Speech by Minister Chan Chun Sing at the Inspiring Teacher of English Award Ceremony at the Pod, National Library

Introduction

1. A very good evening to all of you. It is a pleasure to see all of you in person. I think all of us miss having this physical interaction and live audience for the last two years.

2. This year marks the fifteenth year of the award, and I am pleased to note the number of outstanding members of the English Language teaching fraternity who have been recognised over the years.

1. I would like to say a special word of thanks to the Speak Good English Movement, the Straits Times and the National Library Board for partnering MOE all these years.

The Importance of the English Language in Singapore

3. For all of us, fluency in the English language is crucial in helping us remain connected and relevant to the world.

1. English plays an important role as the lingua franca of the world in economics and trade, as well as science and technology.
2. Our early adoption of English as our business and working language gave us impetus. This is a practical choice given its widespread use internationally and the role it plays in our history in uniting our people from diverse backgrounds.
3. Our proficiency gives us the capacity to connect with the world and enables us to gain a competitive edge in the global market for talent and capital.
4. It also helps us to play a key role in bridge-building across cultures, not just within Singapore, but also on the larger international stage.

4. In multi-racial Singapore, the English language continues to serve as a common language to facilitate effective communication and understanding.

1. The English language provides a common civic space for different communities to foster bonds and share experiences that build mutual understanding.

Tribute to the ITEA Recipients and English Language Fraternity

5. Given the importance of the English language for our students both locally and globally, our teachers play a critical role. They help our students build a strong foundation, appreciate the beauty of the language, and develop competencies which will help them to be future-ready.

6. This is seen in the recipients of the ITEA. Our nine recipients today are passionate about the English Language and in helping our students enjoy their learning.

1. They meaningfully pique students' interest in learning about the world through developing their confidence in using the English language;
2. Skilfully employ innovative pedagogies; and
3. Proactively develop themselves professionally so that they can enrich our students' learning.

7. Let me share with you three examples from our ITEA recipients today.

1. One of them is Ms Lim Kai Li Clare, Head of Department for English from Fuchun Primary School.
   1. She leads her department to use stories and current affairs to help students acquire language skills and understand the relevance of what they are learning in their daily lives.
2. Another recipient is Mdm Norashikin Binte Hassan, Senior Teacher for English Language from Qihua Primary School.
   1. She incorporates the affordances of technological tools with EL pedagogical practices such as "talk moves" in her students' study of narrative texts. In this way, she builds their confidence to think through, and share their views.
3. Mr Lee De Yi is an English Language and English Literature teacher from Swiss Cottage Secondary School:
   1. He applied insights from a Teacher Work Attachment Plus (TWA+) Programme opportunity with National Gallery Singapore, as well as courses on Art and Literature to design engaging classroom experiences for his students.

8. Clare, Norashikin and De Yi provide just a snapshot of the good and innovative work of our ITEA recipients and nominees, who are doing so much to enable our students to learn well, and to make language learning come alive for them. And I am sure that beyond our nine award recipients today, we have many more such good stories from our fraternity.

9. Congratulations to all our award recipients and nominees! Well done to all of you.

Envisioning the Future of English Language Teaching and Learning

10. As our world of teaching and learning continue to change, the way we teach the English Language must also change.

1. Certainly, in language learning, there will be core knowledge and skills that remain fundamental.
2. But English itself is a living and dynamic language which continues to evolve.
3. The prevalence of technology and new media also influences the use of the language.
4. The future workplace requires our students to develop new and higher level of competencies.
5. Adding to this equation is how we can better nurture the potential of our students who come from diverse backgrounds.

11. What then, do we envision for our English Language teaching fraternity in the days ahead? Let me share three aspirations with you today.

12. First, even as our English Language teachers continue to build a strong foundation in literacy in our students, we will need to harness language learning to develop other literacies.

1. I begin with information and digital literacies.
   1. In a world inundated with information especially in the digital space, we will need to help our students acquire the skills of sensemaking and discernment.
   2. English Language is a vehicle for students to acquire the skills of critical reading and thinking, verifying sources of information, understanding purpose and audience, and appreciating diverse perspectives before coming to a well-reasoned conclusion and deeper understanding of issues.
2. In addition, English Language learning must help our students to have the ability to connect and collaborate with others. In this way, they can create new ideas and perspectives which bring value to the world.
   1. To be able to do this well is not just about enunciating well.
   2. It is also about having the confidence to use the language effectively and responsibly for expression, persuasion and inspiration.
   3. Or what the English teachers will be familiar with – for "effect, affect and impact".
3. By developing these literacies in our students, we are building our social and cultural capital.
   1. Through the language, our English Language teachers open up the world, and a world of opportunities for our students from diverse backgrounds.
4. I am pleased to learn that the English Language Syllabus 2020 puts an even greater premium on nurturing these literacies and dispositions in our students.
   1. Let's keep working at this, and we will see the fruits of our labour one day.

13. Second, our English Language fraternity must continue to adopt innovative pedagogies, including harnessing new technologies, to enrich the learning experiences of our students and to nurture their potential.

1. Our competition is not with one another. Our competition today is with the vast amount of information and approaches out there, competing for the attention of our students, competing to see which approach best attracts our students' attention.
2. We must teach and learn in both the physical and virtual classrooms; and to teach and learn both in schools and outside school.
3. We must leverage the best of technology in educationally meaningful and age-appropriate ways.
4. For example, we can tap immersive technology to make the beauty of the English Language come alive for our students and help them better connect with what they learn.
   1. Imagine, our students transported with Jane Austen to the rural English countryside!
5. We will also need to adopt adaptive technologies that will allow our students to be self-directed in their learning, and to better cater to their diverse needs and aptitudes.
   1. For those who are more linguistically inclined, we can stretch them further.
   2. For those who need a bit more help, we can help them establish the necessary language and literacy foundations.
   3. Coupled with the use of data, these will help the English Language teachers to make decisions on who and where to focus their attention at any one time.
6. Customising learning like this requires more resources. But it is not always possible for us to do more with the same number of teachers. And therein lies both our challenge and opportunity.
   1. How do we use the latest technologies to help our English teachers to teach better, and to better reach out to our students?
   2. To give an example, recently, I visited a country. They did not always have the best English teachers available to them.
   3. But because they did not always have the best English teachers available to their students, they thought very hard about how to leverage commercial technologies to complement the English teachers that they have.
   4. They use programmes, sometimes powered by Artificial Intelligence, to help their learners read, and they gamified the experience, using computers to guide their students, to encourage them to do better as they go along.
   5. They have turned a constraint into an opportunity to do better.
7. While we may not have the same constraint, we should not rest on our laurels, when there are new technologies available that may enhance our teaching and the learning experiences of our students.
8. If we can leverage technology effectively, then we can better customise our teaching according to the abilities and aptitudes of our students, even when they are doing out-of-classroom activities without the teacher present.
   1. For example, we are developing a Learning Feedback Assistant for English that provides students with immediate feedback on some aspects of language in students' writing, so that our teachers can focus more on the complex aspects of writing.
   2. There are also possibilities to help our students to develop reading and speaking skills which we are looking into.
   3. In fact, MOE's Educational Technology Division has been exploring this with the Mother Tongue Languages Branch. And if this can be done for the Mother Tongue Languages, we can certainly apply similar technologies for the teaching of the English Language.

14. Even as we tap into the wonders of technology in teaching and learning, I must emphasise this; we can never replace the critical role of the teacher.

1. The human touch of the teacher to nurture, guide, and inspire, is at the heart of teaching.
2. The teacher will then be able to focus on higher value-added work with the students, continue to inspire learners from all backgrounds, and stoke the curiosity of our students to learn not just for exams, and not just for their time in school, but to learn throughout life.
3. Our ultimate benchmark of success is not how well our students learn in the first 15 years of their life in school. Our ultimate benchmark of success is always how well our students continue to learn in the next 50 years of their life beyond school.
4. Therefore, our English Language teaching fraternity will also need to develop new skill sets in order to master all these new technologies and help our students to deepen their competencies and ignite their curiosity.

15. Third, while we celebrate the talents of the individual English Language teacher, we must also focus on leveraging team strengths to evolve and progress as a fraternity more quickly.

1. This calls for more collaboration such as the sharing of the best ideas and resources across the fraternity.
2. We have started doing this with the Student Learning Space (SLS).
   1. Our curriculum planners and Master Teachers develop learning resources and lessons for teachers to adopt, and more importantly, to adapt and customise.
   2. Teachers can also share their own resources with other teachers in the Community Gallery.
3. But we can do much more.
   1. I have shared this "80 - 20" rule where 80% of our basic teaching resources are to be readily available from a common pool, while the other 20% is customised by our teachers according to our students' needs.
   2. This will also help to alleviate the workload of our teachers, to free them up to focus on the higher order and more complex tasks.
   3. So, we must continue to crowdsource for good lesson ideas and resources, and we must build up this marketplace of good ideas to be available to all our teachers. This allows us to learn from one another, and we would not have to reinvent the wheel, allowing us to constantly build on the foundations that the rest have set before us.
   4. Let's help one another to figure out what are the best approaches, so that every teacher, regardless of experience, can contribute to this marketplace of ideas for teaching and learning.
   5. Also, as what was shared – how can we use some of these new learning channels and platforms, from YouTube to TikTok and many others. How do we use these platforms to ignite the curiosity of our students, to capture their attention amidst the many competing demands? These are all new opportunities.
   6. Let me share a story. Recently, I met up with the CEO of TikTok. People used to think that TikTok was just a platform for entertainment purposes. But in a short span of time, 20% of TikTok's content have been turned into educational content, according to the CEO. The question for us is, how do we leverage new platforms to reach out to the younger generation? How do we build up the competencies amongst our teaching fraternity to design content to be placed on different platforms. How do we use such platforms, to build up a marketplace of ideas to benefit everyone. So that even the newest and the youngest in the teaching fraternity will have that wealth of resources from the generations that have come before them.
   7. That is how we can progress faster and evolve better as a fraternity. If we can do that, we will rapidly up the standards of our professional development. We will also improve our ability to engage the new generation of learners.

Conclusion

16. To all the award recipients and nominees, I am very heartened and encouraged by your passion and dedication in nurturing our students' English Language proficiency and love for the language.

1. I would also like to commend you for contributing professionally to the fraternity and for being a source of inspiration to teachers of English.
2. My congratulations to all of you, and to your schools!

17. But, our work is not done. Every year that we gather here to affirm the good work of our teachers, we also know that there is so much more that we can do, and we want to do, for our teaching profession, and for our students and schools.

1. Let us work together, overcome the challenges, seize the opportunities, and demonstrate not just to ourselves, but perhaps to the wider world, how we as a fraternity can come together, adopt the latest technologies, pedagogies, and adopt the latest platforms to share the best practices, so that we can truly evolve our practices better, and faster, in service of our nation, our schools, and ultimately, our children.

18. Thank you very much.