In line with the government’s initiatives to promote the usage of mother tongue languages, parents are now paying more attention to their child’s MTL activities in schools. This has led to an increase in the number of Chinese teachers seeking to raise their standards in the pronunciation of Chinese.

In 2018, 274 students took the test, an increase of 37% over 2017 (201). The number of test candidates in 216 was 73 and in 2015, 138.

PSC was developed by China’s Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Institute of Applied Linguistics. China classifies “Putonghua” as Chinese language with standard pronunciation and it is currently utilised across the world.The test is conducted in oral form, without the need for pinyin knowledge and written skills, to assess candidates’ spoken proficiency.

Student taking the PSC test @KLCII Dhoby Ghaut campus on 15 November 2018

It is the most effective way to benchmark oral proficiency in Putonghua standards, and is considered a must for those teaching the Chinese language, as well as others in commerce, entertainment, broadcasting and where accurate Chinese pronunciation is essential.

From left: Mr Desmond Seah, Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Ms Li Tao, PSC Examiner, Ms Tao Yulin, PSC Examiner, Dr Chen Shi, Vice Principal of KLCII and Mr James Ling, Head of Chinese Language Department