Learning Other Languages 2024
On 22 January 2024, the NUS Pharmaceutical Society (NUSPS) Inter-Professional Education (IPE) Committee launched its first event of the year, Learning Other Languages (LOL), a one-month programme that brought together students from various healthcare faculties in NUS, NTU and SIT to learn 5 different local mother-tongue languages and dialects – Mandarin, Malay, Tamil, Cantonese and Hokkien while making friends with one another.
Group photo of the students and tutors from Cantonese class
Learning Other Languages (LOL) is an IPE programme aimed to equip healthcare students with basic conversational skills in various Mother Tongue languages and dialects. The programme has gone through tremendous growth to offer more unique and affordable classes. For this year, the programme is expanded to allow healthcare students from other schools such as NTU and SIT to join the lessons as well. Moreover, offering the classes in hybrid format also enticed many students to take part this semester. The participants were made up of healthcare students from NUS Medicine, Pharmacy and Nursing, NTU Medicine, as well as SIT Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Speech and Language Therapy, and Dietetics and Nutrition. This not only benefited a larger group of healthcare students, but also allowed the participants to make new friends from various healthcare faculties across the different universities in Singapore.
Interactive Component of the Malay Lesson through Kahoot Quiz
For all five languages, the first two lessons were held online via Zoom. The main objective for the first two lessons was for participants to learn the basic command of the language such as numbers and greetings before diving into the medical terms. This was being conducted online to provide convenience for the participants who are from other schools. Despite being done online, there were still interactive components such as encouraging participants to create a story using one sentence each in the specific language they were learning. This provided a good opportunity for the participants to interact with one another and break the ice amongst themselves.
A screenshot of the Tamil class conducted on Zoom
The last two lessons were subsequently done physically in a classroom setting, with the aim to expose students to some of the healthcare-related terms such as body parts, diseases and symptoms. This will come in handy when they communicate with patients in their future workplace such as hospitals and polyclinics, especially if the patients can only communicate in their own mother tongue languages or dialects. The physical class also allowed students to interact with each other in a more intimate and engaging way, where meaningful bonds can be forged. On top of that, the participants also got to practice pronouncing the phrases in the various languages and receive instant feedback from the instructors.
Tutor from Hokkien class guiding the students in real life
Overall, the programme came to an eventful end on the last lessons in the third week of February. Majority of the participants who provided feedback gave a high rating to the instructors and mentioned that they would recommend their friends to sign up for this programme in the future. In particular, Eliza Loh, a student from SIT Speech and Language Therapy mentioned that she learnt many relevant information that will be applicable in the medical field. Amyra Zulraimi from NUS Pharmacy also mentioned that the instructors were very patient and helpful, and they also put in effort to highlight the words that are commonly used in Singapore.
All in all, the Inter-Professional Education Committee would like to express our gratitude to all the participants as well as the tutors who were involved in this programme. Without them, the programme would not be able to run smoothly. In particular, we would like to thank the NUS Chinese Studies Students’ Society, NUS Tamil Society, Viriya community service, Madam Norzaidah and Madam Punithamani for being the tutors of the various classes and sharing valuable insights to the participants. We hope that everyone will stay connected and continue to practice the various mother tongue languages and dialects and apply them in the future when they are in the healthcare sector.
Article by 63rd NUSPS Inter-Professional Education (IPE) Committee – Kanesananthan Yahrliny (Year 2 Pharmacy student), Song Jia Xi Clarissa (Year 2 Pharmacy Student), Lam Weng Chung (Year 3 Pharmacy Student), M P Abirami (Year 3 Pharmacy Student) and Lai Kin Yee (Year 2 Pharmacy Student)
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