The Speak Good English Movement (SGEM) will be officially launched on Thursday 18 April 2002, 3.30 pm at the Performance Theatre of Victoria Junior College. Minister for Education and Second Minister for Defence RAdm (NS) Teo Chee Hean is the Guest-of-Honour.

2 Adopting a light-hearted approach, SGEM aims to encourage Singaporeans to speak good English and reduce the use of Singlish. For 2002, the Movement will continue to adopt the slogan of "Speak Well. Be Understood".

3 This will be the third launch of SGEM. The inaugural launch was officiated by Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong in April 2000 as a drive to encourage Singaporeans to speak good English.

5 This year’s launch ceremony will showcase the four young student storytellers who emerged winners at the recently held SGEM Storytelling Competition 2002. In addition, local theatre company, Dramaplus will put up a humorous short skit adapted from the second series of the highly popular SGEM Telephone English Lessons. Audiences can also catch the first glimpse of this year’s SGEM new interstitials, produced by Channel NewsAsia.

6 This year’s SGEM Festival will start from Friday 12 April and will last for around one month. During this period, the public can take part in the over 100 activities on good English which will take place at community clubs, libraries, schools etc. These activities are being organised by the SGEM Secretariat, People’s Association, Ministry of Education, educational institutions, Ministry of Defence and National Library Board etc. During this month, Singaporeans can also look out for entertaining TV & radio programmes and telephone lessons on good English — attesting that learning good English can be fun. The highlights are as follows:

7 Supported by SGEM and jointly organised by Mattel Southeast Asia and Singapore Scrabble Association, students from various primary and secondary schools will take part in the first ever Inter-School Scrabble Championship 2002 to find out who is the wordsmith amongst them all. This event will be held on Saturday & Sunday 13 and 14 April 2002, at Woodlands Regional Library.

8 Following its well-received first series of Telephone English Lessons last year, SGEM has produced a second series this year in collaboration with The British Council. The public can dial the toll-free number, 1800-8386030 to listen to the lessons from 19 April to 18 May. Based on the same fictitious characters working in a local Internet portal company, HotDotCom, these lessons highlight commonly-spoken English errors made by Singaporeans in humorous scenarios. The text of these daily lessons will be printed in The Straits Times Life! section and Lianhe Zaobao zbNOW section to facilitate listeners in following the lessons.

9 In this interactive play, leading characters, secret agents P & Q are let loose as they uncover more strange incidents where the use of English has mysteriously gone awry. Targeted at primary schoolchildren, the young audiences will be invited to help the agents solve these puzzling cases, and thus learn some common mistakes in spoken English. Dramaplus will perform the play at selected libraries, community clubs and schools.

10 Full-time National Servicemen (NSFs) in the SAF will be reminded about the need to speak good English and be understood. This will be done through a variety of short skits performed by artistes of the SAF Music and Drama Company (SAF MDC) in SAF camps. A list of SGEM activities will also be placed on the Ministry of Defence’s website (www.mindef.gov.sg) to promote the Movement.

12 Channel NewsAsia (CNA) will continue as SGEM's Official TV Station for the third consecutive year. The station will produce four new 30-second interstitials featuring local artiste, Jack Neo, radio DJ Petrina Kow and top Hong Kong actresses, Lydia Sum & Carol Cheng sharing their experiences in using the English language. These interstitials will be telecast over CNA, MediaCorp TV Channels 5 & 8 from today.

13 The New Paper (TNP) will be appointed as the Official Print Media for a second year. In this collaboration with SGEM, TNP will produce a new weekly cartoon by their well-known cartoonist, Hup, that highlights common errors in Singapore English from 19 April. In addition, the paper will feature a series of weekly contests related to the English language in April, with $100 book vouchers up for grabs.

(See Annex B for the detailed list of activities) 

14 The SGEM Official Launch and Festival 2002 will kick start this year’s series of activities/programmes on good English. It will be followed by a year-round programme to be run by the public and private sector organisations. Members of the public can find out more about the Movement from the SGEM website at www.sgem.org.sg.

ISSUED BY:

SPEAK GOOD ENGLISH MOVEMENT COMMITTEE

c/o MINISTRY OF INFORMATION, COMMUNICATIONS AND THE ARTS

12 APRIL 2002 TIME ISSUED: 1030 HOURS