ICON+

Admit it. Singlish is COOL!

“La”, “Ma”, “Ah”, “Arama-!” Although foreigners from North America, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand might not understand what we’re saying when they first arrive at our shores, they quickly find themselves falling in love with this dialect that incorporates words from so many different cultures. Here, on our tropical paradise, we convey ideas and messages in the most efficient way possible. “Sure, I can certainly do that for you, sir!” becomes a succinct, “Caaan!” Come on - what’s not to love about Singlish?

As fun as it might be to communicate in our national tongue, however, there is one teensy-weensy problem: Singlish oftentimes deviates greatly from standard English, and is therefore not looked upon favorably by TOEFL and IELTS exam markers. Because we at ICON+ want all Singaporeans to score highly on these English tests, we have compiled the below tips.

Here are some common “errors” that Singlish users make:

1. You can SPEAK ABOUT something, TALK ABOUT another thing, but you cannot MENTION ABOUT anything. Rather than write, “My supervisor MENTIONED ABOUT the tsunami in Japan,” say, “My supervisor MENTIONED the tsunami in Japan.”

2. Verb tenses! Verb tenses! Verb tenses! Many Singaporeans tend to use the present tense whether they are talking about the past, present, or future. Make sure you use the correct tense for the time frame you are addressing.

3. Singular-plural errors abound in our test-prep students’ writing. For example, how would you correct the following? “The contract require that plans be furnished in May, the work be approved by independent evaluator, and they demand that all copyrights for the plans belongs to the Noble Group.”

4. Every sentence needs a main subject and main verb. The following are sentence fragments, not sentences.

“Also, the beautiful blue bird singing on top of the green mountain”
“When these parents decide that earning more money will give happiness to society”
“Although my colleague told me to be quiet”

5. In the previous example, we addressed sentences not written in full. Here, we address wordy and run-on sentences that might be considered overly full.

“When the relationship sours, the child might have the idea that his parents are too busy to care for him and to love him and the bond between the parents and the child will start to break when the parents do not do anything to try to salvage the remains of their sour relationship with the child,”

should be rewritten,

“When the relationship sours, the child might get the idea that his parents are too busy to care for or love him. The bond between the parents and the child will start to break when the parents do nothing to salvage the remains of the sour relationship.”