Singapore kids top ME, sure or not

[eremarf]

I find that hard to believe.

Judging by our children in Toronto, I believe that they read better than my classmates and I, at that age.

My youngest child read as though he is 2 to 3 grades higher.

Because English reading takes a lot of rote memory, and Singaporeans good at rote memory. English spelling system is really quite hard to learn (not many language are harder - Chinese and Japanese come to mind to read).

Consider:

cough
rough
though
bough
through
thought

the same "ough" cluster can be pronounced in so many ways.

Consider "cake" vs "certain", or "gem" vs "geese", "king" vs "knight", etc. This is the exception rather than the norm for many languages (depends on when the last spelling reform was - for English I think it's been 400 years and counting), e.g. think about Malay - recently produced spelling system - very clear correspondence between symbols and sounds. These languages are easier to learn to read.

Learning all the spelling-sound correspondences is a huge rote-learning exercise. So rote-learning is good for some things you know. Like learning languages with lousy writing systems.

 

[eremarf]

Congratulations to the Singaporean students.
Hopefully, in the forthcoming decades, one or more of you will win a Nobel Prize in Mathematics, or Physics, or Chemistry.

I also waiting. Nahbeh I see Obama get Nobel Peace Prize... then I see our Pee Em, wahlau pay so high but cannot get award. Damn lose face. Hopefully some kid will make us proud in future.

 

[vamjok]

English cannot swim? Then all the more you should be reading. Novels aren't the only genre. There are also non-fiction categories like history, politics, philosophy, religion, economics, current-affairs, autobiographies, war, socialism, comedy. The list goes on. Reading is a good habit and excellent past time. I can spend the whole day with a good book by the poolside, in bed, on a bus/train. Best part is - it doesn't cost much.

Cheers!

I work from 830am in lab to around 9pm. go up mrt first thing is to sleep.

if my boss find out i have time to read things like " history, politics, philosophy, religion, economics, current-affairs, autobiographies, war, socialism, comedy", within the next few mins, i will received the email asking me to read up the last 5 years published paper on a particular field and make a presentation on next group meeting.

brother, sometimes when we grow up, what we read, our time is not within our control. btw, sat i still work and sometime sunday.

 

[loneshark]

Because English reading takes a lot of rote memory, and Singaporeans good at rote memory. English spelling system is really quite hard to learn (not many language are harder - Chinese and Japanese come to mind to read).

Eremarf, you English teacher is it?

 

[Charlie99]

I also waiting. Nahbeh I see Obama get Nobel Peace Prize... then I see our Pee Em, wahlau pay so high but cannot get award. Damn lose face. Hopefully some kid will make us proud in future.

At the present rate, I do not believe that there is any potential Nobel Prize winner.
But may be the next generation.

 

[Rapist]

Over a generation ago, this nation has overcome that stage of development (to fill the tummy) and is looking further (eg. a gracious society). If we're still thinking of bringing food to the table, we're overeating.

Cheers!

Not only that. Teachers rape teens and little children.

 

[vamjok]

At the present rate, I do not believe that there is any potential Nobel Prize winner.
But may be the next generation.

its hard to say, in the next 50 years things will change and it will be a great changes. nothing is fixed. The focus in Science is already shifting towards asia, just look at the number of top publications Asia universities are pushing out in recent years compared to US.....you will be surprise. The main reason is because funding in Europe and America is dead for science. All the top guys are coming to S.Korea, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan. Those that shift in the early years ~5 years ago are lucky....

 

[Kinana]

I work from 830am in lab to around 9pm. go up mrt first thing is to sleep.

if my boss find out i have time to read things like " history, politics, philosophy, religion, economics, current-affairs, autobiographies, war, socialism, comedy", within the next few mins, i will received the email asking me to read up the last 5 years published paper on a particular field and make a presentation on next group meeting.

brother, sometimes when we grow up, what we read, our time is not within our control. btw, sat i still work and sometime sunday.

Either you are very stupid or your company not enough staff.

 

[tanwahtiu]

Even Pommie kids find own English language hardest subject to learn, amazing.

With only 26 alphabets to form so many words in writing English language had reached its limitation.

Many words do not fit the sound of the root words which cause furhter confusion. Japanese language is more precise and build up from their radicals, like the Chinese language.

its hard to say, in the next 50 years things will change and it will be a great changes. nothing is fixed. The focus in Science is already shifting towards asia, just look at the number of top publications Asia universities are pushing out in recent years compared to US.....you will be surprise. The main reason is because funding in Europe and America is dead for science. All the top guys are coming to S.Korea, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan. Those that shift in the early years ~5 years ago are lucky....

 

[Charlie99]

Even Pommie kids find own English language hardest subject to learn, amazing.

With only 26 alphabets to form so many words in writing English language had reached its limitation.

Many words do not fit the sound of the root words which cause furhter confusion. Japanese language is more precise and build up from their radicals, like the Chinese language.

I believe that the English Language consists of one alphabet of 26 letters.

 

[Picardo]

Aparently a matter of "culture shock"? Lol.

I believe that the English Language consists of one alphabet of 26 letters.

 

[eremarf]

Eremarf, you English teacher is it?

Yeah, last time got teach some English. But no more - I not comfortable with MOE style of education.

its hard to say, in the next 50 years things will change and it will be a great changes. nothing is fixed. The focus in Science is already shifting towards asia, just look at the number of top publications Asia universities are pushing out in recent years compared to US.....you will be surprise. The main reason is because funding in Europe and America is dead for science. All the top guys are coming to S.Korea, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan. Those that shift in the early years ~5 years ago are lucky....

I can't speak for other fields, but not in my field. Top publications are still often by whites, or if by Asians (most frequently Japanese, then (anglo-)Indian, then Korean, then Chinese) who are based in universities in the west. But I'm in social science which is perhaps quite language-biased. The case might be very different in the hard sciences.

Nonetheless - I think the Singapore approach to research is wrong on a few counts.

1. Setting quotas for researchers on annual number of publications in journals of different tiers (overly narrow KPI)

2. Hiring lousy PhD people on SGD3+k/month and naively thinking all PhD holders are equivalent (speaking just for NUS)

3. Focusing too much money on top researchers (describing A-Star), instead of spreading the money around on fewer, not-so-famous researchers - research is like gambling, the more you try (and fail), the more likely you will serendipitously stumble on success - what Nassim Taleb calls positive Black Swans

Anyway - if you believe Acemoglu et al about cuddly and cutthroat capitalism, then there's no point being cutthroat and innovative. Technology costs a lot to develop but everyone can benefit from its productivity gains. Better to just focus on our comparative advantages (super-strong work ethic? I don't know... I'm just crapping actually - I do think a strong technology or R&D culture is worth developing here... even if just because it allows us to be competitive in high-tech manufacturing).

Even Pommie kids find own English language hardest subject to learn, amazing.

With only 26 alphabets to form so many words in writing English language had reached its limitation.

Many words do not fit the sound of the root words which cause furhter confusion. Japanese language is more precise and build up from their radicals, like the Chinese language.

I think English's writing system is called "phonetic". Symbols stand for sounds which linguists call "phonemes" or "phonemic segments". Russian is like this, Malay is like this (they didn't all invent this - writing was invented only two or three times by humans - the rest of the cultures just imitated and borrowed).

Korean and Japanese hiragana/katakana script are "syllabic" - symbols stand for entire syllables (which can contain multiple phonemic segments, e.g. [san] contains consonant and [n] and vowel [a])

Mandarin and Japanese kanji is "ideographic", because - well symbols stand for entire syllables, but each syllable could correspond to several different ideographs. This kind of writing system is arguably the hardest to learn.

Re: what you mean by Japanese words being "built up from their radicals", I think you're referring to their very transparent morphological system (e.g. for verb marking, past tense is always -ta, negation is always -nai, progressive is -always iru, etc), unlike English with irregular morphology all over the place, e.g. am/are/is/was/were/be, go/went/gone, swim/swam/swum, cows/sheep/oxen/stimuli/larvae, etc.

 

[Charlie99]

QUOTE:
[ I think English's writing system is called "phonetic". Symbols stand for sounds which linguists call "phonemes" or "phonemic segments". Russian is like this, Malay is like this (they didn't all invent this - writing was invented only two or three times by humans - the rest of the cultures just imitated and borrowed).

Korean and Japanese hiragana/katakana script are "syllabic" - symbols stand for entire syllables (which can contain multiple phonemic segments, e.g. [san] contains consonant and [n] and vowel [a])

Mandarin and Japanese kanji is "ideographic", because - well symbols stand for entire syllables, but each syllable could correspond to several different ideographs. This kind of writing system is arguably the hardest to learn.

Re: what you mean by Japanese words being "built up from their radicals", I think you're referring to their very transparent morphological system (e.g. for verb marking, past tense is always -ta, negation is always -nai, progressive is -always iru, etc), unlike English with irregular morphology all over the place, e.g. am/are/is/was/were/be, go/went/gone, swim/swam/swum, cows/sheep/oxen/stimuli/larvae, etc. ]

*** *** ***

This proves to me that you are very well read, and intelligent.

 

[tanwahtiu]

Yeah, last time got teach some English. But no more - I not comfortable with MOE style of education.


What is it that you don't like MOE style of Education, such as?

Apparently they top world standards beating angmoh countries.

I can't speak for other fields, but not in my field. Top publications are still often by whites, or if by Asians (most frequently Japanese, then (anglo-)Indian, then Korean, then Chinese) who are based in universities in the west. But I'm in social science which is perhaps quite language-biased. The case might be very different in the hard sciences.

Nonetheless - I think the Singapore approach to research is wrong on a few counts.

1. Setting quotas for researchers on annual number of publications in journals of different tiers (overly narrow KPI)

2. Hiring lousy PhD people on SGD3+k/month and naively thinking all PhD holders are equivalent (speaking just for NUS)

3. Focusing too much money on top researchers (describing A-Star), instead of spreading the money around on fewer, not-so-famous researchers - research is like gambling, the more you try (and fail), the more likely you will serendipitously stumble on success - what Nassim Taleb calls positive Black Swans

Anyway - if you believe Acemoglu et al about cuddly and cutthroat capitalism, then there's no point being cutthroat and innovative. Technology costs a lot to develop but everyone can benefit from its productivity gains. Better to just focus on our comparative advantages (super-strong work ethic? I don't know... I'm just crapping actually - I do think a strong technology or R&D culture is worth developing here... even if just because it allows us to be competitive in high-tech manufacturing).



I think English's writing system is called "phonetic". Symbols stand for sounds which linguists call "phonemes" or "phonemic segments". Russian is like this, Malay is like this (they didn't all invent this - writing was invented only two or three times by humans - the rest of the cultures just imitated and borrowed).

Malay language is known as one of the most beautiful languages in the world. Many words use 2 syllabus and easy to remember. Pity they don't have their own style of writtings, borrowed Latin for their writings.

Korean and Japanese hiragana/katakana script are "syllabic" - symbols stand for entire syllables (which can contain multiple phonemic segments, e.g. [san] contains consonant and [n] and vowel [a])

Jap language also make nice sound and tone, easy to follow and remember.

Mandarin and Japanese kanji is "ideographic", because - well symbols stand for entire syllables, but each syllable could correspond to several different ideographs. This kind of writing system is arguably the hardest to learn.

Re: what you mean by Japanese words being "built up from their radicals", I think you're referring to their very transparent morphological system (e.g. for verb marking, past tense is always -ta, negation is always -nai, progressive is -always iru, etc), unlike English with irregular morphology all over the place, e.g. am/are/is/was/were/be, go/went/gone, swim/swam/swum, cows/sheep/oxen/stimuli/larvae, etc.

Jap language more precise to the term they use unlike English to many similar sounds but do not mean the same, and no tone.

Chinese language produces happy sounds and tones and often look like the speaker is smiling or relax talking.

 

[Agoraphobic]

Wow. Your hours are very long. In a lab (exposed to solvent vapours?) I view that to be kinda hazardous work. Hope you are not endangering your health. I would have suggested reading during leisure hours but it seems like that will be hard to come by for you and after such long hours, one would normally look forward to unwinding.

Hope your sacrifice pays off and you get rewarded. Personally, I can't imagine myself in a laboratory environment; visited a couple of paint chemists in their labs and felt sorry of them in there. Prefer to be out in the field like sales where you meet people and talk to lots of different folks out there.

Cheers!

I work from 830am in lab to around 9pm. go up mrt first thing is to sleep.

if my boss find out i have time to read things like " history, politics, philosophy, religion, economics, current-affairs, autobiographies, war, socialism, comedy", within the next few mins, i will received the email asking me to read up the last 5 years published paper on a particular field and make a presentation on next group meeting.

brother, sometimes when we grow up, what we read, our time is not within our control. btw, sat i still work and sometime sunday.

 

[vamjok]

Wow. Your hours are very long. In a lab (exposed to solvent vapours?) I view that to be kinda hazardous work. Hope you are not endangering your health. I would have suggested reading during leisure hours but it seems like that will be hard to come by for you and after such long hours, one would normally look forward to unwinding.

Hope your sacrifice pays off and you get rewarded. Personally, I can't imagine myself in a laboratory environment; visited a couple of paint chemists in their labs and felt sorry of them in there. Prefer to be out in the field like sales where you meet people and talk to lots of different folks out there.

Cheers!

actually you guess quite correctly. only synthetic chemist spent that much time in lab. i am an organic synthetic chemist and i am indeed making dye compounds. but mine belongs to fluorescence compounds mainly for bioimaging.

its more of passions, interests and supports from your peers that keeps you going in research. its very hard to explain to others why i am doing this.

 

[vamjok]

Yeah, last time got teach some English. But no more - I not comfortable with MOE style of education.



I can't speak for other fields, but not in my field. Top publications are still often by whites, or if by Asians (most frequently Japanese, then (anglo-)Indian, then Korean, then Chinese) who are based in universities in the west. But I'm in social science which is perhaps quite language-biased. The case might be very different in the hard sciences.

Nonetheless - I think the Singapore approach to research is wrong on a few counts.

1. Setting quotas for researchers on annual number of publications in journals of different tiers (overly narrow KPI)

2. Hiring lousy PhD people on SGD3+k/month and naively thinking all PhD holders are equivalent (speaking just for NUS)

3. Focusing too much money on top researchers (describing A-Star), instead of spreading the money around on fewer, not-so-famous researchers - research is like gambling, the more you try (and fail), the more likely you will serendipitously stumble on success - what Nassim Taleb calls positive Black Swans

Anyway - if you believe Acemoglu et al about cuddly and cutthroat capitalism, then there's no point being cutthroat and innovative. Technology costs a lot to develop but everyone can benefit from its productivity gains. Better to just focus on our comparative advantages (super-strong work ethic? I don't know... I'm just crapping actually - I do think a strong technology or R&D culture is worth developing here... even if just because it allows us to be competitive in high-tech manufacturing).



I think English's writing system is called "phonetic". Symbols stand for sounds which linguists call "phonemes" or "phonemic segments". Russian is like this, Malay is like this (they didn't all invent this - writing was invented only two or three times by humans - the rest of the cultures just imitated and borrowed).

Korean and Japanese hiragana/katakana script are "syllabic" - symbols stand for entire syllables (which can contain multiple phonemic segments, e.g. [san] contains consonant and [n] and vowel [a])

Mandarin and Japanese kanji is "ideographic", because - well symbols stand for entire syllables, but each syllable could correspond to several different ideographs. This kind of writing system is arguably the hardest to learn.

Re: what you mean by Japanese words being "built up from their radicals", I think you're referring to their very transparent morphological system (e.g. for verb marking, past tense is always -ta, negation is always -nai, progressive is -always iru, etc), unlike English with irregular morphology all over the place, e.g. am/are/is/was/were/be, go/went/gone, swim/swam/swum, cows/sheep/oxen/stimuli/larvae, etc.

I started reading scientific journals ever since i started working in this field since about 7 years ago. i do not know of any racial discrimination in writing any papers. i do not know about the culture or what you hear before, whoever did the most work, leading the the completion of the project will write the paper. Irregardless of his language skill, and thus will be given the right to be called the first author. there is no such rubbish as just because you are better in english you write the paper and got the right to be the first author from others work.

on the publisher side, they too know scientist english in general sucks, they have professional editor to solve that issue. but mainly to just correct the grammar, never changing much of the words or introducing more bombastic words. by the way, these are from my experience with people publishing at really top tier journals of impact factors above 10.

if what you said is really true, i do not think any of my chinese and indian friends can publish in journals like Angewandte chemie (which one did) and JACS (i lost count how many did). go check their impact factors if you think i am kidding. and search 2011 to 2012 how many Angewandte and JACS published by indians and Chinese from NUS chemistry.

This is speaking from personal experience and interaction with others who walk in and out everyday with people with publications.

 

[loneshark]

its more of passions, interests and supports from your peers that keeps you going in research. its very hard to explain to others why i am doing this.

I have respect for you. In a way, you are fortunate to have found your passion, and is able to pursue it. When you are at it, hours are immaterial.
Reminds me of drifter, he is also very passionate about his work.

About eremarf's comments about scientific publications, to be fair, he is refering to his field of Social Sciences, not hard sciences. So his observations may be different from yours.

Cheers.

I can't speak for other fields, but not in my field. Top publications are still often by whites, or if by Asians (most frequently Japanese, then (anglo-)Indian, then Korean, then Chinese) who are based in universities in the west. But I'm in social science which is perhaps quite language-biased. The case might be very different in the hard sciences.

 

[vamjok]

I have respect for you. In a way, you are fortunate to have found your passion, and is able to pursue it. When you are at it, hours are immaterial.
Reminds me of drifter, he is also very passionate about his work.

About eremarf's comments about scientific publications, to be fair, he is refering to his field of Social Sciences, not hard sciences. So his observations may be different from yours.

Cheers.

in such environment, people around you are important. they makes you feel comfortable and thus the long hours do not feels like anything actually.

 

[vamjok]

Either you are very stupid or your company not enough staff.

till now you still do not have the brain to figure out this; if people of my academical qualifications are considered stupid. I wonder where you stand