Reading vs. communication needs

Chong Seck Chim, News Straits Times, Kuala Lumpur

For primary school, 360 or more books read get the top prize; at secondary, 270 books and over. Lesser totals qualify for smaller prizes down the line.

This stress on extra-curricular reading is not new, but now the students have to keep a notebook on what they have read, monitored weekly by their teachers.

There are some uncertainties. Will a thin book rate the same as a thicker one? And if the stories are picked up from the TV or the internet, will that count? How to distinguish between good and trashy reading, and so forth.

What is almost certain is that it will add to the administrative work of the teachers. Such non-teaching duties already take up 40 per cent of their time, it seems.

Yet something had to be done to encourage students to read more. With all the emphasis on passing exams, there's neither time nor incentive to read outside the syllabus. Multiple-choice tests require only a minimal response. At this rate, the youngsters may be literate, but certainly not too articulate.

It was reported last week that the British are planning to revive essay exams, with perhaps a dissertation on an optional topic.

We have a more complex problem. Our children use two or more languages in school. The crossing of syntax and vocabulary enriches but also transforms the languages; local English has therefore been derided as Manglish sometimes. The other languages probably fare no better. All this may be partly due to an easygoing lifestyle, especially among the young: enjoy now, pay later just about sums it up. Casual insouciance is hip, expressed flamboyantly in language, dress and song in teenage subcultures. Colloquialisms and language fragments are also popular on the Internet.

SMS (short message service) has replaced ordinary conversation with its own idiom. When a hard-up youngster appealed: "No mon, no fun, your son," his father replied just as briefly, "Too bad, so sad, your dad." So where is language headed? On one hand, the traditionalists say that language provides the key to logical thinking and argument, as was also claimed for the study of Latin once; on the other, modern communications technology is opening up fresh possibilities as never before.

Voice recognition in e-banking accepts your spoken PIN number without your having to tap it out. In SMS, predictive texting supplies the whole word from just two letters keyed in. CLID or caller identification gives you the caller's number before you have answered the phone.

Wal-Mart may soon have trolleys fitted with wireless monitors to show the shelf displays for customers to click on their purchases for collection at the pay counter. Warehouse retailers provide a similar service, but their shoppers have to fill out an order form for the purpose.

These electronic marvels are simple to use, but you have to follow the instructions. Our children must therefore be familiar with the printed word, at least as a tool of communication: reading to understand, and speaking and writing to be understood.

So much for reading with a purpose: to pick up a working language to get by in the modern world or, for the more ambitious, to prepare for higher education or a better job. What of simply reading for pleasure? The lending libraries and bookshops, also the newsstands, show that there are people out there interested in reading for reading's sake.

It used to be the same in schools too, but computer games and other diversions have pushed books into the background. Besides, it's too much trouble reading up on the stories which are all better done in the cinema or on the telly. This shift from books is not altogether bad, however. Taiwan has found that computer games do educate. Last year, an Indian professor in Gujarat began promoting literacy through same-language subtitling (SLS) in films. Oddly enough, he got the idea from the karaoke sessions. In Europe, research with eyeball-tracking devices had shown that viewers read the subtitles automatically. Subliminally, their reading speed increased, as did their vocabularies.

We have subtitling in our films too, occasionally in more than one language. If these were shown in different colors, viewers could concentrate on the one for subliminal learning at little extra cost. Incidentally, a private TV station has just announced it will be adding Chinese to its existing range of subtitles beginning this month.

Such opportunities for incidental, nonformal education exist all around us. The new reading program is not therefore merely a book count, but also a reminder to parents to provide more out-of-school educational support for their children.

All it takes in this case is to make sure there is some reading material at home. Even newspapers would help, specially those with supplements for their young readers.