Japanese

Benefits of Learning a Third Language

They open doors to tertiary education & scholarships in France, Germany, Japan and Spain; they also increase job opportunities in MNCs in Singapore, and local enterprises with overseas networks or operations in Europe, the Americas and Japan.

Additionally, research [1] has shown that the greater the effort made to learn a foreign language, the greater the brain growth in areas “involved in the learning of new material and spatial navigation”. In later life, it has been found to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

Research [2] also shows that learning a foreign language to an advanced level – as opposed to second language learning – also “significantly enhances all four divergent thinking abilities, i.e., fluency, elaboration, originality and flexibility. Such enhancement can be attributed to specific cognitive practices that language learning brings, and the psychological consequences of being trained under a system different from school system.”

Admission to the courses

To be eligible to apply for the following third languages, applicants must satisfy all three criteria for the respective third language.

• Students must obtain a PSLE Score of 8 or better
• For Japanese, students must have taken CL/HCL at PSLE
• Students must be SC or SPR, or a child of a SC/SPR

Organisation of classes

The MOELC follows the standard school term and holiday periods. Lessons are conducted once a week. Each weekly session comprises 3 hours 15 minutes of in-class instruction at MOELC, followed by 45 minutes of online independent learning at home.

Testing and evaluation

• Students’ progress is monitored at regular intervals through quizzes, common tests and an End-of-Year or Preliminary examination.
• Students take the following national examinations:
• O Level at the end of Sec 4
• A Level H1 at the end of JC1 (For the foreign languages only)
• A Level H2 at the end of JC2 (For the foreign languages only)
• Foreign Language students are also encouraged to measure their proficiency against the various external language examinations in French (DELF / DALF), German (Fit fur Deutsch / TestDAF), Japanese (JLPT) and Spanish (DELE) conducted by the respective examining agencies.