Only bad memories of Chinese lessons stay

THE report,'Learning Chinese by rote a mistake', caught my interest. As a child, I was bilingual in English and Mandarin.

However, I focused more on English when I reached Primary 5.

I did so because it was easier to look up words in an English dictionary when reading.

I do not remember much of my Chinese lessons in secondary school, other than laborious, compulsory exercises I had to complete.

My Mandarin was peppered with English. I did not like speaking in this manner as I wanted to be more proficient in Mandarin.

I appreciated the value of Mandarin only when studying in the United States, when my non-Chinese friends saw that I was able to communicate with people from China and Taiwan.

Incidentally, I had two roommates, one from China and one an American, who was studying Mandarin.

We were all working on our language proficiency - the Chinese roommate in English, and the American and I in Mandarin.

After a year, all of us had improved significantly.

While holidaying in Singapore, my friends were surprised at my 'English-free' Mandarin.

My improvement was probably because I had used the language daily for communication instead of struggling to learn it in order to pass an examination.

I took this approach towards learning French in university, treating it as a communication tool instead of an exam subject, and did quite well in it.

I had a great interest in learning the language despite the many grammar rules.

Learning any language brings with it challenges, even English.

Previously, I could have told you if a sentence was grammatically right or wrong, but I could never tell you why.

I learnt more about grammar only when I was training to be an English-language teacher in Thailand.

Thai is rather tough to read and write. However, I was able to get by in my daily interactions with locals.

I am also learning conversational Japanese.

If I had dived headlong into studying the grammar and script of both languages, that would have put me off.

Learning how to listen and speak first piqued my curiosity and encouraged me to learn more about how the language was read and written.

I could not agree more with Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew when he highlighted the importance of rousing children's interest in a language.

This is a challenge for educators as everyone has different ways of learning.

If one can spark interest in a language, the fire from within will drive a student to find the resources and energy to learn it.