My daughter speaks better than Me =p

Recently, I found out that my three-year old girl speaks better English than I have been. This credit belongs to her childcare teacher for teaching the correct pronunciation.

I recalled how this foreign language was taught to me in my school days. During my era which is in the 1980s when I was still in my primary school; English is not the main language most families speak at home. A lot of students at that time struggle real hard with it. In order to pass my English paper for PSLE, I went to British Council for a 5 days course to brush it up. Instead of getting better, I screwed up the whole thing and got a real bad grade for my English. The reason? British Council actually teaches the fundamentals of the grammar and etc and somehow my school did not touch on it; I got really confused.

And at British Council, I realised that we have not been pronouncing the words correctly all along too. We never pronounce the ‘th’ in three and keep saying it the way it sounds like tree but we don’t mean a tree. We also were not taught to pronounce the ‘k’, ‘n’ and etc at the back of the word. For example; ‘pink’, we always say it as ‘pin’. I suddenly realised why the teachers of that time are not teaching us the right English pronunciation or simply, they do not know about these too.

Till now, I am still putting a great amount of effort to make sure my English improves but somehow, it hard.

Foundation is very important in languages. Once you know the fundamentals, you can survive gracefully with it. For children, they can pick up a language so easily. My daughter who often watch Dora The Explorer actually do pick up espanol. While I was teaching her to count, she suddenly stop at four and start once more but in Spanish going; uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, and etc.

Here, I urge parents to start paying attention to how your kids speak English; ensuring that not only they speak good English but also pronounce it the correct way; not ‘half past six’ like us. As it is easier to build it now at a young age, don’t wait.

To ensure we speak properly, there’s this Speak Good English Movement. Why not go to their website and have a go at the tests. It’s kind of fun.

Website: http://www.goodenglish.org.sg/