Kelvin Teo
Photo courtesy of attercop311, Flickr
In recent years, revisions have been made by our education ministry to the learning syllabus of our Mother Tongue Languages (MTL) out of recognition of the needs of exceptionally weak students who have trouble learning them. Known as MTL syllabus B, it is offered to students who scored a C and below for their Mother Tongue during their Primary School Leaving Examinations prior to secondary school, or to those with learning disabilities such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, dyslexia and hearing impairment.
The teaching of Mother Tongue, specifically Mandarin Chinese in schools has obstacles of its own. A growing number of households are using and speaking English at home, which is an issue to the older generation who lament the erosion of the Chinese culture and heritage.
That being said, however, the Chinese language has its own advantages too. Stanislas Dehaene, professor at the Collège de France and one of Europe’s leading neuroscientists and other colleagues noted in a New Yorker article entitled Numbers Guy by Jim Holt that language, specifically pertaining to the way we name numbers has an impact on our ability to count. There is a great deal of hassle within the English language especially when it comes to naming numbers as there are special words for numbers from 11 to 19 and between 20 to 90. Thus, English-speaking children tend to face challenges with counting numbers beyond 20.
In contrast, the numerical descriptive system within the chinese language tended to be simpler. The Chinese language counting system follows the base 10 format of Arabic numerals with minimal terms needed to describe the numbers. As a result, a Chinese four-year-old kid is able to count up to 40. An English-speaking kid from America on the other hand would struggle to count up to 15. Due to the brevity of the Chinese numerical terms, it takes a mere quarter of a second to verbally mention a number, as compared with a third of a second for English description of numbers. The Cantonese dialect which is the lingua franca in Hong Kong is also remarkably efficient similarly to the Chinese language – it is said that speakers of the dialect can actively juggle 10 digits in memory.
Singapore has performed well in the domain of Mathematics at least up to the pre-university level as results from international tests indicate, thanks to our teaching methods in that subject area (due credit to our educators), which is something that US President Obama wants to emulate.
The recently concluded Programme for International Student Assessment, a worldwide evaluation of students’ scholastic abilities saw Singapore performing well in three categories – we were placed second for Maths, fourth for Science and fifth for reading. In all three categories, students from Shanghai came in first. For math alone, we garnered 562 points with Shanghai students being the runaway winners at 600. Hong Kong and Taiwan, who scored 555 and 543 at third and fifth place respectively were the other countries within the top five.
It is no mere coincidence that three of the top five countries speak languages with an efficient descriptive system for numbers – cantonese among Hong Kongers, and Mandarin Chinese among the Shanghainese and Taiwanese. Thus, for us Singaporeans, especially with a Chinese population majority, we can look into getting our kids to start to speaking Mandarin Chinese at home, at least to be able to start counting in the language. In that way, we can kill two birds with one stone by firstly keeping our kids up to speed with their cultural heritage, and secondly, to harness the efficient numerical descriptive system that will enable them to be comfortable with numbers, relative to their peers from elsewhere at a given age.
Hence, why hesitate? It is never too late to have our kids counting away in their Mother Tongue, specifically Mandarin Chinese. In doing so, we will have a new generation with a strong numerical aptitude and in combination with our high quality teaching methods – enable us to stay ahead of the mathematics game as compared with our international peers.
“It is no mere coincidence that three of the top five countries speak languages with an efficient descriptive system for numbers – cantonese among Hong Kongers, and Mandarin Chinese among the Shanghainese and Taiwanese.”
It could be a coincidence. After all, Japan and South Korea also scored very well in the math portion of PISA. A far more plausible factor is the extreme emphasis on education in middle-class East Asian families. That would explain the top marks in reading and science too.
I would hesitate to equate this correlation — which, by the way, is not very strong — with causation. Moreover, while Singaporeans score high in standard tests, it does not translate to higher creativity and other attributes that aren’t so easy to measure. Such tests reveal only a small aspect of education.
This observation is at best a minor argument in support of teaching kids Mandarin. Come to think of it, perhaps evaluating the correlation between Maths and Chinese grades may be a better measure.
Chinese-American kids also do well in math compared to their peers. And many of them don’t speak any Chinese languages.
Chinese counting is also quite clumsy when it comes to very large numbers. 109214871 is quite a mouthful in Chinese (and in English too). At that level, a symbolic, algebraic understanding of numbers is more helpful for counting than a linguistic one.
No, chinese language and mathematics has no correlation. If that’s really the case, then arabic would have won hands down. 1234567890 are ARABIC numerals.
No chinaman ever won a Fields Medal. (Terence Tao is an Australian, he speaks Cantonese but doesn’t write Chinese). I’d place my bets on the Ruskies any time of the day.
Learn Russian Today!
Such sycophantic notes I note in this report.
“It is no mere coincidence that three of the top five countries speak languages with an efficient descriptive system for numbers – cantonese among Hong Kongers, and Mandarin Chinese among the Shanghainese and Taiwanese”
Wut?
1234567890 are Indian numerals. Since the Arab traders brought the Indian numbering system back home, it has been mistakenly and quite unfairly been attributed to them. The Chinese language has absolutely nothing to do with mathematics in whatsoever way.
In fact, some of the best mathematicians in the world are Indians and Russians. Neither speak Chinese. It is at best a propaganda tool used by the government to promote the Chinese ethnicity and heritage. Nothing more.