Mother Tongue Languages

Vision & Mission:

Vision:

A cultured and effective communicator with a passion for Mother Tongue Language.

Mission:

We inspire Woodlanders to be life-long learners and articulate communicators in Mother Tongue Language with social and moral values.

Department Overview:

The Mother Tongue Language Department aims to nurture self-directed and life-long learners who can communicate effectively in their respective Mother-Tongue Languages, in written and spoken forms and carry on the good practices of their culture and customs. To achieve this, besides the MOE MTL syllabus and Character and Citizenship Education curriculum, the MT Language Department develops fun, exciting and engaging programmes to prepare students in attaining proficiency in the 4 skills, namely Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing, and achieving a deeper appreciation of our diverse cultures. The MTL teachers seek to create a caring, safe and stimulating learning environment for students to think critically, communicate confidently and make connections of the cultures associated with MT Languages.

MTL Department Key Programmes:

Festive Celebrations

To help students value Singapore’s socio-cultural diversity, and to promote social cohesion and harmony, the MTL Department organises interesting and meaningful activities to celebrate Lunar New Year, Hari Raya Puasa, Mid-Autumn Festival and Deepavali. These activities allow students to have a better understanding of the culture and traditions of the other ethnic groups, and to better appreciate multi-culturalism in Singapore.

Mother Tongue Language Fortnight

Keeping the objectives of stimulating and sustaining our students’ interest in speaking the mother tongue languages, the department has put in place a range of enrichment activities designed to expose our students culturally while promoting opportunities for meaningful interaction and collaboration amongst students. This includes a two-week programme to encourage our students to use their Mother Tongue and appreciate their own culture. Other than classroom-based activities, students took part in learning stations during recess and family bonding activities at home. These platforms gave the students more opportunities to use their mother tongue languages in an exciting way.

Reading Programme

We believe in the joy of reading and we want our students to be hooked on reading. We create opportunities for students to read in class and beyond the classroom. To ensure a strong MTL reading programme, the school has purchased more interesting and age-appropriate storybooks for the school and classroom library. We organize a wide range of activities such as book reviews and reading portfolios to promote the love for reading. Through reading books extensively, students will be able to further expand their vocabulary in MTL and cultivate the habit of reading.

Primary 3 Cultural Camp

The Mother Tongue Language Cultural Camp is the signature programme of the Mother Tongue Language Department. Through the varied traditional games and cultural hands-on activities, the day camp aims to arouse the students’ interest in the learning of their mother tongue languages, to deepen their understanding and to appreciate their cultures better. These interesting activities will reinforce the joy of learning languages.

Primary 3 Conversational Chinese and Malay Programme (CCM)

The Conversational Chinese and Malay Programme is introduced to provide students with exposure to the Conversational MT languages. Learning another MT language for conversational purposes will help to nurture interaction among the ethnic communities and friendship between students, across races and religions.