Q Will the new funding plan help boost students' language proficiency?
I am glad to learn that a Chinese medium of instruction (CMI) school may write proposals and get $3 million (maximum) from the government to strengthen English education over a period of six years.
There is a lot a school can do with the money: employing two more teachers' assistants for class and co-curricular activities, designing cross-curricular lessons, organising cross-curricular visits, conducting English drama workshops, to name but a few. What concerns me most is, however, the foundation of the students.
Phonetics has never been part of the formal curriculum. Textbooks don't have them, teachers don't know them.
Two years ago, I met an adult who could not pronounce an initial 't' sound. To him, 'tea' is pronounced as 'key'.
I thought it was a hearing problem on his part because he could pronounce the medial and final 't' properly.
But I was wrong. Since then, I have met more and more people failing to tell (hear) the difference. One English teacher who used to work with me pronounced 'dictation' as 'dickation'. Imagine the shock I was in.
