the next academic cow to slay in singapore has to be english. now they want to pound in grammar emphasize oral skills and hopefully de-emphasize singlish. here are my suggestions:
1. retire cloze passages, which only help if you want to acquire elementary esl.
2. upgrade local newspapers, currently oblivious bastions of solecism and inelegant syntax.
3. let them read puffins or penguins, not local newspapers (see #2).
4. make teachers learn some latin, it will improve their grammar. i'm serious.
5. boost teachers' parents' and public's english. i wish.
4 comments:
Never quite understood where the word "cloze" comes from. Asked various Singaporeans, but could never get an answer. Tried looking it up in the dictionary but the word doesn't exist.
Current abysmal standard of English has been one of my pet peeves for a long time...
i think cloze is subsistence level education - narrow mandate, inflexible implementation, and it penalizes those who enjoy playing with language.
my US-born son was penalized for using the term play "ball" (the latter being the blank that had to be filled in); same teacher "corrected" his use of popcorn with "popcorns"...something he has never forgotten nor forgiven! Thank goodness we switched him out of the local system...
see, that's why i have point #4.
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