THE CURSE OF PERFECT EYESIGHT

I don't understand why people bother to correct their myopia through invasive surgical procedures. I have perfect vision and I can't just make do with a pair of glasses. The white pair is necessary when I need to look at the fine print. As the years go by, the category of what constitutes "fine print" becomes increasingly larger.

The black pair is important to cut out UV light and blue light which are harmful to our eyes. They are glasses manufactured specially for use when we're looking at the computer screen and that's probably more than half our waking hours.

If I had myopia, I'd only need a pair of glasses for seeing everything I need to see around me. It can be coated to shut out UV and blue lights. To read, all a myopic person needs to do is to take off the glasses and everything is well.

The irony is the myopic person needs only a pair of glasses while the person with perfect vision needs two. Think again if you want to see your eye surgeon for a LASIK surgery. There may come a time when you might just regret your action.

The Empty Tomb - as seen by women

Today, the Easter sermon was about, not surprisingly, the Resurrection of Jesus. The empty tomb is seen nowadays as the trump card that apologists have when they want to argue for Jesus' resurrection. The usual argument goes like this - the Gospels tell us that women were the first to see the empty tomb. If the disciples had concealed the body of Jesus and cooked up the story of the empty tomb, surely they would have told the story of the male disciples discovering the tomb? After all, as we all know, the culture then was not to believe the stories of women. The fact that the Gospels tell us that women were the ones who saw the empty tomb makes the Gospel writers more believable. Had the Evangelists wanted to tell an untruth, they would have made the discoverers of the empty tomb men who would be more reliable.

But is that really true?

What if the Tradition of the Empty Tomb (although an important argument for apologists today) only started some decades after Christ's crucifixion?

Scholars tell us that the Synoptic Gospels were written after AD 70 or around that time. All scholars are agreed that the earliest documents in the New Testament are the Pauline epistles and the Gospels were written many years after St Paul's death. As we know, St Paul is a great apologist so let's see how he defends the faith. In all the instances when St Paul wants to argue for our Lord's Resurrection, he does not mention that the tomb was discovered to be empty. Surely that would have been the first thing anyone would have said if he wanted to show that the resurrection probably did happen. In 1 Corinthians 15 (1 Corinthians is one of the earliest epistles of Paul and hence, one of the earliest books of the New Testament), St Paul wants to prove that Jesus did resurrect from the dead. He mentions how the resurrected Jesus was seen by the Apostles and by other people. He did not say the tomb was discovered to be empty. Not in any of St Paul's epistles can we find any declaration that the tomb was discovered to be empty.

From this, some historians are of the view that the Tradition of the Empty Tomb had not been concocted in St Paul's time but decades after, perhaps just before the writing of the Gospels.

If that is true, a Gospel writer who wants to introduce a new element, ie the Empty Tomb, has got to be very careful. He may be met by a storm of protests among church goers who will want to know why it is that they had not heard of the Empty Tomb for some 40 years since Jesus' death.

Mark 16:8 tells us that the women who discovered the empty tomb were too frightened to tell anyone. So, that's why our early Christian church goer and reader of St Paul's epistles didn't get to hear of it.

We learn from Luke 24:10, 11 that the women did talk about having found the empty tomb but their words seemed like "idle tales" and they were not believed.  Again, naturally, it's not so surprising if our early Christian knew nothing about it before reading of this new piece of "fact" in the freshly written Gospels.

Contrary to what modern apologists say, it would be in the interest of the Gospel writers to make the discoverers of the empty tomb people who were not reliable or credible or who were too frightened to talk about what they purportedly saw.

Hemingway is wrong!

I always pride myself on my ability to tell a lot about a person by just listening to him or reading what he writes and when I come across a person who assiduously avoids the relative pronoun "which", I know immediately that he has been paying too much heed to his grammar checker. It does not matter what word programming software you use; these days, they all come bundled with some programme that purports to spot spelling errors and grammatical mistakes.

I used to think only ninnies used a grammar checker in a word programming software and since ninnies did not number among my friends, nobody I knew used a grammar checker but then, as time went on, I began to meet more and more people who exhibited grammar-checker symptoms in their speech and writing. While I condemn the grammar checker as a programme fit only for dolts and it's designed to make a dolt even more doltish, I must say I find the spelling checker in a word programming software quite useful. A reading of my old hand-written diary entries shows me that I didn't know how to spell "cappuccino" until I started to type my diary on the computer.

But let us be clear about one thing - no machine can teach you grammar and there are no exceptions. I initially titled this article "Who but a blockhead would use a grammar checker?" but I changed the title so as not to sound offensive but honestly, who but a blockhead would use a grammar checker? I admit there are people who just cannot write a single sentence without making some grammatical mistake and if you have read some of my previous articles in this list, you will see that some of Singapore's English language experts are included in this group of linguistically challenged people. My advice to these people is simply to go ahead and write in another language. Nobody puts a gun to your head to force you to write in English.

Yesterday, there was an article on Netted about an app created by two men in their early 20s which they called Hemingway. It's an app that claims to "make your writing bold and clear". According to Netted, the app "makes language tight, clear, and free of unnecessary complexity and obfuscation (like adverbs, passive voice, and words like "obfuscation")." I find that puzzling. How can one consider adverbs and the passive voice an obfuscation? The English language is so much richer because of its adverbs and the passive voice. Writers who rail against the passive voice have been shown to use it quite often and to good effect in their works. But objection to the use of adverbs is ridiculous. An adverb embellishes the verb and gives further information to it the way an adjective does to a noun.

The New Yorker has an interesting article about Ernest Hemingway himself and about this silly app. What I find appalling about the app is it seems to take great pains to simplify a text to such an extent that it can be understood by a young child. But that is not, and it should not be, the motive of any good writer unless he is a writer of children's books. Simplicity may be necessary if you are talking to a young child or if you are addressing a village idiot but too much simplicity can only make a piece of writing inelegant and sometimes ludicrously so. No reader wants to feel like he's the village idiot you are addressing.

This app will probably find the works of all the greatest Nobel laureates for literature too obfuscatory and confusing.  Let's be realistic here. Ernest Hemingway is not the greatest English writer. He's only great because he's an American writer and there are so few good writers in America that when you come across a decent writer there, you toss the confetti and dance in jubilation. If Hemingway were born in India where all the greatest writers seem to come from these days, he'd be selling postcards outside the Taj Mahal.

I don't want to belittle Hemingway the novelist. I've read most of his novels although I must say I only read him because my literature teacher was a Hemingway fan and she'd set the unseen prose questions from an excerpt of a Hemingway novel. I confess I did enjoy reading Hemingway who of course ranks much higher than any other American novelists except Henry James who doesn't really count as an American. Hemingway's simplicity of style was a unique voice which exuded all the masculine machismo which the effete literati of the day severely lacked. The novelty went well with the general public.

But it's the height of folly to choose Hemingway as the role model for today's writing style. Of course this will appeal to anyone who doesn't think very much or who finds the coarse mutterings of a cave-dwelling savage attractive and elegant. It will appeal to those who already find the average commonplace sentence difficult to digest and who are unable to construct a single sentence that isn't riddled with grammatical errors.

And what about the grammatical errors of Hemingway the writer?  Just read that New Yorker article and you will see that the writer whom the app purports to emulate couldn't even write grammatically faultless sentences. And if you can't spot the errors, you really need to delete the Hemingway app and disable your grammar checker for a start.

Low Crime Has Its Consequences

Zoologists tell us that animals that live on islands that have no predators are usually unable to defend themselves when a predator is suddenly introduced. A mere rat that gets to the island from a vessel is enough to threaten extinction to an entire rare species.

The same applies to us humans. Singapore is a country with probably the world's lowest crime rate. Its laws are draconian, its government clean and incorruptible and its police force efficient and competent. I've seen how a thief made off with a camera bag of a Singaporean tourist in Spain. The bag contained not just his camera but all the precious photos he's taken. When I carry my backpack in front of me, friends ask me if I've got gold bars in it.

But it's not all that safe in Singapore. Recently, the Singapore Police Force has been waring the public of a rise in pickpocketing cases. There's now a growing trend of foreign pickpockets making a beeline for Singapore. They may stay here for a week or two and the loot they steal covers their trip and all expenses with a lot of money to spare. They usually steal wallets, mobile phones and cameras. Last year, a pickpocket from as far away as Brazil was convicted of theft in a Singapore court.

This morning, at breakfast, something happened that's best recounted with the help of photographs. Someone hurriedly left his table and I noticed something odd and took a quick pic.

Yes, he left his wallet literally standing on the table. I looked to see where the person had gone to and I saw that he was at a drinks stall quite a distance away from his table.

I didn't want to be meddlesome and he might very well be returning to his seat even though leaving one's wallet on the table is a rather unusual thing to do. I kept watch of his wallet from where I was seated just in case someone took it. I also kept an eye on him, for fear that he might just leave the stall and walk out of the food centre. Sure enough, he walked away from the drinks stall and was leaving the food centre when I shouted out to him.  He went back to his table and took his wallet after thanking me sheepishly.

Can such a person survive in Barcelona or Prague or Rome or any of the other major pickpocket cities of the world? I've been on the infamous Bus No. 64 and I took a lot of selfies and photos of my surroundings, much to the annoyance of the pickpockets who naturally didn't want to be photographed. I have photos of them looking shady and annoyed.

Singapore's phenomenally low crime is a testimony to the wisdom of its strict laws and the integrity of its enforcement officers. But every silver lining has its dark cloud and the average Singaporean is more likely to be a victim of petty theft when he is abroad.

THE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

THE BEAST

Anyone who can find it in his or her heart to make fun of someone else's poverty, even if it's a private joke among friends, is most certainly a beast. There can be no quibble about that. I don't think there is any right-thinking Singaporean (unless he's a beast himself) who will deny the universally accepted fact that Jesslyn Tan is a beast.

Then who is the beauty? We all agree the victim of the beast is a wonderful, industrious and honest worker but there is another person in this whole sad episode who emerges as beautiful and virtuous. She is beautiful physically although not in the beauty pageant kind of way which is really all hype, dross and fakery where models starve themselves almost to death just to look sylph-like. But for those of us who know her, what's truly beautiful is her sincerity and kindness.

I was a little annoyed when I read in one of the alternative news media something about Indranee Rajah. This is what it says:

This after Indranee Rajah, a PAP MP for Tanjong Pagar GRC, opportunistically wrote on Facebook that we must support the man wearing a holey t-shirt who was made fun of by former Miss Singapore Universe finalist, Jesslyn Tan.

Granted, this article is intended to be facetious and humorous but I've seen elsewhere the comments of people about what Indranee has done in support of the victim of Jesslyn Tan and many of them aren't at all complimentary.

Indranee spoke up for the victim. She explains that he is an honest worker and she gave the reason why his t-shirt had a hole in it, which was the subject of Jesslyn Tan's cruel insult. It's a good thing for someone like Indranee to go out of her way to defend a man who lives in her constituency. Anyone can post in his blog in support of the man but the impact won't be great. What Indranee has done is courageous and highly laudable.

I understand what many people think. Of course there are a lot of opportunistic people in any government and Singapore is no exception. Like most people, I too have my doubts about the sincerity of some people in government. But Indranee is different. I happen to know her personally as my former classmate in uni and I know how sincere she is. I know that when she spoke up for Jesslyn Tan's victim, her motives were pure and perfectly selfless and she did it out of a desire to support someone in her constituency. Nobody I know who knows Indranee personally will ever imagine that she was opportunistic in what she did.

I was initially reluctant to write this post. I'm happier talking about the errors of our English language "experts" as I have done in countless posts on this blog (and if you are interested in looking at a list of them you may click here). But then I thought how terrible it must be for Indranee to have her motives questioned not just in this facetious article but by many Singaporeans who do not know her personally but judge her unfairly. I continued to lie in bed on this hot Sunday afternoon nursing a fever (it's my tonsillitis again) and I thought to myself how horrible our society would be if every good and sincere MP says nothing in support of victims just because they don't want to be accused of being opportunistic. It does take a great deal of courage to speak up for some victim if you are in government because the default reaction of netizens is to assume that you are just being opportunistic.

I hope to see more such public support from Indranee and other MPs. Those of us who know Indranee or have met her even fleetingly will not doubt her sincerity and those who do not know her at all should be more charitable in their blind judgment. Let's not excoriate the beauty with the beast.

A Matter of Degree

It's a rainy evening and I thought I should play my game of chance again. My hand reached out for one of the two disgraceful books and it landed on  ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2 which we are told were written by a bunch of unknowns Khoo Li Ying, Stephanie Pee, Sylvy Soh and Aloysius Yap or the Yap-Soh-Pee-Khoo gang, as I called them in a previous post. I flipped to a page and allowed my hand to rest on the right side of the book and it's page 29. Now, do we have a mistake on page 29 or do I have to admit that there is at least a page in the two books that does not contain some laughable error?

My readers who have been following my recent blog posts will know that I have made a bold claim that both ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN and ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2 are the most outrageously flawed books that have ever been written on this planet on the subject of English grammar and it would be almost impossible for a reader to show me a single page in either book that does not contain some egregious blunder in English grammar or usage. And so far, I have not been shown to be wrong.

I've just looked at page 29 and the blunderheads who gave the answer obviously don't know what "much" means.

This is what they wrote. Before I go on, I should explain that both ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN and ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2 are written in a question-and-answer format. Newspaper readers ask questions on the English language and the panel of English experts (as they style themselves) from either the Ministry of Education or the Speak Good English Movement provide the answers. Here's the question on page 29 followed by the experts' answer. Since this is taken from ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2 the answer is provided by the Yap-Soh-Pee-Khoo gang.

I've just been told by a reader that calling the quartet the Yap-Soh-Pee-Khoo gang sounds obscene in the Northern Chinese dialect because "pee khoo" means anus. But the answer that they give to the question on page 29 of their book (which is characteristic of all the answers they have given in the entire book) is really no different from excreta that should rightly be discharged from one's anal orifice and so although I had no idea that "pee khoo" meant anus when I first wrote it I can now see how apt the name is and I wouldn't for the world refer to the Yap-Soh-Pee-Khoo gang by any other name. I might even shorten the name to just the Pee-Khoo gang but that won't be fair to the other two language "experts".

The word "much" given in the example is not redundant. Anyone who has a passing acquaintance with the English language should know that. There is a difference in degree between "This oven is much cheaper than that" and "This oven is cheaper than that" and even a child of five should know this. And the Yap-Soh-Pee-Khoo gang doesn't know this.

You be the judge and tell me if the answer they give is, as I have said, no different from what naturally comes out of the pee khoo.

If you would like to have a look at a growing list of all the errors made by Singapore's language experts and others too, please click here. The list is always growing as I add to it whenever I write a new post on the subject.

Confusion over Concord

Reliable historians tell us that when Monsieur Guillotin invented the famous beheading device, he had in mind muttonheaded ninnies such as the writers of ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN who have the gall to call themselves language experts when they probably can't even spell "grammar". I have shown about a few hundred thousand errors in their disgraceful books ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN and ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2 in my previous blog posts and if you are interested in having a look at a growing list of them (I update the list every time I post something new on the subject), please click here.

That the writers of the disgraceful books are a bunch of knuckleheaded blunderheads is a truth that I have established beyond the shadow of a doubt. They do not seem able to get even the simplest of grammar rules correct and they have the audacity to call themselves English language specialists and to write not one but two books on English grammar. Although I'm the last person on this planet to scoff at anyone, my attentive readers will notice that I have sometimes allowed my characteristic high level of courtesy to dip a little when mention is made of this group of village idiots.

I have nothing against village idiots who keep their idiocy to themselves. But when an idiot tells the world he's a language expert and writes books on grammar, I will have to put him in his place.

I've just done my blind test again. I allowed my fingers to pick up one of the two books written by Singapore's language "experts" and this time, I got the first book. I flipped the pages and by chance, I was at page 158. Looking into both books to find grammatical errors is like looking into a Spanish treasure chest for gold ingots. They're everywhere and on every page. I was pretty sure I'd be able to find some error on this page and and I was right. Here it is. The A or Answer is supplied by the English language experts from the the Ministry of Education (MOE).

To be fair to the English language experts from the MOE, this is one error most language teachers in Singapore make. I'm of course speaking from my own experience with language teachers from my kids' primary schools. But I expect more from MOE's language experts and I cannot accept such an error made in a book that has been re-printed at least ten times and has the full endorsement of the MOE and the Speak Good English Movement. Grammatical concord is easy in that you have a 50% chance of getting it right. It's either a plural verb or a singular one. It is as outrageous for a language expert to get it wrong as it is for a surgeon to cut off the wrong breast in a mastectomy.

One of the mistakes I made when my kids were in primary school was to enrol them in private schools for additional lessons. I did that only because every parent I knew enrolled their kids in private schools after normal school lessons. It may only be an hour or two each week but that's still precious time which could be put to better use if we parents conducted our own lessons for our kids. Of course I later pulled them out of the private school and spent a bit of time each week teaching them grammar and I achieved more in an hour what any school could do in a year. At least I don't make egregious blunders.

One day, my child showed me a question in a test paper in which he was marked wrong. It was a sentence similar to this sentence and he wrote the plural verb and his teacher said it was wrong. I wrote a note to his teacher and cited three references from renowned grammarians and told my child to give it to his teacher. The following week, I got a phone call from the teacher. She was a pleasant woman and she agreed with what I said. However, she said the other teachers in the school still insisted that the plural verb was wrong. She also sent me an email and I replied to her email by writing at great length, thanking her for teaching my child and saying all the pleasant things we normally say to others and I included in my email this paragraph.

What happened after that was entirely her fault. She printed my email and all the references I had quoted and approached her head of department. When he saw that paragraph in my email, he hit the roof. He accused her of not being a good "team player" because he insisted it was wrong of her to tell a student's parent that the other teachers didn't agree with a point of grammar even after they were shown references in support of it. He probably thought the worst of me too and that is one reason why I don't like to tell someone he is wrong. Some people react very badly when they are told they are grammatically wrong. I wrote about this a long time ago in this post and I think I told the story about a friend in my hostel who refused thereafter to talk to me throughout the duration of our stay.

I am not slamming teachers in private schools or the teachers in our schools employed by the MOE. They are all wonderful people who work very hard and they truly want the best for their students. But MOE's language experts are different. If they can't even sort out their own grammatical problems, they should have the decency not to accept any remuneration from the MOE as language experts. And they certainly should not have the effrontery to write a book on grammar and usage.

English Matters!

I only started on my language crusade after I stumbled upon ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN, the incredibly flawed grammar book of the Speak Good English Movement which I've written about ad nauseam in my recent posts.  Before I even knew of the existence of this horrid book which is Singapore's undisputed linguistic debacle, I hardly bothered one bit about grammar and usage. It was only after I looked at the book and its sequel, ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2 that I became aware of the extent of the incompetence and ignorance of Singapore's top language teachers who have the endorsement of both the Ministry of Education and the Speak Good English Movement. From my observation, Singaporeans generally speak very good English. The language experts are the ones who are clueless about the most basic rules of English grammar.

If you are interested in looking at my growing list of the errors made by Singapore's language experts and others click here. I add to that list every time I write a new blog post on the subject.

I saw in my letter box this evening a colourful pamphlet from a school called Mind Matters.

Now, I didn't exactly pay attention to the pamphlet and I merely cast an idle eye over the section "English Matters!" which is the school's English language programme. The pamphlet highlights what the school teaches to help students acquire composition skills. If you are interested, I have a zoomed up version on the left but I wouldn't bother to read it if I were you. It's still a bit of a strain on the eye.  I'll just tell you briefly what it's all about. The programme teaches students how to start off an essay with an attention-grabbing introduction. One method is for the narrator to recall an incident in the past - the use of a flashback. That's of course not of concern to us here. But what is really interesting is the example given by the school of how a student may start his story with the use of a flashback. As I have said, I was merely reading the pamphlet mindlessly but when I read the one-sentence example given, the same horror that I felt when I first read ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN seized me once again. Let me blow up that sentence:

Now, this is a sentence which is meant to start the story and its main purpose is to whet the reader's appetite for more. But Mind Matters has succeeded in that one sentence to pack more grammatical mistakes than even the writers of ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN can possibly achieve in a single sentence. There are three errors in that one sentence. The error in the tense is an error almost all language teachers in Singapore make and that is my unshakeable belief after having made countless trips to school when my kids were very young. Many English language teachers in Singapore are never sure when they should use the present tense, the past tense, the present perfective and the past perfective. For them, it's really a game of Russian roulette and as I used to tell my kids, their teachers are all universally dense on the tense. So, it will be unfair if I pick on that error. But there are still two other glaring errors.

One of them is rather obvious even to a child of eight. It should be "...the day when..." and not where.

The other error is also pretty obvious.  Any school-going kid in Singapore and anyone who speaks and writes British English can tell that the preposition in the first sub clause is wrong. Burchfield writes that even though it has a long history (since the mid-13th century) and Shakespeare used it too, "at the present time it is non-standard in the UK".  What's non-standard in the UK is non-standard in school exams in Singapore and let's not pretend we are unaware of this.

Such a construction is only acceptable in Singapore if you are singing this song and it only works if you have Randy Vanwarmer's voice.

If the youtube link doesn't work, please click here.

The Yap-Soh-Pee-Khoo gang on the English language

I've been asked what personal grievance I have against the Speak Good English Movement, the language experts from the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the other writers of the appalling grammar book ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN. I have nothing personal against them for I do not know the language experts from the MOE and the other writers of the deeply flawed grammar book from Adam and if you have followed my blog from the very start, I have nothing but praise for the MOE which is instrumental in placing Singapore on the top of the world's chart on education. As for the Speak Good English Movement, I've always thought of it as a bit of a clown from its very start but I have no strong feelings against it.

I only went on a rampage (which is how my children humorously describe the occasional criticism I make of Singapore's ignorant English language experts) after I discovered the extent of these experts' ignorance of basic English grammar. Those who would like to see a list of all my recent criticisms of these experts may click here (see under para 1 A of the list). It all started in May last year when I saw an article in the newspaper about the Speak Good English Movement that prompted me to write this article in my blog. Months after that, an ad by the Movement led me to look at the work of the Speak Good English Movement more carefully. Their website was undergoing maintenance as it still is today. I just checked and here's the screen capture.

But I found archived in the website of the National Library a treasure trove of all the ludicrous errors made in a newspaper series contributed by the Movement and the MOE called "ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN". Two books were published from this and they were touted to be excellent resources on English grammar for Singaporeans. The then President of the Speak Good English Movement wrote the Preface to the book. ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN and ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2 are the work of both the Speak Good English Movement and the MOE although the latter seems to have distanced itself upon the publication of ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2. It may very well be that while the first book saw "English language specialists" from the MOE giving the answers to questions posed by newspaper readers, the English language panel for the second book consists of named but unknown individuals - Khoo Li Ying, Stephanie Pee, Sylvy Soh and Aloysius Yap - who were probably not be in the MOE's employ. I'll refer to the writers of ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2 collectively as the Yap-Soh-Pee-Khoo gang.

I bought both books last month and you won't believe how outrageously flawed every page is until you have gone through the books yourself. I have come across rotten grammar books in my time including a horrendous book on English which I found in a book shop in Kyongju written by a Korean writer for Koreans who, by and large, don't speak a word of English but even that book pales by comparison with these two books when I'm looking for the worst possible book on English.  I've been asked many times which of the two books is worse. Book No. 1 or Book No. 2?

But those who have read my posts (please see the list given in the first link above or if you're lazy, you may just click here) will know that it's very hard for me to decide which book is more rotten of the two. They are like two very badly rotten eggs jostling to see which wins the Most Stinking Egg Contest; they both beat all other rotten eggs flat but it's hard for a judge to decide which of the two exudes a more noisome stench.

What truly astounds me is the fact that any human being with some basic knowledge of English grammar can be as wrong as the English language panel in both books. I am not just talking about the difficult areas of English grammar; the experts in both books are clueless about even elementary grammar rules that children in primary schools in Singapore are well aware of. I have given many examples in my earlier posts (see my list in the link above).

I've been asked whether I exaggerate when I say that almost every page of both books contains shocking errors. I have not exaggerated one bit. Almost every page contains some error that makes it perfectly justifiable for me to publicly denounce the English language panel as a bunch of ignoramuses who have shamelessly and wrongly claimed for themselves the right to teach Singaporeans English grammar and usage when they really ought to go back to primary school to learn the rudiments of English grammar. I have shown enough instances in my earlier blog posts to substantiate my claim.

I just looked at ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2 this evening and I decided to confine myself to merely the first page. You would have thought that surely there can't be errors even on the first page? Surely any decent writer would make sure that the first page is at least correct? There are only two questions on the first page and I'll examine the answers to these two questions and see if there is at least an incorrect answer. The answers in this book are written by the named quartet - the Yap-Soh-Pee-Khoo gang.

Here's the first question followed by the answer.

This answer is a dead giveaway that the Yap-Soh-Pee-Khoo gang aren't at home with the English language. Elsewhere in the book, they have shown a total lack of understanding of grammatical concord and they fumble when they see plural and singular nouns in a sentence. They have a tendency of resorting to some fixed mathematical rule (of their own concoction) which really isn't what English grammar is about. See this and this.  There are many other examples in the list I've given of my past posts. But grammatical concord is not the only thing they know nothing about. Almost every aspect of grammar is alien to them. I have millions of examples, many of which I have not written in my blog yet.

Let's look at the second question that the hapless newspaper reader asks. Asking the Yap-Soh-Pee-Khoo gang a point of grammar and usage is like getting a witchdoctor to remove a tumour from your brain.

Wow!  "We are out to lunch" is incorrect according to the Yap-Soh-Pee-Khoo gang. This is such a stupid answer I don't think I need to tell my readers why they are so wrong.

I'll just give a few examples from a couple of dictionaries. My Cambridge Dictionary gives this example:

I'm sorry, Ms Wilson isn't here at the moment, she's out to lunch.

In another dictionary, the definition of the verb lunch is given as

(verb intransitive) to eat lunch; (verb transitive) to provide (somebody) with lunch or take (them) out to lunch.

"Out to lunch" is such a common expression that it's taken on a new meaning informally especially in conversation. You can say of someone who isn't paying attention or isn't doing her work or is behaving strangely in the office that she's out to lunch. It's as if she's not in the office but eating lunch elsewhere. When it comes to giving correct answers on grammar, the writers of ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN are always out to lunch. There are only two questions on the first page and both their answers are wrong. Now, you know I wasn't exaggerating.

[EDITED ON 3 APR 2014 AT 6:50PM]:

As you know, I do try to be fair to the writers of these two execrably flawed books ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN and ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2 and I've just noticed that in Book 1, a reader asks the same question whether "go out for lunch" and "go out to lunch" are acceptable. The language specialists from the Ministry of Education (MOE) who are the ones who supplied the answers to questions in Book 1 say "Both are fine" on page 58 of the book. Although the MOE's language specialists are just as bad and clueless about English grammar as the Yap-Soh-Pee-Khoo gang, I want to be fair to them on the very rare occasion when they are correct.

Ultra CRAP!

If you have been following my blog, you will know that I've been excoriating the language experts of the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Speak Good English Movement in Singapore for their unpardonable ignorance of even the most basic English grammar rules. There is nothing more dishonourable than for an ignoramus to arrogate to himself the authority to teach others a subject that he knows absolutely nothing about.

Pliny the Elder tells the story of Apelles of Kos, a legendary painter, whose painting was once criticised by a cobbler who pointed out that the sandals in the painting were defective. The renowned painter corrected the error in his painting but the cobbler proceeded to point out other parts in the painting which he felt should be corrected, to which Apelles remarked, "Sutor, ne ultra crepidam" or "Cobbler, not beyond the last". The cobbler was told to venture no further than the last of the sandal which is where his expertise lay. He should not go into areas he knew nothing about.

It's from this that we get the English word ultracrepidarian which means a critic who is ignorant and presumptuous. The writers of ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN are all ultracrepidarians even though they shamelessly consider themselves English language experts. If the word is too long, you can always call these experts "ultra-CRAP" which is precisely what they are; not just ordinary turds but the ultra-excremental variety and they must be if they can't even get simple points of grammar right.

You can pick any page of either ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN or ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2 and I assure you you'll see something shockingly wrong. I've just allowed my fingers to touch one of the two books and it's ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2 and I picked a page at random and it's page 77 and sure enough there is a shocking error there. Here's a pic of it and you decide for yourself if the "expert" who gave the answer to the question is indeed ultra-crap.

From the answer given above I'm able to say a few things about the language "expert" who wrote this.

First, the English language must be as alien to him or her as Swahili is to me. Anyone who has some knowledge of the English language however rudimentary it may be cannot possibly make such an egregious blunder.  Next, only an ultra-Crap can be so ignorant of a subject and yet be so brazen as to hold himself out as an expert and I don't think anyone will disagree with me when I say that the writer of this passage fits the definition of an ultracrepidarian to a T.

I have been informed that no Primary school pupil will make the kind of mistake the language expert has made. This is so basic that all Singaporean pupils in Primary 3 must know this in order to be promoted to Primary 4.  How can the MOE be so misled as to hire language experts who don't even know a basic grammar rule that every nine-year-old in Singapore knows?

The rule in indirect speech is the opposite of what the "expert" says. The present tense in direct speech is often backshifted to the past in indirect speech when the time reference of the original utterance no longer applies at the time that the utterance is reported. I'll give an example from A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (Section 14.31 at page 1027):

'I am being paid by the hour,' she said.
She said she was being paid by the hour.

The example our disgraceful language expert gives is a stupid example because it doesn't illustrate anything and it only serves to convince the reader that the "expert" knows nothing about grammar. What he gives in the example is a to-infinitive and only a nitwit with a bad concussion will give such a dumb example. In "He told me to go to bed" go will always not be in the past tense because it's an infinitive. Any child of ten can tell you that.

Let's alter the dunderhead's stupid example and we can see how moronic he is:

He said, "Go to bed after you have said your prayers."

Of course there are always exceptions but as a rule, the indirect speech will have to be

He told me to go to bed after I had said my prayers.

The present perfective is backshifted to the past perfective.  As I have said, as in anything in English grammar and usage, of course, there are exceptions. If I haven't gone to bed yet and my mum asks me what the man just said to me, my reply would be "He told me to go to bed after I have said my prayers." But this is not what our dumb expert writes. As you can see from the excerpt I posted above, he or she says, incorrectly of course, "As you are reporting what the person told you, the tense does not change for the reported part of the speech." I still can't get over the fact that anyone can make such a stupid statement. You can't get more wrong than that. I used to have a pet parrot called Polly who knew better than our language expert. She would always say, "He said I was a bad bird". The MOE should dismiss their panel of birdbrained language experts and keep half a dozen parrots which I'm sure won't be so featherbrained as to make such an outrageous blunder.

If you are interested in seeing thousands of other errors Singapore's English language experts have made, click here. Please note that the list will be updated every time I publish a fresh post in my blog on the subject.

MOE's Language Experts Need Voice Training

Anyone who has read that disgraceful book ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN by the MOE's panel of English language experts cannot help but see that these experts are so ignorant of the rudiments of English grammar that they sometimes fail to answer a question from the public but they think they have given an answer simply because they don't even understand the question. Can you believe that? They have such a poor understanding of simple English that they can't even fully grasp the question that is put to them in order to give an answer. I'll give you a stark example of this below.

First, it's important to remind my readers that the book is in a question-and-answer format. Newspaper readers send their questions on English grammar to the newspaper editor and the MOE's English specialists write their answers.

Here's a question from a reader. The reader asks two questions but let's just look at the first question asked. What he wants to know is which of these two is correct: "This is subjected to..." or "This is subject to...".  Be amazed at what the language experts from the MOE have to say!

Let's rephrase the question asked. What's the difference, if any, between "This is subject to..." and "This is subjected to..."? The experts begin by stating that the difference is very subtle. And they proceed to explain the difference.  They give an example of how "This is subjected to" can be used. They talk about people who are "subjected to" some rules.

In the next sentence, the experts proceed to explain what "This is subject to..." means but they fail miserably. The reason for their failure is they do not understand what in grammar is called the voice. Yes, you probably now understand the reason for the facetious title of this post.

What the language experts don't realize is the second sentence explains the same thing as the first sentence. In the first sentence, they write, "If people are subjected to the rules...", they are using the passive voice to explain the question asked by the reader.  The reader asks what "This is subjected to..." means. That's the passive voice.  As far as the first sentence goes, it's ok. But the second sentence is just a repeat of the first.  They write, "If you subject someone to something". That's the active voice.  But it means the same thing as "If someone is subjected to something" which is the passive voice.

In other words, the experts have not even begun to talk about "This is subject to..." at all.  They have only dealt with "This is subjected to..." in both the passive and active voices which is not what the question is about. But the experts think they have addressed "This is subject to..." when they write "If you subject someone to something..." simply because they can't tell an active voice from a passive one.

Now, this is a very serious error because it's an error that's caused by the experts' total ignorance of the voice in grammar. How can such duffers be looked upon as English language experts by the MOE? After stating that the difference between "This is subjected to..." and "This is subject to..." is very subtle, they proceed to talk about "This is subjected to..." in both the passive and active voices and totally ignore "This is subject to..." because evidently, they are labouring under the mistaken notion that the active voice ("If you subject someone to something...") is the same as "This is subject to...", presumably because the word "subject" is used in both sentences (as opposed to "subjected").

An English language teacher who makes such an error ought to be disciplined and seriously considered for dismissal. A language expert who makes this error ought to be sent to the gallows!


You want more? Sure! I have a lot more for you.

There are millions of errors in the MOE's grammar book ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN. If you would like a list of the links in my blog that deal with this same subject, please click here. It's a growing list and every fresh post that I write on the subject is added to this list which is divided neatly into different categories.

The Blind Leading the Blind

I have said many times that the two grammar books written by English language experts from the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Singapore are hilarious in that you can't go through a single page without noticing some glaring error that even a ten-year-old wouldn't make. Sometimes I don't find it all that funny. It's incredibly sad that the language experts from the MOE can be so ill-qualified, ignorant and incompetent in a subject which they claim to have expertise in. I feel sorry for the poor students who really want to learn good English grammar and is it really wrong of them to rely on experts from the Ministry? After all, the MOE employs all teachers in Singapore. If their language experts are so blatantly clueless about basic grammar, what guarantee do students have that their teachers who aren't even considered language experts by the MOE can get anything right?

I've said in previous posts in this blog (click here if you want a list of my previous posts in this blog on this matter) that one classical method employed by the MOE's English language experts is to go where the wind blows them. If a reader tells them they are wrong, they will change their opinion instantly and try to accommodate the view of the reader (never mind the fact that the reader knows nothing about the language or quotes from an unreliable book).

Here's a pic I took from page 2 of ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN written by the MOE's "panel of English language specialists", as the Acknowledgement page tells us. Yes, you don't have to go very far to spot a language mistake made by the experts. It's there on page 2 and just about every page thereafter.

The book uses a question-and-answer format. Newspaper readers ask questions on English grammar and usage and the experts give their answers. Sometimes, readers are not satisfied with the answer and they write in again on the same subject. This will be placed in an inset titled "YOUR SAY" and this is sometimes followed by the reply from the experts, also in an inset and titled "THE EXPERTS REPLY".

Here's a question from a reader who, like many people I know, has a great deal more confidence than knowledge. His question is more a cocksure statement of what he thinks is a legitimate usage rule. Faced with such overweening certainty, the MOE's panel of experts, as they have done in many other such instances, agree with the reader.

Not only do the experts agree with this mistaken reader, they venture to suggest that "pressurize" refers to atmospheric pressure and should not be used to mean "coerce" or "persuade".  This is clearly a case of the blind leading the blind. Next, comes a third blind man, a reader who claims to have been guided by a book that none of us has heard of and neither has, I daresay, any renowned grammarian.

Now, as I have shown from other examples in the book, the moment a reader claims to have the backing of some book (whatever the book may be and it doesn't even matter if the reader has misquoted the book), experts from the MOE will back down. Look at their reply.

So swiftly have they forgotten what they wrote a moment earlier, that "pressurize" should only refer to atmospheric pressure.

Here's a clear case of the blind leading the blind leading the blind. The reality is all of them including the language experts know nothing about English grammar and usage.

For a list of my blog posts on grammar terrorists, click here. Please note that this list of grammar terrorists will be updated every time I publish a fresh post in my blog on the subject.

MOE's Joke Book Part 2

After writing MOE's Joke Book (Part 1), I stumbled upon one more incredible gem in ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2 and I really hope my readers will indulge me one more article on this matter and I promise I won't belabour the same point again but this really is the funniest thing you'll ever see in your entire life. And this time, I swear that if nobody finds this uproariously funny, I'm prepared to streak down not just Orchard Road but all the way through Holland Road to Holland Village and do a lambada in the middle of the town square!

A reader is confused. Should we say "use your brain" or "use your brains". You won't believe the answer given by the English language expert. First, he goes through the anatomical structure of the human brain. That's a no-brainer - any fool can regurgitate the same facts from wikipedia. Then comes the priceless gem, the beauty of which will be lost if you do not see it for yourself. Here's a pic I took of the page itself.

I bet you're now in stitches.

Do we say the monkey which wrote this answer has no brain or brains? Singapore's language experts will tell you it depends on whether it was written by one monkey or more than one.


EDITOR'S NOTE:

By now, some of my readers probably believe both the grammar books are in fact joke books. Sadly, they are not.  Both books are intended as a reliable guide to students and the general public on how best to speak and write in the English language. They are widely sold in all book shops in Singapore and are found particularly in schools and school children are encouraged to buy them. They both topped the best seller charts in Singapore for a very long time. Prof Koh Tai Ann, the then Chairman of the Speak Good English Movement, writes in the Preface to ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN, that the book "addresses common errors, and areas of concern and confusion, through examples and explanations under three categories: Usage; Vocabulary; and Grammar." She continues to say that the book "examines and explains the sometimes baffling rules of grammar." She hopes that the book "will not only help readers to clarify areas of uncertainty in their use of the language but also foster an awareness of how we speak and write English." In the Foreword, Felix Soh, Deputy Editor of the Straits Times writes, "This book is not designed to grace a shelf but as a practical guidebook. Use it, refer to it - and speak with confidence."

I have in more than a dozen blog posts shown quite conclusively that both books are so shockingly wrong and flawed that anyone who depends on them does so to his detriment. If you are interested in looking at the entire list of all my blog posts on this subject, please click on this. It's a growing list and I will add to it every time I post a new article in my blog on the subject.

I'm doing this in the hope that MOE will realise what rotten apples they have for language experts and what a disgrace their grammar books really are but so far, all my posts have fallen on deaf ears. But it doesn't matter. I've been richly entertained by both books and I hope I've entertained my readers too. And I assure you there'll be more posts.

For a full list of grammar errors made by MOE, the Speak Good English Movement and other language teachers, please click here.

MOE's Joke Book

I sometimes feel a little down and exhausted and I need a good joke book to perk me up. Last night, I was in a pensive mood thinking about a friend who recently passed away when my eyes rested on the Ministry of Education's ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN. To be fair to the Ministry of Education (MOE), it is only openly responsible for that book and not its sequel ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2. These two books are Singapore's all-time best sellers and each one of them has seen no fewer than ten re-prints. As I have shown in more than a dozen posts in this blog, both books are a huge minefield that will most certainly mislead young students of the English language into making outrageous grammatical mistakes that they would not have made if they hadn't read the book. If you want to have a look at the long and growing list of shocking mistakes made by Singapore's English language experts, please click on this link. But for those of us who are not so misguided as to rely on books written under the auspices of the MOE and Singapore's Speak Good English Movement for our knowledge of English grammar, this book by both the MOE and the Speak Good English Movement together with its sequel affords hours of entertainment and laughter. ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN is the MOE's most successful joke book. It is quite aptly titled - English as it is broken by Singapore's language experts.

I was thinking of my friend who passed away just a week ago (God bless his soul) and reflecting on the transience of human life as I leafed through ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2, when I came across this passage in the book that brought laughter and mirth back to my downcast spirit. Both books follow a simple question-and-answer format. First, a question is asked by someone who may be a student or just anyone from the general public. This is immediately followed by the answer given by the language expert. In the first book, this panel of language experts are clearly stated to be English language specialists from the MOE.

Here is a pic of the question followed by the expert's answer.




I will ignore the obvious typographical error - the omission of "be" after the word "should". This happens to the best of us. So far, the "experts" have not made any error. I thought that was rather surprising because I've read both grammar books and I stand by what I say - almost every page contains some ludicrous error that even young kids wouldn't make. Anyway, I didn't have long to wait. On that very same page, another reader challenges the experts. But what is really priceless is the experts' answer. Read it for yourself and if you don't burst out laughing, I'm prepared to streak down Orchard Road.

The language experts who had a hand in the writing of this answer must be a bunch of illiterate ninnies with an IQ way below that of a retarded bonobo. Of course the reader is wrong. "Premises" used in that sense is one of those nouns that are always plural and there are no exceptions. Any average English speaker knows that. One doesn't even have to be an English language expert to know something this basic and simple. And yet Singapore's English language experts are as clueless as a newborn babe in swaddling clothes.

Both books are filled with such priceless gems. It's hilarious to see how these ignorant experts hedge their answers or conceal their ignorance with jokes and generally make all kinds of ridiculous statements which, I'm convinced, will leave the reader with the unmistakeable impression that they are no more language experts than a troop of jabbering baboons.

I highly recommend ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN and ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2 to those who are reasonably proficient in the English language and who may have need of something to make them laugh. For learners of the English language, it is prudent to assume everything stated in both books to be wrong because the odds are high that it is wrong.

Are local school kids less able than foreign ones?

I have just been referred to this article presumably written by a school teacher in Singapore. He or she is of the view that Singaporean school kids are more reserved in class and less able to make a class presentation than foreign students who are more eloquent and have a better command of the English language.

I'm tempted to disagree with her but since I haven't got statistical data to back me up, I will simply say that I have no knowledge if her opinion is accurate.  I would have been more forceful in my disagreement if I hadn't recently chanced on clear evidence of how rotten English language teachers in Singapore could really be. I have presented examples of this in my recent blog posts and if you would like to see a list of all the examples of the kind of English Singaporean teachers and language experts write in, you may click here. This is a growing list and I will update it whenever I write a fresh post in this blog on the subject.

I really have no idea if Singaporean students are indeed more reserved and less able than their foreign counterparts in terms of language skills and public speaking. I would have thought much of it is dependent on whether a child is an introvert or an extrovert. But I will defer to the writer who is a school teacher and has no doubt a much richer experience with a far greater number of Singaporean students than I can possibly have in my entire lifetime.

I will assume that the writer's observation is correct and reliable and Singaporean students are less able to do a book review in class or to speak in front of a crowd. The writer does not specify in her article the country the foreigners came from but I am no less a keen observer and I can safely assume they are Indian nationals. Let me phrase the question succinctly so we can all home in on the real issues at hand: WHY ARE INDIAN NATIONALS MORE ABLE THAN SINGAPOREANS IN PUBLIC SPEAKING?

Anyone who visits India will notice immediately that the average educated Indian can speak very good English. He will also observe that the average Indian reads far more than a Singaporean. I remember going to a book shop in India which was no more than a ramshackle hut with a partially caved-in zinc roof and there were a few schoolboys browsing through the books. I looked at what they were reading and without exception, they were all reading Victorian novels in this tumbledown book shop. Who inspired them to read Victorian novels?

If Singapore's language experts are so absolutely rotten in their command of the English language as I have demonstrated quite ably in my recent blog posts, how can we expect our students to be inspired to write and speak as well as Indian students?  From my own personal experience, Singaporean teachers aren't at all learned in English grammar. I can recount many personal experiences with some of my kids' teachers but that will take a long time. If you click on the link above, you will see a list of some of the mistakes English language experts from the Ministry of Education make in grammar books that they have the gall to publish. If these are our English experts, what hope have students in Singapore unless we parents take charge of their language education ourselves?

I don't want to appear like a captious pedant but even the blog post written by the school teacher who is decrying the lack of English proficiency among Singaporean students isn't without any grammatical error. I immediately noticed a glaring error in the first few sentences. One would have thought anyone who was writing about other people's command of the English language would at least have taken the trouble to read through what he'd written and made sure it was flawless.

Perhaps, our students' inability to make public speeches has a lot to do with their lack of confidence in the English language. One can hardly fault them if their English language teachers are equally clueless about basic English grammar rules and what we see in Singapore is a sorry situation of the blind leading the blind.

EDITOR'S NOTE [25 February 2014 at 2:15pm]

I was rightly chided by a friend. He said that if I mentioned that someone had made a grammatical error in her text, I should point out precisely what error it was that I referred to in my blog. I should not assume anyone could tell what error there was in a passage. He admitted that he read through the article and could not spot any error in the teacher's blog post.  My friend is right and I apologise to my readers for not identifying her error.  The truth is I'm not bothered about grammar and I don't care for errors but since the writer was loudly complaining about the standard of English of Singaporean students, it's only right that I should expose her mistake.

Here is a very short excerpt of what she wrote.

The error is in the second paragraph in the sentence "And she did it so eloquently and grammatically sound." This error is pardonable in daily conversations but when it appears in the blog post of a language teacher who is declaiming against the poor standard of English of Singaporean students, it's a little hard for one to excuse her.

The mistake shows the blog writer's poor grasp of conjunctions. "And she did it so eloquently" is correct.  "And she did it so grammatically sound" is obviously wrong. The sentence should read "And she did it so eloquently and grammatically." Or "And she did it so eloquently and she was so grammatically sound". But NOT "And she did it so eloquently and grammatically sound." Anyone with an elementary knowledge of conjunctions, adverbs and adjectives should know this.

That's all I have to say. It's not in my nature to correct other people's grammar but since she's an English language teacher and she is making an observation about the state of English proficiency in Singapore, I suppose it is only fair to remind her that our poor students have a lot of reasons not to be as confident in public speaking as students from India. The burden rests squarely on our teachers' shoulders. Whether our English language teachers have discharged their duty properly is debatable.

If you are interested in a list of my blog posts on grammar terrorists (as I call them), click here. I have included this post in the list. My definition of a grammar terrorist is anyone who criticises another person's grammar or command of English when he himself is in error. The person has to be an English language teacher or the English language experts from the Ministry of Education (MOE) (most of my posts are against these experts from MOE) or someone who represents himself as an authority on the language.

Singapore's Language Experts - the Nation's Disgrace

Singapore is an amazing country. Despite being so small that you can't run a marathon in it in a straight line without hitting the sea, Singapore has shown itself in many respects to be superior to most other bigger countries, particularly in the arena of education where the PISA test results rank it the top in the world together with Taiwan, South Korea and China.

There is however an ugly spot on the face of its otherwise impeccable educational record. Singapore's English language experts (from both the Ministry of Education and the Speak Good English Movement) are an incredible disgrace to this nation which normally has a low tolerance for incompetence. Singapore's language experts are not just incompetent; they are totally ignorant of even the rudiments of English grammar but as I have shown in various posts in this blog, they go out of their way to misrepresent to the nation's trusting and ingenuous school children that they are experts in the language. What they do is insidious - they tell students who write perfectly grammatical sentences that they are wrong and they teach them to write what renowned grammarians condemn as wrong and ungrammatical. If you are interested in reading specific examples in my blog, I have a list of them here. Look under Heading No. 1 "TEACHERS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE". I will add to this list as I write more posts in this blog.

Through the collaboration of the Ministry of Education and the Speak Good English Movement, two grammar books were written called ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN and ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2. These two books are hugely popular in schools all over Singapore and they have gone through at least ten re-reprints each. I have examined both books and I have documented some of the errors in my blog and will continue to write more when I have the time. Almost every page of both books contains atrocious errors. The books are both so appallingly flawed that at one point, I really thought they were meant to be a parody of English grammar books. If there is a 50% chance of the language experts getting some very basic point in English correct, they will somehow get it all wrong. What I've written in the list provided above is only the tip of the iceberg. There are far too many mistakes in both books for anyone to attempt to correct them all. What's truly ironical is the fact that Singapore's language experts are more ignorant of basic grammar rules than the students they purport to teach. These books should properly be titled ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN BY SINGAPORE'S LANGUAGE EXPERTS.

I have shown in this blog many examples that will convince any reader that Singapore's language experts are really clueless about anything pertaining to English grammar. Here's one more taken from the book ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2. The book is in a question-and-answer format. It begins with a question posed by a reader of the Straits Times newspaper and it's immediately followed by the answer given by the language experts.

In this excerpt, a reader notices that the experts wrote in a previous article "as hot as them" instead of the more formally acceptable "as hot as they" and he questions the experts if they may have slipped up. Just read the experts' answer and if you will ignore the irritating arrogance which permeates the entire book, you will see how they try to worm their way out by adding one mistake on top of another.

Real grammarians (as opposed to Singapore's disgraceful nitwits who have the gall to call themselves language experts) say a different thing. "As hot as they" is generally considered preferable in formal settings but in daily conversations, "as hot as them" is commonly accepted. Burchfield says, "To escape censure, and also sometimes to avoid ambiguity, it is better in formal writing to adopt the style he is as clever as he/she/they". Robert Allen says the same thing. Grammarians are all agreed on this.

Singapore's sham experts say a different thing. They say it should be "as hot as them" and not "as hot as they" because in the sentence "Don't you wish your teacher is as hot as them?" them is the object! If that is so, all the real grammarians are wrong and so are all the great writers.

How can Singapore's language experts be so dead wrong in something as simple as identifying the subject and object in a simple sentence? How can one of the world's top-ranking educational giants be so crippled and helpless when it comes to basic English grammar? Let's not kid ourselves. Although Singapore has four official languages, English is the main language of the land. It's the language of the government, the courts, schools and just about every single institution here. The fact that Singapore's English language experts don't even know the rudiments of English grammar is certainly a disgrace to a country which prides itself on being correct in almost everything you can think of. Singapore usually fixes instantly anything that's broken and has no qualms about getting rid of things that don't work. Why the Ministry of Education has done nothing about its language experts is totally incomprehensible to me. Any competent Education Ministry would have sent Singapore's language experts to the stocks and pillory years ago and removed their appalling books from the book shops and incinerated them.

You may wonder if I have anything personal against Singapore's language experts from the Ministry of Education. The truth is I do not even know who they are. I'm however totally repulsed by the shamelessness of a group of people who are not just totally ignorant of even the most basic rule of grammar but have the effrontery to misrepresent themselves as experts when they are in truth no better than a troop of chattering gibbons. At least gibbons don't teach students what's clearly wrong.

For a list of my blog posts on grammar terrorists, click on this. Please note that this list of grammar terrorists will be updated every time I publish a fresh post in my blog on the subject.

How to Spot a Rotten Language Teacher

It's not easy to be a good language teacher. Most people I know think that the English language is the easiest language to master. It's the language that comes most naturally to the highest percentage of humans regardless of our ethnicity and background. While many of us are able to get our grammar largely correct in speech and writing, very few of us can make good teachers of the language.

I must, at the very beginning, make it clear that I have never been a professional teacher. While I consider the teaching profession a truly noble one, I have never, not even for an hour, taught for remuneration. I have to specify that because I have taught, for short spells, (under the umbrella of the church) in a penitentiary and also to the children of drug offenders. My little forays into the world of teaching tell me I'm a bad teacher and I have difficulty communicating effectively with my students especially when they aren't really interested in their work.

But I'm not a professional teacher and I've not earned a single cent from teaching and I have no intention of becoming a professional teacher and so it doesn't bother me in the least if I make a bad teacher. But the language experts of the Ministry of Education (MOE) are different. They are paid teachers of the English language and they have contributed to two disgracefully flawed books on grammar and as I have said repeatedly in my previous posts, MOE should do something about these teachers.

I will refer to one more example from the book ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN by MOE's "panel of English language specialists". This is the format of the book: first a question is asked by someone who has written to the Straits Times newspaper. The question is immediately followed by an answer given by MOE's panel of specialists.

Let's examine the effectiveness of the teaching method of MOE's panel of English language specialists according to two criteria. First, we'll look at the teacher's personal knowledge of the subject. Does the teacher understand English grammar? I'm not even asking if the teacher knows enough to teach. I'm merely assessing if the teacher himself or herself has personal knowledge of what he or she is talking about.  Next we will see what is really taught to the student and how effective it is.

The question in the book is a perfectly legitimate question asked by a student who needs help in grammar. Why is "ring" in the present tense? Let's look at the answer of the experts and examine it under the two criteria I have laid down.

1.  THE TEACHER'S KNOWLEDGE OF THE SUBJECT

The writers of ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN and ENGLISH AS IT IS BROKEN 2 are consistent in referring to such a verb (in the above case it's "heard") as a catenative. I am positive I have seen it repeated elsewhere in these books. The verb "heard" as used in the example given by the questioner is NOT a catenative. By classifying the verb as a catenative, the experts from MOE have demonstrated immediately their ignorance of this aspect of grammar. They are wrong from the very outset.

2.  THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE TEACHING METHOD

Since MOE's language experts are ignorant of this part of grammar, it naturally follows that whatever they teach cannot be effective. But I will examine their teaching method all the same.

One thing I really hate about ignorant teachers is their tendency to throw smoke bombs at the students just to confuse them, perhaps in the hope that the students do not discover that these teachers are really clueless about grammar. They love long technical words even if they don't know what they mean. The verb is not a catenative but even if it were, what good would it do to talk about catenatives? The student wants to know WHY the second verb is "ring" instead of "rang". Notice that MOE's experts totally fail to give any answer as to why the second verb is "ring".

Catenatives have a different set of rules altogether and they are much more complex and varied than the example given by the student of the verb "heard" which must always be followed by an -ing construction or a bare infinitive. Why is that so? What other verbs fall under the same category? What are the exceptions to the rule? Any good teacher of grammar should be aware of the exceptions to almost every basic grammar rule. MOE's language experts are totally silent on these questions. It's only after the teacher has covered these questions that he is at liberty to proceed further and talk about catenatives and why the student must not confuse them with the verb "heard" as given in the student's question.  They must learn not to be as ignorant as MOE's experts.

In order for a student to understand the rules governing catenatives, he needs to have a good grounding in verbs which MOE's experts evidently haven't got. That's not really necessary for a student who is not studying English language at uni level. A good teacher will not use complex sounding terms just for show but he will answer the question properly and in a way that the student can understand.  MOE's experts, on the other hand, employ technical terms that they themselves don't understand.  And the worst thing is they leave the question unanswered.

MOE's English language specialists fail on all counts of what makes a good teacher.

How can one tell that a language teacher is rotten? If he displays ignorance on the subject he is teaching and he uses technical terms that he doesn't understand and that have no direct bearing on the immediate question asked and he doesn't at all answer the question, you know you're better off asking a chimpanzee for help. At least it won't teach you the wrong thing.


For a list of my blog posts on grammar terrorists, click on this. Please note that this list of grammar terrorists will be updated every time I publish a fresh post in my blog on the subject.

Speak Good English Movement's Consultant Strikes Again

In my last post, I wrote about a blogger who is a Vice-Dean in the School of Arts and Social Sciences and a consultant to the Speak Good English Movement. He holds a PhD in Linguistics from Cambridge University; his PhD dissertation was on some aspect of Singapore colloquial English. I would expect him to be far more careful before he denounces anything as non-Standard Singapore English. As you can see from that previous post on this blog, he was totally ignorant of a rather fundamental rule of grammar when he wrote in his blog that the Straits Times' use of a verb was not Standard English but was a feature of Singapore English derived from Chinese.

There is more in his blog. For instance, this:

Those who have been following my blog must know by now how I detest anyone who would, at the drop of a hat, brand anything as Singlish or non-Standard Singapore English. I always ask myself why this captious nutter can't simply look up a dictionary or a book on grammar before he puts on his pointy hat, plonks his rump on St Peter's throne and pontificates on what Standard English is.

This blogger is a good example. I won't name him because the purpose of my blog is not to name and shame anyone. I merely want to draw the attention of the people of Singapore to the fact that our command of English isn't bad at all. As a fervent supporter of Singlish, I really don't see anything wrong with a beautiful variant of English that is steeped in the history, culture and flavour of this land. Singlish is as homey to us as the fragrance of satay, prata and char kway teow. It's stupid to suggest that since foreigners might not understand Singlish, it should be abolished. You might as well say we should abolish Hokkien, Tamil and Malay because foreigners don't understand them.

Why does the blogger not check the dictionary before he declares that "departmental store" is Singapore English while "department store" is Standard English? I can't speak for the blogger because I do not know him but I do know some people who have this tendency of looking at any piece of writing in Singapore with a jaundiced eye. If you have been following my blog, you should be aware of some of the instances I've pointed out in my previous posts.

The simple thing to do when one is in doubt is to look up a good dictionary.  From the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, we learn this: "departmental store = department store". Nowhere does it relegate "departmental store" to Singlish or Singapore English.

I asked myself why the blogger didn't look up a good dictionary. Bear in mind that the blogger is the Vice-Dean of the School of Arts and Social Sciences in one of our new universities. As far as I know, all universities in this day and age channel funds first to their Business schools and if there is any money left over in the Finance Department, the Linguistics Department might see a tiny trickle. Perhaps you can't find the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary in the Arts library of any university. After all, this two-volume dictionary cost me quite a fortune and universities these days would rather spend their money on management books than invest in a mere dictionary.

So I looked up my old Concise Oxford Dictionary which I bought on a meagre schoolboy allowance. Now, surely this is something any library can afford even if it's starved of money by a university policy that generously favours the more money-generating faculties. This is what the Concise Oxford says: "departmental store = department store".

There we have it. "Departmental store" is Standard English and not Singapore English derived from Chinese.

It's interesting to note that one of his readers made a comment on his blog.

She asks if he's right. His reply is really amusing. This is what he says, "'Departmental' is an adjective that means 'connected with a department', e.g. 'departmental supervisor' (supervisor connected with a department). So, a 'departmental store' would be odd, because it would describe a store that is connected with a department." Well, the Oxford English Dictionary says you are wrong and that's that!

For a list of my blog posts on grammar terrorists, click on this. Please note that this list of grammar terrorists will be updated every time I publish a fresh post in my blog on the subject.