Filipino students recount their Mother Tongue woes
Two students share why Singapore’s Bilingual Policy made it difficult for them to enter the Junior College of their choice.
By Lee Zhi Ying
David Ivan Quirmit Vicedo, 18, has always wanted to go to a Junior College, but he realised he could not qualify upon receiving his O-level MTL examination results.
David Ivan Quirmit Vicedo, 18, scored six distinctions and a nett L1R5 of eight in the 2017 O-level examinations. That would have guaranteed his entry into Junior College (JC) had he not failed his Mother Tongue Language (MTL), Japanese.
The second-year Engineering Science student from Ngee Ann Polytechnic (NP) was born in Cavite, Philippines and came to Singapore at the age of six. To fulfil Singapore’s bilingualism criteria, he took Japanese as his MTL in secondary school since his native MTL, Tagalog was not offered as an examinable O-level subject.
David says: “I'm Filipino and the language Filipinos speak is Tagalog. How can learning another language that isn't spoken by your family or you be assessed as your Mother Tongue?”
Due to Japanese being completely foreign to him, David struggled to cope and consistently failed in his MTL examinations throughout secondary school, and ultimately in the O-level MTL examinations.
David’s result slip from the 2017 O-level examinations. Photo by: Lee Zhi Ying
As a result, he was unable to advance to JC, as students must attain at least a D7 in the O-level MTL examinations to be eligible for JC enrolment.
Singapore’s Bilingual Policy took effect in 1966, which entails the compulsory study of a second language in all government or government-aided schools in Singapore.
The move was to ensure that students would be proficient in at least two languages, creating a tightly-knit society and better serve Singapore’s multilingual society.
Ethnic minority students, who do not belong to Chinese, Malay or Indian ethnic groups, can either choose to apply for any of the three official MTLs, Chinese, Malay or Tamil. Alternatively, they can take up MTL-in-lieu such as French, German, Japanese, Arabic, Burmese or Thai.
According to data collected by the Ministry of Education, percentage passes in O-level MTL examinations for ethnic minority students rose from 68.1 per cent in 1997 to 86 per cent in 2017.
However, percentage passes for such students in O-level MTL examinations are consistently lower than that of students who belong to Chinese, Malay or Indian ethnic groups.
While some ethnic minority students felt that they failed their MTL examinations due to the difficulty of learning a foreign language, others attributed it to their lack of interest in learning a foreign language.
Cedric Emmanuel Olivia, 18, who is also born into a Filipino family, was unable to fulfil his goal of going to JC after attaining an E8 in his MTL subject, French.
The second-year Biomedical Science student from NP says: “French wasn't too difficult but I did not enjoy learning the subject and skipped my classes so I was behind for everything.”
He believes that ethnic minority students should be able to handle the rigour of a foreign language they make a concerted effort to do so.
“With enough effort, I believe that ethnic minority students will be able to cope with the extra language,” he adds.
Dr Luke Lu, 37, a lecturer at Nanyang Technological University Language and Communication Centre thinks that the Bilingual Policy is a fair assessment for all students, even if they are not taking their native MTL as an examinable subject.
“At the end of the day, national examinations in all subjects, not just Mother Tongue, are institutional gateways to higher levels of education. The threshold scores are arbitrarily defined, and one cannot say that it is unfair since it applies to everyone regardless of whether they speak the Mother Tongue at home or not,” he says.