Yesterday, my students got their mother tongue (MT) results. Most didn't do very well, and I wonder why. Are we no longer focused on MT? I guess I'm slightly different, as I speak MT at home, rather than English, hence English is more acquired for me than my second language.
I pity those who had to retake again, it's just a bloody waste of time. I can imagine how painful it is. Though last time in my O'lvls, I managed to do it in one trial (A2 - dun play a fool with me), I did tried two times in my A'lvl. That took up a lot of time and I could have spent it on better things.
Come to think of it, not a lot of my students can make it in MT. I can only vaguely remember a handful (less than 10) whose MT is as good as their English. Most are just passing standard only. So much to say about Singapore's bilingual system - it seems that it made that effectively single language only.
The recent outbreak of H1N1 is causing a lot of problems in Singapore. Me, especially. When the last pandemic of such scale happened, it was during the SARS period while I was in NUS. I wasn't acutely aware of the implications, just that I must not go around crowded places and so on. Basically, I couldn't care less.
But for this current pandemic, my job was affected. As Singapore nears the peak of cases reported with H1N1 (coupled with 5 deaths so far), there are many many students reporting fever and even 1 confirmed case of H1N1. Quite a few cancelled because of flu-like symptons coupled with fever. What can I say? Of course they had to rest and cancel the tuition.
It's been pretty disruptive to my job and schedule. Hopefully all these will clear up soon and things will get back to normal.
Going to meet my H1N1 student this afternoon. Wish me luck!
This is such a nice picture, I have to share this! There is this website where you can create wordle. Don't know what a wordle is? You just have to try it to see it, amazing!
Here's the update for my new book. I've began writing since last week and making some good progress. Already, I've had 160 questions under my wings, and it's only 50% done. Looks like I should be able to finish a chapter at long last!
I plan to finish a chapter every week, so I should be able to finish in around 6 months or so, provided I keep to my schedule. It's a bit hard to think of questions but the worst is actually having to type it out as it takes up a lot of time. No choice lah, have to do it anyway.
For the sake of my students, I must persevere!!
I'm trying to write a book for my students here. I've gathered all my stuff in front of my desk already and I'm ready to begin doing. It's been a long time project since a few years ago but I've been dilly-dallying till now. Can't really reveal much on the details because firstly, it's quite confidential and secondly, I don't have much details to sketch out anyway.
I figured that if I don't do this in bits and pieces, I'll probably do not have enough time to sit down and write it in one shot. Divide and conquer, don't they say?
Will keep you posted once I've had significant progress.
Irritating student (I shall call that person from now on) slept in my class again. I've been asking him time and time again to get some form of Ten Year Series (TYS) so that he can do some practice, but he'd been delaying for months. I think at least for 3 months. I'm not sure what he's so busy with.
Irritating student is more alert today, at least he is not openly yawning. He just sleeps while I look through his working. Sometimes it feels like a chore teaching people like that. It's very very draining on my energy level teaching someone who is an energy sucker - it feels like I've finished a 4 hours class at the end of the 2 hours lesson.
If I'm financially free, I will NEVER teach such students. It's a waste of their parent's tuition money and my time. I wonder what good will come out of it in the end.
Enough whining....I noticed that the market do not sell TYS anymore. That's a bit troubling. I thought that perhaps the publishers are a bit late to consolidate the papers for publishing, but in this time period and there's still no signs of TYS - there must be something seriously wrong. Perhaps with the change of the new syllabus for O'lvls, there are not enough years to publish a TYS, hence they stopped publication. But, even if the older syllabus are not entirely relevant, a good part of it (80-90%) are still very useful as extra practice for students sitting for the O'lvls.
With this new move, there are really only two ways to get such practices:
1) From bras brasah complex, look for 2nd hand bookstores. If I'm you, I'll hurry and get a copy before it runs out
2) From 'old-fashioned' tutors like me, who had the foresight to store up before the whole supply runs out. I had 20-30 yrs series even, for certain subjects. I shall take good care of those books, since they are a rare commodity now.
I was bored and tried searching my own name. Hey, guess what - my tutor profile starts to show up. Besides that, I found a website with my name on it from NUS alumini. It was from my batch of Civil engineering class 2003.
Not bad eh, my name is quite prominent, occupying the number 10 slot!
