Curriculum implementation in early primary schooling in Singapore (CIEPSS)
"This one-year project was an investigation into the ongoing implementation of recent policy initiatives that influence pedagogies, curriculum innovation, and instructional practices in primary education in Singapore. Investigation covered P1 and P2 in all core subjects: English, Mother Tongue (Chinese, Malay, Tamil) and mathematics. It included investigation of local contextual conditions which impact the work of policy developers and implementers at all levels within the system: class, school, zone, national. Our goal was to assist in developing a more complete understanding of the specific, local challenges of policy implementation." -- p. 2.
The place of Tamil literature in the midst of Chinese, Malay and English literatures in Singapore
Use of Tamil language and IT in Tamil language education
'There is a compulsion, not option to use technology', said Raveendran N., President of the Computer Society of India. (The Hindu Newspaper 2008). He stressed that barriers including language should be circumvented to make technology available to all. The use of computer technology enhances the knowledge and resources of the Tamil language. National Institute of Education and Ministry of Education in Singapore are continuously harnessing effective Information Technology in Teaching and Learning in Singapore Schools. Tamil Language Education is not an exception for it. Naa Go Tamil Language Information Technology competition was one of the process to develop the IT and Language skills among the Singapore Primary School Tamil Students and Tamil teacher trainees. 50 Primary schools and Diploma in Education Year 2 teacher trainees took part in this competition which capitalized on their skills. From the palm leaves in the olden age when Tamil words were written more than 2500 years ago to the age of computers and internet has made Tamil a living language. Among all the Indian Languages, Tamil has already made a considerable presence on the internet. Naa Govindasamy was known as "The Father of Tamil Internet". In view of all his noteworthy contributions towards Tamil Language and the Tamil community, the Naa Govindasamy Tamil IT Award was inaugurated to inspire our young generation to engage in the development, use and promotion of Tamil IT. The National Institute of Education (Tamil Language & Culture Division) and Tamil Murasu, a local Tamil newspaper, jointly organized the Naa Govindasamy Tamil IT Award Competition at the national level to all Primary schools offering Tamil language and Tamil teacher trainees from NIE. This paper shares the process, the experience and the outcomes in terms of IT and language skills among the students and teacher trainees.
The contribution of the mass media to the teaching and learning of Tamil language in Singapore schools
Singapuril makkal thodarbuch chathananggal Tamil mozhi, ilakkiya valarchikku aattriya panggalippu = The contribution of the mass media to the development of Tamil language and literature in Singapore
The objective of the research study is to evaluate the contribution of the mass media to the development of Tamil Language and Literature in Singapore. Language in order to keep growing has to be alive and has to be spoken by people in their daily lives. The language must be corpus-planned and developed to be relevant for the scientific and commercial worlds. To analyse the language development, three basic measures were recommended by socio-linguists. They are Graphization, Modernization and Standardization of Tamil language. In the development of language, literary development also plays a significant role. Literary development means there must be more people reading literature, creating new literacy forms and trends, translating their literature into other languages and bringing other world literatures to their language.
The research was done based on articles from newspaper, books, interviews and programmes broadcast and programmes telecast from radio and television. The period was from 1965 to 1994. The main sources for the research was obtained through microfilms, recorded programmes and interviews from professionals in the media. The period of research was from 1965 to 1994 and some of the sources were not available. Since the researcher was in Singapore only from 1990, there was no direct contact with mass media officials before 1990.
The research also analyses whether the mass media has contributed to the development of Tamil Language and Literature and also whether Tamil people developed interest due to its influences. In Chapter Two, the research reviews similar research done in Singapore or other countries. Chapter Three discusses research methodology and here the researcher follows the historical research tradition. The researcher also looked on how the mass media added to the development of Tamil Language and Literature in Chapter Four. In Chapter Five, the researcher evaluates the contribution of the mass media to the development of Tamil Literature. Chapter Six discusses the findings based on this research and recommendations.
Among the three mass media sources the newspaper has contributed the most to the development of Tamil language and literature. It was made readable for the people and loanwords, loan blend, translation for the technical terms were included. The loan blend in the language of the medium of simplicity of the language used made it convenient and well understood by Singaporean readers. Under literary development, a students' column was introduced for the students to improve their creative writing skills. Besides this, essays, stories and poetry competitions were introduced. There were also ample opportunities for ordinary readers to participate in the literary pages.
Radio as a medium has played a major role in developing Tamil Language and Literature, after the medium of newspapers. Tamil Pronunciation with proper voice modulation helped in the improvement of literary Tamil and spoken Tamil. As a result in the extension of hours of broadcast, many listeners found time to listen to a wider range of programmes which were broadcast daily.
Another dominant role is now played by the medium of television which has contributed to the development of the Tamil Language and Literature. Although the programmes are limited, but the viewership has remained strong and is growing. There are many entertaining programmes but not much of literary programmes. There is time constraint and it is costly to introduce literary items when compared to other types of media programmes.
The following recommendations are made based on the results of this study. More programmes in the mass media reflecting ethnic identity, language and culture must be introduced to bring about awareness among the younger generation. Competitions involving the young and old should be introduced by the mass media to encourage each group of speakers and listeners to share their knowledge in their language and literature. Although entertainment is one of the priorities of the mass media, it must also provide more educational and informative programmes to its customers, viewers and listeners.
The mass media which includes the medium of the newspapers and the radio have helped in the development of the language. The media should be further employed to help to make Tamil language contemporary and societal and provide input to modernise the language by corpus - planning activities that will introduce new lexical and cultural items and lead to codification in linguistics dictionaries.
Coding manual on transliterating and analyzing varieties of Tamil language in early primary classes
An examination of the use of standard spoken Tamil in Singapore: in the school and media domains and in Tamil classrooms in order to establish SST as an additional resource for the teaching and learning of Tamil
This study aims to examine the corpus of Standard Spoken Tamil (SST) in the media and school domains in Singapore, in order to establish SST as an additional resource for the teaching and learning of Tamil. The rationale for this study is that it will lead to instructional strategies that seek to redress the disjunction in the pedagogic context where only one monolithic norm, that of Literary Tamil (LT) prevails. The project aims to ascertain the status Tamil speakers and educators ascribe to the variety of Standard Spoken Tamil(SST) in order to establish a base line for an acceptable speech style for educated Standard Spoken Tamil. This will be used for developing teaching materials in speaking skills for Tamil classrooms. The project has two phases and the second phase is a continuation of the phase 1. Hence both phases share the main research questions except for an additional question for phase 2.