“Furthermore, it’s important to ensure that pre-school teachers have sufficient language proficiency and teaching resources, and that they use a variety of activities and teaching methods to stimulate children’s interest and enthusiasm for learning their mother tongue,” she said. The new curriculum places a greater emphasis on helping pupils learn and use their mother tongue languages in and outside of the classroom.Īssociate Professor Sin Joo Ee, who heads the Master of Early Childhood Education (Chinese) programme at Singapore University of Social Sciences, said it is a good move to increase the exposure to MTLs among pre-schoolers as the early years are a critical time for language development in children. Speaking at the Mother Tongue Languages Symposium in August 2023, Education Minister Chan Chun Sing said that remaining proficient in mother tongue languages has been a challenge as Singapore has seen a shift to English as the language most frequently spoken at home in the past decade.Īt the event, Mr Chan had announced a refreshed curriculum in mother tongue lessons for Primary 1 pupils from 2024. The national census data in 2020 showed that 48.3 per cent of Singapore’s resident population aged five and above speaks English most frequently at home, up from 23 per cent in 2000. Mr Peh Yi Han, chief operating officer of Global EduHub, the educational group which runs Mulberry Learning, said the Chinese-immersion pre-school, which was opened in 2020, currently has about 70 children, including non-Chinese. It also has a Chinese-immersion pre-school called Mulberry Learning Fusionopolis that exposes children to Chinese around seven hours a day. Mulberry Learning’s 17 bilingual pre-schools typically expose children to the Chinese language around four hours a day. Some pre-school operators already offer their students significantly more exposure to Chinese.
Ms Thian Ai Ling, MFS’ general manager, said it also offers reading and learning content through its microsite so that children can learn the languages at home, with parental support. NTUC First Campus, which runs 20 Little Skool-House (LSH) centres and 158 My First Skool (MFS) centres, said its centres conduct about seven to eight hours of MTL lessons per week on average. Hence, PCF has developed resources such as e-books and an upcoming Home Learning Portal online to help parents engage their children with home-learning activities, including MTL resources. Learning rhyming skills is an essential skill to have and can be practiced here while employing other senses along with it.Ms Angela Yang, PCF’s director of professional and education development, said parents play a huge role in a child’s MTL journey. The words begin simply, with only three letter simple words being used, but it quickly amps up with each subsequent screen if they are able to handle it. A timer does continuously tick up as you play, bringing more and more screens of matching rhyming words. Incorrect matches get a slightly harsh sound and a “This is incorrect.” statement. Once you click a correct pair, the narrator will announce that A rhymes with B, and whisk the cards away. Locate two rhyming words on the screen, and click once on each to pair them up as a correct rhyme. If the child does not know the word, they simply press the auditory button on the left of each word and it will be read aloud to them. Pictures show up on the screen with words at the bottom of each like digital flashcards. Once you click through the OK button to begin playing the game, it takes you through the brief instructions, which encourages you to look for three pairs of rhyming words on each page. Rhyming is an important skill to master, as it sharpens auditory awareness and heightens a child’s ability to play with words and use them with more precision. Specifically, the children will be looking for end rhymes, with three pairs of rhyming words on each screen. In the game Words that Rhyme, young learners are introduced to the concept of rhyming and learn to build sounds and word relationships.