By Janadas Devan, Review Editor

Dr Goh Keng Swee was the finest writer of English prose this country has had.

If one read his speeches - even his Budget speeches - one might have thought a choir of angels had a hand in their composition. But when one heard him deliver those very same speeches, one would have concluded all those angels had marbles in their mouths.

How was it possible for someone who wrote so elegantly to sound so uninviting? Why couldn't he reproduce in his own voice what he must have heard with his inner ear? For only a person with a very precise ear could have written as finely as Dr Goh did. So why couldn't he hear himself speak, correct or adjust his enunciation, and reproduce what he must have heard in his head? Why couldn't a man who wrote like an angel sound like an angel as well?

I don't suppose we will ever know the answers to these questions. But Dr Goh must have known he was not a good public speaker, for he avoided public speaking as much as possible. He had to make parliamentary statements, of course, and speak at factory openings and so on, but he avoided mass rallies. I have seen only one photograph of him speaking at a rally - in the 1959 General Election - but nothing after that.

And so it was that the second most influential politician in the first quarter-century of independent Singapore's history was hardly a presence on the stump. Fortunately, the oral skills of the most influential politician in the period, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, more than made up for this ineptitude in his 'alter ego'.

In an ideal world, we would all be able to write as well as William Shakespeare or W.B. Yeats and speak as well as Winston Churchill or US President Barack Obama. But in the real world, that is not possible.

People are different. Even the preternaturally talented among us are not multi-talented. Great composers are not always the best performers of their own works; gifted poets are not always the best readers of their own poems; talented communicators in one medium - the written word, say - are not always talented communicators in another - the spoken word, say.

We would do well to remind ourselves of these facts as the Ministry of Education implements new programmes to improve the oral communication skills of students. According to a report in this newspaper, 'the teaching of languages in schools is up for a major revamp, with the focus shifting to getting students to speak well.

'For both English and the mother tongues, the new measures of success will be how well students can express themselves and communicate with punch.'

Education Minister Ng Eng Hen, who announced this new emphasis earlier this month, took pains to explain that MOE was not aiming to produce an army of 'world class debaters or winners of elocution competitions'.

Still, the minister thought the majority of students should be 'able to speak proper English, express themselves clearly and be understood'.

'To be able to communicate well,' he argued, 'will become increasingly important in their working lives, whether they work here or abroad. At the basic level, those who can communicate their ideas to market their...products, or convince others will have an edge over others.'

Speech matters - as much as being able to count or write. Already renowned for producing students with high standards in maths and science, Singapore should also aim to be known for producing students who express themselves well in English, Dr Ng said. So our schools will teach public speaking, pupils will be encouraged to tell stories and read aloud, and speech and drama will be a regular feature.

Insofar as these programmes serve to make English - and equally important, the mother tongues - familiar to our students, they will be a plus. For too long, languages have been taught as distant and formal disciplines - to be mugged up and examined upon, not used and lived.

One reason many students do not speak the formal English they are taught in school, preferring instead Singlish, is precisely that the English they are taught appears distant to them - a school-room language, ink-stained and foreign, not a living and breathing organism like Singlish.

If the emphasis on speech encourages them to take possession of English - make it their own - that would do more good than scolding them endlessly about Singlish.

And if in the process we produce more Lees, politicians who can communicate their ideas effectively, a few more Lim Kay Tongs, actors with an innate sense of the beauty of the language - or even salesmen who can market products effectively - those are bonuses.

But let us not delude ourselves: Focusing on oral skills is not going to solve all our problems. To begin with, we are not going to expand the number of great oral communicators in Singapore just because more schools have speech and drama.

More importantly, an emphasis on speech is not going to help us much with what is in fact as pressing a problem as the prevalence of Singlish here: The inability of the vast majority of the products of our schools and universities to write clearly and logically.

As an editor, I read hundreds of contributions a month from a wide variety of people. None of them is an Obama but they almost all possess above-average oral skills. I can count on the fingers of one hand, though, the number who write well enough for their articles to be printed without having to be rewritten substantially.

Already renowned for producing students with high standards in maths and science, Singapore should also aim to be known for producing students who express themselves well - in writing!

If I had to choose, I would rather have one more Dr Goh than 10,000 silver-tongued politicians.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.