The English Langauge

Recently I helped my friend to proof read his scientific report. I ended up spending quite some time giving him tips and helping to edit any thing I felt needed editing. Was quite fun doing proof reading, and on a subject I love at that – chemistry. It has been so long since I wrote a proper scientific report. Heck, the only truly proper report I wrote was the one for SRP/SSEF like 4-5 years ago when I was still in JC. In ntu… I only wrote a few lab reports and all… nothing that felt really formal and needed tons of planning/time to write. Those lab reports were mostly just… crap anyway… its like you just rephrase the materials and methods from ur lab worksheet and write pretty much the same stuff in ur discussions and conclusions as everyone else. Since we all did the same experiment anyway. You didn’t have to plan your experiments, loads of stuff was pre-prepared by the lab tech for u…. it just didn’t feel like a real experiment and the reports didn’t feel real either. Not interesting really.

So I was really glad to have the report to read and edit, it really made me think, some thing that I’ve not been doing enough of recently. It made me remember the time I had in IBN… everything in my long forgotten past… I dug out my old report to read. It was… okay. Well I was quite surprised that the report was a mere 2.4k words long... and that’s the total word count including all ur acknowledgements and references. Ok, there was a word limit requirement for the report after all. Still, I never remembered it being so short. I guess its cause I’ve been writing all the long, grandmother stories with my blog posts. Hitting 2k words isn’t a problem at all. The language use and such, my friend put it in a very positive way: ur English was already as good last time as it is now. That’s an optimistic way of looking at things. If you look at it from another direction, it just means that my standard of English didn’t improve in these 4-5 years. I can’t help but agree with this train of thought.

Looking back at the recent few years, I’ve stopped reading tons of storybooks like I used to. I hardly borrow books at all, and if I do, they often end up returned, unread. I really need to get back into the habit of reading. It’s not that I don’t have the time, it’s that I need to make it a habit, it’s that I need to make the time. Being in ntu where broken English or Chinese is used way too often, at least among the friends I hang out with the most, didn’t help improve my language capabilities. The lack of practice didn’t do me any favor either. And that was precisely the reason why I decided to restart my blog (even though this blog has close to no readers) – I am in dire need of practice. Even my typing and spelling skills have deteriorated. Apart from the casual blog entries I shall try to write something more proper and sharpen up my skills, however little it may help. My vocabulary in particular is severely lacking. My poor memory and spelling skills certainly doesn’t help in this.

Perhaps I did learn a little about English over the past few years. At least I think I’ve become more aware of the language. After taking some basic courses in Japanese, and courses such as ‘Mastering Communication’, ‘The Art of Academic Writing’, ‘Technologically Speaking’ and ‘Research Seminars’, I’ve taken a new look at languages, grammar, and how to use them. My teacher from Mastering Communications lamented about how those ang mo lecturers complained to her about the poor grammar of Singaporeans, and questioned if we were ever taught grammar in school.

I remember learning about the various tenses in primary school, memorizing whole lists of the various tenses of the verbs (such as present tense, past tense, present perfect etc)… I only knew exactly how present and past tense worked, the rest of the tenses… I learn from examples how and when to use those tenses. Right now I can’t even remember which tense is which, or what present perfect tense is and when it should be used etc. I remember my teaching trying to teach us the different parts of a sentence, like which is the subject, which is the verb and so on. I never understood those things in class, as with many of my classmates. My teacher attempted to explain to us, and I remember her repeating it a few times, but somehow the concept was too huge for our small minds to grasp. I remember how at the beginning I had great difficulty remembering to use past tense when I needed to, probably because the idea of tenses was still new and foreign to me – there are no tenses in Mandarin. Later on, somewhere along the line, it just got natural for me and I started forgetting about grammar. In secondary school I starting reading a lot of storybooks, and that was when my language improved by leaps and bounds (actually, that’s cause my English standard was really terrible to began with). I made fewer and fewer grammatical errors in writing, but in the process I forgot all about the basic grammatical rules taught in primary school. Or maybe you could say I never remembered them. I only knew what’s a noun and how to differentiate past tense from present tense.

Years later, I decided to study Japanese in uni – because I think its fun, because I could, and because I enjoyed to. That was when all that grammar that I had forgotten caught up to me. Nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives… I actually had to check the dictionary to find their meaning and some definitions were absolutely of no help… in fact, I found that I was learning the meaning of those words through this foreign language. I guess it is because I now have a greater understanding of things in general. It was much easier for me to grasp the grammar rules of Japanese than it probably was when I learnt English in primary school. I was really glad I took those Japanese modules. Not only did it give me more insights to the Japanese culture, it was made me take a closer look at language itself.

The Technologically Speaking course I took also highlighted many of the differences between languages. I enjoyed the course thoroughly as I contemplated on the various differences between English and Mandarin.

I’ve never been good at languages. Spelling in particular, whether in English, Chinese or Japanese, has and probably will always be a big headache for me. I failed my Chinese spelling in primary 5/6, and continued to have problems with it throughout secondary school. I remember being punished by my English teacher in primary 6 to write out words 99 times for every word I got wrong in spelling. I remember how she insulted not just me, but even my parents in front of the whole class… but I just suck at spelling. And pronunciation (though you could, argue that just about every Singaporean suck at it too - the environment we grew up in does shape us after all). I still rely on spell check to tell me whether it’s silent or slient; sliver or silver. It took me a really long time to remember how to spell remember (oh how ironic, I know). I still have trouble with words especially when I’ve not had writing practice from some time. Sometimes my mistakes are so bad that even spell check or google can’t figure out what I’m trying to say. Neither can I. I often try and spell words like how I would pronounce it, which ends up all wrong. Perhaps you can say it runs in the family. My dad was Chinese educated and still has difficulties spelling things (that even spell check can’t save or help him). He comes to me and my sis for help to draft formal letters at times... Perhaps it is because phonetics wasn’t taught to us early on? Perhaps it is because I don’t work hard enough…

The usage of both British and American English in Singapore further adds to my spelling confusion. In primary school everything I learnt was taught with British English, but now it seems like Singapore is moving towards the use of American English… why is that so, I do not answer. Seems to me that is, and honestly I didn’t pay much attention. I suspect that many people are probably just as ignorant as I was about the differences between the two. The usage of ‘s’ and ‘z’ is pretty well known I guess, as with words like ‘colour’ and ‘color’. But how about words like ‘center’ and ‘centre’? or ‘catalogue’ and ‘catalog’… or ‘foetus’ and ‘fetus’…? I never paid much attention to these till it was highlighted to us during the Research Seminars module. During that module, the key concepts of scientific writing were nicely highlighted and emphasized upon. As someone who has had experience in writing scientific report, most of the information I had already figured out on my own. Still, it was content on grammar that I found the most useful. It really made me pay a lot more attention to my writing. For the most part however, I questioned the need for a course on scientific writing, so late into our course at that. It was only until our lecturer showed examples of my classmates work that it struck me there are many people who really needed the course.

So good at memorizing, and so what?
Memorizing and more memorizing, that’s what the Singapore education is all about it seems. I find that while we are bilingual, Singaporeans are neither here nor there. Many/Most of us do not process a high standard of English, or Chinese (I cannot speak for the other mother tongue languages). Sure, most of us can write decent English, but we have a pathetic vocabulary. Which is the reason why you see me repeat my words so often – my small dictionary doesn’t present me with any other choice. Same goes for mandarin, only that it’s probably even worst. While I am proud to say that I can speak Chinese well enough for some of my friends from China to think that I, too, came from the mainland, the same cannot be said for my reading and writing skills. Writing, in particular, was a killer. And my lack of practice only makes it worst. When was the last time I even wrote my own Chinese name… probably last year? I’ve wanted to do some self-improvement on my mother tongue but, as usual, never got round to doing it. Somehow exams just don't sit well with me. I remember thinking about how Chinese is actually quite interesting the very day my O lvl HCL exams ended. Why didn’t I think it was interesting before? I figured it must all be due to the four-letter word EXAM. I wish we’d adapt more of the teaching style in America… how they promote free discussion and more importantly, critical thinking. It’s something that is really missing over here. So important, yet so little of it seen.

Right now I’ve got about half of my holidays left, guess its time for me to do something more useful and brush up on my reading, my vocabulary, my writing… and just doing something, rather than nothing.


Note: i wrote the front half of the post two days ago, the rest was completed now... (in case there are any confusions in time references)