Assumptions behind Singapore’s language-in-education policy: implications for language planning and second language acquisition

Lang Policy (2009) 8:117–137
DOI 10.1007/s10993-009-9124-0
ORIGINAL PAPER

Assumptions behind Singapore’s language-in-education policy: implications for language planning and second language acquisition
L. Quentin Dixon

Received: 30 September 2007 / Accepted: 14 January 2009 / Published online: 27 February 2009
Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract Singapore’s officially bilingual education policy, in which the majority of children are schooled through a non-native medium with their ‘Mother Tongue’
(an ethnic heritage language that is not necessarily spoken in the home) as a single school subject only, has resulted in dramatic language shifts in the population and high academic achievement as measured by international comparison studies. Much current second language acquisition theory would predict failure for such a policy.
This paper examines the assumptions concerning language planning and second language acquisition underlying the city-state’s language-in-education policy, their relation to current theory in the field, and how the case of Singapore can support or challenge these different theories.
Keywords Bilingual education Á Language planning Á
Language-in-education policy Á Second language acquisition Á Singapore

Widely hailed as an educational success story, Singapore, a multilingual island nation in Southeast Asia, embraces an officially bilingual education policy. English is the medium of all content-area education from the start of schooling, with students’ official Mother Tongue1 required as a single subject. Singapore’s education system has gained worldwide recognition through its excellent results on international comparisons such as the Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) and the
Progress in Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS; Elley 1992; Martin et al. 1999; Mullis et al. 1999), making it a fascinating case study of government language planning
1

Because these languages are not

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