Language Education in Asia

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Summary 6

Summary 6

l the rehabilitation of the Vietnamese language, which had been eclipsed under French colonialism

l the North and South

l In the North, Vietnamese became the sole official language. Russian, Chinese, French and English were taught as foreign languages. / Adult literacy / literacy levels had been raised to 93%

l In the South, Vietnamese as the only language of instruction

l The reunification of Vietnam in 1975

l foreign language education had been largely restricted

l English came to be seen as indispensable, although Russian was still to be the main foreign language

l From the 1990s, English has come to be privileged as the main foreign language

l By 1995 about three-quarters of all high school students studied English

l In 2008 the government introduced a plan for language education for the country’s modernisation and industrialisation.

l A curriculum for English in primary school was introduced in 2003

l the use of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) as an element of Vietnamese foreign language education.

l the introduction of content and language integrated learning (CLIL)

l Teacher supply has been an ongoing problem

l The 1946 Constitution recognised the right for minorities to be educated in their own languages (Kosonen 2013).

l the Vietnamese Education Law of 2005 recognises that ethnic minority children should be able to learn their languages in schools

l Vietnam’s language education policy places literacy in Vietnamese language as the central policy objective

l The policy in Vietnam is currently open in which there is a bilingual objective

Summary 5

Summary 5

l Japan’s language education policy is set against a monoethnic myth of Japanese identity

l Japanese as the standard national language (kokugo)

l Japanese is the only recognised MoI

l to develop knowledge of western theories and practices by reading foreign language documents (Amano 1990)

l The Global 30 Project / the Super Global Universities

l the policy remains predicated on a monolingual ideal, with some students acquiring a level of English / excluded minority languages

l The immigrant population: Koreans and Chinese,

l minority languages of Japan are essentially located outside the context of formal, recognised Japanese education

l English as the main foreign language

l the idea of internationalisation 国際理解教育

l ‘It is also necessary for Japanese to develop their ability to clearly express their own opinions in Japanese first in order to learn English’ (Toyama 2002).

l English should be taught through the medium of English.

l ‘foreign language activities’ (MEXT 2008) in primary schools

l Japanese language policy is fundamentally focused on the teaching and learning of the official standard language

l low levels of achievement of Japanese students in English

l a conflict between the pedagogical aim and the realities of assessment.

l It is questionable what level of English is actually acquired by the majority of Japanese students

l Very few Japanese are likely to become bilingual in Japanese and another Asian language

l The focus of the education system is on the national language and English.

Summary 4

Summary 4

l The language education policy in Hong Kong has a complex history stretching from colonial times to the present day.

l trilingual education in Hong Kong’s schools (see also Wang & Kirkpatrick 2013).

l British colonial rule: secondary schools – English. primary schools –Cantonese

l the Chinese University of Hong Kong

l the Hong Kong Institute of Education

l trilingual in Cantonese, Putonghua and English, and biliterate in Chinese and English

l the medium of instruction should be English or Chinese

l (1) English or Chinese can be equally effectively used as a medium of instruction

l (2) English and Chinese are taught as subjects

l Before the 1997 Handover, some 90% of secondary schools remained EMI

l After the handover in 1997, the Hong Kong government adopted the biliterate and trilingual policy.

l curriculum was revised in 1998 to make Putonghua a compulsory subject in all primary and secondary schools.

l some 25% of secondary schools were designated as EMI schools.

l from 2010, secondary schools have had the flexibility to choose which classes to teach in Chinese and which to teach in English

l Putonghua has been introduced as a subject in all schools implemented in Hong Kong primary schools.

l Hong Kong still retains the mother tongue of the great majority of its citizens, Cantonese, as the MoI in government primary schools.

Summary 3

Summary 3

l Over many decades, language reform also saw the simplification of several hundred Chinese characters – the traditional characters are still used in Hong Kong and Taiwan – and the development of an alphabetic script, pinyin.

l The Chinese Communist Party has also promoted the variety of spoken Chinese based on the Northern dialect, Mandarin, as the national or ‘common’ language, Putonghua.

l The National Language Law of China – Putonghua Mandarin as a MoI

l Chinese is a superordinate term

l 55 languages (Mandarin, Shanghainese, Cantonese (or Yue) ,Min Nan Hua, Xiang, Hakka and Gan languages, of these, but in fact rather more than this – can be taught as media of MoI

l Putonghua and English

l one using the ethnic language as the MoI and one using Putonghua as the MoI.

l ‘almost universally the loss of the minority language’ (Adamson & Feng 2015: 250).

l In 2008 there were 163.71 million Grade 3 to undergraduate students learning English in China

l Putonghua as the national language and English as the first foreign language

l Korean and Mongolian

l Cantonese and Shanghainese

Summary 2

Summary 2

l China (including Hong Kong), Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam

l CHINA –the national language + English - Chinese languages

l JAPAN –English + the national language.

l INDONESIA – little attempt to introduce local languages as languages of education or as subjects / Bahasa Indonesia.

l THE PHILIPPINES – mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE).

l VIETNAM – re-evaluating the importance of English

l The region under discussion (ASEAN + 3) – linguistically and culturally highly diverse

l 94% of the world’s population speak 6% of its languages while 6% speak 94% of its languages

l the state in effect moves children from a minority to the dominant group

l the removal of languages from the curriculum undermines their status

l ‘Historically, it is precisely the isolation and separation of minority communities that has most favoured the preservation of their languages’

l globalisation necessarily threatens the continued use of many of the world’s minority languages?

Summary 1

Summary 1

l East and Southeast Asia is the most linguistically diverse region on earth, with some 2,500 of the world’s 6,700 languages being found in Asia (Lewis 2009).

l they achieved independence from colonial governments

l English has played a particularly significant role as a foreign language in education.

l While national languages have been strongly supported in education systems, there is concern, however, that many of the languages of the region are threatened

l national languages along with English

l the ASEAN + 3 forum

l The purpose of this article is first to review the language education polices of these nations.

l English as the first ‘foreign’ language

l influenced by the one nation-one language ideology

l a common language allows effective communication and access to state institutions and political functions.

l a single language creates and represents a single, unified identity.

l monolingual language policies,

l Language learning is seen as being primarily for the purpose of economic development, often accompanied with agendas of modernisation and internationalisation.

l English as THE global language (Pennycook 2000)

l The focus on English in Asia is very apparent in the language policies of the ASEAN.

l The one nation-one language ideology and the pragmatic rationale for language learning have combined in many Asian nations to exert a constraining pressure of language policy that has often conflicted with the multilingual realties of these nations. This, as we shall demonstrate, has led to the promotion of national languages across the region.