The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
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thelinguist.uberflip.com DECEMBER 2015/JANUARY 2016 The Linguist 9 FEATURES one that teaches in English is an increasingly common phenomenon." A good example is the large number of Hong Kong Chinese children enrolled in schools that belong to the English Schools Foundation (ESF), where the medium of instruction is English, and Chinese is taught only as a subject. Parents of these children appear to be sacrificing literacy in Chinese on the altar of English. Reversing the trend While the move to more and earlier English is a general trend, there are examples of countries trying to promote local languages. Malaysia, for example, has recently reversed its policy of teaching maths and science in English from grade 1. These subjects are now being taught in Malay, as they were before 2002. Two major reasons have been given for this change. First, children from poor and rural backgrounds were not coping with the demands of having to learn challenging subjects in a language they did not know well. Second, many maths and science teachers, while perfectly capable of teaching these subjects in Malay, could not teach them well in English. A second country that has moved away from the teaching of maths and science in English from grade 1 is the Philippines. The country is home to some 170 languages and had, for several decades, a bilingual education policy (BEP) that used English as the medium of instruction for maths and science, and Filipino for other subjects. However, this needs further explanation because Filipino is, in effect, Tagalog, the language spoken around the capital, Manila, dressed up as the national language. This meant that, until the change of policy, children from outside Manila who did not speak Tagalog might arrive at school and find that they had to learn in two languages, neither of which they knew. The result, mirrored in many countries of the region, has been a very high drop-out rate, with only a minority of students completing grade 5. The BEP has been replaced by a new mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTBMLE) policy, which insists that, until grade 4, children be taught in one of the 19 languages of the Philippines that have been gazetted as languages of education. The new law states: "For kindergarten and the first three years of elementary education, instruction, teaching materials and assessment shall be in the regional or native language of the learners." While this has been welcomed by long-time proponents of the policy, concerns remain. First, the MTBMLE campaigners had argued for the mother tongue to be used throughout primary. Second, despite the new law, English is still the medium of instruction in many schools and regions. Third, it is not clear why only 19 languages (out of a possible 170+) have been nominated as languages of education. Fourth, there has been no time to train teachers to teach or to develop suitable teaching materials in the languages. It is likely, then, that a well-intentioned policy will fail due to a lack of careful and appropriate preparation and training. The Chinese question The major player in the ASEAN+3 region is, of course, China. There, the National Language Law is unequivocal, prescribing Putonghua Mandarin and Modern Standard (written) Chinese as the sole language of education. This means that no other Chinese language, including Shanghainese, Cantonese and Hokkien, can be taught in schools. The A local language familiar to the children is thus replaced by a foreign language few of them know THE WAY TO GROW? In many countries, subjects such as science are taught through English, although the policy has been reversed in Malaysia and the Philippines IMAGES: © SHUTTERSTOCK