Singapore’s compulsory mother tongue language instruction in schools has helped the English-speaking country preserve its Asian identity, a linguist says.
“The idea is that if they could at least learn the language while they are still in school, and they have this foundation because the key to mastering a language is that you have to learn it at a young age,” said National Institute of Education, Singapore linguist Neo Peng Fu.
The languages range from Tamil, Malay or Chinese and a student has to learn the language that aligns with their ethnicity.
Language has been a key issue for the multicultural country since its founding in 1965, with the Government engineering the country’s dominant language to be English, to connect Singapore with the world and provide a neutral language for different cultures to communicate with each other in.
The positioning of Tamil, Malay and Mandarin as the other official languages led some people to change the language they spoke over the decades.
“This first stage of language shift is from dialects to Mandarin, Mandarin being a school language,” Neo said about the Chinese language changes in Singapore.
“We observed that there’s another phase of language shift happen in Singapore, beginning from the mid 1990s to the early years of the 2000s.
“This is the shift from using Mandarin as the predominant home language in Singapore and Chinese-Singaporean home to English being the predominant language in Chinese-Singaporean home.”
Māori Language Commissioner Professor Rawinia Higgins said New Zealand could learn from Singapore’s strategy.
“Appreciating that it is a different context, I think what it signals around understanding identity and seeing identity as a fundamental part of their social and economic and political situation and that they’re not afraid to embrace bilingualism or multilingualism as a way of positioning themselves as a nation and I think it’s there’s stuff to be learnt from that.
“Whilst we might be taking it from a different perspective, I think fundamentally learning languages being bilingual, being multilingual is already been proven that it strengthens cognitive abilities so that can only improve educational spaces, that has a knock on effect to the economy.”
Higgins said New Zealand was not ready to make Te Reo Māori compulsory in schools, because there’s not the workforce capacity.
She said the Government’s decision to reallocate $30 million from Te Reo Māori lessons for teachers to funding maths resources for primary and intermediate students has affected momentum.
“Creating more capability, albeit at a rudimentary level, to start building up that momentum and I think one of the things that people don’t fully appreciate around language policy and language revitalisation is that it’s a multi-generational approach and so you have to start somewhere,” Higgins said.
“I was very disappointed when that program stopped because we were just starting to see these cohorts of non-Māori and Māori teachers embracing it and feeling comfortable to be able to deliver Te Reo Māori curriculum.”
Education Minister Erica Stanford said she stands by the “tough decision.”
“When I saw that only 60% of teachers were finishing the course, that we weren’t tracking any student outcomes or knowing if it was even being used in the classroom and a lot of it was being done at a level that was good for people’s knowledge, but not useful in the classroom.
“I mean, that is not good use of money and we can contract much better.”
Stanford said she hoped the Government could fund the lessons with a new evaluation approach this year.
“We will look in the next budget to re-contract that and be a lot smarter with what we do and a lot smarter with tracking who’s finishing, what level they’re doing, making sure that we’re getting it in the right places where there are high populations of Māori tamariki.”
‘Not just a language’
Yusof Ishak Secondary School head of mother tongue languages Wong Peizi said teachers facing the challenge of motivating students to learn incorporate wider aspects of language education.
“It’s not just a language, but how this language is related to the roots of your family, the culture behind this language itself,” Peizi said.
“We also have after school programs such as a mother tongue fortnight where we introduce some cultural activities to the students so that all these cultural activities actually relate to their language learning as well.”
She said teachers help students who require additional support grasping lesson content after school too.
Group discussions, and gamification of learning through online tools are other approaches used to make learning more interesting for students.
Students recognise value
Students 1News spoke to say studying with classmates and realising the real-life value of learning a second language helped them to stay motivated to learn.
“I used to think it wasn’t that useful but I had this instance where I had to order from a store in a hawker centre and I wanted to try using the Malay language for the first time because I saw the hawker store worker, she was Malay,” student Danish Syakir Bin Muhammad Shazri said.
“I was like maybe I could give this a try and I did and it felt rewarding.”
For Mikaela Clark, learning Chinese helped her feel connected to her mum’s Chinese side of the family.
“I can learn more about our family’s past because they can tell us stories and if I didn’t learn this mother tongue I wouldn’t be able to communicate with them.
“Being able to talk to them or understand them makes me feel like I am Singaporean in that I am also part of their family,” she said.
Ongoing commitment required
Neo said an ongoing commitment from the Government was required, as well as support from parents.
“A meaningful question that we have to ask ourselves is that if we choose not to do anything in preserving the mother tongue languages, what would be the future for our community languages?”
Higgins said there was multiple factors to consider with progressing Māori language policy in the New Zealand education system and the levels of language use in the wider community was a contributor.
“It’s not quite as simple as, ‘You all now speak this,’ without some wider support beyond the classroom,” she said.
“Getting that powerful impact of language learning and language acquisition requires some of that immersive experience.”
Higgins said Māori immersion schools and kura kaupapa were under-resourced, and more schools were required.
She said making Māori compulsory to learn in all schools could reduce the funding available for students in immersion schools.
“We could be doing more in the immersion space to support and create at the immersion end but that’s not to not focus on the other end of the spectrum, because there are also Māori kids that are in the mainstream sector as well.
“It’s a way of trying to think around how do we position language policy that’s going to be more effective in terms of the impact it can make on supporting and building that capacity and capability,” Higgins said.
The Commissioner said all New Zealanders would benefit from learning Te Reo Māori, as the official language that makes the country unique.
“I think that sense of identity and social cohesion and having that shared understanding of the nuances of language but also… Te Reo Māori is so heavily embedded in the environment so it gives an understanding of place and where we come from and the names often emanate from the environment.”
“Our nation’s identity has this shared first language because it’s built into the environment and so how do we position ourselves as a strong opportunity in strengthening our economy?”
She encouraged school staff to see learning and using Te Reo Māori as a journey.
“They shouldn’t give up hope and should always think about this as a forever language and that they Kia Kaha (be strong) Te Reo Māori and so always keep chipping away at it because you can only get better with the more you use it.”
*1News travelled to Singapore with the support of the Asia New Zealand Foundation
