Mother Tongue

Department Vision

Effective Global Communicators rooted in Values with a Love for the Languages and Cultures

Department Mission

To nurture Active Learners, Proficient Users anchored in values who embrace their ethnic identities.
To develop Adaptive Thinkers with a global outlook and appreciation for unity in diversity

The Mother Tongue Department believes in the importance of nurturing students to learn and love Mother Tongue Languages as living languages and also appreciate the beauty of colourful cultures behind them. To engage our learners, our teachers engage in life-long learning to continuously improve our pedagogies and effective use of ICT in their lesson and assessment design.

Teacher	Designation	Unit
Mdm Tan Lay Teng	HOD Mother Tongue	Chinese
Mrs Tan Woan Chyn	Subject Head	Chinese
Mdm Lai Meei Ju	Teacher	Chinese
Mdm Su Xiaoling	Teacher	Chinese
Mr Tham Wen Xi	Teacher	Chinese
Mdm Whong Tung Geok	Teacher	Chinese
Mdm Wong Mui Lin	Teacher	Chinese
Ms Wong Yin Sung	Teacher	Chinese
Mr Yang Peiqiang	Teacher	Chinese
Mr Mohamed Naguib Ngadnan	Teacher	Malay
Ms Nadia Sharin	Asst Year Head	Malay
Mdm Norhidayah Mohamed Sis	Teacher	Malay
Mdm Nur Shahirah Shahir Sha Hir	Teacher	Malay
Mdm Siti Fatimah Muhammad	Teacher	Malay
Mdm Lee Low Eng	Flexi-adjunct Teacher	Chinese

Signature Programmes / Enrichment Programmes

Chinese New Year Celebration 2024

Mayflower students and staff celebrated a special Chinese New Year with our very own "Dragon Mascot Design Competition" followed by a physical concert in the hall.

Our CNY concert Emcees

Sharing the Festivity with AWWA

To spread our love to the community during the festive season, staff and students also rallied together for a donation drive to provide the AWWA elderly with daily necessities. This year, our students from Literary and Oratorical Club also went down to the AWWA Dementia Care Centre to share the festivity with the seniors.

Mother Tongue Language Fortnight 2024

Our Secondary 3 Chinese Language students went for a learning journey to Tea Chapter to learn about history of Chinese tea and the art of tea drinking.

The Malay Language students attended a Dikir Barat Workshop to learn its culture and form. After attending the workshop, the students came together and took initiative to prepare and perform during Hari Raya assembly programme.

International Friendship Day Commemoration cum Hari Raya Celebration

Our Malay Language students put together a Malay Dance item and a Dikir Barat performance for the International Friendship Day cum Hari Raya Celebration Assembly Programme. The programme is a collaboration between CCE Committee and Mother Tongue Department.

Secondary 4/5 Mother Tongue Intensive Programme

Every year, the school will set aside 4 full days of Mother Tongue Intensive Programme at the end of Term 2 to help prepare our graduating students for the O Level Mid-Year Mother Tongue examination. During this period, the Mother Tongue Department will come together to customise the revision packages for our students and work along side with them.

Applied Learning Programme (Effective Communication)

The MTL ALP aims to provide authentic learning experiences, riding on the foundation of language skills taught in EL ALP, based on the students’ interests. The learning experiences are customised based on the profile and interests of the students, by providing them different platforms and opportunities to use the MT languages and code switch to apply the skills taught in EL ALP.

Tier 1 Programme:

Secondary 1: Reading Programme
Secondary 2: Speech and Drama
Secondary 3: Journalism and Broadcasting

Tier 2

Recital Training
Translation Skills
Debate Skills

Chinese Language Applied Learning Programme

The teachers work closely with the instructors to conduct quality lessons for our students to teach them skills for reading, speech and drama and journalism and broadcasting.

Malay Language Applied Learning Programme

The ML Speech and Drama instructor conducted an engaging lesson for our students.

Achievements and Programmes

In 2024, we continued to stretch our students by participating in a variety of competitions. These includes:

3T National Inter-Schools Translation Competition
Malay Debate Competition 2024
The 7th National Textbook Recital Competition
Xin Lei Jiang Creative Writing Competition
National Translation Competition
“Xin Kong Xia” Xinyao Singing and Songwriting Competition 2024
NTU National Chinese Calligraphy Competition

7th Text Recital Competition 2024

Sec 1 and 2 Higher Chinese students attended the ALP Tier 2 training on recital skills. Two teams and two students took part in the 7th Text Recital Competition 2024 under the Group Category and Individual Category respectively. We have been sending our students for this competition for the few years and have attained good results for all.

Most our teams have attained the silver awards and in 2023, our Secondary 2 team was awarded the gold award and was selected to participate in the finals.

National Translation Competition

2 groups of our Secondary 3 Higher Chinese students participated in the National Translation Competition at Nanyang Junior College after attending our Tier 2 translation programme.

Xin Lei Jiang Creative Writing Competition

Rakan Bahasa 2024

2 of our Mayflowerians have been nominated by the Mother Tongue Department to be Malay Language ambassadors. This is an initiative by the Malay Language Council Singapore. As ambassadors, they are required to attend various workshops conducted in Malay Language as well as apply the usage of Malay Language in varied forms of medium. The ambassadors are also role models to their peers in encouraging their peers to develop the love of the language.

The 2 Malay Language Ambassadors, also known as Rakan Bahasa are Nur Alisha from 2B and Alisa Ariana from 2E.

Malay Debate Competition 2024

We have sent a group of Malay students participated in the Malay Debate Competition organised by the Malay Youth Literary Association 4PM. This is our second year participating in this competition and the students have improved since last year. The students are:

Zamir 3I
Qurratuaini 3J
Marsya 2D
Qasdina 1D （Best speaker for the team）

Professional Sharing and Accomplishment

The Chinese Unit set up a booth at the 2023 Mother Tongue Language Symposium to showcase the good practices of our MT department (CL unit).

Our confident students interacted with the public and engage the children with our language games.

Presenting our good practices to fellow teachers at the 7th International Conference on Teaching and Learning of Chinese as a Second Language cum the 11th International Forum on Chinese Language Education.

From Berita Harian website

Congratulations to Mr Naguib for receiving the 1st Prize at the Golden Point Award for Poetry (Malay Category).

Congratulations to Mdm Tan Lay Teng for receiving the Distinguished Chinese Teachers Award 2024.