English in Singapore and Malaysia 15
taken significantly divergent paths, resulting in very different outcomes
or “fruits”. The chapter is organized in three sections. In the first section,
we trace the historical development of English in Singapore; in the second,
we examine that of Malaysia, followed by a discussion which compares
and contrasts the language in education policies of these two countries.
SINGAPORE
The Republic of Singapore is a relatively young nation, which celebrated
only its fiftieth year of independence in 2015. Despite this, and the fact that
it is a small island with no natural resources apart from its geographical
position, Singapore has grown to become a thriving metropolitan country
with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (adjusted for Purchasing Power
Parity) per capita that remarkably ranks it as the third richest nation in the
world (International Monetary Fund 2014). This outstanding achievement
is no mean feat for a country less than half the size of London and which
less than fifty years ago had a GDP that placed it as a struggling Third
World nation. Among the many factors credited for Singapore’s phenomenal
economic success are its language policies, seen by the Singapore
government as instrumental to its economic competitiveness (Ng 2008).
Singapore’s language policies have primarily focused on two essential
issues. The first has been to manage the diversity of Singapore’s linguistic
and cultural landscape that comprises 74.1 per cent ethnic Chinese, 13.4 per
cent Malays, 9.2 per cent Indians, with the other races including Eurasians
making up the remaining 3.3 per cent of the 5.08 million population
(Singapore Department of Statistics 2010a, p. 3). The second issue is the
careful positioning of English in relation to the three mother tongues of
Mandarin, Malay and Tamil, which represent the nation’s primary ethnic
groups, ensuring that its ascendance as Singapore’s working language
does not compromise linguistic and cultural plurality. Although the rise
of English in Singapore is clearly attributable to British colonization, its
continued centrality to Singapore’s sociolinguistic landscape, as we shall
see, extends well beyond these roots.
The first set of language-in-education policies in independent Singapore
came in 1956 in the form of the All-Party Report, formulated by an all-
Singaporean committee (All-Party Committee on Chinese Education
1956) at the end of British rule. Several key recommendations were made;
critically, the All-Party Report gives official recognition to four languages