Minister Reassures Mother Tongue Teachers

I feel that the ministry’s decision to not cut the weighting for Mother Tongue Language (MTL) at PSLE is the right decision. I agree with Jun Wei that reducing the importance of a subject is not a solution to students not being able to perform up to standards. Instead, more efforts should be put in to resolve the problem head on. A more proactive approach should be adopted to capture students’ interest to learn and master MTL.

MTL is especially crucial and important nowadays as more and more households are predominantly English speaking as stated in the article. As opposed to up to a few years ago, students today have lesser outlets to practice speaking in their native tongue. Everyday conversations are usually in English and school is, for most students, the only place they get to practice speaking in their MTL and improve their fluency in the language.