Why the Speak Good English Movement harms Singapore

Many of my friends tell me to ignore ignoramuses such as the Speak Good English Movement (SGEM) and the people associated with it. They think I'm wasting my time but I totally disagree. I truly believe the SGEM and other grammar ignoramuses who love to criticise others when they themselves have no knowledge of grammar are causing harm to Singapore in many different ways. Recently, at a dinner, my fears proved not to be unfounded. Someone at the dinner asked me if I was the writer of this blog. He liked some of my blog posts criticising the SGEM. He told me that a group of women writers in Singapore compiled their writings into a book but everything just fizzled out because of the negative blog review of one Ludwig Tan, a committee member of the SGEM who criticised a very small grammatical error in the book and blew it up. He thanked me for 'being instrumental in shutting down Ludwig Tan's obnoxious blog'.

He was a total stranger to me and there were many other people at the dinner I had to talk to and so I didn't have the chance to speak more to him but what he said puzzled me throughout that evening. I know that Ludwig Tan used to have a language blog that was not only hypercritical of Singaporeans but also highly erroneous in its treatment of the English language and I have had some occasions to expose his errors in this blog. And although I would be delighted if indeed my just criticisms were the reason for the shutting down of his 'obnoxious' blog in which he used to write his scathing but unjustified excoriation of the language of Singaporeans, there can be many reasons why someone removes his blog from the internet and the reason that would warm the cockles of my heart may not be the only reason or even one of the reasons.

At the time when I first discovered Ludwig Tan's highly critical blog, I was really surprised that someone who purports to teach the English language could make so many ridiculous language mistakes. I wanted to explain in this blog why everything Tan said was wrong and why his sometimes harsh criticisms of Singaporeans were not just unwarranted but blatantly wrong. The people he criticised were linguistically correct and it was he who was wrong. But because Tan's mistakes were numerous and almost every blog post of his was riddled with shocking errors that I would not even have expected children to make, I could not address the mountain of errors in his blog. What I did was to screen-save many of his outrageous posts so that I could address them in the future.

When I got home, I looked up my album of screenshots to see if I could find any post by Ludwig Tan that criticised the writings of women writers in Singapore. What small grammatical error could he have chosen to slam?  Was Tan correct in the first place? If the many language mistakes Tan makes are symptomatic of his innate inability to get his language right, there is a high chance he was grammatically wrong in his criticism of the Singaporean women writers.

Sure enough, I found precisely what the person was talking about at the dinner.

The endless mistakes of the Speak Good English Movement

You may be forgiven for thinking that I have a personal vendetta against Singapore's Speak Good English Movement (SGEM) when I honestly have none. You may think that way because this blog has more than a hundred posts that highlight the ludicrous language mistakes made by the SGEM. But the fact is the SGEM is unbelievably ignorant of even the most elementary rules of English grammar and I can't help picking on it when everything it says or publishes is erroneous. I just went to its Facebook page and I saw this:

'Do you say "the photos you sent me" or "the photos you sent to me"? Let's learn and improve our English with Kai Ying and Robin!'  

I was naturally curious what nonsensical error the SGEM might come up with this time and I clicked on the link which brought me to a video that the SGEM produced, complete with real actors. It's a cringe-inducing video which is just what I expected of the SGEM. The video pokes fun at how an uneducated Singaporean speaks which is of course in poor taste. Although the SGEM loves to make fun of the the way an uneducated Singaporean speaks, it is itself hopelessly unable to get its own grammar right. I forced myself to continue watching the video and I waited for the SGEM to make a pronouncement on grammar. As I have shown in countless articles in this blog, the SGEM is totally incapable of getting its grammar right. I knew that all I had to do was to wait for it to condemn a sentence as grammatically unacceptable and the SGEM would most certainly be in error and expose its own ignorance of English grammar rules.  I didn't have long to wait.

This is what the SGEM says:

Should Singapore Schools Teach English Grammar?

Most people are not aware that English grammar is not taught in Singapore schools. Neither is it taught in any other school all over the world except those in Britain which recently re-introduced grammar in their curriculum because of the prudent educational policy of the Tory government. However, parents in Britain have staged huge protests against this. They don't want their kids to be taught grammar.

Many people don't realise that most English-speaking people are grammar illiterates. This has everything to do with the history of English teaching. In the 1960s, educators came up with the novel idea that English grammar was too difficult for children and it would take away their interest in creative writing. This idea soon spread to schools in all other parts of the world and children were taught how to communicate effectively and correctly in English but grammar itself was left out. However, it became clear a few years ago to educators in Britain that this was a huge mistake. We now have a whole generation of people who may be English-speaking but have no knowledge of English grammar at all. The government in the UK took the decision, even though it's an unpopular one, to re-introduce English grammar in all schools and make it essential for all 11-year-olds to sit an examination that tests their knowledge of grammar.

It was in this context that Nick Gibb, the UK education minister embarrassed himself when a BBC presenter asked him if 'after' in the sentence 'I went to the cinema after I'd eaten my dinner' was a preposition or a subordinating conjunction.

What Lucien Wong, Singapore's Attorney General, wrote

Many years ago, in the middle of work, my then secretary entered my room to ask me if 'organise' should be spelt with an 's' or a 'c', or at least that was what I thought I heard. I told her there was no 'c' in 'organise'. She repeated what she had said more carefully. 'Should "organise" be spelt with an "s" or a "zee"?' I asked her why she called it a 'zee'. All self-respecting citizens of this country were taught from the cradle to call a zed a zed. She eyed me as if I was a fossilised specimen from the Jurassic Period and said haughtily, 'That is so passé! Stylish people today call it "zee"'.

Section 377A - the slippery slope: a short musing

Everyone around me is now divided on whether Section 377A, an outmoded law which criminalises homosexual acts between consenting adults, should be repealed. Churches seem to be quite eager to see that homosexuals remain branded as criminals. While that may be the official stand of the National Council of Churches, individual Christians are very much divided on this issue.

WHEN IGNORAMUSES BECOME GRAMMAR NAZIS

Recently, many newspapers all over the world reported the story of a retired school teacher who purportedly corrected Trump's language in his letter to her.  You may read the full story in USA Today which gives more details about this retired teacher that other newspapers have chosen not to reveal. First, the 'corrections' of the retired teacher Yvonne Mason appear more like the ravings of a hysterical woman.  What's amusing to me is Mason has not shown a single language error that Trump has made. We will examine what Mason says are errors made by Trump. We will then take a look at those who defend Mason and of course there are legions of them - anyone that takes a swipe at Trump is always supported by a massive cheer-leading team and the story is always blown up out of all proportion; CNN even gave Mason two interviews at prime time.

Singapore's Good English Award in Bad English

Singapore's Speak Good English Movement (SGEM) is currently asking school students to nominate their favourite English teachers for the Movement's 'Inspiring Teacher of English Award'. You would have thought that the least the SGEM could do was to ensure that their own Nomination Form for the Award was grammatically correct. How can the SGEM assess English teachers and give an award to the best English teacher when the whole world can see that it can't even churn out a few sentences that are free of grammatical errors?

You must be wondering how anyone can make grammatical errors in a Nomination Form which has mainly empty spaces for students to fill in. You underestimate the SGEM's propensity for making grammatical errors if you think it can't possibly trip up on a Nomination Form. At the start of the Nomination Form, there is an explanatory note consisting of only five or six sentences. Short though this explanatory note may be, you can be sure that if there is room in any bit of writing for grammatical errors to be made, the Speak Good English Movement is sure to make them.

Fools or Liars?

A couple of months ago, I was seated by myself in my favourite restaurant eating my favourite meal when I overheard a conversation at the next table which was occupied by a small family consisting of a Brit (presumably so from his accent), his Asian wife and their young son of kindergarten-going age. The boy was eating fish and chips and he said very loudly, 'These are my all chips'. His father very swiftly corrected him, 'These are all my chips'.

Not another preschool ad!

Stuffed into my letter box recently was yet another preschool promotional flyer, this time by Learning Vision. What surprises me is Learning Vision takes in really young children - infants who are only two months old. What can one possibly teach a baby of that age? But whatever the preschool's ability may be in communicating with babies of such a tender age, I am tempted to think after having read the ad that perhaps it is less effective when communicating with parents.

Why the Merriam-Webster Dictionary should not appeal to you

In my last post in which I criticised the Speak Good English Movement for using the word 'collaterals' to mean 'books on grammar', a friend of mine informed me that the Merriam-Webster Dictionary has this as one of its definitions: 'informational materials (such as brochures and fact sheets) used in selling a product or service to a prospective customer or buyer'. It may be a little far-fetched to extend that definition to 'grammar books'. Further, this preposterous definition is only found in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and absolutely nowhere else, at least at the present time. And it's certainly not a definition accepted by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) or the constantly updated Oxford Dictionary Online (ODO).

There are very good reasons why you should not consult the Merriam-Webster and I'm not talking about the reasons I gave in this blog post I published a few months ago: Don't buy a Webster's Dictionary! That blog post deals with what the Merriam-Webster Dictionary has to say about a small area in English usage which, as I have demonstrated, is incorrect. What I'm questioning in this article is Merriam-Webster Dictionary's lexicographical reliability. I'm not only talking about the dictionary's comment on usage. I'm going to the heart of the dictionary - lexicography itself.

The Chairman of the Speak Good English Movement blunders again and again - PART 2

What I will show in this article is the similarity between Humpty Dumpty and Goh Eck Kheng, Chairman of the Speak Good English Movement. They both use a word to mean what they choose it to mean, even though the dictionary gives a totally different definition of the word and nobody else on this planet uses the word to mean what they choose it to mean.

At the start of Part 1 of this blog post, I briefly mentioned Goh's incorrect use of the word 'authenticity'. While scanning through the SGEM's website, I discovered another glaring misuse of a common enough word.

The Chairman of the Speak Good English Movement blunders again and again - PART 1

In 2014, Mr Goh Eck Kheng, the Chairman of the Speak Good English Movement (SGEM), made a speech which was published on the SGEM's website. In the speech, Mr Goh used the word 'authenticity' without understanding its meaning. I posted a critical comment of this. Thereafter, there were no further publications of the Chairman's speeches or any other announcements under the heading 'Press Release' on the SGEM's website. I wanted to look for Mr Goh's speeches in 2015 and 2016 but they could not be found on the website. I was particularly interested in a conference the Movement held in 2015. That was the conference the Movement got even its title wrong. Can you imagine that? The Speak Good English Movement has such a poor command of the English language that it could not even get the title of its conference grammatically correct. Click here to read what I wrote about that Conference. Recently, I discovered that the SGEM is getting more confident and has published its Chairman's 2017 speech on its website. Surely after all that has happened the SGEM must get its act together to ensure that the speech contains no error? You don't even need to speak English to be able to publish a grammatically correct speech in English.  All you need to do is to get someone who speaks English well to write it for you. So, what do you think? The 2017 speech of the Chairman of the Speak Good English Movement contains no grammatical errors? Is this too much to ask of the Speak Good English Movement?

Good Lord! It's the Pat's Schoolhouse ad again.

About a month and a half after I posted this blog article, I found in my letter box yet another ad from Pat's Schoolhouse. I was about to leave for the airport at the time and so I took a photo of it, stored the photo in my online album, forgot about it, had a good holiday although I had a fall while climbing a mountain, underwent medical treatment, recovered (to a degree) and this morning, as I was going through my online photos, I came across the photo I took almost three months ago and here it is:

Don't buy a Webster's Dictionary!

When I was about 7 years old, I went to a book shop to buy a dictionary. There were many dictionaries and I didn't know which one to choose. In the end I picked the one that had the most attractive and colourful jacket design. When I got home with my new purchase, my grandpa who was visiting us at the time told me that I had bought the 'wrong' dictionary. 'Avoid Webster like the plague', I was told.

Mr Goh Chok Tong's Facebook post

Don't ask me anything about the family dispute. I was abroad when it happened and I just heard about it when I got home. A person's family dispute is a private matter and even if members of the family choose to air their quarrel online, I take no interest in it. But I'm more interested in how people express their thoughts in words. This afternoon, I saw this Facebook post by Goh Chok Tong, the former Prime Minister of Singapore:

Pat's Schoolhouse keeps getting its grammar wrong

Those who follow my blog will recall that Pat's Schoolhouse sent me an ad just last month and I wrote about its flawed grammar here: Pat's Schoolhouse Again! I stressed 'again' in the title because in 2016, the school shoved a badly written advertising flyer into my letter box and I blogged about it in this post: An Ad by Pat's Schoolhouse. A couple of weeks ago, the school did it again - it got someone to stuff yet another promotional flyer into my letter box. And Pat's Schoolhouse which got its grammar wrong in two previous ads did it again. This is what it wrote in the ad:

A Kamm-ouflaged Pedant - a review of Oliver Kamm's book on English usage.

There are three different kinds of people who write books on grammar and usage. The first consists of linguists and grammarians who have proper academic credentials in the study of language. The second group is extremely rare - writers who have absolutely no knowledge of grammar and I really mean zero knowledge. Most ignorant people aren't that shameless. Singapore's Speak Good English Movement is the only organisation I know that writes grammar books that are totally wrong and the people who shamelessly write them are clueless about English grammar as my recent review of their latest grammar book demonstrates. The third group that writes books on grammar and usage is made up of mainly journalists. Unlike the second group that knows nothing about grammar and cannot even construct grammatical sentences themselves or make an official speech without errors, these journalists usually have some working knowledge of grammar and they can write beautiful prose but this knowledge is too skimpy for them to write books on grammar and usage.

Pat's Schoolhouse again!

Last year, I blogged about an error in Pat's Schoolhouse's advertisement. They wrote in their ad:

Pat's Schoolhouse provides a distinctly unique education for over 28 years...

As I explained in my blog post, the sentence should read: 'Pat's Schoolhouse has been providing a distinctly unique education for over 28 years...'

I've just received in my letter box Pat's Schoolhouse's 2017 ad and this time, the flyer looks even more attractive than their 2016 ad:

I am quite pleased to say that this time, they didn't use the simple present. The first sentence of their ad which contains only 3 sentences reads:

LTA's illiterate poster

In response to my last post which includes a photo of an embarrassing poster by the Land Transport Authority (LTA), a reader posted this comment in a vigorous but futile attempt to defend LTA's indefensible blunder:

Why pick on shopping centres in Singapore?

Last week, the Straits Times published a photo of a poster found in a shopping centre in Singapore that contained grammatical errors: