On 14 September 2024, the 13th Mother Tongue Languages (MTL) Symposium took place at Suntec Convention Centre. With the theme "Our Mother Tongues as Living Languages", this year's symposium emphasised the importance of integrating MTL into daily life. The event focused on strengthening partnerships among parents, educators and community partners to build a vibrant ecosystem supporting the use of mother tongue languages. During the opening ceremony, Minister for Education Mr Chan Chun Sing unveiled a series of new initiatives to help students at different learning stages acquire their mother tongue so as to uphold bilingualism in the education system.

         The event was filled with diverse activities, featuring 45 sharing sessions and interactive workshops, along with over 40 exhibition booths. The booths engaged the public with creative and interactive activities. Children on-site enjoyed tremendously the fun of using their mother tongue language in those exciting activities.

         As a community partner, the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language (SCCL) showcased its resources under the theme "Learning through Reading, Growing with Joy", including "5E Add-on Children's Picture Books", "Unboxing the Treasured Memories" Graded Picture Book Series, and the "Cultural Station" teaching toolkits for primary and secondary schools. These resources are tailored to the language proficiency levels of Singapore students, allowing readers to immerse in an atmosphere rich in local culture.

         Principal Master Teacher Dr Zheng Yingjiang was invited to share her insights on "The 'Secret' between Schematic Play and Children's Chinese Language Acquisition". Dr Zheng observed that to unlock this "secret", preschool teachers need to acquire a set of "decoding tools" and take on diverse roles to promote children's schematic development and enhance their acquisition of the Chinese language through play. She shared specific strategies and methods to guide teachers in the diverse roles -- as observers to analyse children's schemas in play, as co-players to understand children's thoughts and language, as designers to use schemas to design "living" Chinese language learning experiences, and as advocators to help parents to carry out schematic play so as to promote their child's Chinese language acquisition at home.

Ms Gan Siow Huang, Minister of State, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Manpower (fourth from the right), visited SCCL booth

Ms Beatrice Chong, Deputy Director-General of Education (Professional Development) (third from the left), and Mr Wong Siew Hoong, former Director-General of Education (first from the right) visited SCCL booth

Dr Zheng Yingjiang interacting with teachers and parents at the MTLS

Parents and children fully engaged in the language activities at the SCCL booth