A Standalone but not Lonely Language: Chinese Linguistic Environment and Education in Singapore Context

Bilingual education policy in Singapore permits the students learn both English as working language and mother tongues, such as Chinese, as L2 anchoring to culture heritage. Starting from historical and sociolinguistic reasons, this paper is intended to provide a panoramic view of Chinese education...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Huang, Min, Cheng, Kangdi
Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2017
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/82311
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/43526
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
Description
Summary:Bilingual education policy in Singapore permits the students learn both English as working language and mother tongues, such as Chinese, as L2 anchoring to culture heritage. Starting from historical and sociolinguistic reasons, this paper is intended to provide a panoramic view of Chinese education in Singapore, clarify and compare Chinese education syllabi on different levels from primary schools to pre-university schools, cover social movement support on promoting Chinese learning and use in this multilingual society. Meanwhile, Singapore’s success in bilingual education cannot hide its own problems. The status of Chinese dialects, the competitive role of English, the rational and practicality for proficient bilingual users, the choice of teaching methodologies between L1 and L2, are all remaining open to further discussing and probing for language policy making and modification in the future.