And I was a member of it!
It sounds so important, and the participants were elementary, middle, and high school teachers sent by the Ministry of Education to participate in this TEE (Teaching English in English) program at Korea University! Anyway, Jay’s mom and this other professor teaches this program, so she invited me and other students from China, Russia and Saudi Arabia to be panelists. Basically, we just sit in front of all those teachers, they ask us questions, and we answer. It’s like an exchange of ideas of how education is in other countries.
For some reason, A LOT of questions were put out to me, and reflecting back, I’m amazed I didn’t ruin Singapore’s reputation! Some of the questions they asked were really difficult for an amateur like me! I mean, it’s not like I researched about Singapore’s education or anything, so the only thing I could rely on was my own experience.
I think the one question that stumped me a lot was asked by an elementary school teacher,
“I’ve lived in Singapore for a year and did a little research about its education system. It is reported that Singapore’s students speed reading ability topped the world at about 220 words per minute (That had no effect on me. I mean, I don’t even know the average reading rate, much less the fastest). Singapore kids are faster than those native speakers! Why is this so? Are there any special programs Singapore schools are doing?”
In my mind, I was like HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW! So while I was publicly laughing and saying how I didn’t know Singapore had such a record, inside me I was like OH SHIT OH SHIT WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO SAY.
Thanks to my Crap-Making ability, I managed to come up with 2 answers in a matter of seconds!
And so I said, I’m not too sure why, but I believe it may has something to do with how schools emphasise reading. For example, I remember I had ‘Reading Day’ every week during elementary school and middle school. I talked about how I was free to choose my own books during those days in elementary school, and in middle school, 13 and 14 year olds read Reader’s Digest while 15 and 16 year olds read Newsweek (I nearly said Sec 1 and 2, Sec 3 and 4! Luckily I stopped myself in time. Like they would understand what that means). The moment ‘Newsweek’ fell out of my mouth, the whole room went,
“EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?!”
Even Jay’s mom! I was like, what..what’s wrong? She was so agitated! She got up and started gesturing, saying how her freshmen class couldn’t even read Newsweek! The rest of the teachers just stared at me like O_O! (Later I heard from Jay’s dad that most Korean students take 2 hours to finish a page of TIMES!)
I must say, I felt really proud of Singapore at that moment, even though I don’t know if that’s the norm in other schools. I mean, we did that in Crescent, but I’m not sure for other schools. Anyway, I said the other answer was that since Korean students and Singaporean students are pretty similar in their drive to score well in tests and exams, we study a lot, and as our textbooks are all in English, I guess it helps our reading ability.
Of course, there were some questions about Singlish (Oh dear!), Singapore’s general standard of English, and our bilingualism policy (How interesting that our LKY just released a video the other day saying that our bilingualism policy failed). It was kinda saddening cox I must admit that many Singaporeans do not speak perfect English. Even though many of them have perfect sentences, it’s the intonation that throws foreigners off. I remember how the government used to emphasise that as long as we can speak grammatically perfect sentences, it would be okay, but I realised this was not the case when Jay visited Singapore. Even though everyone spoke English to him, and IMO perfect English, I was so shocked when he told me that there were times he couldn’t understand what people were saying!
All in all, it was a really interesting experience! Like how I learnt Saudi Arabians only spend 3 years learning English, and with only 3 – 4 hours a week; Russians used to learn English in Russian, how the system changed only recently; China’s English classes are being taught in 50% English, 50% Chinese, and how they are put in schools according to their learning abilities. Really cool stuff!
We had 15 minutes to interact with the teachers after that, and I got questions like how to teach children to be bilingual (Seriously, I have no idea how these teachers think I’m some bilingual expert), and this teacher even told me that her sister is thinking of sending her kids to Singapore for an English summer course (“Why Singapore??” was what I asked in my head) and asked me whether I think it’s a feasible idea. I replied that if her sister insists on sending her kids to Singapore for some inexplicable reason, it’s best to choose British Council. The teacher who lived in Singapore for a year brightened up and jumped in, saying how British Council is the best in Singapore! Yes, I think so too. Unbelievably expensive, but at least they deliver results.
Anyway, because we volunteered to be panelists, we had a pizza party with gifts, courtesy of Korea University :) I told Athena, Jay’s mom, to please invite me again when she has her next batch of TEE students! :D
