李光耀承認推行雙語教學政策錯誤

almom

原帖由 mow-mow 於 09-12-1 12:30 發表
Perhaps in the era of 'My Fair Lady', Queen's English accent was indeed regarded as a symbol of good breeding & prestige.
But that was a long time ago!!

My Fair Lady was a movie. And even in the movie, Hepburn needed to learn much more than the accent itself to be like a lady.
How you speak, how you present yourself, the little gestures and even the range of vocabularies you can use...

almom

原帖由 thankful 於 09-12-1 13:04 發表
A brain transplant may not work because they will run the risk of losing their beautiful Queen's English.  

Perhaps they should also try dying their hair blonde, bleaching their skin to look white... ...

I have been thinking, why are people despising Singaporean or Indian accents, when they seem to be less harsh when judging Swedish, German or French accents.
May be the hair and skin colours really matter.

[ 本帖最後由 almom 於 09-12-1 13:12 編輯 ]

almom

原帖由 Avatar 於 09-12-4 18:28 發表
因此，本人認為近年一些標榜推行Bilingual 的新興學校, 例如推行 IB 但又強調中、英俱佳，其實是誤導父母以為入讀的子女能建立雙母語能力，即英文及得上國際學校，而中文及得上本地學校。其實只是給父母們一個不切實際、虛假的夢，基本上沒有任何一個人能以同樣的程度來掌握好兩種語文。如果你認為自己可以，那是在自欺欺人。

First, IB =/= bilingual.
In fact, most students are not getting a bilingual diploma at IBD. You need to take 2 "A" languages to be bilingual. Even with CIS, which is considered to have a very good Chinese program, not all students are "bilingual" students. Many students are taking English A and Chinese B.
On ther other hand, there are indeed quite some students from CIS and other IB schools that are so competent that they do both English and Chinese (or French, etc)  A and get a bilingual diploma. These students achieved that because they put in effort.

Second, IB schools do have the curriculum that ultimately lead to a bilingual diploma, IF STUDENTS WANT TO. So IB schools do have (or they have to have) the resourses to educate students to be bilingual. However, it is unrealistic to expect that everyone can be that strong.
Local schools also provide a curriculum where students can, if they work hard and try hard, get "A" in Chinese both English at HKCEE. Realistically, not many get "A" or even "B" in both. In fact, many students still fail in either or even both of the languages. Can we say that the school misled you?

Last, I also think that this discussion of whether it is possible to be "bilingual" would not be fruitful. We have different expectations of how good we have to be in the 2 languages to be called bilingual.
I would say that, since my kids are in an IB school, I might simply follow the IB criteria. If a student are taking both "A" languages, then he should be bilingual, if he attain a certain "grade". Language "A" in IBD is the "hardest" available course in the IB curriculum, I would say that if someone gets a score of say 6 (with 7 being the full score), I would say he is pretty much "good at the language".  Of course, this is for my own convenience. I am sure some other people have much higher expectations. I myself is quite happy with my kids having English A and Chinese B.

[ 本帖最後由 almom 於 09-12-5 11:07 編輯 ]

almom

原帖由 thankful 於 09-12-6 11:58 發表
Papa_pop, where are you?  We need your help because I find talking to stccmc is absolutely hopeless and it will lead us nowhere (except the entertaining part about 陳克勤 which he steadfastly refuses to give us an aswer).  Please clarify what you meant.  Please reply to #86.

Hey, friend.
I have BK arranged the topics such that the newest reply to a topic is always "on top" on my screen and it is always #1. So the "number" of the replies change each time there is a new reply. In this respect, I cannot locate your #86.

What was it about?

almom

原帖由 thankful 於 09-12-6 12:49 發表
It's the number on the top right hand corner of each post.  I couldn't believe you are still following all these.  I thought people would have long given up.

Given up the other one, definitely.

This one is more heated but at least at a higher level. So although I am not exactly following everything, I do not mind reading some. Kids are at their swimming practice for the whole morning. Nothing to do for a "see lai". So I am a nosy 塘邊鶴.

BTW, my problem is, the newest message is always message #1 (on my screen). The number keeps changing so it is impossible to locate a message by #. One minite, it is #20. When there is a new one posted by someone, it is pushed back and becomes #21 and so on.

almom

原帖由 mattsmum 於 09-12-6 13:33 發表
a passer by

when I first got to know singapore students in UK may years ago, I noticed that they spoke good english with everyone else except singaporean, but when they sit together in the dinning table, they deliberatly spoke changed their tone and spoke with accent. I felt funny. I thought they wanted to creat a home atmosphere in a hall in UK.

mattsmum,
I have this one Singaporean friend whom I have known since I was in junior high. And some how we are now both living in Hong Kong. After all these years, believe it or not, when I speak to her, I have some Singaporean accent, while she has long ago been able to get rid of hers. Should I be worried? :)