March 15, 2004
Yay!!! In the midst of typing out the following post, my horrible monday blues have been lifted by my badly-missed friend, Eug. My smart, witty, perceptive and charismatic knight. hehe And we are, finally, going to meet up to catch up on the past ... *gulp* 4 months! Sure it's gonna be a long session, with me doing the bitching half of the time. heh...
'From the papers...9'
I really do not wish to harp on this anymore than I have to, but the more Mr Shanmugaratnam (Acting minister, MOE) airs his opinions on the M.T issue, the more I feel like shouting, 'Just SHUT UP!' (muz be sthg to do with my mood today... shudders)
His self-founded assurance that students will not forsake their M.T now that the M.T grades will not be significant in university entry requirements lies in the fact that China is the next upcoming economic power and land of opportunities. In other words, he's saying that students are going to embrace Chinese because well, China is opening up! WOW!
And I heard that our dear minister knows not his own M.T? No? Oh, I must have heard wrongly.
Anyway, I wanna stress the point again. To learn Chinese or not is definitely a matter of personal choice and to each his own motivation. But, stop thinking that people will embrace the language just cos one country up in the north is opening its doors. Please, for the people of that country, Chinese is their native tongue, for us here, Chinese is our Second language. Try explaining to the students why our M.T is our SECOND language first.
Bai2 chi1. Don't understand? Go learn Chinese!
Posted by 杏 cy （Jancy） at 10:41