achieve a higher level in second language than in first language. Misconceptions such as these may have an ill-effect on the teachers and students as well. Returning to the original question of the difference in standard, when it is said that CL2 is, say, 2 years lower than CL1 in standard, where is this difference to be located—at Primary 6, Secondary 4, or Pre-university 2? Moreover, is the difference maintained consistently at 2 years throughout the educational continuum or does it increases gradually over time, ending up with a wider gap? More fundamentally, what is the reference for first language? Perhaps, the last question should be answered first. For historical reason, it is reasonable to use Chinese Language standard of China as a benchmark and compare CL2 standard of Singapore textbooks with CL1 standard of textbooks used in China, especially when the same texts (usually literary works) are used in both places, e.g. Li Bai’s hh夜思ii and Zhu Ziqin’s hh背影ii. This simple method of comparison may sound simplistic, especially in view of the acceptance of Englishes replacing Standard English. But the discussion of this world trend is beyond the scope of this essay. If the 2-year difference is to be attained at the end of primary schooling, then Singapore’s CL2 at Primary 6 should be equivalent to China’s CL1 at Primary 4. In fact, the question is more complex than this as language has at least four aspects of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, and a student may have different proficiencies of these. Generally, he is more proficient in listening and speaking than in reading and least in writing. So, to which does the 2-year difference refer? Assuming that the 2-year difference pertains to reading, it is not difficult to ascertain whether Singaporean students have attained the specified level. All it needs is to get a Primary 6 student to read a Primary 4 text from a textbook from China and see if he understands. Of course, the text has to be carefully chosen in terms of content, vocabulary, and expression as these are much influenced by culture. This, of course, is the problem of validity of reading assessment. On the other hand, absolute level (or standard) refers to what the student is capable of doing with the language in specific contexts or situations at the end of a

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period of learning. In the recent years, different states of the United States have propounded their respective standards (e.g. Common Core State Standards Initiative, n.d.), specifying the specific tasks where English is to be used. Likewise, the Council of Europe has put up its Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2019) as a guideline to describe achievements of learners of foreign languages across Europe. Such standards enable the development of language curricula at one end of the teaching process and accountability reporting at the other end. This is yet to be seen where Chinese Language is concerned and is, therefore, worthy of pursuing. An absolute “standard” for Primary 6 CL2 writing may be Use proper words to write a shopping list, name at least ten different home appliances, or Use proper words to write a message about home life. For another example, take Secondary 4 reading, an “absolute standard” may be After reading the supplied text, is able to tell the main points and explain the meanings of chosen words, or After reading the supplied text, is able to tell the author’s intended message and make comments. Yet another “absolute standard” for Secondary 4 Is able to explain the meanings of given idioms and use the idioms to write sentences. Absolute standards like these take time to define, and not many teachers are equipped to write them; after all, specifying such standards is not the teachers’ job; it is the responsibility of curriculum developers. Such absolute standards are useful to indicate to the education authority’s expectations, and to the schools, these point to specific, measurable learning outcomes to work toward to. For students, such statements allow them to be clear about how they progress and what they have achieved or need to achieve. Which is more important, relative or absolute standards? The answer is both are important. Relative standards guide curriculum developers and textbooks writers with targets to be built into the syllabuses and textbooks. Without these, curriculum developers and textbook writers will have to rely almost entirely on personal experience and preferences, and these vary from people to people, literally shooting in the dark. This will result in neglecting the language’s characteristics and the students’ readiness, thus causing difficulties in teaching and learning. On the other hand, relative standards specify the proficiency to be attained at each class level for the language knowledge or skills. They allow teachers to know clearly whether they are teaching at the correct levels, not over-teaching nor under-teaching. They also enable teachers to choose and use at-level assessment methods to gauge students’ progress and achievement.

Question No. 2: How Much Time Is Available for Learning? Once I said apologetically to a friend from overseas, “Our students’ standard of Chinese Language is not high”. To my surprise, he replied, “No, you should not say that. In view of the time they spent learning Chinese Language, they have done

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well”. He sounded so sincere and reasonable and I felt comforted. This is an encouragement and a reminder. In Singapore schools, Chinese Language has eight to ten periods of 35–45 min a week, and it has around 15–18% curriculum time. This is about the same as other subjects such as mathematics and science and more than other subjects like social studies, music, and art. Thus, it is estimated that for the 10 years from Primary 1 to Secondary 4, there are about 2400 h for learning Chinese Language in the formal curriculum, not to mention after-school “remedial lessons” tuition hours. But, why do students still find Chinese Language difficult? And, some parents even complain that the time spent on learning Chinese Language is unrewarding when compared with other subjects. Of course, for any subject, time for learning has a close relation with achievement: the more time there is, the better the achievement. However, the relationship between learning and achievement may not be linear; the increased proportion of time may not bring about the same proportion of achievement. The well-known diminishing return curve of economics may apply here. Thus, increase in time goes with increase in achievement up to a point after which the increase is not in proportion but gets less and less. In other words, learning language needs time, but increasing time does not necessarily bring about increase in achievement. Perhaps, it is more important to ask what student actually do and learn in class. It has to be realized that students learn what they do. This pertains to what the teacher and her students do during Chinese Language lessons. Under normal circumstances, what students do is a response to what their teacher does: when the teachers talks most of the time, the students learn to listen most of the time; the end result is enhanced listening comprehension. Contrarily, if the teacher asks more questions, the students learn to think and talk more; the end results are thinking and oral communication. This relationship between what the teacher does and what the students learn will be later reflected in the assessment; when the students listen more in class, they will find written examinations more difficult, simply because they have not been sufficiently prepared for it. From the viewpoint of learning psychology, use or practice enhances learning. This simple principle applies to all subjects, and Chinese Language is no exception. More than a century ago, H. Ebbinghaus (Flashcard Learner, n.d.) used himself as the experimental subject and pointed up several phenomena related to learning and memory, confirmed later by experiments with better control. Later, deep processing experiments (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) showed that paying attention to word meanings resulted in better memory than attending to letter shapes and sounds. This implies that Chinese Language learning (1) needs more time (up to a point only) to learn, (2) needs to be used outside the classroom, and (3) needs to focus more on meanings than shapes and sounds. Chinese Language is a standing-alone subject in the Singapore curriculum. All its learning takes place in the Chinese Language lessons, and there is very little chance of using it in other subjects. On the other hand, English Language is learned in English lessons and also have the chance of being used (practised) in other subjects. If fact, the language instructional time for the two languages is not much different,

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and the difference lies with the language exposure time, that is, opportunity of using them in other subjects. Where then can Chinese Language be used? Obviously, in the various co-curricular activities, especially those involving language, such as drama group, choir, dance troupe, literary society, calligraphy society, and even art club. These co-curricular activities afford the time for students to use (practise) Chinese Language in a light-hearted and lively atmosphere. They also give the students a chance to learn Chinese culture, thus killing two birds with one stone. Such activities also may rectify the students’ misconception that Chinese Language is useless, as usefulness need not be always about economic gains or personal benefits. To the young students, getting satisfying experience by using Chinese Language may make them see the usefulness of the language. Simply put, although instructional time is a factor of achievement in the learning of any subject, it is not the only factor (Soh, 2008). What the time is used for and what the students do in the class and outside may be just as important, if not more. If instructional time is fixed and limited, schools and teachers need to find opportunities outside the curriculum for the students to use Chinese Language in ways personally meaningful to them.

Question No. 3: What Are the Emphases in Teaching? By tradition, learning language is learning skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. From the perspective of learning psychology, skills refers to the ability to control muscles through cognition. For example, many students could not remember the needed Hanzi when composing. This is not because they could not control the pens to leave the desired marks (of Chinese characters) but because they have forgotten the combinations and positions of strokes. This is more cognitive than muscular and, strictly speaking, is not a problem of skills but a problem of mental processes related to information processing or recall. Whether we call them skills and knowledge, a more important question is what should be the focus of Chinese Language teaching. Language is a tool for social interaction; it is also a tool for learning culture. From this perspective, the purpose for students to learn Chinese Language is quite clear, and this should also be the focus of the curriculum and teaching. To most students, they need to understand what people say to them about daily matters in Chinese Language, to express their own views and feelings using Chinese Language, and to be able to read with comprehension in Chinese Language. These objectives of listening, speaking, and reading should be attainable; as for writing in Chinese Language, most of them may not need to. Writing has two meanings: at the primary school level, it is more likely interpreted as character-writing (or forming the Chinese character, 书写), whereas at the secondary school level, it is more likely seen as composition (or essay writing, 写作). In tradition, when students are able to write good compositions, they are seen

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as being outstanding, and their written works will be displayed for the class to see and even be edited for school publication. The local Chinese newspapers publish good works by students, and the schools also publish collections of such good writings. It is obvious that these have a motivating effect on the students. Writing also means character-forming. This is a problem troubling Chinese Language teachers at, mainly, primary level. Students just form Chinese characters with wrong, missing, or additional strokes. They also mix up Chinese characters with the same pronunciations. Reminders and repetitions do not always help. Teachers teaching lower classes followed the tradition of counting the number of strokes (数笔画), emphasizing the sequence of strokes (笔顺) and writing in the air (书空) without much thinking about their effectiveness, simply because it is a tradition. Counting the number of strokes is not totally useless. Searching for a Chinese character in an old dictionary necessitates the number of strokes. However, nowadays, Chinese dictionaries arrange Chinese characters in terms of Hanyu Pinyin (incidentally, this in itself is a controversy), and the search does not require the number of strokes. As for sequence of strokes, it is said that Chinese characters written following the correct sequence look nicer. This may be true to some extent, since Chinese characters have components arranged in certain structures, such as left-right (笑) or up-down (校). If they are written in the wrong sequence, the components may not be balanced and therefore look odd. However, correctness has to take precedence over appearance. In fact, many famous calligraphers do not bother with sequence of strokes; they even add or subtract one or more strokes for aesthetical purposes. Emphasizing number of strokes and sequence of strokes may simply add stress in learning Chinese characters and serve little useful purposes. Many Chinese characters are made up of components, and between 85% and 90% of them are shape-sound combinations (形声字). This being the case, maximizing these characteristics will facilitate the learning of Hanzi. This also is consistent with the principle of moving from the known to the unknown, since most of the components are simpler Hanzi learned earlier. Instead of learning a “new” Hanzi as a totally unfamiliar configuration of so many strokes, it is learned as a combination of known components. For instance, 明 is not to be learned as a new character of eight strokes but as a combination two components 日 and 月, thereby reducing the mental load. Moreover, this approach is consistent with the principle of Gestalt psychology which emphasizes the principle of configuration and the principle of chunking. Emphasizing structures also allows students to classify the learned Hanzi, and this is consistent with the psychology of memory for which organization is found to enhance recall. Writing helps memory; this is common sense. Why does this happen? For the perspective of learning psychology, knowledge is learned through seeing and listening, but when another mode is involved, there is new information sent to the brain. Writing involves kinetic input over and above seeing and listening, and it therefore helps memory. However, writing is an additional demand when learning word recognition, but would it be over-burdening? In the old days when computer software for typing Hanzi was not available, the students need to learn to write them,

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but writing by now is cumbersome when computers are practically everywhere. Do students still need to go through the agony of writing Hanzi? Perhaps, where Chinese Language is concerned, writing should be replaced by typing. This may be a minor change, but it will benefit Singaporean students learning Chinese Language. When students type instead of write their compositions, they will not be bothered by inability to write the needed Hanzi from memory and will choose from those shown on the monitor. With this change, they can focus more on the content and the expression and thereby produce better works. This is also consistent with the recent educational strategy of emphasizing higher-order thinking. Does this help the teachers? Yes. She will not be spending time detecting and correcting wrongly composed Hanzi but concentrate on the content and expression in students’ compositions. Of course, she still needs to make sure the correct Hanzi were chosen. Besides, when students submit their composition as email or on a disc, essaymarking is more convenient, and computer-aided marking can be attempted. An objection to this is that the students may not be able to write Hanzi as a consequence. Yes, this may be a price to pay for better compositions in terms of content and expression. In the Chinese saying, one cannot have fish and bear’s paw at the same time; a choice has to be made. In this case, the pros and cons need be weighted, and the more beneficial one is the choice. Some may lament that this means the art of Chinese calligraphy is lost. Maybe yes, but calligraphy class or society can always be organized for those students who are interested in this cultural aspect of Chinese Language. This co-curricular activity may broaden the scope of Hanzi and enhance the feeling toward it. For instance, there are young primary students who almost perfectly emulate the writing styles of grand masters like Liu Gongchuan (柳公 权), Yan Zenqing (颜真卿), and Wang Xizhi (王羲之), but do they understand what they have copied? Of course, whether calligraphy will raise the students’ standard of Chinese Language is to be empirically verified. Learning for the sake of learning does not seem to be an accepted idea in Singapore nowadays. With this as a premise, Chinese Language teaching in the Singapore context needs to be relevant to the needs of Singaporeans now and in the future. This is where the curricula emphasis needs to go to.

Question No. 4: What Is the Content to Learn? Instructional materials such as textbooks result from interpretation of curriculum goals and are tools by which the students learn to master knowledge and skills of language. Texts are the vehicle of language, and they transmit knowledge (including culture) at the same time. Therefore, whether curriculum goals can be attained depends on texts to a large extent. In Singapore, Chinese Language texts usually depict daily lives of young children, with the view of enabling them to familiarize themselves with relevant vocabulary and expressions. As the students grow, the scope of content widens

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and may deal with arts, science, history, etc. Besides, culture and values are specified as a goal in the Chinese Language curriculum, and stories of ancient China and people increase with class level. This approach is well-thought through and consistent with the Chinese concept of “essays being vehicle of principles” (文以载道). However, this does not mean there is no problem. Firstly, Chinese Language texts have to be simple to match the students’ proficiency, and because of this, the content tends to be also simple. Then, simple texts tend to be uninteresting. In the end, to the older students whose mental ability is more developed, such texts are lacklustre and unchallenging or even childish. Of course, this mismatch between intellect and content is not unique to Chinese Language texts but to all materials for promoting literacy. Secondly, Chinese Language textbook writers are more likely arts graduates with years of experience in teaching the language and, in some cases, authors of literary works. Their knowledge tend to be limited to arts and literature, and these naturally become their main sources when writing the texts. With these qualities, the resultant texts cannot be easily related to other subjects in the school curriculum. Chinese Language thus become isolated, and the students will have difficulty in making use of it other than in the language lessons. Occasionally, a Chinese Language may deal with science (e.g. Newton and Apple, hh牛頓和蘋果ii) or music (e.g. Beethoven’s Moonlight,hh貝多芬的月光曲ii), but such matters are not familiar to the text writers. Over and above this, Chinese Language teachers have the same limitation like the writers, and it is difficult for their lessons on such topics to be exciting. Moreover, because of the sources, values-related texts tend to depict ancient events and people. For instance, Wen Tianxiang (文天祥) and Yue Fei (岳飞) are invariably cited when writing about patriotism, and the story of Li Bai (李白) grinding an iron rod into a needle is used for teaching the value of hard work. There is no doubt that these stories are educational, but because of space and time differences, the students find them remote. Personalized readers have been advocated as a way of improving young children’s reading ability. For instance, the early study of Bracken (1982) study involved elementary students. The research gathered first information about the individual students’ interests. Armed with this information, personalized readers were created. The experimental group read such readers, and the control group read the regular readers. The results show that students weak in reading benefitted from reading personalized readers, but students of average reading ability made no benefit. One explanation is that the weaker students were more able to relate themselves to the personalized readers and hence understood better. The implication for the relation between content and reading achievement even for Chinese Language textbooks is obvious. It is a well-known fact that girls read better than boys in language, and Singapore is no exception to this. Moreover, boys and girls prefer books on different topics (Cole & Hall, 2002). One explanation is the “in-masculine” nature of textbooks (Merisuo-Storm, 2006), especially those for lower classes which tend to have a feminine bias, depicting events more familiar to girls. A researcher created texts with more masculine content such as adventure, machines, sports, etc., while maintaining

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the language level. The results show that boys who read such masculine texts improved more than those who read the standard texts. However, text difference had no effect on girls. Again, the implication for Chinese Language textbooks is also obvious. The relation between text content and student achievement cannot be denied. The question is how to ensure Chinese Language textbooks meet the students’ needs, life experience, and interests, especially those of the boys.

Question No. 5: Are the Teaching Methods Effective? One oft-heard criticism is that the teaching methods of Chinese Language are dull and obsolete, and they use up too much time. Traditional teaching methods may not be bad if they bring about the desired student achievement. But, then, they make the students tired of learning and lose interest. Challenging practices, though time-consuming, may result in student achievement, but repetitive and monotonous exercises kill interest and create frustration. The famed Russian psychologist L. S. Vygosky’s idea of zone of proximal development suggests that the student learns best when the learning task is just a little higher than his current state of ability so that with some efforts he can master it (McLeod, 2019). In other words, a task below his level is of no interest to him, and one too difficult just puts him off. Thus, pitching the learning tasks of Chinese Language at the appropriate level is critical. A controversy in second language teaching is the relative effectiveness of direct and indirect methods (e.g. Morrow, n.d.). This is a theoretical as well as practical issue. Proponents of the direct method advocates using only the second language in the second language lessons as if it is a first language, and no reference to the students’ true first language should be made. To them, using the first language in second language learning reduces the instructional time and may even turn the lessons into first language ones. Moreover, using the first language in second language lessons may cause confusions and result in impurity in language, and interlanguage is seen as “bad” language. The two reasons sound reasonable, especially to the linguistic purists who have strong preferences and emotional ties with the second language. On the other hand, a question can be asked whether the learning of second language can be made more effective and efficient by appropriate referencing to the students’ first language using the indirect method. Soh and Noe (1993) conducted a study involving Primary 3 to 5 students for an answer to the question. The experimental group first read an English version of a story before they read the same story in Chinese. The comparison group read the story in Chinese without first reading it in English. When the two groups were assessed with a comprehension test in Chinese, the experimental group did better: Primary 3 scored 10% higher and Primary 5 scored 15% better. The priming effect of reading the story first in English is obvious.

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Soh (2010, 2011, 2012) assessed Primary 3 to 5 students with monolingual and bilingual tests. The monolingual tests have item stems and option in the same language, i.e. English-English and Chinese-Chinese. The bilingual tests have item stems in one language and options in another, i.e. English-Chinese and ChineseEnglish. The content of the items are the same. The results show very high correlations between monolingual and bilingual tests, indicating that primary students were able to make use of knowledge in one language to answer questions asked in another. The correlations are r ¼ 0.92 for Primary 3, r ¼ 0.89 for Primary 4, and r ¼ 0.97 for Primary 5. There is evidently considerable overlap between languages. The implication is that by making use of the students’ first language (the known), their second language (the unknown) can be learned more effectively and efficiently. To the linguistic purists, code-switching is unwelcome pollution of language. However, as time passes by, new vocabulary and modes of expression are introduced and accepted, and it is doubtful to think of a language which is unchanging, pure, and standard. Thus judicious use of code-switching, or bilingual method, may not be a bad thing as it has been made out to be. From the perspective of learning psychology, using the known to learn the unknown is economical and natural; this is capitalizing on transfer of training. Besides, asking young children to keep the two languages they are learning separate is not easy and unnatural. For instance, neuroimaging research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) shows that “cued word generation, even with orthographically distinct scripts, can result in the activation of common cortical areas within the left hemisphere” (Chee, Tan, & Thiel, 1999). This indicates that although Chinese and English have very different writing systems, the information is nevertheless stored in the same area of the brain. Even if the teacher forbids the use of another language when learning a language, students will use both languages outside the classroom and in daily activities. And, there is no way the teacher can control which language the students will use in their minds quietly. The recent theory of translanguagging (Garcia & Wei, 2014) allows and encourages students to use all their languages in second language classes, and this has been found to be helpful. Using first language to help learning second language is natural, especially to students of higher class levels and adults. Explaining a Chinese word in English is an example. For instance, to explain 尴尬 (two formidable looking Hanzi, at least the first one), the teacher will have to say in Mandarin that the word means “(1) difficult situation, not easy to handle, for example, He does not know whether to go or not to go, very awkward; (2) unnatural (looking, attitude)”. This example is taken from a popular Chinese dictionary in use in Singapore schools. Here, the explanations bring in new words and concepts, making it more difficult than the word to be explained. For another instance, to use dictionary to explain 饶恕, the teacher will have to say in Mandarin “pardoned, forgiven” and bring in new words the students may not know. However, the students might have learned in their English lessons such words as awkward, unnatural, pardon, and forgive. By referring to these, the Chinese words can be readily understood. Some may object to say this is translation. Yes, but is it wrong to translate wenyanwen? In fact, when the teachers use learned words (therefore, easier) to

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explain difficult (unknown) words, it is a kind of translation. When ancient Chinese (wenyanwen, 文言文) is re-presented in modern Chinese (baihuawen, 白话文), it is intra-language translation. Psychologically speaking, when the teacher used a picture or object to help students understand word meanings, she is doing cross-mode translation. The critical question is not whether translation is involved but whether the students understand after translation, be it intra-language (Chinese-Chinese), cross-mode (picture-word), or interlanguage (English-Chinese). The principle of using first language to help in learning second language can be applied to composition, too. Many Hanzi were taught without much reappearance in subsequent texts, and they are hence not remembered well. This problem surfaces when the students write compositions and are unable to recall how to write those needed Hanzi. This problem can be solved by using an English-Chinese dictionary. The students can write the compositions by inserting English words when they cannot remember the Chinese characters, thus the thinking process is not often disrupted. They can then use the dictionary to look for the corresponding Hanzi. Doing this will minimize the unnecessary frustration and can build up the students confidence in composing. It will also encourage the students to express themselves using more sophisticated concepts, and the process of looking up words in dictionary is in itself learning Hanzi. Normally, when the teacher does not know how to teach, she will teach the way she was taught. Thus, the traditional teaching methods are passed on. Nowadays, Chinese Language teachers have been introduced to a wider and livelier teaching repertory. The question is whether these are used and how often. As the saying goes, All roads lead to Rome. By employing different teaching methods, the teacher can take the student to reach the same goal of learning. There is not one best method; the best one is the one which takes the students to where they are expected.

Question No. 6: Is the Assessment Appropriate? Using MRT as an analogy, assessment is the starting as well as ending points of a journey, and teaching is the stations in between them. However, in the traditional view, assessment is the end point, always coming at the end of the learning journey. In fact, at the beginning of teaching, the teacher needs to know the students’ strengths and weaknesses, and this calls for assessment or, at least, use latest available information to know the students better. During teaching, she needs to know the students’ progress and problems, and this also requires assessment information. After teaching, assessment is indispensable for making sure that the students are now better than at the beginning and deciding what to do next. The purpose of assessment is to gather information of student learning, so that concerned people (teachers, students, parents, and administrators) can judge the progress, plan instruction, and, of course, decide student movements. However, the last mentioned use of assessment turns it into high-stake assessment, and this detracts the true value of assessment as a feedback mechanism. The most important

Question No. 6: Is the Assessment Appropriate?

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function of assessment is to enable the teacher to make objective judgement about students’ learning reliably and validly. Therefore, assessment methods should be closely related to teaching. There are two main approaches to assessment. First is the discrete-point tests which break language learning objectives into a long series of specific and wellcircumscribed language abilities, such as word recognition and word meanings. Most of such skills can best be assessed using multiple-choice items. Then there is the integrated test, which requires constructed responses from the students, for instance, sentence making, sentence completion, and short essay writing. The two approaches to assessment each has its own function and complements each other, and hence a balance between the two modes is necessary. Discrete-point tests have the strengths of broad coverage (i.e. proper sampling of language abilities), minimal writing, and objective scoring. However, they are limited by not covering the skills in written expression, and this should be made good by integrated tests. As this approach to assessment normally has multiple acceptable responses, the scoring poses a problem of consistency among teachers as makers; this is the reliability problem. When there is a balance of both types of assessment, they complement each other for higher validity of assessing language learning. Singapore’s assessments do have the two types, covering a wide range of language abilities (Soh, 2018). Here, a relevant question is the proportion of each. At the lower class levels, the students are learning and accumulating vocabulary, and hence, discrete-point tests are more relevant. As the student move up the levels, integrated tests become more relevant. Thus, there is a need to shift emphasis with levels for assessment to be aligned to language learning. One oft-neglected problem in language assessment is the congruence between modes of teaching and assessment. This is a tricky problem. If the teacher uses most of the class time for oral activities, the students learn to listen and speaking. When the students come to examination which requires reading and writing, they have learned the wrong modes. Then, is it not a surprise that they do not do well in written examinations? The extent of the discrepancy is a topic of empirical research. On the other hand, if Chinese Language teachers emphasize written works in preparation for written assessments, will parents object? This deserves careful consideration. Oral assessment is part of language assessment, and some 30% of marks are assigned for it. A popular assessment method is to have the student talk about what they see and think after looking a one or a series of drawings. This gives rise to some problems. Firstly, although oral assessment may carry, say, 30%, the teacherassessors are unlikely to use the full range of 30 marks. At the same time, written assessment takes 70% and hence has a much wider range of marks. Statistically speaking, the oral scores will have a much smaller standard deviation, and the opposite is true for the written component. When the two sets of marks (with very different standard deviations) are added to arrive at the total mark, the oral marks play little or even no role because of its much smaller range. Thus, the oral component may have its motivational effect on teaching and learning, but it does not function as intended in assessment. The solution to this problem (which is

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statistical in nature basically) is to standardize the two sets of marks before weighting and summation. The use of the same sets of drawing for assessment of oral ability standardizes the stimulus; the intention is good. However, as the students have different home backgrounds and life experiences, the same drawings may not mean the same things to them. Let us say a series of drawings depicts the cable car at Sentosa. Students who have had the experience up there will have a lot to say, but not those without the same experience; and, this difference may be due to home background and not oral proficiency. If this difference happens, the validity of the assessment is doubted as the assessment result reflects home background more than it does oral ability. Authenticity is another problem. In real life, oral ability in listening and speaking is used for social interaction, and there must be interlocutors. Describing a drawing is a monologue and this is seldom required in daily life. Real-life use of oral communication may take place in asking for directions, shopping, making enquiries, or even discussing a more serious topic. These may lend oral assessment greater authenticity and hence validity in assessment. Oral assessment usually takes the form of having two teacher-assessors questioning a student (poor kid). In such a set-up, the power imbalance may intimidate the student and thus lower his performance. If three to five students form a group to discuss a given topic relevant to their life experience, this may be more realistic and natural. This is a mode worthy of consideration. From the administrative perspective, traditional methods of assessment are systematic and convenient. The question is whether these are good match to the goals of language learning at different class levels and whether they are relevant to the language skills needed in daily social interaction. Most importantly, the assessment results must truly reflect the language abilities the students have learned.

Question No. 7: Is There Sufficient Opportunity for Practice? Practice makes perfect, so says the adage. Yes, to learn a language well, practice and application are indispensable. However, there are subtle differences between practice and application. Psychologically speaking, practice is repetition of the same knowledge or skills; thus, learning is cumulative. On the other hand, application is using learned knowledge or skills to new situation or solving problems not previously encountered. In Singapore’s curriculum, Chinese Language is a standing-alone subject. In lessons of other subjects, Chinese Language is not used and does not get reinforced. At the same time, due to the content of Chinse textbooks, students do not have the opportunity to apply knowledge and skills they have learned in other subjects. This means the learning of Chinese Language begins in the classroom and ends there. The end result is that vocabulary is poor, expression is limited, and students thereby wrongly see Chinese Language as being irrelevant and useless. Since the

Question No. 7: Is There Sufficient Opportunity for Practice?

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instructional time is fixed, Chinese Language teachers need to find other opportunities for the students to practise and apply the language. Due to tradition, teachers of Chinese Language pay more attention to repetitive practice than application. Nowadays, there is a plethora of assessment books (some of which claims to be from prime schools) which are in fact mocked exam papers. Although there have been calls to develop higher-order thinking, much of it is lip service. This, of course, is not peculiar to Chinese Language. Psychological studies of the earlier years show that practice as a repetition does not help learning and may even become a roadblock. For instance, primary school students’ practise writing Hanzi by repeated copying. It is a common observation that they write correctly in the earlier part and make mistakes at later time. From the psychological perspective, this reflects the teachers’ expectation that practice helps learning, but then results are the opposite. This is because the students’ minds are active and they bring in past experience and change the strokes and structures; thus, what they write may be wrong to the teachers. Besides, repeated copying tires the students and they become inattentive, allowing errors to creep in. A recent experiment at John Hopkins University shows that muscle fatigue or overexertion when practising a new skill can negatively affect the performance of the same new skill in the future (Stinson, 2019). Practice is not totally useless, but it must have a clear purpose which the students can see and understand. Practice also needs feedback, and the earlier the better. Moreover, practice should not cause psychological and physical stress. In the teaching of Chinese Language, how these requirements can be met to raise the students’ interest and achievement is a question worthy of research. Reducing repetitive practice but increasing meaningful application may be an answer. Application of Chinese Language should not be limited to the language alone; it needs be expanded. After a Chinese Language lesson, it is natural that the students are given the opportunity to practise and apply as these consolidate learning. However, if practice and application are limited to answering questions pertaining only to the language lesson per se, the students will have difficulty seeing Chinese Language as useful, and they do not see the reason or need to learn the language. And, when the school, parents, and teachers overemphasize the importance of assessment, this creates an impression that marks are the only value of learning Chinese Language. Later, when there is no pressure, the students just will not continue to learn it and, as some students say, “Return it to the teachers”. As alluded to earlier, arrange for co-curricular activities in which Chinese Language is used and encourage students to participate. This affords the students with opportunity to practise and apply Chinese Language. Moreover, when there is no pressure to compete, the students will learn in a relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere. In such cultural activities, the students will get a sense of achievement. At present, the usefulness of Chinese Language does not seem to be of much concern to the school, parents, and teachers; they seem to be more interested in ranking, promotion, and examinations and less concerned with the students’ interests.

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How to make good use of co-curricular activities to enhance the students’ interests in learning Chinese Language and how to help them see the relevance of the language to their lives deserve careful consideration.

Question No. 8: What Is the Students’ Motivation? It is natural for the school to value its reputation, the parents to be interested about the future of their children, and the teacher to be concerned about examinations. Although there are different aspects of assessments, they depend very much on the student’s performance as indicated by the test results. For these, schools, parents, and teachers naturally focus on the exam marks. Students who originally are unconcerned about examinations learned to be concerned. With repeated experience, the student also becomes highly mark-conscious like the adults, and learning may become uninteresting. In an early study, children who originally were highly interested in drawing lost their interest consequent to being awarded with marks and prizes. In this case, the children’s attention was unheedingly diverted to the rewards so much so that drawing lost its original attractiveness. Whether this happens in Singapore schools, especially for Chinese Language, remains to be studied. Likewise, college students who were not paid for engaging in solving a puzzle returned voluntarily to it after a break, whereas those who were paid chose other activities (Deci, 1971). An interesting article discussing the effects of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation can be found in LoBue (2018). Studies of second language motivation usually focus on two types of motives, instrumental motive and integrative motive. Instrumental motive is by nature irrelevant to learning, which is done for getting rewards beyond the subject per se, for example, enhancing the opportunity of furthering education and job opportunity. For this type of motivation, learning is a means to something beyond and is therefore instrumental. On the other hand, integrative motive is by nature intrinsic, for instance, learning a second language because it is interesting or enabling interaction with people who speak it. Besides, the present writer found in a study a third kind of motivation, that of identity motive (Soh, 1993). This has to do with responses such as Being a Singaporean, I need to know English Language and As a Chinese, I should know Chinese Language. Such responses reflect the desire to be identified as of certain identity, hence identity motivation. In the pertinent literature, instrumental motivation and integrative motivation tend to be antagonistic; being stronger in one tends to go with being weaker in the other (Soh, 1993). The question here is which of the three types of motivation has a stronger influence on our students. In the Singapore context, English Language is the mainstream language, and all students ought to learn it well; so, there is no question about the motivation for its learning. However, for Chinese as a second language, the students’ motivation deserves to be studied. For a comprehensive review of language motivation research over the past 60 years or so, see Al-Hoorie (2017).

Question No. 9: Is Student Motivation Strong Enough?

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No doubt, the society, the school, and the family emphasize the instrumental motivation for learning Chinese Language. Relatively speaking, although the society and school sometimes point up the need to learn culture through learning Chinese Language, this emphasis on integrative motive is occasional. The emphasis is still on instrumental motive and related economic effect. Emphasis on instrumental motive may be necessary at a certain stage of language learning, and therefore, it is legitimate. The problem is whether the students, especially the younger ones, understand this approach. To students of different ages, future is that far away from now, and possible economic benefits are not of their concern, although they may be relevant to the parents. Of course, what affects parents affects their children. Motivating the adults may lead them to motivate their children. Perhaps, a more direct influence can be explored. As the adage goes, Nothing succeeds like success. Modify the curriculum, revise the textbooks, and change the teaching methods to give students a sense of achievement and develop their self-efficacy, so that they feel that achievement or the lack of it in learning Chinese Language depends on their own effort but not the chance, the teachers, and the test papers. This may result in better performance because, especially to the young children, feeling good about what they do and about themselves as learners is crucial.

Question No. 9: Is Student Motivation Strong Enough? Not only that the types of motivation affect students’ performance in learning Chinese Language, but the strength of motivation is also influential. Disregarding the types of motivation, students with stronger motivation are willing to put in more time and effort and are more likely to be interested in things Chinese. In such cases, better achievement can be expected. Even more important is that such attitudes and habits function as a virtuous circle of self-reinforcement. Therefore, the strength of the students’ motivation to learn Chinese Language should be of concern. Unfortunately, large-scale studies in this regard are practically non-existent, and this deserves research effort. Years ago, the present writer conducted a study of pre-university students (161) on their language motivation and ethnic attitudes (Soh, 1993). Half of these students graduated from Special Assistance Plan secondary schools which emphasized Chinese Language and culture, while the other half from other types of secondary schools. The results are encouraging. As Table 12.1 shows, the two groups of students have about the same motivation to learn Chinese Language, and the percent scores are high (78% of the possible score). Moreover, although the two groups had different second school experiences, where contact with students of other races is concerned, their motivation to learn English Language is highly similar. Furthermore, the students’ instrumental and integrative motivation was stronger than identity motivation. However, the groups differed in motivation to learn English Language. Thus, all these students learned

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Table 12.1 Comparison of language motivation

Chinese Instrumental Integrative Identity English Instrumental Integrative Identity

Special Assistance Plan (N ¼ 84) 40.48 12.19 12.02 15.97 40.45 15.16 13.30 12.00

Non-special Assistance Plan (N ¼ 77) 40.33 12.53 11.74 16.05 42.07 15.70 13.64 12.73

Both (N ¼ 161) 42.16 12.90 12.40 16.71 43.05 16.10 14.06 12.90

Percentages 78 72 89 93 80 89 78 72

Source: Soh (1993) Table 12.2 Factor structure of language motivation

Chinese Instrumental Integrative Identity English Instrumental Integrative Identity

First factor

Second factor

0.754 0.068 –

0.356 – 0.923

0.716 0.787 0.608

– – –

Source: Soh (1993)

English Language for both instrumental and integrative motives, but they learned Chinese Language for being ethnic Chinese; both groups identified more strongly with Chinese Language than with English. When the data was factor-analysed, a factor was found for motivation to learn the two languages, and the high correlations indicate the students’ attitude toward bilingualism (Table 12.2). However, integrative motives for Chinese Language are unrelated to this factor. Interestingly, a second factor was found where instrumental motives and identity motive for learning Chinese Language have different signs. This suggests that students who learn Chinese Language for instrumental motivation did not see learning the language as relevant to their ethnic identity and vice versa; this indicates that students who learned Chinese Language for identity did not see learning it for instrumental reason. In sum, the findings indicate that the students were positive about bilingualism for instrumental motive. Of course, there are individual differences. However, the negative correlation between instrumental motive and identity motive deserves further study.

Question No. 10: Are There Family and Societal Supports?

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Question No. 10: Are There Family and Societal Supports? The great Greek philosopher Aristotle said, “Where it is cultivated, it grows there”. This is a simple fact that always gets neglected, but it is applicable to the learning of Chinese Language. In other words, the society and family need to support the students in learning the language. What supports are needed, then? Many years ago, local newspapers reported that some parents questioned the need for the students to learn Chinese Language. They felt that their children spent too much time on it and thought the time should be used to learn and get better results for the other subjects so that the students had better chances to go to the university. Fortunately, education authorities stood firm on the bilingualism policy. With this, the negative voice dissipated, and there was a turnaround of parental attitude. This reflects the pragmatism of Singaporean parents: since it was necessary to learn Chinese Language, to avoid lagging behind other people, encouraged the children to learn it. Among the students, there are some who excelled in other subjects but not in Chinese Language. Thus, the language was seen a burden. Their parents, while finding ways to help their children learn better, considered sending them abroad to avoid having to learn Chinese Language. In fact, there were cases of migration of the whole family for this reason. This phenomenon is to the disadvantage of Singapore for two reasons. Firstly, these students were intelligent achievers who would be able to contribute to Singapore in various realms. They did not do well in Chinese Language not because they were dull or lazy. Secondly, like many other developed countries, Singapore has a fast declining birth rate. The long-term effect is a shrinking population, and this has ill-effects on economy, defence, and politics. A Singaporean less is one less. This does not matter to large countries but critical to a small country like Singapore. As a way to cope with such a problem, Chinese Language B was introduced to allow students who have proven difficulty to learn the language at a lower level. At the same time, students who excel in the language were encouraged to study it at a higher first language level. When Chinese Language B was first introduced, there were concerns among the Chinese teaching professionals and academics that might open a flood gate—parents might find excuse to have their children study the lower-than-second-language programme. Surprisingly, the number of students opting for Chinese Language B was less than expected. On the contrary, more parents preferred to have their children study a higher level of the language. Has the society and family supported the learning of Chinese Language? According to the 2002 census, Singapore’s population was becoming increasingly bilingual. As shown in Table 12.3, among Singaporean-Chinese 15 years old and above, the proportion of monolinguals decreased from 1990 to 2000, and at the same time, there was an obvious increase in bilinguals. Specifically, over the 10 years, English monolinguals reduced by 3.4%, and Chinese monolinguals reduced by

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Table 12.3 Home language in 1990 and 2000 (15 years old and above)

Table 12.4 Home languages in 1990 and 2000 (25- to 39-year-olds)

English only Chinese only Chinese and English Others

1990 19.8 40.6 37.8 1.9

1990 24.6 30.4 44.8 0.3

English Mandarin Chinese dialects Others

2000 16.4 32.0 48.3 3.3

2000 25.2 46.5 28.0 0.3

Difference 3.4 8.6 +10.5 +1.4

Difference +0.6 +16.1 16.8 –

Table 12.5 Home languages in 1990 and 2000 (5- to 14- and 55- to 24-year-olds)

English Mandarin Chinese dialects Others

5- to 14-year-olds 1990 2000 23.3 35.8 57.6 59.6 18.9 4.3 0.2 0.4

Diff. +12.5 +2.0 14.6 +0.2

15- to 24-year-olds 1990 2000 19.9 21.5 28.5 59.8 51.5 18.4 0.2 0.3

Diff. +1.6 +31.3 33.1 +0.1

8.6%, but Chinese-English bilinguals increased by 10.5%. This is indeed an encouraging trend. Such trends can be expected to provide a bilingual environment to the younger people. This, again, can be seen in the census figures. As shown in Table 12.4, among Singaporean-Chinese aged 25–39, English speakers increased by 0.6% over 10 years, but Mandarin speakers increased by 16.1% accompanied by a decrease of 16.8% of dialect speakers (Table 12.4). These changes can be attributed to two events. Firstly, with the implementation of a national unified curriculum in the late 1970s, this age group had more contact with Chinese Language in the daily life. Secondly, Chinese dialects were replaced by Mandarin as a result of the Speak Mandarin Campaign (Ministry of Education, 2011). This age group consisted of parents, and their language preference can be expected to influence the younger generation. As shown in Table 12.5, according to the census, during the 10 years of 1990–2000, among 5- to 14-year-olds, English speakers increased by 12.5%, Mandarin speakers increased by 2.0%, but dialect speakers decreased by 14.6%. For the 15–24 age group, English speakers increased only by 1.6%, Mandarin speakers increased by 31.3%, and dialect speakers decreased by 33.1%. In time to come, these people will become parents, and their impact on their children is something to watch. More recently, English has become the most spoken language at home, being used by 37% of residents aged 5 and older, compared with 35% who spoke Mandarin the most. However, it was also reported that Singapore has become more bilingual, with 73% being literate at least in two languages. By comparison,

References

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the corresponding figures of bi-literate Singapore are 71% in 2010 and 56% in 2000, showing an increase of 15% over 10 years or 1.5% per annum.

Conclusion Although the classification of languages seems quite simple, in fact, the language environment in Singapore is complex. For instance, a three-generation family have a large variety of languages. For Singapore-Chinese, there are monolingual Englishspeaking families, but the number is not large. There are more bilingual ChineseEnglish-speaking families. The grandparents may speak one language or a combination of two languages of English, Mandarin, or Chinese dialect. The parents may speak only one language, either Mandarin or English, or both languages. Thus, children grow up in a complex language environment but get by well. As an aside, it is worth mentioning that many families have household maids who come from foreign countries. They interact with young children every day, and the influence on language learning is yet to be studied. This essay explores the influences on Chinese Language learning with reference to the school, the family, and the society. And, the ten questions raised here beg answers. When some partial answers are attempted, more questions may arise, because language learning is a complicated matter in a multilingual environment and there are no shortcuts. Therefore, we who are concerned about the students’ language learning need to collaborate, cooperate, explore, and adjust, thereby solving and preventing problems from occurring. Note: The original essay in Chinese was published in 2005 in the Zhongjiao Xuebao (中教学报), Journal of the Chinese Secondary Teachers’ Association. Although more than a decade has passed, the questions are believed to be still worth pondering about.

References Al-Hoorie, A. H. (2017, March). Sixty years of language motivation research: Looking back and looking forward. SAGE Open. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244017701976. Bracken, B. A. (1982). Effect of personalized basal stories on the reading comprehension of fourthgrade poor and average readers. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 7(4), 320–324. Chee, M. W. L., Tan, E. W. L., & Thied, T. (1999, April). Mandarin and English single word processing studies with functional magnetic resonance imaging. The Journal of Neuroscience, 19(8), 3050–3056. Cole, M., & Hall, C. (2002). Gendered readings: Learning from children’s reading choices. Journal of Research in Reading, 25, 96–108. Common Core State Standards Initiative. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.corestandards.org/ ELA-Literacy/L/. Council of Europe. (2019). Common European framework of reference for languages. Retrieved from https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages.

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Craik, F. I. M., & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11, 671–684. Deci, E. L. (1971). Effects of externally mediated rewards on intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 18, 105–115. Flashcard Learner. (n.d.). Hermann Ebbinghaus—A pioneer of memory research. Flashcard learners. Retrieved from http://www.flashcardlearner.com/articles/hermann-ebbinghaus-a-pio neer-of-memory-research/. Garcia, O., & Wei, L. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism, and education. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Goh, K. S. (1979). Report on the Ministry of Education 1978. Singapore: Ministry of Education. Lee, H. L. (1999). Ministerial statement by DPM BG Lee Hsien Loong on Chinese Language in Schools in Parliament on 29 January 1999. Singapore: Ministry of Education. LoBue, V. (2018, June). Motivating children without rewards: When you should throw those sticker charts away. Psychology Today. McLeod, S. A. (2019). What is the zone of proximal development? Retrieved from https://www. simplypsychology.org/Zone-of-Proximal-Development.html. Merisuo-Storm, T. (2006, April). Girls and boys like to read and write different texts. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 50(2), 111–125. Ministry of Education. (2011). Mother Tongue Languages Review Committee. Singapore: Ministry of Education. Morrow, C. (n.d.). Caught or taught? Combining indirect and direct language instruction. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/3609651/Caught_or_Taught_Combining_Indirect_ and_Direct_Language_Instruction. Ng, T. (2016). The past: A review of the five reviews. In K. Soh (Ed.), Teaching Chinese language in Singapore: Retrospect and challenges. Singapore: Springer. Ong, T. C. (1992). Chinese language teaching and learning in Singapore: Report of the Chinese Language Review Committee. Singapore: Ministry of Education. Stinson, A. (2019, March). Does practice really make perfect? Science says it doesn’t & an expert has a better alternative. Elite Daily. Retrieved from https://www.elitedaily.com/p/does-practicereally-make-perfect-science-says-it-doesnt-expert-has-a-better-alternative-16819187. Soh, K. (2018). Tests and exams in Singapore schools: What school leaders, teachers, and parents need to know. Singapore: World Scientific. Soh, K. (2008). Is time NOT always a factor of achievement? A lesson from re-analyzing PISA data. International Journal of TESOL and Learning, 1(1), 50–64. Retrieved from http://www. untestedideas.com/journals.php?journal¼IJTL. Soh, K. C. (2010). Bilingual dual-coding and code-switching. Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching, 1(2), 271–296. Soh, K. C. (2011). Testing students’ bilingual ability in a bilingual manner. Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching, 2(2), 253–266. Soh, K. C. (2012). Bilingual testing at the phrase and text levels and its implication for bilingual programmes. Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching, 3(2), 253–266. Soh, K. C., & Neo, E. G. (1993). The priming effect of English texts on the comprehension of Chinese tests. Singapore: Centre for Applied Educational Research, National Institute of Education. Soh, K. C. (1993). Language motivation and ethnic attitude of high-ability students who attended ethnically homogeneous secondary school. Language and Education, 7(4), 271–281. Wee, H. T. (2004). Report of the Chinese Curriculum and Pedagogy Review Committee. Singapore: Ministry of Education.

Chapter 13

Research into Teaching of Chinese Language in Singapore: From Students to Students

A model of research on the teaching of Chinese Language in the Singapore context with reference to three basic sciences is proposed. The need to reference the sciences is briefly explicated, and specific areas of needed research are suggested.

Many problems and issues pertaining to the teaching of Chinese Language in the Singapore context have been identified and discussed in this collection of essays. It is readily appreciated that many of these problems and issues call for empirical research, over and above reasoned discourse. As an ending essay, this chapter revisits some of those concerns identified and suggests an integrative approach to empirical research studies which should be able to provide answers, partially at least. In the Singapore curriculum, Chinese Language is taught as a standing-alone subject taking up between 15% and 18% of curriculum time. This amount of time is similar to or more than other subjects, and yet many students find the language difficult. There are many discussions on Chinese Language education, which, as the present writer understands, is a much broader and complex issue than Chinese Language teaching, which is a more focused and simpler issue. The problem of Chinese Language teaching deals mainly with the curricular and pedagogical aspects with consideration for student ability. These are more operational in nature as to what the goals to reach are and how they can be reached. The present writer also believes that the core of the problem of Chinese Language teaching lies with teaching and not Chinese Language, although admittedly it is one of the most difficult language to learn (see Chap. 5, this volume). In other words, Chinese Language is not the problem; the problem is how to teach it well. The difficulty in the teaching and learning of Chinese Language in the Singapore context is related to two root problems. First, Chinese Language is indeed more difficult to learn when compared with English (Lyons, 2017). Secondly, being a standing-alone subject in the curriculum, its teaching does not get the needed reinforcement from the other subjects, and, as a corollary, it is seen as useless, thus affecting students’ (and their parents’) attitudes and motivation.

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Fig. 13.1 Research model

Against this background, this article ventures to propose a model for research into Chinese Language which takes the students as a starting point and ends with the students.

The Model The diagram (Fig. 13.1) shows the interconnections among factors affecting student learning and hence teachers’ teaching. At the top layer is research problems which has two sub-levels, the student learning needs and difficulties, to be identified by the researchers in collaboration with teachers, through classroom observations and study of students’ work samples, including assessment results. The identified problems (i.e. difficulties and errors) are then related to possible causes in connection with three basic sciences, namely, Chinese Linguistics, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics, as the problem may well be due to or related to factors in one or more of these fundamental disciplines. The next layer is classroom reality. The identified learning problems and their relations with the basic sciences will have implications for teaching in the classroom, and these need be empirically checked through classroom teaching for their validity and usefulness. The final layer is research outcomes and uses. This entails sharing of research findings at conferences and journal publication for academic purposes and, for practical purposes, the development of instructional materials (including textbooks), sharpening of teachers’ skills through in-service training, and forums for teachers to share experiences.

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In short, the process begins with the problems and difficulties experienced by students and ends at benefitting the students in their learning.

Basic Sciences How the basic sciences will contribute to the research process is discussed below. The illustration does not try to be comprehensive, but just point to some relevant examples. Chinese Linguistics Research on the teaching of Chinese Language cannot be separated totally from a link with some aspects of Chinese Linguistics. First, there is a need to have a reference to standard Chinese that will enable the researcher to decide whether student responses gathered during data collection through observation or testing are acceptable or substandard or erroneous. It is obvious that such information is needed before any further analysis for causal explanations are possible. However, as language is evolving, with new concepts and new ways of expressing are introduced into it, there are questions of what an error is and what a variant is. Are students in transition to achieving L2 proficiency (i.e. interlanguage), or have they fossilized? If the research have found errors or variants in students’ products or output and stops there, the teachers are not likely to benefit from such research and will say “We already know that”. Thus, reference to Chinese Linguistics for error analysis may not be sufficient, and it is necessary to go further to contrastive analysis (in spite of its limitation) with reference to the other language (here, English) to find probable root causes of the observed irregularities in the students’ products. Yang, Cooe, and Sheng (2017) provide a meta-analysis of crosslinguistic transfer between Chinese and English. Psycholinguistics Some problems in the teaching of Chinese Language have little, if at all, to do with the language itself but are psycholinguistic in nature. For example, it is a common observation that Chinese Language is difficult basically because of its orthographic system. This makes Hanzi difficult to learn and remember. In this regard, the findings of learning psychology and memory experiments conducted in the Ebbinghaus tradition and later studies on levels of processing (Craik & Lockhart, 1972) are directly relevant or indirectly inspiring. Then, there are the episodic and semantic memories (Essyat & Davachi, 2011) which have implications for instruction and textbooks writing (see also Chap. 7 in this volume). Besides, motivation to learn a second language has been an extensive research, especially in the Canadian context and more recently in the British context of L2-self (Dornyei, 2005; Magid, 2012). There are also the findings of the psychological and physiological benefits of being bilinguals (Bialystok, 2011). These two areas, memory and bilingualism, have implications for the teaching of Chinese Language in Singapore for its unique language environments.

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Sociolinguistics The problems of teaching Chinese Language in Singapore cannot be understood without due consideration for the sociolinguistic factors in Singapore. The consistently changing landscape of mother tongue languages (MTLS, namely, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil) vis-à-vis English is that English is fast replacing the MTLS as the main home languages of Primary 1 students (Ministry of Education, 2011). It is predicted through extrapolation of data that Chinese Language will cease to be the main home language of Primary 1 children in about 20 years from now. The changed language background of the majority of students has implications for Chinese Language curriculum design, textbook writing, and classroom teaching. Moreover, Chinese Language use in Singapore depends on locations and social transactions, and many people (students and adults alike) are code-switching so frequently that it has become a norm to mix languages in daily social interactions and even formal occasions. Then, there is the question of language identity which has not been sufficiently research on here.

Needed Research Using the model, many research topics can be generated. Some urgently needed ones are as follows: What is the expected standard of Chinese Language as a Second Language? The question has been discussed in an earlier chapter and will not be repeated here. In an exploratory study by the present author, to operationalize the standard of Chinese Language of Singapore in terms of that of China, a set of Primary 1 texts from a Chinese textbook was found to be equivalent to Primary 3 of Singapore texts, and a set of Primary 6 China text was found to be of a standard equivalent to Pre-university 1 of Singapore. This suggests that the 2-year gap is the starting point and the gap get wider with class levels. Further study using more texts is needed for a confirmation. This, however, pertains only to reading comprehension. Similar studies are needed for oral interaction (i.e. listening and speaking) and writing (composition). In connection with these, the Singapore-Chinese word list needs to be compared with China’s word list. Besides, it is also useful to study the commonly used sentence structures in Singapore textbooks with those of China. Where should the emphasis be for teaching Chinese Language in Singapore? Traditionally, learning Chinese Language is to learn the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In recent years, to these four skills are added oral interaction and written interaction as an emphasis on the function of social communication of the language. However, since pure listening and pure speaking are not natural, the two skills should not be treated separately of each other but combined in the same social interaction process; hence, oral interaction (listening and speaking) should be considered and hence taught and assessed as one integrated skill. On the other hand, reading and writing are two skills that can be developed and assessed independently. In sum, for Chinese Language teaching, there are now three skills and not six (Ministry of Education, 2011). In the Singapore context, for social

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interaction and acquisition of knowledge, Chinese Language teaching could focus largely on oral interaction and reading comprehension, with writing playing a minor role. If this shift of emphasis is acceptable, effective teaching of the three skills need be systematically and vigorously researched. Are the current teaching methodologies effective? The teaching of Chinese Language in Singapore has been criticized as being archaic, boring, and overdemanding. The situation has changed somewhat in the recent years with the introduction of more student-centred learning activities and the use of modern technologies, following the 2010 review conducted by the Ministry of Education. However, the teaching is still mainly monolingual in approach following the direct or audiolingual methodology. In view of the fact that the students are learning two languages concurrently and there is a trend to become stronger in English, the teaching of Chinese Language, for greater effectiveness, may need to take this into account by adopting a bilingual approach to capitalize on the students’ language learning background and experience. Research on L1 in L2 learning has evidenced the effectiveness of bilingual approach (Yang et al., 2017), and not to use it means not maximizing the students’ learning capacity. Is the current assessment adequate? Traditionally, assessment focuses on testing students at predetermined intervals, and the information thus gathered are used for administrative purposes. The results of such summative assessment, besides serving administrative purposes, inform the students (and their parents) about the achievement attained but come in too late to guide learning. In the recent years, the concept of assessment for learning (formative assessment) has been advocated, and teachers are expected to incorporate this as an organic process in teaching. However, as the saying goes, tradition dies hard. Chinese Language teachers might have conceptually learned the differences between the two approaches to assessment, but whether they have changed their assessment practices is yet to be researched on. Incidentally, the SCCL has just planned such a study, and its outcomes are something to watch in the near future. A related question that calls for attention is whether formative assessment should be different from summative assessment in terms of content coverage and test format. Moreover, if the emphasis of teaching Chinese Language has shifted to social functions, how is this reflected in the assessment in terms of weights for oral interaction, reading comprehension, and written interaction? Yet another topic for research is the use and effects of above-level testing which is rather common in Singapore schools. It has been pointed out that above-level testing (Soh, 2011), in Chinese Language and other subjects, yields assessment data which is highly reliable (i.e. students always do poorly) but not valid (i.e. the scores always under-estimate their real standards). These are some aspects of assessment which should be aligned to the curricular goals of teaching Chinese Language in the Singapore context. How to increase the practice of Chinese Language? As Chinese Language is taught as a standing-alone subject, what students have learned does not get a chance to be used in other subjects. This lack of application has negative consequences. Although practice does not always make perfect, a reasonable amount of practice is

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80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30%

20% 10% 0%

1990

2005 Chinese

2009 English

Fig. 13.2 Percentages of main home languages of Primary 1 students

necessary for effective learning for any subject, and Chinese Language is no exception. Teachers (and parents) need to be aware of the famous Yerkes-Dodson curve which indicates that optimal rather than maximal practice (stress, motivation) produced the best results. Over-reliance on the so-called practice tests is quite common and its effect has not be researched on. A more positive approach to compensate for the lack of practice is to encourage students to do more “outside reading”, reading beyond the textbooks. But, how? Besides, another pertinent question is how to integrate co-curricular activities that involve Chinese Language with language learning so that the activities are indeed co-curricular and not merely extra-curricular. In short, students need more opportunities to use Chinese Language they have learned in the classroom, and such opportunities will have to come from outside the curriculum and such opportunities need be used wisely. How to encourage more use of Chinese Language in families and the society? While Singapore strives to become bilingual, the family seems to go the opposite direction. Figure 13.2 shows the changes in home language. As shown therein, in 1990, the percentages are 70% and 20% for Chinese Language and English, respectively. Fifteen years later, in 2005, the percentages are 50% and 50%. After this the relative percentages reversed to 40% and 50% (Ministry of Education, 2011). Based on the trends, the projection is that by the year 2038 (20 years from now!), Chinese Language will cease to be the main home language of all Primary 1 students. This put Chinese Language of Singapore as an endangered language, if nothing is done to reverse the trend. While there is an obvious need to reverse the trend, it is also useful to find out why parents gradually decrease the use of Chinese Language as the main home language and, in conjunction, how the school can compensate for this lack of support for learning Chinese Language at home. As experiences of other countries with similar problem show, to effectively revitalize the language, it needs the concerted efforts of the society and the school.

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Teachers’ Roles A discussion of research on the teaching of Chinese Language is incomplete without a discussion on the roles teacher can play. Traditionally, teachers play a secondary role in research: they assist in data collection for surveys and conduct experimental teaching conceptualized by researchers from universities or education authorities. These are necessary and important because without the teachers’ participation, the research is just impossible. However, this tradition puts the teachers in a passive position. While such passive involvement may be necessary in some cases, especially for studies at the zonal or national level, teachers can play a more active role in action research at the school or classroom levels. Although some of the needed research suggested above are to be conducted at the macro level beyond the school, most of them can be carried out by teachers on a smaller scale in the school or classroom. Traditionally, research on teaching Chinese Language (or any other subjects) are expected to involve a large sample. However, large-scale research is beyond the resource and purview of teachers. Teachers ought to be constantly in search of better teaching outcomes and understanding of the processes; they therefore should be encouraged and even required to conduct action research with their students, with the view of improved practices. Although such small-scale action research, which serves the specific group of students, are not generalizable, with the use of meta-analysis techniques, their findings can be accumulated when many similar studies have been conducted. The meta-analysis results can help to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching methods experimented and predict possible outcomes of similar experiments being considered (Hattie, 2009; Soh, 2010).

Conclusion It is argued here that the problems of teaching Chinese Language in Singapore are not so much a problem of the language being a difficult one than a problem of teaching. While Chinese Language per se admittedly poses some learning problems mainly because of its orthography, factors of psychological and sociological nature influence the learning processes and hence the achievement in the long run. Therefore, research on the teaching of Chinese Language in Singapore has to make references to the prevalent psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic conditions in Singapore for a proper understanding of the problems before these can be successively solved or, at least, minimized. Moreover, as the classroom is where the actions are and Chinese Language teachers are the key players, they need be more actively involved in research to solve problems in situ through conducting their own research studies the findings of which can later be meta-analysed for widely application. Note: This article is based on the Inaugural Speech when the author was conferred Senior Fellow of the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language, on 1 April 2016.

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References Bialystok, E. (2011). Reshaping the mind: The benefits of bilingualism. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65(4), 229–235. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025406. Craik, F. I. M., & Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11, 671–684. Dornyei, Z. (2005). The psychology of the language learner: Individual differences in second language acquisition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Essyat, Y., & Davachi, L. (2011, February). What constitutes an episode in episodic memory? Psychological Science, 22(2), 243–252. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610393742. Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London, England: Routledge. Lyons, D. (2017, May). The 6 hardest languages for English speakers to learn. Babbel Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/6-hardest-languages-for-englishspeakers-to-learn. Magid, M. (2012). The L2 motivational self system from a Chinese perspective: A mixed methods study. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 6(1), 69–90. Ministry of Education. (2011). Mother Tongue Languages Review Committee. Singapore: Ministry of Education. Soh, K. (2010). What are the chances of success for my project? And, what if it was already done? Using meta-analysis effect sizes to inform project decision-making. Educational Research Journal, 25(1), 13–25. Soh, K. C. (2011, October). Above-level testing: Assumed benefits and consequences. IDEA2, (2). Retrieved from https://studylib.net/doc/18393472/above-level-testing-%E2%80%93-assumedbenefits-and-consequences. Yang, M., Cooe, N., & Sheng, L. (2017). An investigation of cross-linguistic transfer between Chinese and English: A meta-analysis. Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education, 2, Article 15.

Epilogue

Kaycheng Soh Bilingualism has gone through three phases as its conceptualization changes over the years. To begin with, there was, ironically, the monolingual approach which treated languages as separate and the teaching of one language therefore made no reference to the other language. In this conceptualization, teachers were advised not to mix languages in the classroom, and students were forbidden and even punished for language mixing. This approach worked partly because the teachers are themselves monolingual and linguistic purism was upheld by scholars. Then came the bilingual approach as it was realized that keeping languages apart was not only difficult but also unnatural; and recent studies of brain imaging support this. This approach was attested by interlanguage which was a hybrid of two languages with its own linguistic systems. Code-mixing and code-switching were then seen as a mixture of positive and negative influences of the other language. As interlanguage is seen as a natural and necessary transition to bilingualism, it was to be tolerated, at least for the time being. Now, translanguagging or translinguistics recommends that for effective concurrent learning of languages, all the learner’s language resources should be capitalized on, thus allowing total freedom to mix two or more languages in the classroom. And, there are studies which show this works. In a very real sense, this reflects the reality outside the classroom. As people of the world are becoming more bilingual or multilingual and their contacts are maximized through modern transportation and digital communication, such total freedom to use languages in the same transaction is going to be the norm (or, it is already there), not only in the classroom but also beyond it. Singapore has a rather complex language environment with so many possible combinations of different languages in the society, the family, and the classroom. This has implications for the teaching and learning of languages which needs perforce to take into consideration the interactions or mutual influences of languages.

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Epilogue

In this collection of essays written over more than a decade, I share concerns and visions regarding some of the intricate and hitherto unsettled problems of the teaching and learning of Chinese Language in an environment where English is learned concurrently. Due to my academic background, I tend to see language learning problems as psychological or psycholinguistic in nature. I believe that by applying the relevant psychological or psycholinguistic concepts and principles, the problems can be minimized if not eradicated. However, this should not preclude other perspectives which can be as helpful, but this is beyond my limitation. The issues raised in this publication are real and practical, and they call for more thorough discussion and empirical experimentation.