30 Lubna Alsagoff
a position where the standard of English advocated continues to be an
exonormative one. In the current incarnation of the English Language
Syllabus, released in 2010, the Ministry of Education has continued to
stress the need for students to develop an “internationally acceptable”
English, and has placed added emphasis on the standards of English,
clearly embracing a more structural approach to language, along with a
renewed concern for accuracy in grammar and pronunciation. The term
“Singapore English” continues to be absent from official policy documents,
and there continues to be little or grudging official recognition of Singlish
as Singapore’s “badge of identity”, this despite the fact that English in
Singapore has come a long way — from a “foreign” language of the British
colonizers, it has evolved into a variety with a growing population of
native speakers. English has clearly become the de facto lingua franca.
Literacy in English has risen significantly, from a low 21.0 per cent in pre-
independent Singapore of 1957 to 33.7 per cent in 1970 (Kuo 1980, p. 55),
and to 70.9 per cent in 2000 (Singapore Department of Statistics 2000,
p. 2). In 2010, this figure has risen yet again, and stood at 79.9 per cent
(Singapore Department of Statistics 2010b, p. 9). Even more interestingly,
the census data also show more children using English as their most
frequently spoken language at home than youths and adults. In 2000, for
example, 36 per cent of Chinese children aged 5–14 years spoke English
most frequently at home compared with 22 per cent of youths aged
15–24 years and 25 per cent of those aged 25–54 years. In just ten years,
this figure has again risen, with now 52 per cent of Chinese children aged
5–14 years speaking English as a home language (Singapore Department
of Statistics 2010b, p. 11).
Without a doubt, English will continue to flourish in Singapore.
However, potential problems lie ahead if Singapore refuses to embrace
and manage the development of its own brand of English. As more and
more speakers of English as their native “step-tongue” (Gupta 1994) enter
adulthood and claim English as part of their cultural identity, it seems
unclear how the formulaic functional division of English as a working
language versus the mother tongues as languages of cultural heritage
can be sustained, especially when fewer and fewer Singaporeans even
speak these mother tongues outside of second language classes in school.
Furthermore, Singapore faces a considerable challenge in culturally
integrating the large numbers and diverse range of migrants and migrant
workers who now make up an overwhelming 36 per cent of Singapore’s