Opening Address by Minister Chan Chun Sing at Mother Tongue Languages Symposium 2022 Opening and Awards Ceremony at Republic Polytechnic

1. Ladies and Gentlemen, a very good morning to all of you. 大家早上好。Selamat pagi. Vanakkam.

2. It is my pleasure to join all of you for today's Mother Tongue Languages Symposium (MTLS). This is our annual event to encourage our Mother Tongue Language educators, key stakeholders and community partners to come together to share ideas and strategies in promoting the learning of our Mother Tongue Languages.

Singapore's Bilingual Policy During the Early Days and Its Relevance Today

3. In the early years of our nation-building

1. We needed English as the common lingua franca to communicate among different groups and for us to do business with the world.
2. At the same time, we needed people in our multi-racial society to be anchored in their heritage and to appreciate their own Mother Tongue Languages.
3. A monolingual policy could have been easier for us, but it would definitely have been detrimental to our nation-building.

4. Bilingualism gives us a cutting edge in terms of providing a cultural ballast for our multi-racial society.

1. It enables us to stay connected to our roots.
2. It helps us build our distinctive national identity as Singaporeans who can understand and bridge differences across cultures.

5. Our Mother Tongue Languages also enable us to network and connect with communities across the region and the world who speak the same languages or share similar cultures.

6. In a nutshell, bilingualism presents us the best of both worlds.

7. Moreover, there are other educational benefits of bilingualism, especially for young children.

1. Studies have shown that bilingual children have better executive function and cognitive skills compared to monolingual children.
   1. These include working memory, inhibition, and attention switching which allows us to multi-task better and concentrate on complex tasks.
2. Early bilingualism in young children also helps to develop their social skills.
   1. To fully appreciate what others are saying about their values, culture, and practices, you must not only understand the language that they use, but also be able to see things from their perspectives.
   2. A study by psychologists from the University of Chicago found that bilingual children can better appreciate things from different perspectives.

How to Enhance Bilingualism and Promote the Learning of MTL

8. However, we know that pursuing bilingualism is not the easiest of all paths – for most people, it is challenging to master two or more languages.

9. Despite having a bilingual policy in place for many years, recent trends have shown that our children are speaking more in English at home compared to their Mother Tongue Languages.

1. There are others who have attributed this to the lack of opportunities in our larger macro environment.
2. We understand and indeed share their passion for Mother Tongue Languages.

10. But perhaps we can ask ourselves - what can we do together to encourage and enthuse our children to not just learn, but also to use our Mother Tongue Languages, to gain perspectives from different cultural backgrounds.

1. I have shared this story before about my own experience.
   1. When I was much younger, looking at my exam results, you could say that I did reasonably well in the Chinese language.
   2. However, as I was not the strongest in Chinese language in my family, there was always a feeling of inadequacy.
   3. This inadequacy will sometimes discourage me from trying, and sometimes I wondered if I could master the language.
   4. On the other hand, in my early years in school, I chanced upon Economics, and my Economics teacher affirmed me with simple words. This spurred me on to study harder to explore the subject, and eventually, I majored in Economics in university.
   5. I am sharing my story to remind ourselves of the importance of affirming and encouraging our students.
   6. A negative word can go a long way in casting doubt on one's ability and affecting one's confidence. On the other hand, positive affirmation can go very far in encouraging our students to pick up the language and to use it.
   7. Hence, it is incumbent on us to try our best to encourage our students to pick up the language, and not feel that they are constantly being judged, even if they have not yet perfected or mastered the language.
2. We need to plant the seed of confidence in students, and this is important in their lifelong journey to acquire and master the language.
   1. Our benchmark of success is not how well our children score in their Mother Tongue Languages in the first 15 years of their lives.
   2. Our benchmark of success is really, how our children continue to use and master the language in the next 50 years of their lives, beyond their school years.
   3. For us to achieve that, we will need to plant the seeds in them early.
3. If we constantly lament about the standard of their language
   1. It will serve as a negative reinforcement of what they cannot do.
   2. On the other hand, if we can positively bring up the improvements that they are showing, we will have a much better chance to encourage them to be confident, to keep trying.
4. Recently, I came across a news report on a pair of twin brothers known as the Chinese Hackers. Chinese Language was their strongest subject back in secondary school and they leveraged this to their advantage.
   1. They started to offer bite-sized Chinese edutainment content on TikTok for youths.
   2. The duo engaged students by challenging them to translate nouns and phrases commonly used in Singapore from English to Chinese.
   3. They managed to reach out to 100,000 TikTok followers; by Singapore standards, that is quite an achievement.
   4. Such activities help students to widen their vocabulary of commonly used terms in our Mother Tongue Languages, rather than the commonly-encountered approach of replacing words from other languages when they could not find the right word for it.
   5. You can do this as a bonding activity with your own children as well.
5. This is just one example of how we can harness resources on social media and entertainment programmes, augmented by technology, to make learning fun and engaging for our children.

11. There is a Chinese saying, "与时俱进" - which means to keep up with the times.

1. To get our younger generation interested in learning Mother Tongue Languages, educators, parents, and the community will all need to come up with new and more innovative ways.
2. We can use emerging trends to spark interest in our children.
3. We can all play a part in promoting the learning of Mother Tongue Languages beyond the classroom.
4. I would like to emphasise that the contact that we have with our students in the classroom is but a few hours. If we want a macro environment that can encourage our students to use their Mother Tongue, the home environment and the community environment are as important, if not more.

Everyone Can Play a Part

12. MOE has been continuing to strengthen the Mother Tongue Language curriculum to be more engaging and meaningful for our children. We will continue to help them to appreciate the beauty of their Mother Tongue Languages and cultures.

1. The updated Nurturing Early Learners (NEL) Framework will be launched at the end of this year.
   1. It emphasises the importance of children's holistic development to give every child a good start in life.
   2. It recognises the importance of bilingualism for our young children.
2. Under the updated NEL framework, the learning of Mother Tongue Languages aims to develop an awareness and nurtures children's appreciation of the local ethnic culture.
   1. For example, interactive and engaging activities using stories and songs set in the local context will allow young children to learn about local customs, traditions and festivals celebrated in Singapore from a younger age.

13. There are also many examples of our educators exploring innovative ways to make the learning of Mother Tongue Languages livelier.

1. One of the awardees today, Mdm Norliza Binte Hasan, promotes her children's interest in learning Malay Language with recyclable materials.
   1. For instance, during Racial Harmony Day, she used recyclable rubber bands to make 'yeh-yeh', also known as skipping rope, to play the traditional zero-point game and the red saga seeds to play 'congkak', the Malay traditional game with the students.
   2. She also plans environmental walks and conducts purposeful outdoor learning activities to engage children in observing nature and learning new Malay terms spontaneously. This is an example of how we can bring language to life in our daily activities.
2. Another awardee, Mdm Nazreen Banu adapts her lesson plans to increase her students' interest in Tamil Language.
   1. She creates activities like puppetry, word games, scavenger hunts, and show and tell.
   2. She consciously includes parents in her lesson designs, such as involving parents in the show and tell preparation to encourage children to speak more Tamil beyond the classroom.

14. Parents play an important role in promoting the learning of Mother Tongue Languages too. We encourage parents to build a bilingual reading culture for children at home. Even though students are taught to read in schools, the habit of reading starts very much earlier and is most effectively inculcated at homes.

1. A recent report on the reading habits of bilingual children in Singapore by the National Institute of Education reveals that children who have adults reading to them before entering school are more likely to continue reading often, and for longer periods while they are in school.
2. As the Malay saying goes, "Kalau melentur buluh, biarlah dari rebungnya"- bend the bamboo while it is still a shoot.
   1. As parents, we can create a cozy environment for our children to nestle with books in both languages and to build reading time into their schedules.
   2. Reading habits that are formed since young will follow them a long way.

15. The learning and promotion of Mother Tongue Languages requires the efforts of all our community partners as well. As the Tamil proverb says, 'Koodi Vaalnthaal, Koadi Nanmei' - we will achieve great things only if we come to put the pieces together.

1. At this juncture, I would also like to thank our community partners for their continued strong partnership with MOE in promoting the learning of Mother Tongue Languages in our community.
2. We have been working closely with the Lee Kuan Yew Fund for Bilingualism (LKYFB) to support our children's bilingual learning, particularly in the learning of Mother Tongue Languages and culture.
   1. This includes the production of our very first bilingual TV programme targeted at pre-schoolers, entitled 'Junction Tree' in collaboration with Mediacorp.
   2. The programme has a strong flavour of local culture and values.

16. I would also like to affirm the efforts of new partners for coming on board to create a lively and authentic environment for the learning of Mother Tongue Languages.

1. For instance, Mandai Wildlife Group collaborates with the Mother Tongue Languages Promotion Committees, the Committee to Promote Chinese Language Learning (CPCLL), the Malay Language Learning and Promotion Committee (MLLPC), and the Tamil Language Learning and Promotion Committee (TLLPC) to partner pre-school teachers and parents by bringing the learning of Mother Tongue Languages beyond the classrooms.
   1. The Wow Wild Learn programme for Chinese and Tamil this year saw teachers setting up iconic images of animals such as stingrays, gharials, manatees, and pandas in the classrooms.
   2. This was then followed with online activities such as the "Baby Panda Keeper Goes to School" programme and a teacher-guided learning journey for our children to have the River Wonders experience in MTL.
   3. Similarly, the Kembara Nusantara Malay Language Programme, a collaboration between Mandai Wildlife Group and MLLPC, includes a learning journey to the Singapore Zoo and task-based activities focusing on popular animal stories.

17. Once again, I would like to thank our educators, parents, and community partners for your efforts, and I look forward to more people and more organisations joining us to play a part in the promotion of our Mother Tongue Languages.

Highlights of MTLS 2022

18. MTLS is one of MOE's key outreach platforms for children and parents to interact with educators and community partners. The theme of this year's MTLS is 'A Garden for Joyful Discovery'. I believe that this will be a good platform to harness the efforts of parents, educators, and community partners in creating a joyful, nurturing, and vibrant MTL learning environment for our children. This gives them opportunities to discover engaging and meaningful Mother Tongue Language learning experiences beyond the classroom. Some highlights you can look forward to the Symposium this year include:

1. Live and pre-recorded Sharing Sessions on tips and strategies that parents can take back to try out with their own children at home. There will also be sessions for our educators as well, where valuable classroom experiences are shared.
2. Younger children can join the story telling sessions, which will bring them into a world of fantasy in the Mother Tongue Languages.
3. Parents and children can also take part in interactive workshops together, as an opportunity for parent-child bonding while experiencing how Mother Tongue Languages can indeed be a part of our daily environment.

Conclusion

19. Ladies and gentlemen, positive mindsets lead to positive actions. The Mother Tongue Languages ecosystem in Singapore has expanded throughout the years. Let us continue to find ways and think about how we can tap onto the bigger ecosystem to build the macro environment that we desire to have for our children to pick up the language, not just when they are young, but more importantly, to pick up the language to plant the seeds in them so that they will keep on learning throughout their lives.

20. MOE will continue to explore new possibilities, with current and new partners, to expand our suite of options to enthuse our children and parents in the picking up of our Mother Tongue Languages.

21. "千里之行始于足下"- the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. As our children take their first steps in learning their Mother Tongue Languages, they can rest assured that they have an entire ecosystem beyond school– an ecosystem consisting of teachers, parents, grandparents, and community partners growing alongside with them.

22. In closing, I would also like to thank the organizers behind the scenes who have put the programme together, and the many community partners, parents and teachers, who have come on board to join hands together with us to create a conducive Mother Tongue Language learning environment for our next generation. Thank you very much.