Woah! Been really a long time since I've posted anything up here... hee..

Just met one of my student (that I taught while doing relief teaching in a neighbourhood secondary school). Hee... maybe because I was their Chinese relief teacher back then so the first then that he told me was that "Chinese is so boring.... It's so difficult to learn... I don't understand what the teacher is talking about...."

Is chinese really that boring? I don't know. Maybe because I had a great Chinese teacher during my secondary school days that Chinese is nenver boring to me...

Well it seems that from the student's point of view, he believe that it's super difficult for him to study Chinese and it seems so tempting to forgo Chinese and concentrate on other subjects that he deemed more useful. It appears that he thinks "English rocks" and that there's not much point in learning Chinese for China is pretty weak. ( No offence to anyone reading this yap.. cause the point that I'm trying to put through here is about point of view of a student regarding learning Chinese).

Well it seems that being a small nation, we have to adapt ourselves to the changing world economy. When US is strong, all the parents became super pro-English. Now that everyone sees China as a huge market, parents are pushing their kids to Chinese tuition classes. Sigh... in doing so, the poor kids are the ones who are suffering now.

Is Chinese really that had to learn?

While fingers have been pointing around... at the government for make Chinese syllabus so hard (you think it's hard? Think about the kinda Chinese that people in China are learning at the same age)... at parents for speaking to their children in English... at parents again for they themselves might not even be able to speak a nice sentence of Chinese words without spattering...

Is reducing syllabus really helping the students to master Chinese? I don't know...

At the end of the day, I think that it's not what we do to the syllabus that matters, it's the mind set of the students regarding Chinese that really matters. Oh and of course... good Chinese teachers who can spark off the interest of the students regarding Chinese will help the students to ease the road of learning Chinese too...

So to my student if he get to come across this bloggie of mine...

open up your heart and your mind. Tell yourself that if the westeners are eagerly learning Chinese and not forgoing English, why can't you? Spur yourself into mastering both.... Go for it!

Just a penny of thought...