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Paul Beaufait

English as lingua franca gives Singapore a fighting chance | Features | Malay Mail Online - 0 views

  • Adopting the international language of business, diplomacy, and science and technology was about the only way this resource-less tiny island could guarantee its survival after losing its economic hinterland in Malaysia. Unemployment was at 14 per cent and rising.
    • Paul Beaufait
       
      Main article, ¶2
  • Just as importantly, picking this race-neutral language demonstrated his government’s anti-communalistic stance, helping to keep the peace in a newborn nation made up of a polyglot-settler populace who had struggled for years with racial and religious strife.
    • Paul Beaufait
       
      Main article, ¶4
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For the sake of building “a community that feels together”, Lee pushed through the bilingualism policy in 1966. All students had to learn their “mother tongue”, Mandarin, Malay or Tamil, depending on their race, as a second language, and this became a compulsory and critical examination subject in 1969.
    • Paul Beaufait
       
      Bilingualism, ¶1
  • ...1 more annotation...
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But the various initiatives Lee rolled out in subsequent years to put proficiency in mother tongue on par with that in English were to divide opinions, especially among the Chinese, even up to the present. Indeed, he described bilingualism in 2004 as the “most difficult” policy he had had to implement.
    • Paul Beaufait
       
      Imperfect implementation, ¶1
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    This article recap's policies that made English a national language of education and made other official languages required second languages.
Paul Beaufait

http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002437/243713e.pdf - 0 views

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    "This policy paper, released for International Mother Language Day, argues that being taught in a language other than their own can negatively impact children's learning. It shows the importance of teacher training and inclusive supporting materials to improve the learning experience of these children, and provide them with a resilient path of achievement in life" (¶3).
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