SG Education System: Disadvantageous to those from Chinese-Speaking Families

This post will be divided into two parts. In the first half of my post, I will talk about how the Singapore education system greatly favours those from English-speaking over those from Chinese-speaking families. 

In the second part, I will be sharing about how I beat the system and scored distinction for Chinese without speaking it at home or in school. 

In my recent post about 5 Difference between Neighbourhood and Elite schools in Singapore, reader Ethan Lee raised an interesting observation about Mandarin speaking vs. English speaking Singaporean Chinese.

Lee had been in an elite secondary school and encountered neighborhood school kids in Poly. He realized that people from Chinese speaking families generally dominated polytechnics, ITEs and neighbourhood schools. 

These were his observations:

1. “They spoke Chinese a lot more, it was ok to be bad in English and not much better at Chinese at the same time.

2. “Also generally speaking, the better educated, and ones in better jobs tends to be our English speaking demographic. Most MNCs, even in non-English critical jobs, require a good grasp of English at least so you pass the interviews. Ivy league, and other most renowned educational institutions all teach in English.”

photo credit: The Asian Parent

While I don’t have the statistics to prove anything, generally I do agree with his observation.

In Singapore we generally have two types of Singaporean Chinese. Most can speak both English and Mandarin. However, there are the ones who are more comfortable in speaking English with friends and family members. And, the other who are more comfortable in using Mandarin. In this entry, for convenience sake, we shall label them both as "English Speaking" and "Chinese speaking".

In my 'elite school friends' circle, I do notice that almost 80 percent of them come from English speaking families. They are either stronger in English or effectively bilingual. 

By bilingual, I mean being able to speak something close to standard Putonghua with work and academic experiences in China (exchange programs, internships), not the type of Singdarin peppered with English and Singlish phrases which you may hear among neighborhood school kids.

Of course, I am not saying that there are NO elite people from Chinese speaking families. In VJC, many of the students came from Anglican High School and Chung Cheng High (Main). They spoke slightly more Chinese and were very brilliant people.

My cousin’s family is another example. They are pretty immersed into Chinese culture, having studied in Beijing when younger. Both of them are in Hwa Chong Institution. They take part in their school’s Chinese Drama Society and also in Crosstalk (相聲) outside school where they perform regularly.

Like Ethan, I had similarly observed that there is generally a larger proportion of Mandarin-speaking people in neighbourhood schools, Poly, ITE etc. 

It is not that these people cannot speak English, they are just not very good at it. As such, they prefer to speak Mandarin in social contexts like with close friends or at home.

For some, their Mandarin isn't superb either. They don't particularly excel in Mandarin in school and they speak in Singdarin (A mixture of Putonghua + English + Singlish).

Having noted the differences in achievement...

Why is it that majority of the elite in Singapore do come English speaking backgrounds or better yet, are bilingual and bi-cultural

In my personal view, the Singapore education system actually largely benefits those who are from English-speaking families, enabling them to excel.

It is the same everywhere, if you speak the language and lingo of the people in power, you have more opportunities to advance.

You see, if you come from an English speaking family and are not fluent in Mandarin, your opportunities won't be limited much because the education system doesn't really disadvantage those who are only weak in Mandarin.

- If you are bad in Chinese, at most, you would take Chinese Language B which is very easy to pass.

- You can be excused from taking Mandarin. Many of my English speaking friends also got excused from taking Chinese from the Ministry of Education due to ‘dyslexia’. I am sure that there are legitimate cases but I am not sure how many of these cases are real. 

- If these rich children from English speaking families really can’t cope at school, their parents will then send them to international school or to study abroad in UK or Australia.

While school fees are very expensive, not knowing Chinese isn't a problem at all. In fact, you also get to take a much easier version of A levels and increase your chances of getting into a top university abroad. 

classic chinese slit eyes

On the other hand, if you come from a Chinese-speaking family and you are not good in English, it is a lot harder to excel in our education system.

Here is why:

- The language of instruction for subjects like science, geography, history, economics and all are in English. 

- In O levels, English must be counted as your L1, unless you take Higher Chinese. There is no option of English Language B.

- In JC, not doing well for Chinese doesn’t affect you much but screwing up in General Paper will affect your university admission as in many prestigious or humanities based faculty, you are denied entry if you get below a B in GP. The only faculty with a cut off grade for Chinese is the Chinese language faculty. 

Thus, being weak in English will severely limit one’s opportunities as compared to being weak in Mandarin. 

Perhaps for this reason, there was a huge outcry from Chinese speaking families when the Ministry of Education consideredlowering the weightage for Chinese for PSLE in 2010, claiming that this move will disadvantage them even further. 

While the education system provides plenty of safety nets for those who are bad in Mandarin as compared to those who are weaker in English, it also continues to reward those who are good at Mandarin. 

Here are some initiatives:

- Bicultural studies program (2 bonus points in O levels plus tons of exchange trips to China)

- Higher Mother Tongue (2 bonus points in O level

However, to reap the maximum benefits of these rewards, you need a good enough level of English to do reasonably well in other subjects in the first place.

Perhaps due to the lower importance of Mandarin in school; association with Chinese speaking to the lower classes in society and resentment towards Chinese Nationals, Chinese has been labelled like a 'subpar language'.

My friends from the Chinese language faculty often complain that people give them dirty looks when they tell them their major or automatically assume that their English isn't good. 

If you are experiencing people saying you are going to be a teacher or work in a museum, don't get too affected. If you don't place your self-esteem on things like social status, you won't even be upset by those comments at all. Just like how I don't get unhappy when everyone thinks I will become a journalist or tv broadcaster.

I don't think much can be done about the inequalities here.

However, if we continue to treat Mandarin as like a sub-par language in school and in society, I don't think students are going to be very motivated to improve their Mandarin and become bilingual.

As I have argued before, perhaps reintroducing dialects is one of the ways to boost our standard of Mandarin and interest in Chinese languages and culture as a whole.

Beat the system: How to score distinction for Mandarin if you don't speak it at home or in school? 

(You can skip this section and scroll down if it is irrelevant to you)

Having briefly discussed how English-speaking people benefit more in our education system, entrenching their dominance and power in our society, I shall now talk about my experience as a student from an English speaking background and how I still managed to excel in Chinese.

I wish I could share the story of "How I scored distinction for English all the way without speaking it at home" I think if I had such hacks, it will benefit those who come from Chinese speaking families greatly and help to equalize the playing field. However, the truth is I don't know how.

Perhaps the best person to share this story will be a PRC scholar. There are several Chinese Nationals who scored A or B for General Paper in A levels despite having learnt English at a much later age. Thus, coming from a Chinese-speaking background is no excuse to not be good in Mandarin at all. If you work hard and smart, you can definitely do it.

So here is my story of how I scored distinction for O level and A level mandarin without speaking a single word of it at home or in school.

I come from a Hokkien and English speaking family. When I was young, until I was in late primary school, I lived with my grandmother and spoke Hokkien mostly at home. With my own parents, we spoke English. There was no one who could speak Mandarin to me at home at all. My parents were not fluent in it. Similarly, my grandparents didn't know how to speak it well. 

To make matters worse, I went to “Angmoh-pai” (English Speaking) schools all my life. In Kindergarten, I studied in YWCA. For primary school, I went to CHIJ Kellock (this is a very good primary school btw. Please send your daughters there!). For secondary school, I went to Fairfield Methodist Secondary School. Amongst those who took Chinese O levels in 2007, there were only 9 people who got A1 in the entire level. =O

Thus, in these 13 years of education, my peers and I conversed in English. As the culture was more western, I wasn't exposed to Chinese/Korean/Japanese/Taiwanese dramas. Similarly, I didn't really listen to Chinese songs. Well, the PRCs and some NA NT friends spoke Chinese but other than that, no one else did.

The only time where I heard people who did well in their grades speaking Chinese in school for the first time ever was in VJC where the Anglican High, Dunman High and RV kids were speaking to each other in Mandarin.

My only exposure to Mandarin was through tuition (during kindergarten, P6 and sec 4) and during Mandarin lessons.

Given that I neither spoke Mandarin at home nor in school or even immersed in Mandarin pop culture, I was at a significant disadvantage. 

My only advantage was that since young was that I was good at analyzing and beating systems.

As such, in primary school, Mandarin was very easy for me. This is because during that time, the Chinese Language syllabus was designed in a way that if you mastered this book called 华文词语手册.

For each word taught in a chapter… all you need to do is learn what other words it could be matched with; how to make sentences with them and what they meant….. you could get an A. So I got an A for PSLE by following a few simple hacks.

The syllabus remained the same in secondary 1, so I scored 85/100. As such, I was selected for an opportunity to upgrade into the special / higher Chinese stream.

I decided to take Higher Chinese for two reasons. Firstly my friend was going and I didn't want to pangseh her. I also felt that getting two bonus points even if I scored a C6 in Higher Chinese for O levels was a pretty good deal.

However, in secondary 2, something terrible happened. The syllabus changed to what it is now. I could no longer rely on my trusty 华文词语手册 to help me get an A. 

I was faced with two challenges – (i) Adapting to a new system and ball game and (ii) Dealing with the much tougher syllabus offered in Higher Chinese.

To make matters worse, I had to take Chinese Language examination at the end of secondary three before taking the Higher Chinese paper in sec 4. So, I had only about one year or so to improve my Chinese and figure out this new system.

One year to improve my command of the language was simply insufficient, as such I focused my energy on beating the system. 

Here are some tips which I used to score A in Mandarin for O levels and A levels. I hope these tips would be useful to those struggling with Mandarin like how I did.

1) Composition / Zuo Wen

I analysed the way compositions were marked and there were two main components – Language score and content score.

Since I had quite a lot of general knowledge for my age back then, content wasn’t a problem. However, I felt that language was the main area pulling me down. I wasn't very good in my grammar and vocabulary,

To score for language, I realized that I had to improve the way I describe things. To start reading Chinese books and watching movies was a very slow way. So, I decided to do something faster. 

For story based essays, I knew generally my language score could come from knowing how to describe weather; people and feelings. I sourced model compositions for phrases that would enable me to describe these things well. I made notes and organized these phrases according to themes. Under the following themes, there will be 4-5 phrases or even a paragraph which would help me describe this well:

• Good weather
• Bad weather
• Young female appearance
• Old female appearance
• Young man appearance
• Old man appearance
• Sad
• Angry
• Happy

By spamming all these ‘cheem phrases’ into my essay, I could make up for all the language marks I was losing due to poor grammar.