Speak Good English Movement Sneaks Into Facebook

And Twitter, and Blogger, and WordPress, and everything else social. According to the chairman of the come-and-go movement, Mr Goh Eck Kheng, his committee has decided to target the social media platforms like those mentioned above to get the youth community more involved.

The finalized tagline “Impress. Inspire. Intoxicate” is supposedly youth-friendly. A drama series, known as Six Lives, and a radio programme run by 938LIVE are also squeezed into the campaign as part of its initiative to reach out to young Singaporeans like you and me.

I question the effectiveness of the Speak Good English Movement sneaking into social media platforms. The majority of our local youths use Facebook as an informal and convenient way to contact with their peers. We all use Facebook for different reasons but a large portion of us utilize it to post the minutiae of our lives like … getting a new haircut (since nobody else at home cares) or venting out our frustrations (since it doesn’t involve noise).

Therefore, it is hard for me to compass how the movement can truly take advantage of the social media platforms to persuade youths to speak better English. It is awkward and stuffy to keep in touch with your buddies online while spending so much time perfecting it. Moreover, Facebook users would rather spend their time watching the videos shared by their friends or laughing at droll photos uploaded by their peers than figuring out how to have a English-perfect wall-to-wall conversation together.