CHINESE language teaching will remain tailored to students' abilities, with oral skills emphasised for the majority, and ample opportunity for the best to go as far as they can.

Education Minister Ng Eng Hen gave this reassurance yesterday to four Members of Parliament, who cautioned against lowering Chinese language standards across the board.

The exchange came amid an ongoing review of how the three mother tongues are taught in schools, given that the mother tongue is now used less often in Chinese, Malay and Indian homes.

The review, led by the Director-General of Education Ho Peng, will be completed at the year's end, said Dr Ng.

It will redesign the mother tongue curriculum to recognise 'the wider range of starting points and prior backgrounds of our pupils, and devise customised approaches', Dr Ng said.

Far from losing its bilingual edge, Singapore wants to strengthen it by not alienating the majority of students with mother tongue lessons pitched at too difficult a level for them, he clarified.

'With the rise of China, being bilingual is a valuable cachet. Similarly too for those who speak Malay or Tamil languages as markets in Indonesia, Malaysia and India expand,' he added.

A perennial hot-button issue, Chinese language standards have resurfaced as a topic of debate in recent months.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) had said it was reviewing the curriculum now that six in 10 ethnic Chinese students entering Primary 1 come from predominantly English-speaking homes.

The last Chinese language review six years ago introduced a modular curriculum pegged to students' abilities.

New changes in the pipeline, revealed by Dr Ng last December, include modifying how Chinese language proficiency is tested, taking a leaf from overseas examination models tailored for students with little or no exposure to Chinese at home.

But Mrs Josephine Teo (Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC) warned yesterday against basing the review 'on the assumption that (the mother tongues) have become more like foreign languages in Singapore'.

The MP, who chairs the Government Parliamentary Committee for Education, noted the popularity of Chinese-language media here, as well as how Mandarin and Chinese dialects can be heard every day in public places.

'So, I hope the MOE does not adopt a defeatist attitude when reviewing the teaching of mother tongues and end up eroding our language environment to our own detriment,' she said.

The call to have more creative methods of teaching Chinese, rather than lowering standards, was also made by Workers' Party leader Low Thia Khiang (Hougang), Nominated MP Teo Siong Seng and Mr Baey Yam Keng (Tanjong Pagar GRC).

Replying, Dr Ng said Singapore would not swing to the extreme of teaching the mother tongues as foreign languages. He urged teachers to take advantage of the mass media and pop culture to encourage students to use these languages daily.

More details on how language teaching and curriculum will be tweaked will be announced in Parliament today.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.