标题: Singaporean Parents Returned to School to Help Kids with Homework [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 5-25-2015 11:03 标题: Singaporean Parents Returned to School to Help Kids with Homework 莎拉·湯姆斯, 記者來鴻：新加坡父母決不輸在起跑線. BBC Chinese, May 25, 2015 www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/trad/fooc ... c_parents_singapore
Note:
(a) "It's early on a Sunday morning but 'students' in Singapore are buckling down to solve mathematical problems as they prepare for primary school exams."
(i) BBC translation: 星期天一大早，絕對沒有功夫睡懶覺啊，特別是，已經報名去上數學課了。「學生們」埋下頭來、認認真真開始解答數學題，為迎戰小學畢業考試作凖備。
"畢業" should not be there.
(ii) buckle down
(A) "(intransitive, adverb) (informal) to apply oneself with determination <to buckle down to a job>" www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/buckle-down
(B) "[1] buckle someone or something down[:] to attach someone or something down with straps that buckle together <They stopped to buckle the load down again> <Did you buckle down the kids?>
[2] buckle down (to something)[:] to settle down to something; to begin to work seriously at something <If you don't buckle down to your job, you'll be fired> <You had better buckle down and get busy>
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. 2002
idioms.thefreedictionary.com/buckle+down
(b) "There is a total of 5421 cows and goats on the farm."
To be, the "is" looks awkward. And I am right, it turns out! (I wonder whether Ms Sarah Toms is a native speaker--a Briton or a Singaporean (whether she be Chinese or Indian--Indians sometimes have English-sounding last names, because some Indian regions have children get their last names from father's first names. That is what a fomer roommate from India told me, when I asked how he got an English-sounding last name, perplexed and doubtful I later learned from English Wikipedia that it is true.)
Philip B Corbett, Singular? Plural? Pick One. New York Times, July 2, 2013 (blog)
afterdeadline.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/singular-plural-pick-one/
(c) "said Nur Hidayah Ismail, the principal at Genius Young Minds tutorial centre[:] 'As a previous school teacher in a state school, parents kept asking me for help to coach them. I saw there was an urgency because they don't know how to coach their child at home' "
(i) Genius Young Minds has a website for itself, which is all in English (no Chinese, Malay or Hindi). I searched the Web and find no other names except English.
(ii) Grammatically the sentence is wrong: "As a previous school teacher in a state school, parents kept asking me"
Rather than "parents" as the subject, it should be "I."
(d) Anita "Saleh said[,] 'It's totally difficult because I myself didn't go beyond O- level so many years back and then my daughter is sitting for only her PSLEs (Primary 6 level) and I am not able to answer the questions.' "
Singapore Examinations and Assessment Board 新加坡考试与评鉴局
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore_Examinations_and_Assessment_Board
(SEAB; section 1 Primary school examinations: The Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) is a national examination, which a pupil sits at the end of primary education)
So, Ms Sarah Toms was not exact when she wrote PSLE was acronym for "Primary 6 level."