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Paul Beaufait

What Are The 10 Most Spoken Languages In The World? | Babbel Magazine - 1 views

www.babbel.com/...-spoken-languages-in-the-world

Chinese countries education English English speaking populations French Japanese languages Spanish

shared by Paul Beaufait on 08 Jul 19 - No Cached
  • Paul Beaufait on 08 Jul 19
     
    "When we count the top 10 most spoken languages according to the total number of people who speak them (whether or not the language is their mother tongue), eight of the 10 languages from the list above still make an appearance, but with a few major differences: English narrowly edges out Chinese for the top spot, Japanese and Punjabi lose their spots, and French and Indonesian join the top 10 ..." (Top 10 Languages by Total Number[s] of Speakers, ¶1).
Paul Beaufait

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

www.themalaymailonline.com/...es-singapore-a-fighting-chance

business diplomacy education English English speaking populations English-as-a-lingua-franca issues language policies languages policies politics Singapore

shared by Paul Beaufait on 25 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • 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
      Paul Beaufait on 25 Mar 15
       
      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
      Paul Beaufait on 25 Mar 15
       
      Main article, ¶4
  • 
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
      Paul Beaufait on 25 Mar 15
       
      Bilingualism, ¶1
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • 
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
      Paul Beaufait on 25 Mar 15
       
      Imperfect implementation, ¶1
  • Paul Beaufait on 25 Mar 15
     
    This article recap's policies that made English a national language of education and made other official languages required second languages.
Paul Beaufait

EducationHQ Australia - Language is the passport to personal mobility, opportunity and ... - 0 views

au.educationhq.com/...ity-opportunity-and-prosperity

Australia countries education employment globalization language learning languages mobility marginalization monolingualism multilingualism opportunity prosperity English speaking populations

shared by Paul Beaufait on 16 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • English actually trails Chinese and Spanish as the third most commonly spoken language in the world, just ahead of Bengali, Hindi and Arabic. In 1950 about 9 per cent of the world’s population spoke English as their first language. That figure is now about 5.6 per cent.
  • While the proportion increases significantly when you add speakers of English as a second or third language, we’re still left with around 70-80 per cent of humanity not speaking English. Being a monolingual English-speaker places you firmly in humanity’s minority group.
  • The view that ‘English is enough’ fails to acknowledge that being bilingual or multilingual is an increasingly necessary passport to personal mobility, opportunity and prosperity, particularly in knowledge and services based economies where the ability to collaborate and communicate effectively across borders is a prized skill-set.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Julie Bishop got it right in 2011 when she suggested language learning could be a "brilliant form of soft diplomacy", strengthening our capacity to work collaboratively in an increasingly interdependent and volatile world.
  • The number of students who discontinue languages study when they have discretion over that decision is very high. The reasons for attrition are complex and varied, but the perception among students that studying a language represents a low value proposition is one of most potent determining factors.
  • Paul Beaufait on 16 Dec 15
     
    Mullane, Kurt. (2015.12.09). Language is the passport to personal mobility, opportunity and prosperity.
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