the prob with chino

big revamp going on in the s'porean education system. there's been much debate on how to impart our mother tongue to the future generation. there have been complaints about how chinese is too tough for kids who come from english speaking families and how it shouldn't be taught by rote learning because it basically kills their interest.

i, for one, am a failure of the system. you guys out there know how sucky my chinese is. how reluctant i am to speak chinese coz of the inevitable laughter that follows. i've been called names like kentang and banana, all thanks to the fact that i'm unable to fluently communicate in my mother tongue. but i'm proud to say that it doesn't faze me much. heh. okie, once in a while i feel awkward, but not bad enough to wanna make me go back to picking up chinese again.

for me, chinese lessons were always a bore. didn't help that my test papers were always at the bottom of the stack. my most frequent prayer in sec sch must have been 'pls... don't let me be last'. yeah, and chinese teachers were the same year after year, boring, strict and inflexible. it was as if they were made from the same mould.

i remember the countless ting xies (spelling tests) and mo xies. i rem failing almost half of them. and i hated them. i dreaded bringing them home each week and getting my dad to sign them. coz he would never understand how i could do so badly. then it'd be back to more practise and memorisation, in order to bring my grades up.

spanish, on the other hand, has been way more interesting. not only does glenn teach us the language, he shares the culture with us and many other interesting tidbits. spanish lessons were tough. but they were always filled with laughter. we learned to laugh at our own mistakes and help each other along. and there was plenty of encouragement. he'd always be saying 'muy bien' (very good) even after we stutter slowly through a sentence.
that's why i'm looking forward to spanish II. and it doesn't hurt that i think he's cute! heh.

mi BLest amiga was asking me the other day, why it seemed that most students who once took Higher Chinese seem to have less of an affinity with the language than those who took it at the 2nd language level. a very curious phenomenon...