AN ELECTRONIC textbook that flashes phrases in English will soon be the newest helper for students learning Chinese.

Ten primary schools will try out these e-books in the second half of this year as educators experiment further with the bilingual approach to teaching Chinese, Tamil and Malay.

Lecturers from the National Institute of Education (NIE) say the use of English in mother tongue classes is necessary as more children hail from homes where English reigns supreme.

'When you want to learn swimming, you use a float,' said NIE Associate Professor Goh Yeng Seng. 'When you swim, you have to let go of it.'

Already, English is being used in Chinese language classes in at least 11 primary schools.

Now, a team from NIE, publisher Panpac and technology company Creative Technology has come up with the next step: the iFlashbook.

It will have the same reading passages as normal Chinese textbooks, but by moving the cursor to a sentence, students will be able to read the English translation and hear the Mandarin pronunciation of a new word.

If all goes well, the textbook will be made more widely available next year.

The move to use English in Chinese language classes started six years ago and has courted controversy as the Chinese intelligentsia decried the mixing of languages.

According to a Ministry of Education (MOE) survey in 2004, about half of Chinese pupils in each Primary 1 cohort came from homes where English was the main language of communication.

It is not only the Chinese language which is under threat as English becomes increasingly dominant. Mother tongue languages Tamil and Malay are also affected.

A 2005 MOE survey showed that while about 40 per cent of Secondary 4 students spoke Malay with their parents, only 29 per cent of Primary 4 pupils did so.

NIE lecturer Mukhlis Abu Bakar wants educators to rethink monolingual ways of teaching students which 'squash them into a monolingual world and suppress their creativity'.

But teachers like Mr Ezra Sham Mohamed, 36, who teaches Malay at Bukit Panjang Government High, are against the use of English to teach mother tongue languages.

'The language will be diluted. It will end up as a pasar (market) language which you use just to buy things,' he said.

This article was first published in The Straits Times on Apr 25, 2008.