Speaking of good English
Straits Times, 20 July 2006
ENGLISH is one of the most important languages in the world. I feel that the government is doing well by launching the Speak Good English Movement. This campaign will encourage more people in the service and educating sector to self-improve. I believe one's ability to speak fluently with good grammer, articulation and pronunciation sets the first impression. And the first is important, because it reflects the character. I find it rather embarassing when waiters and waitresses offend tourists or local customers as a result of their careless behaviour in pronouncing their words properly. For instance, 'it's a pressure (pleasure) to meet you..' "three" has become 'tree'... Most importantly, for students to learn to speak well, teachers who teach English-based subjects need to be a good example to their students. It would be good if such teachers or civil servants do undergo retraining in their articulation. I feel that it is also important for air stewardess to speak good english too, because they serve as the Singaporean image. Although Singlish gives Singaporeans their unique identity, it is not the proper language.
ENGLISH is one of the most important languages in the world. I feel that the government is doing well by launching the Speak Good English Movement. This campaign will encourage more people in the service and educating sector to self-improve. I believe one's ability to speak fluently with good grammer, articulation and pronunciation sets the first impression. And the first is important, because it reflects the character. I find it rather embarassing when waiters and waitresses offend tourists or local customers as a result of their careless behaviour in pronouncing their words properly. For instance, 'it's a pressure (pleasure) to meet you..' "three" has become 'tree'... Most importantly, for students to learn to speak well, teachers who teach English-based subjects need to be a good example to their students. It would be good if such teachers or civil servants do undergo retraining in their articulation. I feel that it is also important for air stewardess to speak good english too, because they serve as the Singaporean image. Although Singlish gives Singaporeans their unique identity, it is not the proper language.
posted by Ria~ @ 5:18 PM
1 Comments:
At 5:49 PM,
Yixian(^.^) said…
I feel that speaking good english is really important as it is one of the most commonly used languages in the world, and knowing the language will help individuals and countries to communicate better among each other. Just knowing how to speak english is not good enough as english is quite compicated and the use of wrong grammer and pronounciation can result in miscommunication. For example, the recent interview of Fann Wong aired on BBC has really made me feel appalled. Knowing that her english was not great, i feel that fann wong should have declined to do the interview. I feel that she actually made a fool of herself on national television and also disgraced fellow singaporeans as i believe foreigners now think singaporeans cannot speak good english. Therefore it is very important to speak good english and to know how to articulate the words well. Compared to the western people, i feel that singaporeans still have alot of catching up to do on speaking good english.
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