It was just like marriage.

Sunday, June 06, 2004

okay~just found out something about my school.haha.read on and u will noe.

"Boys Pick up Chinese and, Ahem, Girls Too; In a Novel
Experiment, Montfort Students Better Their Language by
Corresponding via E-Mail With St Joseph's Convent Girls

Jane Lee
The Straits Times (Singapore)
May 26, 2003
Singapore

CHATTING up CHIJ St Joseph's Convent girls has helped
Montfort Secondary boys to improve their Chinese.

All Secondary 3 students from the all-boy school spent two
months last year writing letters in Chinese to the Sec 3
convent girls.

They used Chinese software to write at least six letters,
and the girls would reply.

The content - from discussing their favourite pop stars to
what they thought about love - never strayed into risque
territory because the boys were required to print copies of
their letters for the teacher before sending the e-mail
messages to the girls.

Montfort's Chinese teachers thought up the idea to help
their students improve their letter-writing skills, which
are tested in the Chinese O-level examination.

SJC was a natural choice because Mrs Lim Shong Chuan, who
heads Montfort's mother tongue department, was good friends
with her counterpart there.

And it was obvious that the boys would prefer to correspond
with girls.

Said Montfort principal Simen Lourds: 'It'd give the boys
an incentive to write. I don't think they'd be very
interested in writing to another guy.'

The strategy worked.

The boys really worked on those letters, often consulting
the dictionary for the correct words and asking teachers to
translate English phrases into Chinese. Some would spend
two hours crafting just three paragraphs.

Said Glenn Lau, who is now in Sec 4: 'We had to brush up on
our Chinese to impress the girls. It'd be very embarrassing
if there were mistakes in the letters.'

Their efforts were appreciated. The girls said the boys
were polite and rarely made bloopers.

Diana Sim, 15, could not stop giggling when recalling the
experience.

'I don't get to know many boys because I'm in a girls'
school, so this is my first time writing to a guy. It was
quite fun but a bit scary.'

The first letter she received began: 'Hi, I'm so-and-so. I
don't have a girlfriend.'

The boys, who are more at home doing e-mail and chatting
online in English, said they have learnt to do the same in
Chinese.

Daniel Kuik, 16, added: 'Although we can speak Mandarin,
we're not too good at writing Chinese. But with all the
practice from writing these letters, we've not only become
more fluent in the language but we also know how to type in
Chinese now.'

This pilot project is part of Montfort's efforts to make
the subject more interesting to its students. They've gone
on study trips to China and also taken part in online
current affairs forums in Chinese.

It is too soon to say if their grades have improved, said
Mr Lourds, because the project started only last year.

But whether intended or not, some have already graduated
from letter-writing to dating, several boys told The
Straits Times.

Some, in conspiratorial whispers, said that a few couples
have even 'gone steady'.

Boys will always be boys and Mrs Lim let on that at the
start, some girls received no letters at all because the
boys had checked out who the prettier ones were and ignored
the partners they had picked from the class lists.

She said: 'We had to scold them and told them to behave
like gentlemen. They obeyed and went back to writing to
their partners.'

So the school's motto to turn its boys into gentlemen is
working out fine - even in a Chinese lesson."

{/11:20 PM}

count on it .