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 on 25 Mar 15Main 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.
-
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.
-
Bilingualism, ¶1
-
- ...1 more annotation...
-
This article recap's policies that made English a national language of education and made other official languages required second languages.