Bilingual Education System in Singapore

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Recommended: Cognitive advantages of bilingualism

“Bilingual education is a form of education in which information is presented to the students in two or more languages” (Michigan University 2013) .Nowadays bilingual education is extremely prevalent in the world. “. . .if we were monolingual in our mother tongues, we would not make a living. Becoming monolingual in English would have been a setback. We would have lost our cultural identity, that quiet confidence about ourselves and our place in the world.” (Lee Kuan Yew, 2000). One of the countries which represents bilingual educational system is Singapore. Bilingual education gives students an opportunity to be biliteracy. Bilingual education policy started in Singapore in 1966 just after Singapore became fully independent. It has been practicing for more than 45 years in Singapore already. This essay is going to show that bilingual education in Singapore is mostly beneficial and describe 3 beneficial aspects namely, enabling learners to study abroad, biliteracy, more choices in resources and literature.
Singapore consists of 3 major ethic groups: 77% Chinese, 14% Malay and 8% Indian (Singapore Department of Statistics, 2002); According to the department the interdependence hypothesis of the second language suggests that a strong first language is the best foundation for the second one. The policy of bilingual education was implemented to unify the different ethnic groups. In addition, this policy gives teachers and educational leaders the ability and access to learn from other educational systems. All students are required to learn 2 of the official languages English and Chinese (mandarin accent). English was not a native language for none of Singapore population in 1965. However, then English started to become a native la...

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...an talk at school in one language but at home in another says Albert Costa. However, bilingual education can be detrimental for young learners because usually they have some problems in adapting for the second language when they start to go to kindergarten but they adapt to bilingual policy during 2-3 years.
To sum up as it was mentioned that speaking in 2 languages has many benefits especially in globalization of the world. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter, it can have a profound effect on yоur brain, improving cоgnitive skills not relаted to languаge and even shielding agаinst dementia in old age. In fact, compared to the satiation in Singapore 30-40 years ago and the satiation changed incredibly to positive side. Overall, this paper evaluated 3 benefits of bilingual education in Singapore in terms of improving literacy and educational background.

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