Republic of the Philippines

CENTRAL BICOL STATE UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE

Impig, Sipocot, Camarines Sur 4408
Website: [Link]
Email Address: [Link]@[Link]
Trunkline: (054) 881-6681

REQ |COURSE MODULE

ASEAN Integration in
Education/Foreign Language
 A. COURSE OVERVIEW

Course Name : ASEAN Integration in Education/ Foreign Language

Course Units :3
Course Description : ASEAN Integration in Education/Foreign Language is a required
course which aims to develop the skills, knowledge, and
understanding of the students on the best practices in education
of different universities in the ASEAN region. It is a regional
community approach to integration of education through field
exposure or a foreign language study that will create more joint
academic programs and a partnership with other universities
responsive in meeting the needs of 21st century learners.

B. CALENDAR
Synchrono
Wee Begi Topics Course us Learning
k n Requireme Schedule
Date nts Day Goog
s le
Meet
Code
1. VMGO
Recite the
2. Quality Policy
PVMGO
3. Course Outline
Jan.
4. Attendance Policy System and Classroom Rules
11-
1 and Policies
15,
Chapter I. ASEAN and English
2021
1.1 Origin of ASEAN and the role of English

2 Jan. Chapter I. ASEAN and English

3 18-
29, 1.2 Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and the
2021 Philippines: Linguistic context and the role of
English

4 Feb. Chapter I. ASEAN and English

5 1- 1.3 Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand
12, and Vietnam: Linguistic context and the role of
2021 English

6 Feb. ASSESSMENT 1 Performan

15- ce Task
19,
2021

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 2

 Synchrono
Wee Begi Topics Course us Learning
k n Requireme Schedule
Date nts Day Goog
s le
Meet
Code
7 Feb Chapter II. Linguistic Features of English as a
22- Lingua Franca in Asia
26
2021 2.1 Introduction to the Linguistic Features of
English as Lingua Franca in Asia

8 Marc Chapter II Features of English as a Lingua

9 h 1- Franca in Asia
12,
2021 2.2 Pronunciation, Intelligibility, and Lexis

10 Marc Chapter II Features of English as a Lingua

11 h Franca in Asia
15- 2.1 Grammar, discourse, and Pragmatics
26,
2021
12 Marc ASSESSMENT 2 Performan
h ce Task
29-
April
2,
2021
13 April Chapter II Features of English as a Lingua
14 5- Franca in Asia
16, 2.1 Communicative Strategy
2021 of ASEAN ELF
15 April Chapter III. Implication for Policy and Pedagogy
16 19-
17 May 3.1 Implication for Language Education Policy
7, Pedagogical implications: The multilingual
2021 model and the lingua franca approach

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 3

 Synchrono
Wee Begi Topics Course us Learning
k n Requireme Schedule
Date nts Day Goog
s le
Meet
Code
18 May FINAL ASSESSMENT Written
10- Examinatio
14, n
2021
C. Instructor RENIE B. LOTINO
A contract of service instructor at Central Bicol State
University of Agriculture- Sipocot, College of Industrial
Technology who handles General Education Courses
specifically language and literature courses. He has a
bachelor degree in Secondary Education major in English
from the same university and is currently taking his Master of
Arts in Education major in English Language Teaching at
Ateneo de Naga University. He is guided by the mantra that
“the man who think he can be, is the man who succeed.”
RENIE B. LOTINO
Faculty, College of Industrial Technology
[Link]@[Link]
+63 9305200147

She is currently affiliated at the College of

Education, handling General Education Subject
and English subjects. She has a bachelor
degree in Secondary Education major in English
and is currently taking her Master of Arts in
Education Major in English Language Teaching
at Ateneo de Naga University. She is guided by
the saying that “there are no slow learners to a
flexible teacher.”
SHIELA B. MAŇARES
Faculty, COE and COC

D. ASSESSMENT

Percen- Course Learning Due

Assessment Type
tage Outcomes Date
Performance Task 30% Feb.
Assessment 1 19,
Week 1-6 2021

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 4

 Percen- Course Learning Due
Assessment Type
tage Outcomes Date

Assessment 2 Performance Task 30% April

2,
Week 7-12 2021
Assessment 3 Written Exam 40% May
The coverage of the exam 14,
Week 13-18 is the topics from week 1- 2021
17.

MODULE 1
Chapter 1 ASEAN and English
[Week 1]

I. INTRODUCTION
This module introduces you to the summary of the context in which the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was established with the signing of the Bangkok Declaration
in August 1967 by the five founding member countries. The circumstances surrounding the
joining of the remaining five countries will also be reviewed. The main principles of the original
1967 Bangkok Declaration will be compared with those of the recently signed ASEAN Charter.
An introduction to the role that English plays within the Association and the place and role of
other languages underpins the chapter.

At the end of this module, you are expected to trace the history of the inception of the
ASEAN and explain its purport and identify the roles of English in the creation of ASEAN region.

II. PRE-COMPETENCY CHECKLIST

Direction: Argue for or against the statement of Kumar and Siddique (2008). Write your answer
in a separate sheet of paper.

“Kumar and Siddique (2008) point out that, the ‘one word that is anathema to ASEAN …
is integration’.”

______________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________.

III. LEARNING RESOURCES

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 5

 Following are the resources used in the discussion of this module. For further
understanding of the topic, please access the supplementary material/s provided here.

LR1 Online Resource

[1]

LR2 Lecture-Video Presentation

[1]

IV. EXPLORE
MODULE 1
LESSON DISCUSSION
ASEAN and English

Background
The Bangkok Declaration on August 8,
1967 heralded the formation of the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). While
today all ten nations of Southeast Asia are
members, the number of founder member states
was only five: Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. Brunei
joined in 1984, Vietnam in 1995, Laos and Burma
(Myanmar) in 1997 and finally, Cambodia, in
1999.

ASEAN was born at a time of political

uncertainty and ‘in the most unpromising
circumstances’ (Severino 2008: 3). Previous
regional alliances or groupings had been tried but
failed for various political reasons (Curley and
Thomas 2007). These included the Association of South Asia (ASA) of 1961, the 1963 grouping
of Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines (MAPHILINDO) and the Asia and Pacific Council
(ASPAC). In 1967, the regional political situation was one of the conflicts. The Vietnam war was
raging and the Chinese Cultural Revolution was in full swing, both of which threatened to spill
over into Southeast Asia and threaten the stability of the region (Severino 2008). Rajaratnam,
the foreign minister of Singapore at the time and one of the signatories to the Bangkok
Declaration, has recently recalled that ASEAN was born out of a common fear. ‘Regional
countries were faced with managing the effects of de-colonisation, confrontation with the forces
of communism, and separatism. These newly independent countries were also pre-occupied
with building their economies and national identities (Kesavapany 2005: vii). It was this
combination of common interests expressed primarily through an anti-communist position and
fear of regional instability that was the major motivating force for the foundation of ASEAN
(Hagiwara 1992).

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 6

 The countries of ASEAN are characterized by ‘political, cultural, and historical diversity’
(Severino 2005: 15). All the world’s great religions have significant numbers of adherents in
countries throughout the region; there is extraordinary ethnic diversity, with more than 300
ethnic groups in Indonesia alone, and the region is home to more than 1,000 languages
including Sinitic, Tai, Malayo-Polynesian, Mon-Khmer, Viet-Muong, and Papuan, not to mention
the languages of the earlier colonizers, of which English is now the most important. Given the
political uncertainty of the times and the range of diversity within and between the five founding
countries of ASEAN, one might have expected the Bangkok Declaration to be a highly detailed
and juridical document. In fact, the opposite was true, as the Bangkok Declaration contains only
five Articles and covers only two pages of text ([Link] [Link]/[Link]). The seven
aims and purposes of ASEAN, as expressed in the original declaration, were:

1. to accelerate the economic growth, social progress and cultural development in the
region through joint endeavours in the spirit of equality and partnership in order to
strengthen the foundation for a prosperous and peaceful community of South-East Asian
Nations;
2. to promote regional peace and stability through abiding respect for justice and the rule of
law in the relationship among countries of the region and adherence to the principles of
the United Nations Charter;
3. to promote active collaboration and mutual assistance on matters of common interest in
the economic, social, cultural, technical, scientific and administrative fields;
4. to provide assistance to each other in the form of training and research facilities in the
educational, professional, technical and administrative spheres;
5. to collaborate more effectively for the greater utilization of their agriculture and
industries, the expansion of their trade, including the study of the problems of
international commodity trade, the improvement of their transportation and
communications facilities and the raising of the living standards of their people;
6. to promote South-East Asian studies;
7. to maintain close and beneficial co-operation with existing international and regional
organizations with similar aims and purposes, and explore all avenues for even closer
co-operation among themselves.

As you can observe, there is no mention here of a working language or languages for the
Association; nor is there any mention of the languages of the region as whole, points which will
be further considered later.

As Severino has noted (2005: 4), and as signalled by the tone of the original Declaration,
the Bangkok Declaration heralded an ‘ASEAN’ way of doing things, which relied not on juridical
documents but on consensus building in a loose and informal way. The ASEAN way is based on
two Malay concepts, namely musyawarah (dialogue) and muafakat (consensus) (Curley and
Thomas 2007: 9). In its original formulation, therefore, ASEAN had no central authority, no
juridical personality or legal standing under international law (Severino 2005: 6). After more than
forty years of this loose structure and consensual approach to decision making, politicians from
the region recognized the need for a more formal and legal organization and structure. This
resulted in the ASEAN Charter, a document of fifty-five articles and some thirty-five pages of
text, ([Link] and which is, in effect, the group’s constitution.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 7

 The Charter was adopted at the 13th ASEAN summit in November 2007, but in order to
become legally binding, all ten member countries needed to ratify it. The charter attempts to
define a more cohesive structure with specific rules of engagement for member countries’,
including ‘enforceable obligations’ (Kumar and Siddique 2008: 75), while, at the same time,
maintaining the sanctity of the sovereign state through the principle of non-supra-nationality, a
balancing act which is likely to prove difficult. As Kumar and Siddique point out, the ‘one word
that is anathema to ASEAN … is integration’ (2008: 86). It is not clear how such a diverse and
disparate group of nations can work together in any significant way. The principles listed under
Article 2 of the new Charter specify the policy of unity in diversity. How nations so intent on
guarding their own sovereign rights will work together to implement a policy of unity in diversity
also remains unclear.

The Charter was finally signed into law in February 2009 at the ASEAN summit held in Hua
Hin, Thailand, after an unscheduled delay of some two months. Rather embarrassingly, given
the circumstances, the delay was caused by the closure of Thailand’s international airport by
anti-government supporters of the ousted Thai prime minister, Thaksin Sinawatra, an issue
about which ASEAN members kept characteristically silent. Article 1 of the new Charter lists
fifteen purposes of ASEAN, up from the seven of the original Declaration. They are:

1. to maintain and enhance peace, security and stability and to further strengthen peace-
oriented values in the region;
2. to enhance regional resilience by promoting greater political, security, economic and
socio-cultural co-operation;
3. to preserve Southeast Asia as a Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone and free of all other
weapons of mass destruction;
4. to ensure that the people and member states of ASEAN live in peace with the world at
large in a just, democratic, and harmonious environment;
5. to create a single market and production base which is stable, prosperous, highly
competitive, and economically integrated with effective facilitation for trade and
investment in which there is free flow of goods, services and investment; facilitated
movement of business persons, professionals, talents and labour; and freer flow of
capital;
6. to alleviate poverty and narrow the development gap within ASEAN through mutual
assistance and co-operation;
7. to strengthen democracy, enhance good governance, and the rule of law, and to promote
and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms, with due regard to the rights and
responsibilities of the Member States of ASEAN;
8. to respond effectively, in accordance with the principle of comprehensive security, to all
forms of threats, transnational crimes and transboundary challenges;
9. to promote sustainable development so as to ensure the protection of the region’s
environment, the sustainability of its natural resources, the preservation of its cultural
heritage and the high quality of life of its peoples;
10. to develop human resources through closer co-operation in education and life-long
learning, and in science and technology, for the empowerment of the peoples of ASEAN
and for the strengthening of the ASEAN Community;
11. to enhance the well-being and livelihood of the peoples of ASEAN by providing them with
equitable access to opportunities for human development, social welfare and justice;

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 8

 12. to strengthen co-operation in building a safe, secure and drug-free environment for the
peoples of ASEAN;
13. to promote a people-oriented ASEAN in which all sectors of society are encouraged to
participate in, and benefit from, the process of ASEAN integration and community
building;
14. to promote an ASEAN identity through the fostering of greater awareness of the diverse
culture and heritage of the region; and
15. to maintain the centrality and proactive role of ASEAN as the primary driving force in its
relations and co-operation with its external partners in a regional architecture that is
open, transparent and inclusive.

There are a number of interesting points of difference between the fifteen purposes listed in
the Charter when compared with the original seven of the Declaration. The Charter is more
specific — it mentions the creation of a single market (5) and the determination to make
Southeast Asia a Nuclear Weapon-free zone (3), for example. The Charter is also politically
bolder and makes direct reference to democracy (4 and 7) and to Human Rights (7). One area
where the original Declaration was specific concerned the promotion of Southeast Asian studies
as one of its seven purposes. The new Charter makes no reference to this, but rather seeks to
promote an ASEAN identity through the fostering of greater awareness of the diverse culture
and heritage of the region’ (14).

Article 2 of the Charter lists fourteen ‘principles’ which member states are expected to
follow and promote. As noted earlier, these include ‘respect for the different cultures, languages
and religions of the peoples of ASEAN while emphasizing their common values in the spirit of
unity in diversity’. It is interesting to note that ‘unity in diversity’ is also the slogan of Indonesia
(bhinneka tunggal ita), where Bahasa Indonesia, the national lingua franca, provides the ‘glue’
to bind the diversity together. ‘Unity in diversity’ slogans may be signalling unity at some cost to
diversity. Although Article 2 lists ‘respect for the different languages of the people of ASEAN’ as
one of the principles, this does not translate into any official commitment into the study, teaching
or learning of these languages by member states. Unlike the original Declaration, however,
language is mentioned in the Charter, albeit only once. Article 34, the ‘Working Language of
ASEAN’, states that ‘the working language of ASEAN shall be English. There are, however, no
other references to language or languages in the Charter.

The Adoption of English

The lack of mention of languages and the decision to adopt English as the sole working
language of ASEAN will no doubt strike many readers as remarkable, given, for example, the
language policies of the other successful regional organization, the European Union and the
intense debate which surround these (cf. Wright 2007a, Phillipson 2003, Tosi 2003). In striking
contrast to ASEAN, the European Union has twenty-three official and working languages.
Important documents are translated into every official language. The European Parliament
provides translation into all languages for documents for its plenary sessions. However, these
are usually first translated into the so-called major languages. As a result, many who do not
read these major languages are disadvantaged as ‘the translation of essential documents and
amendments may take longer to appear in the “small” languages than the “big”, and may
sometimes arrive too late to be studied properly before the meeting’ (Wright 2007b: 157).
Interpreting also follows a similar ‘relay’ pattern by which a speech of, for example, an Estonian

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 9

delegate, is first interpreted from Estonian into English or French before then being translated
from English or French into the other languages.

The Council of Europe has established the European Centre for Modern Languages
whose task is to promote the teaching and learning of European languages. To quote from its
website, ‘Europe needs citizens who can all communicate in some of the many languages
spoken within its borders’. It promotes policies which aim to maintain linguistic diversity and
plurilingualism, by which is meant the ability of Europeans to achieve functional levels of
proficiency in European languages according to their needs (Beacco and Byram 2003). These
aims are further strengthened by the European Cultural Convention, which commits the states
party to the Convention to promote the reciprocal teaching and learning of their languages.
Each Contracting Party shall, insofar as may be possible:

• encourage the study by its own nationals of the languages, history and civilisation of the
other Contracting Parties and grant facilities to those Parties to promote such studies in
its territory;
• endeavour to promote the study of its languages, history, and civilisation in the territory
of the other Contracting Parties and grant facilities to the nationals of those Parties to
pursue such studies in its territory.
([Link]
3/12/2005&CL=ENG)

The Council of Europe and the European Commission both promote the importance of
Europeans learning languages other than their first language. The European Commission’s
Action Plan for Language Learning hopes to see people learning their mother tongue and two
other European languages, and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages has
the protection of these languages as its goal (Baetens Beardsmore 2009). While it is true that
English is becoming the increasingly dominant language, there are policies in place to
encourage the learning of other European languages.

While no one would argue that the language policy of the EU was perfect, especially about
the increasing dominance of English, the contrast between the official EU and ASEAN policies
is remarkable. Indeed, as has been noted above, language was not mentioned in the original
Bangkok Declaration of 1967. There was no mention even of which language(s) was (were) to
be used as working languages. In the event, English immediately became the one and only de
facto working language.

In her study of the process behind this de facto adoption of English as the only working and
official language for the original members of ASEAN, Okudaira interviewed several key ASEAN
figures. The three answers listed below are representative of their replies:
• the idea of English as the common language came out automatically
• there has been no regulation for the use of English but it has been used in all the
actual situations, and
• we took it for granted (1999: 95–96)

Ong Keng Yong, an ambassador-at-large in the Singaporean Ministry of Foreign Affairs

recalls:

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 10

 “The use of the English language as the working language of ASEAN produced an
unintended outcome! There is a multiplicity of grammatical and spelling preferences originating
from the peculiar usage of English in each member state. At the Charter drafting sessions, such
differences delayed a quick consensus on wording and many formulations had to be put in
square brackets (to be revisited later) (Ong 2009: 111).”

It is therefore worth recalling ASEAN’s founding membership to see if this provides any
possible explanation for the lack of concern about which languages might be working
languages. The five founding member states were Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore, and Thailand.

Following Kachru (1992c), countries can be classified into one of three circles depending
on the history, role, and status of English within them.
❖ Countries where English has been traditionally spoken as the major language are classified
as inner circle countries. These include countries such as Britain, the United States and
Australia.
❖ Countries which were British or American colonies and where English plays an institutional
role are classified as ‘outer circle’ countries. ASEAN member states which fall into this
category include Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, where, because of their
colonial past, English continues to play major institutional roles, and where it is possible to
talk about local varieties of English, such as Singaporean and Filipino English. While Burma
seems to fit this category in the sense that it was once a British colony and where English
played a major role, the inward-looking xenophobic policies initiated by U Ne Win and the
Burmese Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) from 1962 led to the marginalization of English.
There has been some attempt to reverse such marginalization in recent years, but with little
success.
❖ Kachru’s third group of countries are classified as expanding circle countries. In such
countries, English traditionally played no internal role and was taught only as a foreign
language. Indonesia presents such an example. Not only was it a colony of a non-English-
speaking colonizer, the Dutch, but it is also a land with a hugely diverse range of languages
and cultures. After freedom from, first the Dutch, and then the Japanese, Indonesia has
sought to promote a local language, a variety of Malay, to become the national lingua
franca. In this, it has been remarkably successful, so that the great majority of Indonesians
are now able to communicate through what is called Bahasa Indonesia. English is the
second language of the educated urban elite and is also the first foreign language taught in
schools, but often with only limited success (Dardjowidjojo 2000). Thailand, another
expanding circle country, is the only country within ASEAN that has never been colonized.
As in Indonesia, English is now the first second language but, as in Indonesia, it is not being
taught or learned very successfully.
❖ Finally, there are the expanding circle countries which are made up of the former French
colony of Indo-China, namely Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. While these countries have
seen a dramatic increase in the number of English learners, largely at the expense of
French, levels of English even among the elite — particularly in Laos and Cambodia —
remain comparatively low, and this disadvantages them in ASEAN seminars and meetings.

To return to the original five founding member states, English operated as an institutional
language in the outer circle countries of Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore to the extent

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 11

that specific local varieties of English had developed. This could not be said of Indonesia, where
English only existed as a school language and where the real language planning focus was on
the adoption of Bahasa Indonesia as the national lingua franca. In Thailand, English also only
occupied the position of a school language. Thai language policy centred on the national
adoption of Standard Thai.
Despite the comparable history of English as a colonial language in Malaysia, the
Philippines and Singapore, however, the role of and attitudes to English were quite different in
these three countries. For example, in the very year of the Bangkok Declaration, Malaysia
introduced the National Language Act which decreed that the medium of instruction in
education, from primary through to tertiary, would gradually switch from English to Malay, a
process that was given some twenty years to complete. This was the start of the period of
Malaysianization, brought to its culmination with the policies of Dr Mahathir, who became prime
minister in 1981, a position he held until 2003. It is only relatively recently, from 2002, that
Malaysia has seen a change in policy, with, for example, the revival of English as the medium of
instruction for science and maths subjects in primary and secondary schools. Recent
developments, however, have led to the abandonment of this policy and a reversal to Malay as
the medium of instruction for maths and science in primary schools.
While English may have held important institutional roles in three of the five founder
member states, the same and more could be said about Malay. Malay is the national language
of both Malaysia and Singapore. And Bahasa Indonesia, which is a variety of Malay, is the
national lingua franca of Indonesia. In addition, many people in the Southern Philippines and
some in Southern Thailand speak varieties of Malay, or languages related to Malay. And, as we
have seen, Malaysia was embarking on a policy to promote the use of Malay. Despite all this,
there was no call at this stage for Malay to be at least one of the working languages of ASEAN.

Possible explanations for the ‘natural’ adoption of English as the working language
include the view that it represented the language of modernization and advancement on the one
hand (Rappa and Wee 2006), and the language of democratically supported power on the
other, a particularly important motivation, given the Vietnam war and the anticommunist stance
of the ASEAN states. There have, however, been periodic, if infrequent, calls for other
languages to be adopted as working languages in ASEAN.

Call for Other Languages

As new states joined ASEAN, one might have expected some debate over the use of
English only, and indeed there was some. Brunei was the next country to join, in 1984, the year
it achieved independence from Britain. Hardly surprisingly, however, given its small size on the
one hand and the institutional role of English on the other, its membership occasioned no
radical re-thinking of the language policy. It was not until Vietnam’s membership in 1995 that the
role of English only was questioned. It is not difficult to see why Vietnam did so, given its history
of being a French colony and then under Russian influence during the communist period.
Ironically, however, in the discussions leading to their membership, Vietnam asked for
consideration to be given to adopting a second ‘colonial’ language, French, as ASEAN’s second
official language, but this request was rebuffed with the curt, ‘No, English only’ (Okudaira 1999:
101).

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 12

 As outlined above, it was surprising, given the passing of the National Language Act in
Malaysia in 1967 and the relatively widespread role of Malay within the founder member
countries of ASEAN that there was no call for the adoption of Malay in the early years of
ASEAN’s existence. An official request for Malay to be adopted had to wait until 1997 to be
tabled. At a meeting of the ASEAN Committee on Culture and Information, the Malaysian
minister of information suggested the adoption of Malay as ASEAN’s second official language.
Even though, as we have seen, there was some justification for this — Malay is also the official
language of Brunei, so has national language status in four of the ten countries of the ASEAN
nations — no one was prepared to take up the suggestion (Okudaira 1999: 101). Accepting
Malay as official working langauge is tantamount to “Opening the Pandora’s box”.

Since then, there has been no official request for a language other than English to be
adopted as an official or working language of ASEAN. That is not to say, however, that there are
no moves being made to have other languages considered. The main candidate remains Malay.
Concerned Malay linguists from Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei continue to lobby for its
adoption. In addition to the practical reasons for adopting Malay, these scholars also present
historical reasons for its adoption. For example, Abas (2000) argues that a language known as
Kw’enlun, operated as a Malay lingua franca two thousand years ago through the islands of the
Nusantara Archipelago (an area encompassing most of present-day Indonesia, and the
Philippine and Malaysian archipelagos), and that its position as a regional lingua franca is thus
well-established. Abas also points out that one of the reasons why Malay was adopted as a
regional lingua franca is that it posed no threat to others. Its original speakers were seafarers
and represented a minority. This minority-speaker status was also a major reason for its later
adoption as the national language of Indonesia (Alisjahbana 1976). However, Abas’ claim that
Malay is about ‘to become the official language of wider communication in the region of
Southeast Asia and beyond’ (2000: 245) appears wildly optimistic, especially given that the new
ASEAN Charter lists only English as the working language of ASEAN.

English and other languages

Without exception, the amount of English in the school curriculum has increased over
the past decade in each of the ten ASEAN countries. All countries now teach English as part of
the primary curriculum, with Brunei and the Philippines also teaching content subjects —
typically maths and science subjects — through English. In Singapore, English is the medium of
instruction. The other languages associated with the Singaporean government’s bilingual policy
— Chinese, Malay and Tamil — are taught only as subjects. In Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos,
where schools used to teach French, Russian and German along with English, English has now
become the major second language. As one commentator reports for Vietnam:
when Vietnam embarked on economic reforms in 1986 … it prompted a nation-
wide rush to learn English … English classes were crammed with not just students but also
professionals such as doctors and engineers as well as retired government officials, senior
police, army officers and diplomats (cited in Ho and Wong 2004: 1)

English has been introduced into the primary curriculum in Indonesia and Thailand,
although only as an optional subject in the case of Indonesia. As will be argued in Part III, it is
hard to see how this policy can lead to successful language learning, given the shortage of
qualified language teachers and suitable teaching materials. In the bleak assessment of the

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 13

situation in Indonesia, Dardjowidjojo lists a whole catalogue of linguistic and non-linguistic
reasons for the ‘failure’ of English language teaching there (2000: 28). In an attempt to solve the
problems of the acute shortage of qualified and proficient teachers of English, the Thai
government recently went on a mass recruitment campaign for 10,000 native speakers of
English to teach in primary and secondary schools throughout the country. Perhaps fortunately,
as these teachers required no qualifications or vetting, this was extremely unsuccessful. Yet this
blanket-like employment of unqualified and unvetted native speakers gives rise to serious
ethical and professional issues. It is impossible to estimate how many of these native speakers
of English are teaching English through East and Southeast Asia at the moment, but China
alone hires some 150,000 ‘foreign experts’ a year, many of whom fall into this category (Jeon
and Lee 2006).

The shortage of qualified English teachers is mirrored in other East Asian countries.
China has introduced English as a primary school subject and the number of teachers required
for this alone is incalculable. And a recent policy announcement from South Korea includes a
five-year plan for all subjects to be taught in English (Card, 2008). Although this plan has since
been considerably watered-down, English remains a priority in Korean primary schools. In Part
III, the privileging of the native speaker over local multilingual teachers is discussed in depth,
where it will be argued that local governments need to place their resources in the training of
local multilinguals rather than in the employment of native speakers, especially monolinguals
with no relevant qualifications. This rush towards English also comes at the expense of local
languages. Where people can afford it, it is not uncommon for them to send their children to
private English-medium schools. They are therefore prepared to sacrifice fluency or literacy in
their child’s first or national language for proficiency in English.

OFFLINE ACTIVITY

Activity 1: Infographics
Instruction: Through an infographic, illustrate the the history of the inception of ASEAN up to this
date. In your infographic, include all the important events that contributed to what ASEAN is
today. You may canva or easelly and other online platform in creating your infographics. You
may also visit the link provided in the reference list to watch tutorial on how to make an
infographic. Your output will be rated using the holistic rubric below:

Rubrics Point
Correctness of 50%
Content
Creativity and 35 %
Originality
Citation/ Reference 15%
TOTAL 100%

Activity 2: Reflective Essay

Instruction: After reading the content on the role of English in the creation of ASEAN region,
reflect on your role as future teacher. As part of the region, what is your stand about the
prominence of English? As future teachers, what is your motivation in learning English

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 14

language? Write an essay capturing these two questions. You may create your own title. Your
essay must have at least 1000 words but not more than 5000 words. Use Arial, 11, 1.5 spacing,
1 inch margin all side. Your essay will be rated using the holistic rubric below:

Rubrics Point

Content (Emphasis) 20%

Coherence & Cohesion 20 %
Organization 20%
Mechanics (Writing SOP) 20%
Langauge Use 15%

References (In-text citation) 5%

TOTAL 100%

V. DISCUSSION BOARD
Instruction: Read the statement below and answer the question that follows. Write your
answer in your answer sheet.
Situation:
The major role that English langauge plays in today’s world is as a lingua franca. That is
to say, the majority of speakers are multilinguals who have learned English as a second
language. They use English as a common language with fellow multilinguals. This lingua
franca use of English is prevalent throughout the ten nations which make up the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). How can the demand for English be
balanced against the need for people of the region to acquire their respective national
language and mother tongue? Argue for or against whether English language hampers
or promote language accessibility or language loss, respectively.

VI. POST-COMPETENCY CHECKLIST

Direction: Read the questions carefully and choose the letter of the correct answer.

1. Which among the following was the major motivating force in the foundation of ASEAN
region?
a. the political turmoil in the South East Asia.
b. common interests expressed primarily through an anti-communist position
c. fear of regional instability
d. either b or c
2. How did the English become the working official language of the the ASEAN region?
a. All the member-states agreed on the use of English language
b. It was the decision of the original five member-states
c. It happens by chance and so they adopt it
d. None of the above
3. How can the ASEAN enhance regional resilience?
a. By promoting political, economic, and cultural co-operation
b. By maintaining peace and order and stability

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 15

 c. By developing human resources through closer co-operation in education and life-
long learning
d. All of the above
4. To which classification does the countries where English is traditionally spoken as the
major language belongs to?
a. Outer circle c. Middle Circle
b. Inner Circle d. Expanding circle
5. Which among the following regional language is common to all member-states of
ASEAN?
a. Potonghua c. Malay
b. English c. Mandarin
6-10. Explain this statement briefly and concisely: Accepting Malay as official working
langauge is tantamount to “Opening Pandora’s box”.

MODULE 2
Chapter 1 ASEAN and English
(Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and the Philippines:
Linguistic context and the role of English)
[Week 2-3]

I. INTRODUCTION

This chapter will provide a historical description and comparison of the roles of English in
those ASEAN countries that were previously colonies of English-speaking empires and which,
following Kachru (1992c) can be classified as ‘outer circle countries’, namely Brunei, Malaysia,
the Philippines and Singapore. While Burma was once a colony of the British empire, its
decades of closure to the outside world means that the role of English is radically different from
the other countries of the colonial enterprise, and it will thus be considered in the next chapter.
At the end of this unit, you are expected to demonstrate mastery in:
1. Describing the linguistic context and the development and role of English in Brunei,
Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore: and
2. Differentiating the language education policies in the four outer circle countries.

II. PRE-COMPETENCY CHECKLIST

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask.

ENGAGING: Putting Things in the Right Perspective

In this activity you will share with us your prior knowledge on the use of English
language as medium of communication. There are questions below that require you to give your
opinion and will somehow test whether you are in the right perception when it comes to this
matter.
Write your answers in the space provided after the question.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 16

 1. What language/dialect do you speak at home? Are you comfortable in using it?
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
2. What do you think is the importance of using English asmedium of instrcution?
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
3. What is/are the possible problem/s when ENGLISH ONLY POLICY is strictly
implemented inside the school?
___________________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

4. What do you think will happen if there will be a strict implementation on the use of English
as language locally and globally? Cite an incident whrein it affects culture preservation.
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

5. In your own perception, is it difficult learning the English language? Cite your difficulty/ies
if there is.
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________

III. LEARNING RESOURCES

Following are the resources used in the discussion of this module. For further
understanding of the topic, please access the supplementary material/s provided here.

LR1 E-book (in PDF form)

[1]

LR2 Lecture-Video Presentation

IV. EXPLORE

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 17

 MODULE 2
LESSON DISCUSSION
ASEAN and English

Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and the Philippines: Linguistic context and the role of English

Shared Concerns
The dramatically increasing importance and roles of English in today’s globalizing world
has brought similar concerns to many countries, including those in ASEAN. The roles of English
as the major language of modernization, knowledge and globalization make it important, if not
compulsory, for governments to adopt language education policies which are designed to
ensure that their citizens become sufficiently proficient in English in order to be able to use it to
access knowledge and contribute to the development and dissemination of knowledge. The
urgent and widespread parental demands for their children to learn English also make this a
very significant political issue which governments cannot ignore. All governments are thus faced
with decisions over when to introduce English into the school curriculum and whether to
introduce it as a subject and/or medium of instruction. If it is to be introduced as a medium of
instruction, then the question arises over at which grade and/or for which subjects should it be
introduced. At the same time, there is the concern that the increased presence of English will
threaten not only local languages but local cultures. How then can an equitable and practical
balance be struck between English and other languages? This has become perhaps the most
crucial (and difficult) educational question facing governments today, and governments’
attempts to provide answers to this question invariably raise much controversy and emotion. As
will be illustrated below, while many of these problems are shared, governments’ responses to
them have differed. Each of the countries has tried to answer these questions in its own way,
and each has had to deal with the consequences of the language education policies it has
implemented. Of none, however, can it be said that the policies have been uniformly successful.
On the contrary, the implementation of policy has occasioned anger and dissent among
significant sectors of the population, often leading to the very divisiveness that the policy hopes
desperately to avoid. This can certainly be said of Malaysia’s language and language education
policies and it is to these I now turn.

English and Language Education in Malaysia

The British established the colony of the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca, and
Singapore in 1824 and established English-medium schools in all three settlements. British
control over the Malay States was extended and formalized with the Treaty of Pangkor, signed
in 1874, whereby a British ‘Resident’, as the office was somewhat coyly called, was installed as
the official advisor to the Sultan of Perak. The first British Resident was J.W.W. Birch whose
term of office was cut short by his assassination the following year. While English-medium
schools were established, the official position was that these would be only for a very small elite.
The policy regarding education of the locals was well encapsulated in a statement made by

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 18

Maxwell, who was, between 1920 and 1926, the chief secretary of what had come to be known
as the Federated Malay States. This statement is commonly quoted, but it is worth repeating, as
it clearly outlines the British policy at the time as being more concerned with the training of the
majority in practical skills and in maintaining the status quo, than in providing a general all-round
education through which people might expect to achieve some form of social mobility,
The aim of the government is not to turn out a few well-educated youths, nor yet
numbers of less well-educated boys; rather it is to improve the bulk of the people and to make
the son of fisherman or peasant a more intelligent fisherman or peasant than his father had
been, and a man whose education will enable him to understand how his own lot in life fits in
with the scheme of life around him. (Maxwell 1983: 408)
This view was shared by Dussek, who was both the assistant director for Malay Schools
and principal of Malaya’s first teacher training institute, the Sultan Idris College. In a talk given in
1937, he argued for the importance of vernacular schools on the grounds that their curriculum
was designed ‘to meet the needs of the rural community, special stress being laid upon
gardening and handicrafts’ (Dussek 1983: 447). In a remark which may explain the perceived
need to separate ethnicity and occupation which is reported later in the discussion of the New
Economic Policy, Dussek pointed out that introducing carpentry into the curriculum of the Malay
schools was a waste of time, as the Chinese would not let Malays enter the trade. Maxwell’s
ideas that education should merely help the Malay fisherman and peasant become a more
intelligent fisherman and peasant are relevant here also. In this context, it is worth recalling that
Malaysia was a trade or exploitation colony. Mufwene has distinguished these from ‘settlement
colonies’ (2001: 8–9) of which Australia and New Zealand are examples. The role of an
exploitation colony was to provide wealth to the colonizer. ‘Colonial possessions which drained
the imperial purse were anathema’ (Kratoska 1983: 3). The British needed people who would
help the colony become wealthy.
In the context of Malaysia, this meant not only Malay fishermen and peasants, but also
workers for the tin mines and rubber plantations. The Chinese were brought in to work the
mines and the Tamils were brought in to work the plantations. Thus, were sown the seeds of
Malaysia’s current multicultural and multilingual society which has had an extraordinarily
profound effect upon Malaysia as a whole, not least in its language and language education
policies.
The arrival of so many migrant workers led to the establishment of vernacular schools.
During Maxwell’s time, the Malay vernacular schools were free and were run by the
government. The Tamil vernacular schools were mostly established in rubber plantations and
were a mixture of government and aided schools. The Chinese vernacular schools were
different in that they were established and run by the Chinese community and pupils paid
monthly fees. Figures presented by Maxwell (Maxwell 1983: 405) show that, in 1925, about half
of all Chinese and Malay boys were in school (compared with the figure of one in every twenty
Malay girls). Only one in about three Tamil boys were enrolled. Table 2.1 shows the overall
numbers of children enrolled in different schools at this time.

Table 2.1 School enrolments (1925)

School Type Numbers Enrolled

Malay vernacular schools 26 ,000 boys; 3,000 girls
Chinese vernacular schools 15 ,000 (boys and girls )

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 19

 Tamil vernacular schools 8 ,000 (boys and girls )
English-medium schools 14 ,000 (boys and girls of all nationalities )

That 14,000 students of all nationalities were enrolled in English-medium schools

illustrates how highly sought after such schools were. Despite the British aim to restrict English-
medium education to a highly select elite, parental pressure saw the establishment of private
English-medium schools. Most were run by missionaries (Wong and James 2000) and remain
highly regarded and prestigious today. For example, the Victoria Institute in Kuala Lumpur,
which was established in 1893, was the country’s first English-medium secondary school. It is
still considered to be one of the best schools in Malaysia. The cachet associated with the
original name of the school can be seen from the recent decision to rename the school the
Victoria Institute after being called the Sekolah Menengah Victoria for many years. The trend of
preferring to see one’s children educated privately through English rather than through
government schools and the local language is even more pronounced today. Reiterating Wang
Gungwu’s observation about this which was cited in the previous chapter helps underscore this,
‘[t]o actually forsakes the public school system that teaches in your own language for the private
one that teaches in English is an increasingly common phenomenon’ (2007: xiv).
The arrival of so many migrant workers also affected the population balance, so that, at
the time of Malaysian independence in 1957, the Malays made up less than 50% of the people.
Being a minority in their own country caused Malays and many Malay politicians’ deep concern.
The relative number and status of the Malay population is crucial in understanding subsequent
language policy. Not surprisingly, Malays felt that their language and culture was under threat in
their own country. In 1957, the Institute of Language and Literature, or Dewan Bahasa dan
Pustaka, was formed. Importantly its tasks included not only the preservation of the language
and culture, but also the development of Malay into a world language by 2020 (Rappa and Wee
2006: 36).
Two unexpected major political events of the early and mid-1960s altered the balance of
the population in favour of the Malays. The first was the decision of Sarawak and Sabah to join
the Federation of Malaya. Sarawak had been run by the Brooke family for some one hundred
years (the so-called ‘White Rajahs’) until the Japanese invasion, and then became a British
colony in 1946. Sabah had been the colony of British North Borneo.
In 1962, a team headed by Lord Cobbold and which included Sir Anthony Abell, a former
governor of Sarawak, went over to Sarawak and Sabah to find out whether the people would be
interested in joining Malaya. The Cobbold Commission duly reported that they were in favour of
so doing. The work of the Cobbold Commission remains murky, but the result of it was that
‘Malayans woke up one morning in September 1963 to find themselves Malaysians, with a host
of new fellow countrymen from the other side of the South China Sea’ (Rashid 1993: 59).
Malaya became Malaysia and the Malays, together with the indigenous peoples, became a
majority in their own country.
The second political event which was to alter the population balance further in favour of
the Malays was the expulsion of Singapore from the Federation in 1965. As the population of
Singapore was about 80% ethnic Chinese, this reduced the number of ethnic Chinese in the
Federation. Today, Malays now make up about 65% of the population, Chinese 30% and Tamils
8% (Gill 2007: 107).

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 20

 That the Malays made up less than 50% of the population until the mid-1960s is one
reason why Malay has been so important for preserving the identity and culture of the Malays
(Ganguly 2003). The British were also sensitive to this, and the Barnes Commission of 1951
recommended that Malay should become the medium of instruction in all primary schools. This
was just the first of a series of education reports and acts over the next decades, all of which
had to deal with the contentious issues of language and media of instruction. The subsequent
policies have also seen several changes of direction.
As might have been expected, the non-Malays were not supportive of the
recommendations of the Barnes Commission, preferring to retain the Chinese and Tamil
vernacular schools. The Fenn and Wu report of 1952 took their side and argued that schools
should be allowed to adopt different languages as media of instruction. This was to little
immediate avail, however, and the 1952 Education Ordinance adopted the recommendations of
the Barnes report. This became ‘the cornerstone of language education policy in post-colonial
Malaysia’ (Ganguly 2003: 243).
Language and ethnicity became increasingly important political considerations over the
next few years leading up to the country’s independence in 1957. The United Malay National
Organisation (UMNO) had been formed in 1948 and it successfully promoted the Malay
language as the sole national language. While few objected to this, many non-Malay groups
objected to the Malay medium of education policy. The Malay Chinese Association (MCA),
which supported mother tongue education, was particularly influential, as UMNO realized that it
needed MCA support in the 1955 elections (Lee 2007). Thus, the Razak Report of 1956, which
in effect became the Education Ordinance of 1957, made concessions, many of which remain in
force today. The 1957 Ordinance saw the creation of the two different primary school systems,
the ‘national’ schools and the ‘national-type’ schools. National schools used Malay as the
medium of instruction and were staffed by
Malay teachers and attended by Malay students. National-type schools could choose
whether to use English, Chinese (Mandarin) or Tamil as media of instruction. Secondary
schools were all ‘national’ schools, although Chinese schools could teach through Mandarin if
they also taught Malay (Lee 2007). This has led to the inevitable consequence of a racially
segregated school system in a multiracial and multilingual country whose greatest boast is its
racial harmony and diversity.
The years since the Razak Report of 1956 and the Education Ordinance of 1957 have
seen several further acts, including the Talib Report and Education Act of 1960 and 1961
respectively, and the universally unpopular National Language Act of 1967, which ruled that
Malay was the official language, but that other languages ‘could be used in all unofficial matters’
(Ganguly 2003: 248). The late 1960s saw inter-ethnic tensions rise, especially between the
Chinese and the Malays. The national elections of May 1969 resulted in the majority of the
ruling coalition being drastically reduced. A major cause of this was the desertion of many
Chinese from the Malayan Chinese Association in reaction to what they felt was the obsequious
and acquiescent behavior of the MCA to UMNO (Rashid 1993: 86–7). Tensions became
inflamed and resulted in the racial riots of 1969, the subsequent suspension of parliament and
the establishment of a National Operations Council (NOC). Malaysia’s first prime minister, the
popular and collegial Tunku Abdul Rahman, soon resigned and Razak, who was to become the
second prime minister (and father of Najib), took over the NOC and the lead in setting out the
New Economic Policy (NEP). This had two major aims, namely the elimination of the idea that
race and occupation were linked, and to eradicate poverty (Ganguly 2003: 249). Malays were to

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 21

be lawyers and engineers, not just farmers and fishermen. What it also did, however, was to
provide a host of measures which would positively discriminate in favour of Malays under the
general name of the bumiputra policy, which gave special privileges to Malays and ‘sons of the
soil’. Thus, Chinese and Indian Malaysians who had lived in Malaysia for generations now saw
themselves as second-class citizens. This must have been particularly galling in the case of the
bumiputra of the newly acquired provinces of Sabah and Sarawak, as they had been
Malaysians for less than a decade. Thus, has Malaysia been called a nation of paradoxes with
the traditional Malay concepts of kesetosaan (tranquility) and keharmonian (harmony) now
operating alongside the bumiputra policy (Rappa and Wee 2006: 34). The linguistic side to the
NEP was realized in the elimination of vernacular schools and the gradual implementation of
Malay as the medium of instruction in all primary and secondary schools.
This was given twelve years to be completed, when the universities would follow. The
first government Malay-medium university, the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), or the
National University of Malaysia, was established in 1970, some fifty years after the idea of a
Malay-medium university had first been proposed by the Malay literary scholar, Abdul Kadir
Abadi (Gill 2005). UKM includes as part of its agenda ‘the nurturing of Bahasa Malaysia as an
intellectual language at the national and international level’ (Gill 2005: 35). Not only would the
universities adopt Malay as the medium of instruction, there would also be a quota system for
Malays. This meant, in short, that it would be far harder for non-Malays (that is to say,
nonbumiputras) to enter local universities. Not surprisingly, many non-Malays voted with their
feet and enrolled their children in English-medium universities in places such as Britain and
Australia, marking the start of the dramatic increase in international students in Australian
universities.
The position of Malay was further strengthened by the Constitution Amendment Act of
1971. Under this act, the place of Malay ‘may no longer be questioned, it being considered that
such a sensitive issue should be forever removed from the arena of public discussion’ (Rappa
and Wee 2006: 38).
After some two decades of this pro-Malay language policy, there was a general
understanding among ruling politicians that it had been a failure. For example, many of the
graduates from Malaysian universities were now basically monolingual in Malay and
unemployable in many walks of life, especially in the private sector (Gill 2007). Thus in 2002,
the policy was overturned. Much of the initiative for the new policy came from Dr Mahathir
himself, who had been prime minster since 1983 and who had been a prime instigator of the
1979 Education Act which reaffirmed the policy of Malaysianization. The new policy called for
the gradual reintroduction over a five-year period of English as the medium of instruction for
maths and science from Primary 1. In addition, universities would be given far more freedom to
choose the medium of instruction. Indeed in 1993, there had already been significant relaxation
of this, with certain science and engineering subjects along with medicine being taught through
English (Ganguly 2003), although the National University (UKM) rejected this proposal and
continued to teach science and technology through Malay until the government policy mandated
the switch of medium of instruction in these subjects from Malay to English in 2002 (Gill 2005).
A further motivation to allow the emergence of private universities has been globalization. The
1996 private Higher Education Institutions Act led to an increase in private institutions and
universities. Private universities could choose their medium of instruction on the condition that
Malay was made a compulsory subject. Dr Mahathir himself officially opened the Chinese
financed English-medium Tunku Abdul Rahman University in 2002.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 22

 The creation of the private universities system has led to an unfortunate result. Generally
speaking, graduates of the government universities come from the lower classes and are mostly
Malay. Despite the switch to English medium for science and technology, the level of
English proficiency for graduates from other disciplines may not be high. Graduates
from the private universities, on the other hand, are from the middle and upper classes,
are mostly Chinese and their overall proficiency in English is higher (Gill 2005).
Graduates of private universities are therefore more employable, especially in the private
sector.
While the overall relaxation of the Malay-only policies of the past has been generally
welcomed, the policy of teaching maths and science through English from Primary 1 has been
heavily criticized on a number of grounds. People have complained on purely practical grounds,
pointing out that there are simply not enough local primary teachers of maths and science who
have sufficient levels of English to teach the subjects in it, especially in rural areas. The
shortage of qualified English teachers and of teachers with high levels of English proficiency is
indeed acute, as many had left the profession when the medium of instruction switched to Malay
(Wong and James 2000). Another criticism comes from language professionals who have
argued that Primary 1 is too early to start teaching subjects through English, especially
as the children’s own level of English is poor. The Chinese schools are angry, as they argue
that they successfully teach these subjects through Chinese and, if they do have to adopt
English, then Chinese will be reduced to being taught solely as a subject. They have thus
presented a host of different proposals which would allow them to teach a percentage of these
classes in English and a percentage in Mandarin (Gill 2007: 116–7). Malay nationalists also
oppose the policy, seeing it as a revival of the colonial era in its undermining of the place of
Malay and, as a consequence, Malay nationalism itself (Puteh 2006). The Malay Language
Academy is also naturally strongly opposed to this policy, arguing, with justification, that maths
and science can be taught through Malay, especially at the primary level. A group opposed to
this policy organized mass rallies to protest against it, an action that the editorial of 19 February
2009 in the pro-Malaysian government paper, the New Straits Times, poured scorn upon. First
claiming that the widespread use of English in schools and literature ‘can only be good for the
nation’, the author continued:
But as far as the defenders of the Malay language are concerned, their fighting words
may yield yet another case of “yang menang menjadi arang, yang kalah menjadi abu” (winners
turn into coal, losers into ashes). Which is why it would be far better for them to get over their
post-colonial hang-up over the English language.

Two further quotes from a debate recorded in the New Straits Times of 21 March 2009
capture the differing viewpoints. Ng Chai Heng wants the policy of teaching maths and science
through English dropped as:

They (the students) can’t even understand English, how can you make them study
Science and Maths in English?

His opponent in the debate, Datin Noor Azimah, used the argument that Malay was not
an international language — unlike Mandarin — and this was why the policy of using English as
the medium of instruction for maths and science (PPSMI) should be retained:

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 23

 Mandarin is an international language, that’s where the Malays are at a disadvantage.
Because Bahasa is not an international language. That’s why we are fighting and want PPSMI
to be retained, because it is an advantage to the Malays.

At the same time, the then minister of education, Hishamuddin Hussein, hoped that the
new policy would help attract children of all ethnic backgrounds to the national schools and
create, for the first time, an ethnically diverse student body in Malaysia’s government schools.
But he has admitted that this will be difficult, not least because it will require the staff of these
schools to become ethnically mixed (Gill 2007: 120). An alternative way of achieving an ethnic
mix is through the establishment of ‘vision’ schools where Malay, Mandarin and Tamil schools
are sited in the same compound to ‘promote integration and unity among students of various
races’ (Rappa and Wee 2006: 48).
In the event, the government took the decision in July 2009 to gradually rescind the
policy. The teaching of maths and science through English will gradually be phased out
from 2012 because the government, according to the deputy prime minister Muhyiddin
Yassin, has now recognized that far too many children, especially those from the lower
socio-economic classes and rural areas, were failing in maths and science, and that
there were not enough suitably qualified teachers with adequate proficiency in English.
This is not to say that the current government does not recognize the importance of English.
Instead, however, of using English as a medium of instruction, the government proposes
to increase significantly the amount of time given to teaching English as a subject in
both primary and secondary schools. The decision has not been welcomed by the middle
classes. Dr Mahathir, who has expressed his dismay at the decision, even set up a poll on his
blog ([Link] asking people to cast votes in favour or against the
government’s decision. He closed this once the total vote reached 100,000, with more than 80%
of the voters indicating they were opposed to the new policy.
The above account has summarized the major milestones in the development of
language policy and language education policy in Malaya and Malaysia. These provide ample
evidence for the claim that educational and pedagogic issues are less important than political,
social and economic ones in the forming of such policies (Tsui and Tollefson 2004). Three major
issues can be identified: the preservation and development of Malay; the role of Mandarin and
Tamil in the education system; and the role of English.
Despite the efforts of the Language Academy, Malay remains as a language of Malay
identity and culture. The 2002 decision to teach maths and science through English was a
serious blow to the Academy’s attempt to develop Malay as a world language by the year 2020.
Malay has simply been unable to keep pace with scientific and technological developments,
while to provide translations into Malay of the thousands upon thousands of scholarly reports
published each year has proved impossible (Gill 2007). Instead, Malay remains associated with
traditional culture. In a world where the importance of languages is increasingly judged by their
instrumental value, Malay has lost out to English and Mandarin. As Rappa and Wee have
elegantly argued, a crucial aspect of Asian modernity is to ‘manage’ English and find ways in
which English and local languages can operate in a complimentary way (2006: 23). Yet, by
being a language associated with tradition, Malay can be seen as reactionary and ‘old-
fashioned’. To paraphrase Fishman (1973), English provides the road from the rural local village
to the high-tech global metropolis. Malay provides the village road maps, English the global
ones. In addition, however, English also provides a form of linguistic glue within Malaysia itself.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 24

While Malay is undisputed as the national language, it is not always used for inter-ethnic
communication nowadays, especially among the better educated. Many Chinese prefer to
speak Mandarin for intra-ethnic communication, but English for interethnic communication,
although the relationship between language and identity in Malaysia is tortuously complex (Lee
2007). Many monolingual Malays created by the policies associated with Malaysianization have
found themselves unemployed and unemployable.
In the Malay King’s recent address at the Opening of Parliament (New Straits Times, 17
February 2009) he said, speaking in Malay,
Our multiracial and multicultural characteristics should be synthesized and turned into
the nation’s strength.
It may be that English will prove a more effective medium for this than Malay. I now turn
to discuss the situation in Singapore.

English and Language Education in Singapore

While the general histories of Malaysia and Singapore have many similarities, the
language and language education policies in Singapore are quite different from those of
Malaysia’s and provide a cautionary example of how important it is to study local contexts and
situations when considering language and language policy (Sonntag 2003). While I have
suggested that the main issue in the construction of language policy in Malaysia has been the
relationship between the races, in Singapore the main issue has been intra-racial, especially
between the Chinese themselves, with the major struggle taking place between the Chinese-
educated and the English-educated Chinese (Tan 2007). In Singapore, the debate has also
been dominated by economic concerns and the recognition of the need to modernize. This
economic imperative has played a stronger role in Singapore than in Malaysia, while the need
for language as an identity and cultural marker has played a smaller role in Singapore than in
Malaysia.
Singapore’s introduction to English was, however, comparable to Malaya’s, as
Singapore was, along with Penang and Malacca, one of the three settlements which comprised
the Straits Settlements when these were established in 1824. While Singapore shares the same
ethnic mix as Malaysia, the relative numbers of the different ethnic groups are significantly
different. In Singapore, the ethnic Chinese make up the great majority and constitute over 70%
of the population. Malays (about 14%) and Indians (about 8%) thus represent much smaller
percentages of the population than they do in Malaysia. In addition, there is a sizeable Eurasian
community in Singapore, along with the large expatriate workforce of nearly half a million — a
sizeable number in the population of less than five million — although this has been dropping
dramatically since the beginning of the recent global economic crisis.
While Singapore was a British colony, education in English and the vernacular
languages (Chinese, Malay and Tamil) was provided. As was the case in Malaya, however,
there was great parental pressure for English-medium schools, as that was seen as the way to
success.
In this, Singapore’s first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew concurred. Disagreement over
the relative importance of relative languages was a major cause of Singapore’s expulsion from
the Federation in 1965. Lee Kuan Yew wanted to promote English and saw no need to promote
Malay, especially in a country with such an overwhelming majority of Chinese. Yet, Lee Kuan
Yew also understood the need to respect the languages of the various ethnic communities and

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 25

the need to find a delicate balance. He managed this by establishing Malay as the national
language of the now independent
Republic of Singapore, but making Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and English official
languages. The first two items of Article 153A of Singapore’s Constitution read (Tan 2007: 75):
(i) Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and English shall be the four official languages in
Singapore
(ii) The national language shall be the Malay language and shall be in the
Roman script
The present language policy centres around the bilingual policy, whereby each person
learns English and their mother tongue, although the definition of mother tongue is specially
constructed as ‘the symbolic language of the group of one’s paternal ancestry, rather than the
language of one’s primary socialisation, or one’s “native speech”’ (Tan 2007: 79). Despite this
definition, Mandarin has been adopted as the ‘mother tongue’ of the ethnic Chinese, and there
has been a long-standing campaign against other Chinese languages, termed ‘dialects’ by the
Singapore government. In contrast, Indians whose mother tongue is not Tamil can learn other
Indian ‘mother tongues’ such as Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi and Gujerati, but the local community is
responsible for establishing and running the particular language centres where these languages
are taught (Tan 2007: 90).
As indicated above, the major controversy has been among the Chinese themselves. In
the early years immediately before and after independence, Chinese-educated Singaporeans
were, or were perceived as being, associated with Mainland China and communism, and thus
treated with great suspicion by their English-educated counterparts. The political upper hand
was always held by the English-educated Chinese, however. These dominated the People’s
Action Party (PAP), the political party which has been in virtually complete control of Singapore
since 1965. Since the elections of 1968 when it won all the seats, the PAP has lost a total of
twelve seats in nine elections. In the 2006 election, the PAP won all but two of the eighty-four
seats. The PAP is thus able to exercise real power and in 1971 the government decided to
close the leading Chinese-language newspaper, the Nanyang Siang Pau, when the paper
foolhardily demanded more Chinese education in its editorial pages (Ganguly 2003: 257). The
Chinesemedium university, Nanyang, which had been established in 1951, was also viewed
with suspicion as a breeding ground for those with communist sympathies, and this too was
effectively closed in 1981, by being ‘merged’ with the newly established National University of
Singapore (NUS). As NUS is an English-medium university, Nanyang University actually
represented the last of Chinese-medium tertiary education in Singapore (other than in Chinese
studies). The relatively new Nanyang Technological University, established in 1991, is English-
medium, as are all other tertiary institutions.
In 1979, the then deputy prime minister, Goh Keng Swee, released the Goh Report,
which was very critical of the state of bilingual education. There were also government concerns
about the use of Chinese dialects and their apparent contribution to divisions among the ethnic
Chinese. One of the outcomes of the Goh Report was thus the ‘Speak Mandarin’ campaign of
1979, which encouraged the use of Mandarin as the lingua franca among Chinese dialect
groups. This has been remarkably successful in that Mandarin has become the lingua franca of
the younger generations of Singaporean Chinese. This very success has, however, led to a
number of negative consequences. First, it has become racially divisive. Ethnic Chinese now
speak Mandarin to each other, whereas before, English or Bazaar Malay was the common
lingua franca among the Chinese, and they were thus able to mix freely with the Malays and

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 26

Indians. Ethnic Chinese now tend to stick together more than they did. Second, it has become
generationally divisive as the younger ethnic Chinese can no longer communicate in the
Chinese dialects of their parents and grandparents.
The current bilingual policy is more accurately classified as an ‘English + 1’ policy, with
every Singaporean being required to learn English and their ‘mother’ tongue. The aim here has
been to ensure that Singapore can maintain its place as an international city in the era of
globalization, while ensuring that its citizens remain in contact with their original culture. The
policy has been a success with regard to the first aim. The adoption of English as the
medium of instruction has meant that most Singaporeans are highly proficient speakers
of English, with an increasing percentage listing English as their first language. Tan
quotes the then deputy prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, giving a 2001 figure of 44% of
primary school students saying that they speak English as a home language (2007: 86).
In 2004, the number of Primary 1 children giving English as their home language became the
majority for the first time. The Straits Times of 18 March 2009 reported the latest figures which
show that 60% of Singaporean Primary 1 children now speak English as their home language,
with a mere 40% speaking Mandarin. But this very success with English has meant that the
second aim has not been successfully met. For example, while the ‘speak’ part of the ‘Speak
Mandarin’ campaign has been successful, the Chinese literacy of Singaporean students is poor.
Lee Kuan Yew appears to have recognized this as a cause for concern and recently
encouraged parents to speak Mandarin with their children at home (Straits Times, 18 March
2009). With English as the medium of instruction, Chinese is taught as a subject, as are Malay
and Tamil. This means that there has not been enough curriculum time available for ethnic
Chinese students to learn how to read and write Chinese. As explained in Chapter 1, acquiring
literacy in Chinese takes significantly more time than acquiring literacy in an alphabetic
language such as English (Chen 1999). The government has recognized this and has two major
concerns. The first is that Singapore needs people highly literate in Chinese and highly familiar
with Chinese ‘high’ culture, as China becomes an increasingly strong political and economic
force. The Singaporean government has introduced a series of measures to try and produce an
elite group of Chinese Singaporeans ‘who are steeped in the Chinese cultural heritage, history,
literature and the arts’ (Tan 2007: 83). The so-called Special Assisted Plan (SAP) schools aim
to produce this elite group of Chinese-English bilinguals.
The second concern is that many Chinese Singaporeans are losing touch with
their Chinese cultural roots. In an attempt to reverse this, the government has introduced
a new Chinese syllabus, Syllabus B, which is far less challenging that the original
syllabus, but which is aimed at helping students learns at least something about Chinese
and Chinese culture. But this has not been successful, as taking Syllabus B is seen as ‘a
badge of dishonour’ (Tan 2007: 86). The relatively low levels of Chinese literacy among the
majority of ethnic Chinese Singaporeans thus remains a great concern. Despite recent
government initiatives to increase levels of Chinese proficiency, ‘the overall CL (Chinese
language) level is declining’, especially in terms of literacy in Chinese (Goh 2009: 189). In a
speech given in November 2009, Singapore’s minister mentor Lee Kwan Yew admitted that the
bilingual policy had been a mistake in that it demanded too much of children.
We started the wrong way. We insisted on ting xie (listening), mo xie (dictation) —
madness! We had teachers who were teaching in completelyChinese schools. And they did not
want to use any English to teach Englishspeaking children Chinese and that turned them off
completely. (Temasek Review, 18 November 2009)

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 27

 The successful adoption of English as the major language of the majority of
Singaporeans has led to an unforeseen result, which is the adoption of a local variety of
English as the identity marker for Singaporeans. It will be remembered that the two aims
of the bilingual policy were to ensure that Singapore would be able to participate in
globalization on the one hand (through English) and keep a sense of local identity on the
other (through the mother tongue). What has happened, however, is that English has
taken over both roles with the development of Singaporean English, a local variety
marked by influence from local languages at the levels of phonology, lexis, syntax
discourse and cultural conventions. Part II of the book provides specific linguistic illustrations
of local varieties of English along with its use as a lingua franca, so none will be provided here.
However, the Singaporean government has proved extremely unwilling to recognize this
Singaporean variety of English, rather fearing that its use in international contexts will render
Singaporean unintelligible and make them a laughing stock. It has thus been promoting the
‘Speak Good English Movement’. In this, however, the government seems keen to stamp out
Singaporean English as an identity marker, fearing that this will further reduce the roles and
domains of the ‘mother’ tongue. Alternatively, it misunderstands the different functions that all
languages play.
The informal, colloquial varieties of languages are often used for intra-ethnic, intra-
community communication and function strongly as identity markers (Kirkpatrick 2007a). It does
not matter if outsiders cannot understand this variety. It is not for them, it is for insiders within
the local speech community. These colloquial identity marker varieties are not used in out-group
or international communication, where more formal and standard varieties are used.
Singaporeans, in much the same way as Australians and others, will use a localized colloquial
variety when talking with each other in informal contexts (and in the Singaporean context, this
variety will inevitably be characterized by code-mixing), but will use a more standard and
educated variety in more formal contexts or when communicating with speakers from other
linguistic and cultural backgrounds. If the government’s motivation in promoting the Speak Good
English Movement is to try and prevent English from taking over as the Singaporeans’ linguistic
identity marker, it is almost certainly too late. If the government’s motivation is to encourage
Singaporeans to use a more standard form of English in international communication, it is
almost certainly unnecessary. The bilingual policy has succeeded in making English the
common language of Singapore. It has failed in helping people retain their links to their
traditional cultures. This includes not only the issue of literacy in Chinese but also the
decreasing ability to use Chinese dialects. Ironically, the government now seems to realize
that its lack of support for dialects may have been misjudged, as these, along with their
associated clan memberships, continue to play an extremely important role in intraChinese
relationships, within Chinese communities, both within China itself and overseas (Tan 2007).
But Lee Kuan Yew remains convinced that learning dialects is wasted effort. In a speech
reported in the Straits Times of 18 March 2009, he said, ‘If you speak Hokkien or Cantonese,
you reach some 60 million in Fujian or Taiwan, or about 100 million in Guangdong and Hong
Kong. With Mandarin, you can speak to 1,300 million Chinese from all provinces in China.’ In
this, a comparison with the language education policy in Hong Kong is instructive. The Hong
Kong government has retained Cantonese, the mother tongue of the great majority of the Hong
Kong population, as the medium of instruction in primary schools, where English is taught only
as a subject. As a result, all Hong Kong school children who go through the government system
become literate in Chinese while retaining Cantonese. While the levels of English in Hong Kong

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 28

are not as uniformly high as they are in Singapore, its people are literate in Chinese, fluent in
Cantonese and increasingly proficient in Mandarin. Singaporeans are highly proficient, if not
fluent, in English. Singapore is becoming an increasingly English-speaking society
where English is also acting as an identity marker. Singaporeans’ expertise in English
will, of course, is highly advantageous in certain international settings, but their lack of
expertise in other languages may prove disadvantageous in others, especially those
where a proficient knowledge of Chinese would be helpful. I now turn to the situation in
Brunei.

English and Language Education in Brunei

Brunei became a British protectorate in 1888, fourteen years after the Treaty of Pangkor.
The familiar question of how to modernize and become part of the international arena through
English while retaining the local culture through Malay was originally to be answered by
adopting the Malay policy of the use of Malay as the sole medium of instruction. Indeed, this
was the recommendation of the Baki-Chang Report of 1959 (Jones 2007). Despite this also
coinciding with the 1959 constitution which specified Malay as the national language, the policy
was not implemented for a number of reasons, including a civil insurrection in 1962 and then, in
the 1970s, political disagreements with Malaysia. Among other things, this led to the recall of
Bruneian students from Malaysia.
Brunei gained independence in 1984 and the following year saw the introduction of the
National Education System and the birth of the bilingual or dwibahasa policy (Jones 2000). This
is still in effect today and involves Malay being used as the medium of instruction in the first
three years of primary school, after which English becomes the medium of instruction for maths,
science, geography, history and technical subjects. Malay remains the medium of instruction for
Malay literature, Islamic knowledge, civics, arts, handicrafts, and physical education (Omar
2007: 358).
The year 2009 saw some changes to the policy, with adoption of the National Education
System for the 21st Century (SPN 21) ([Link] bn/web/spn21). In a striking
contrast to the Malaysian government’s recent shift back towards the use of Malay for the
teaching of maths and science, Brunei has decided to increase the role of English by
making English the medium of instruction for these subjects from Primary 1.
Remarkably, no explanation of the reasons behind this decision is provided in the new
curriculum document (Brunei Ministry of Education 2009). This new policy is scheduled
for full implementation in primary schools in 2011.
Initially many resisted the bilingual policy, some for pedagogic reasons, some for
national ones. Those with pedagogic concerns argued that becoming bilingual was cognitively
too demanding. Those with national concerns argued that giving so much curriculum time to
English would undermine the position of Malay on the one hand, and introduce harmful
‘Western’ concepts on the other. Today, however, most of these pedagogic and political
concerns have dissipated and the bilingual education system has become accepted. Rather,
today’s concerns centre around the socially divisive effect of the elite schools, where wealthy
parents send their children and where the teaching and resources are superior to the normal
government schools. It has become more an issue of resources than anything else, as the
government schools are poorly equipped and there is a lack of proficient bilingual teachers. As

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 29

Jones has pointed out, it is now not a question of whether a bilingual system should be
implemented, but how it should be implemented in an equitable way to ensure that all do indeed
graduate bilingual (2007: 257). In short, the majority accept the importance of English while still
being confident that the role of Malay will not be undermined, especially as it is the language
underpinning the three pillars of the country’s philosophy, namely Melayu, Islam, Beraja, or
Malay, Islam and Monarchy (Omar 2007). Generally speaking, Brunei’s bilingual language
education policy has probably been the most successful of all the ASEAN member states, even
though access to English in many rural areas remains extremely limited (Martin and Abdullah
2002).
To date in this chapter, the situations in Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei have been
summarized and considered. All three of these countries share a British colonial heritage and
Malay as a national language. While all are multilingual and multicultural, the major ethnic
groups are similar. I now turn to consider the Philippines, a country with a quite different colonial
heritage and a country in which a far greater number of languages are spoken. Another
fundamental difference, at least between the Philippines and the Muslim countries of Brunei and
Malaysia, is that the Philippines is 92% Christian, the great majority of whom are Catholics.

English and English Language Education in the Philippines

The population of the Philippines is around seventy-six million spread over some seven
thousand islands. As indicated above, over 90% of the population is Christian. As Filipinos are
ethnically related to the Malays, this makes the Philippines the largest Malay nation on earth
and the largest Christian nation in Asia (Rappa and Wee 2006: 62). It is a country of extreme
linguistic diversity with eight major indigenous language groups comprising more than one
hundred languages (Galang 2000).
The Philippines was a Spanish colony from 1565 (the name of the country
commemorates King Philip II of Spain) until 1898, whereupon it became an American colony
with the Spanish defeat by the United States in the Spanish American War (Thompson 2003).
The Treaty of Paris of 1898 gave Cuba — another Spanish colony — its independence, but
pressure from President McKinley resulted in the Philippines simply shifting colonial masters
from the Spanish to the Americans. It became an independent nation in 1946.
The Philippine Commission of 1898 headed by Governor Taft had planned to provide
basic education either through Spanish or local languages, but it first discovered that very few
people spoke Spanish, and second, that the local languages had no literary tradition and this
made them unsuitable as media of instruction (Thompson 2003: 19). Here we see one
immediate difference from the situation in Malaya, where Malay was the national language and
spoken by all Malays. In stark contrast, the multilingual nature of the Philippines meant that no
one local language was the obvious choice for the national language. Indeed, it was not until
1941 that Tagalog was made the national language, a decision that still evokes controversy, as
will be shown below, even though it has since had its name changed to Filipino.
The findings of the Philippine Commission led to the Second Philippine
Commission and the decision in 1901 to adopt English as the medium of instruction. This
decision to adopt English rather than Spanish was supported by Apolinario Mabini, one of the
ideologues behind the Philippine revolution against the Spanish (Gonzalez 1996a). The
adoption of English also appealed to the colonizers, as they felt that English would help the

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 30

locals ‘imbibe and internalize democratic principles’ (Gonzalez 1996a: 27). In this, the American
policy was significantly different from the British policy in Malaya, which was to provide an
English education only to small and privileged elite.
The adoption of English as the medium of instruction meant that there was a great need
for English teachers, and five hundred were duly dispatched from the United States in 1901. As
the ship that brought them was called The Thomas, these early English teachers are known as
Thomasites. Even with teachers being sent from the United States on a regular basis, they
never constituted more than 30% of the teaching force, and by 1921, this had dropped to 9%.
This has meant that, in the Philippines, English has been taught mainly by Filipinos (Gonzalez
1996a). The same is true of the other countries of the region. The overwhelming majority of
English teachers have been locals. This has made the development and dissemination of local
varieties of English inevitable, a topic which is discussed in greater detail in Part III of the book.
The decision to adopt English as the medium of instruction was successful if the
numbers of Filipinos who reported being able to use English are reliable. The census figures of
1918 show that over 50% of Filipinos of ten years old or more said they could speak English
and 55% said they could read and write it (Gonzalez 1996a: 27). English remained the sole
medium of instruction until 1938. In 1939, the use of native languages as ‘auxiliary media of
instruction’ was mandated (Galang 2000: 271) and, in 1941, Tagalog was made an official
language. These developments followed on from the promulgation of the National Language
Law and the founding of the National Language Institute in 1936, some twenty years before its
Malaysian counterpart was established.
The choice of Tagalog as the national language was unpopular with the majority of
Filipinos. Tagalog is spoken around Manila — Tagalog literally means river dweller, the river in
question being the Pasig, which flows through Manila — and has about four million native
speakers. But, as mentioned above, the Philippines is multilingual and many speakers of other
languages were naturally angry at the choice of Tagalog (Gonzalez 1996b). Particularly strong
resistance came (and, to a certain extent, still does) from Cebuano speakers, who can be
numbered at over six million, if the dialects related to Cebuano are included (Thompson 2003:
29).
In order to deflect these criticisms of a local language becoming the national language
solely because it was spoken in and around the capital, Manila, the National Language Institute
(Komsiyon sa Wakang Filipino) was given the task of creating a new language to be called
Pilipino, which would use Tagalog as the base, but invest it with features from other local
languages. To quote from the 1973 Constitution, the ‘language needed to be formed from all
existing Philippine languages’ (Gonzalez 1996b: 328). This was clearly an impossible task and
the result has been a language that appears to be Tagalog with a few ‘ethnic’ additions. In an
attempt to convince doubters that the new language was indeed Pilipino and not Tagalog
wearing make-up, the 1987 Constitution renamed it Filipino. The change of the initial sound
from a ‘p’ to an ‘f’ was significant, as Tagalog has no ‘f’ sound. This then represented a further
attempt to persuade people that the new language was indeed Filipino, not Tagalog. The
Constitution also promises that the work will continue: ‘the national language of the Philippines
is Filipino. As it evolves, it shall be further developed and enriched on the basis of existing
Philippine and other languages’ (Rappa and Wee 2006: 73). The addition of ‘and other
languages’ is important as it allows the borrowing of words from English and Spanish. Indeed,
many contemporary critics now claim that colloquial Filipino has become ‘Taglish’, a code-mixed
variety of Tagalog and English. The development of a national language meant that the

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 31

Philippines could implement a bilingual education policy, with P/Filipino and English as the two
languages. The Bilingual Education Policy (BEP) duly came into effect in 1974 with a timetable
for the policy to be fully implemented in primary schools by 1982. Starting in 1974, maths and
science and ‘English Communication Arts’ were taught in English from Grade.
1. All other subjects were to be taught in Filipino. The BEP would take effect in high
schools in 1981–82. But as Benton (1996: 309ff) has pointed out, the BEP represents two quite
different systems. Tagalog-speaking children in and around Manila learn through a standardized
version of Tagalog and English. But children whose first language is not Tagalog have to learn
through two ‘foreign’ languages. And for many children, Tagalog and English may well be their
third and fourth languages, as they speak their mother tongue and a regional lingua franca as
their first and second languages.
The Linguistic Society of the Philippines has carried out a survey into the effectiveness
of the BEP. The findings indicated that the BEP favoured only Tagalog-speaking students from
Manila. Socio-economic status was found to be the main predictor of achievement among these
students, followed by the teachers’ proficiency. Non-Tagalog-speaking Filipinos were accepting
Filipino as the national language, but did not agree that this meant it should automatically
become a universal medium of instruction (Gonzalez 1996b). The lead author of the report,
Brother Gonzalez, cautioned that in a bilingual scheme where one of the languages is not at the
‘same level of cultivation’ as the other, and if the two languages do not share the same social
prestige (as is the case with English and Filipino), the indigenous language is bound to suffer
and the less advantaged may end up in a state of ‘semi-lingualism’ (1996b: 332).
In recognition of the difficulties faced by non-Tagalog speaking children, there have
been several attempts to introduce vernaculars as media of instruction in the first three years of
primary school. For example, a commission headed by Senator Angara recommended the use
of local languages as auxiliary media of instruction (Thompson 2003, Galang 2000), as did
Brother Gonzalez himself when he was minister for education in 1999. More recently a
Multilingual Education and Literacy Act have been proposed. But these recommendations had,
until late 2009, been blocked by those who insist that Filipinos need more English on the one
hand, and nationalists who strongly support the use and spread of Filipino on the other. An
interesting personal perspective comes from Tupas, himself a speaker of two Visayan
languages (Aklanon and Ilongo), but who now speaks Filipino. He writes that, realistically,
Filipino is the national language, and ‘it is now more of an issue of attitudes, not inability, to
speak the national language’ (2007: 32).
The recommendations to use local languages as media of instruction are also
opposed by those who feel that science and maths must be taught in English, as English
is the language of modernization and technology. These are familiar arguments and I
shall return to a critical review of them in Part III of the book, but I would simply quote an
alternative view here, expressed by the Filipino scholar, Bernardo: ‘There seems to be no
theoretical or empirical basis so far to obligate the use of English in teaching
mathematics’ (2000: 313).
Much in the same way that the Institute of Language and Literature was set the task of
making Malay a modern world language, the
National Language Institute of the Philippines was similarly tasked with ‘intellectualizing’
Filipino, a task embraced by the prestigious University of the Philippines, when the university
president introduced a five-year programme starting in 1989–90 in which Filipino would be
introduced as the medium of instruction. However, this was not successful, with most staff

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 32

preferring to lecture in English and most students electing to take the subject ‘Communication
Arts’ though English rather than Filipino (Garcia 1996). The policy ‘met with great difficulties’
(Sibayan 1996: 240) and the hope that other universities would adopt a similar policy was not
fulfilled. The hesitation in accepting Filipino as an intellectually modernized language is seen
even in government circles. A decree issued by President Aquino that all government
documents be issued in both English and
Filipino was followed only for a year and was then ‘completely ignored’ (Garcia 1996:
82), obviously being especially unpopular in non-Tagalogspeaking regions (Sibayan 1996).
Making Filipino an intellectually modernized language appears a formidable task, as it
has yet to develop the appropriate range of vocabulary and registers. And in calling for Filipino
to become the tertiary medium of instruction as soon as possible, Garcia argued that ‘[i]n the
universities and colleges the most convenient way for intellectualizing Filipino in the professions
and different disciplines is to convince those who are experts in the field to use Filipino in their
lectures and more importantly in their publications’ (1996: 83–84). Yet this remains more dream
than reality. In particular, academics will only publish in Filipino when they receive equal reward
and recognition as when publishing in English. It is hard to see any Filipino academic choosing
to publish an article in Filipino — especially in the fields of science and technology — when the
alternative is to publish in English.
The BEP has been described as a compromise between the pro-English group who
wanted the country to modernize and globalize and the proFilipino group who wanted a more
inclusive and democratic society (Hau and Tinio 2003). This is also a class conflict between the
English-speaking elite and the others. There is agreement, however, that the results of the BEP
have not been satisfactory, with many Filipinos being proficient in neither English nor Filipino.
The BEP also privileged Filipino at the expense of other Filipino vernaculars. It needs to be
stressed again that both media of instruction, English and Filipino, are languages that most
Filipino children meet for the first time on their first day in school.
In responding to criticism of the BEP, in 2003, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
ordered the return to English as the main medium of instruction. This announcement was
naturally supported by the elite, as it was recognized how important English was for
international trade and modernization. Her announcement was also supported, however, by
nonTagalog groups (Hau and Tinio 2003: 24). For all the efforts to convince people that Filipino
is made up of all the languages of the Philippines, people still consider Filipino to be Tagalog
under another name.
The need for English is also recognized beyond the elite and by those of low socio-
economic status. Perhaps one of the most striking phenomena in the Philippines is the number
of Overseas Contact Workers (OCWs). The 2008 Survey on Overseas Filipinos reports that
some two million Filipinos were working overseas in 2008, primarily because there is an acute
shortage of work in the Philippines itself. For example, in Hong Kong alone, several thousand
Filipinas are employed as domestic assistants. And while, on the face of it, this does not look
like a job which would require English, Filipinas are preferred as their English skills can be used
to teach English to the children of their employees. The foreign exchange which these OWCs
remit is also crucial for the Philippines economy, with the 2008 Survey reporting a remitted
income in 2008 of 140 billion pesos (US$3 billion). A major demand for English in the
Philippines is thus to develop a workforce of English-speaking Filipinos who can be exported to
work overseas so that they can remit foreign exchange.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 33

 Much needed opportunities for employment at home has recently been created by the
success of the call centre industry (Bolton 2010). High proficiency in English is a fundamental
requirement for employment in these call centres. Thus many non-Tagalog-speaking Filipinos
from a range of socio-economic classes now see English as a far more useful language than
Filipino.
At the beginning of this chapter, I listed a number of the difficult questions which
governments have to face when deciding on language and language education policy. Maminto
(2005: 335–7) presents a number of such questions in the context of the Philippines, which I
paraphrase below:

➢ As four languages can be involved (the mother tongue, the regional lingua franca,
Filipino and English) how can the curriculum be best aligned to ensure success?
➢ How can languages develop a complementary rather than competitive relationship?
➢ When should the regional language take over or work alongside the mother tongue?
➢ When should English be introduced and how?
➢ Should Filipino be used from Primary 1?
➢ Should flexibility be allowed according to specific regional and local conditions?

As we have seen, the Bilingual Education Policy advantages Tagalogspeaking

children from the higher socio-economic circles of metro Manila and disadvantages the
others, which represent the great majority of the population. While there have been
recommendations on several occasions for the adoption of vernacular languages as the
media of instruction, at least for the lower levels of primary schools, these
recommendations have only recently received official support.

Other suggestions include:

The abandoning of the BEP, the establishment of Filipino as the medium of
instruction with local vernaculars as auxiliary media of instruction, and the teaching of
English as a subject (with the promotion here of the educated variety of Filipino English)
(Hau and Tinio 2003: 350) the adoption of Filipino as the medium of instruction in
primary schools and English in secondary schools (Tupas 2007: 31) the use of
vernaculars as media of instruction at the lower levels of primary school, with the gradual
adoption of Filipino in upper primary and then English in secondary (Tupas 2007: 31)

The first and third of these look as though they should be at least trialled, but
there seems little prospect of that in the current situation, where the focus remains so
heavily on the national language and English. Tupas (2007: 31) considers the Philippine
experience provides ample evidence for Tsui and Tollefson’s claim (2004: 2), which he
quotes:
Medium of instruction policy determines which social and linguistic groups have
access to political and economic opportunities, and which groups are disenfranchised. It
is therefore a key means of power (re)distribution and social (re)construction, as well as
a key arena in which political conflicts among countries and ethnolinguistic, social and
political groups are realized.
The Philippine government finally announced a radical change of policy in the later part
of 2009, when the Department of Education issued an order entitled Institutionalising

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 34

 Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MLE) ([Link]
[Link]/).
Article 1 of the Order validates the ‘superiority of the use of the learner’s mother
tongue or first language in improving learning outcomes ...’ and Article 2 of the Order
describes MLE as ‘the effective use of more than two languages for literacy and
instruction’. Significantly, Article 4 of the Order points out that top performing countries in
the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) are those that
teach and test students in science and maths in their own languages. This official
promotion of MLE is seen as a triumph for all those who have been promoting the use of
vernaculars as media of instruction in the early years of primary school.
The Order requires its ‘immediate compliance’, but it will take some years before the
level of its implementation and its efficacy can be adequately evaluated. Supporters will
hope, however, that the sobering formula for success for a Filipino child identified by
Bautista in 1996 will soon be able to be recast: be born in metro Manila; be a native
speaker of Tagalog; and study in an excellent private school (1996: 225). In short, be a
rich and well-connected Tagalog speaker.
V. DISCUSSION BOARD
General instruction: The diagram below will show the differences and similarities of each
countries Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and the Philippines on Linguistic context and the role
of English.

Directions:
Enter the differences: Inside each circle place characteristics that are unique so that
specific item or idea, and are not true of any of the other topics.
Enter the similarities: If two or more subjects have a feature in common, place that feature
in the section in which all such shapes overlap.

MALAYSIA SINGAPORE

Differences Differences

Similarities

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 35

 BRUNEI PHILIPPINES

Differences Differences

Similarities

VI. POST-COMPETENCY CHECKLIST

Post-Test (Formative Assessment)

QUIZ 2
Direction: Answer the following questions based on your understanding of the topic. As
much as possible, as you answer, use your own words and never ever copy paste answer from
the net or from the discussion. Each item has equivalent of five points.

1. Explain the role of English language in modernization, globalization and most importantly in
education.
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________

2. Why it is the Malay nationalists oppose the policy of using the English language in the
classroom instruction especially in Science and Mathematics Subject?
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________

3. Am What were the aims of Bilingual Policy implemented in Singapore?

_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 36

 _________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________

4. Why do you think Singaporeans considered Bilingual Policy as failed in helping people
retain their links to their traditional cultures?
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________

5. Cite the problems faced by the Teachers in the Philippines in implementing English as
medium in instruction?

_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________

QUIZ 3. For 100 points.

Discuss your idea briefly by giving your opinion on the importance of using the English
language as medium of instruction. And as a student what do you think were the challenges
in teaching this language to the young learners? How will you react to the notion that the
implementation of the use of English Language will hinders the aim of culture preservation?
Expand your answer by giving situation based on your own experiences.

MODULE 3
Chapter 1 ASEAN and English
(Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam:
Linguistic context and the role of English)
[Week 4 & 5]

I. INTRODUCTION
This module presents the development and roles of English and the national language in
the remaining countries of ASEAN such as Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand, and
Vietnam. The discussion in this module will focus on education.

At the end of this module, you are expected to describe the linguistic context and the
development and role of English in Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam
and differentiate its language education policies.

II. PRE-COMPETENCY CHECKLIST

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
Direction: Complete the table below py providing the institutional roles of English in the
following countries:

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 37

 ASEAN Nation Institutional Role/s of English
Burma
Cambodia
Indonesia
Laos
Thailand
Vietnam

III. LEARNING RESOURCES

Following are the resources used in the discussion of this module. For further
understanding of the topic, please access the supplementary material/s provided here.

LR1 E-book (in PDF form)

[1]

LR2 Lecture-Video Presentation

IV. EXPLORE
MODULE 3
LESSON DISCUSSION

Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam: Linguistic context and the
role of English

The Case of Indonesia

Indonesia is the largest country in the ASEAN group and is the largest Muslim nation in
the world. It is also even more ethnically and linguistically diverse than the Philippines. Its
population of more than 200 million comprises some two hundred ethnic groups which speak
some four hundred languages. Javanese has, with 75 million speakers, the most mother tongue
speakers, representing just less than 40% of the total population. The next most populous
mother tongue is Sundanese, but whose speakers constitute only about 14% of the population
(Montolalu and Suryadinanta 2007). Yet, partly because it was the language with the most
speakers, Javanese was not adopted as the national language. A second reason for its being
overlooked as the national language is its innate difficulty and concern with hierarchy (Bernard
2003). Javanese comprises a number of social dialects, so learning Javanese means learning a
number of languages along with complex cultural rules of when to use which variety with whom
(Alisjahbana 1976). It was thus considered unsuitable for a national language at the time when
Indonesia was struggling to gain independence from the Dutch. The people wanted a more
‘democratic’ language and one which was not spoken by a powerful group. Malay fitted the bill
perfectly. It was already being used as a lingua franca in the region — indeed, as reported in
Chapter 1, an old form of Malay called Kw’enlun had served as a regional lingua franca several
hundred years previously (Alisjahbana 1976), so people were used to this role of Malay. At the
same time, in the 1930s, the number of Malay speakers represented less than 2% of the

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 38

population, so privileging Malay as the national language was not seen as a threat to other
ethnic groups. It was also considered relatively easy to learn, another potential reason for its
success as a lingua franca (Ostler 2005). Its other great advantage is that it had become ‘the
language of unity against the Dutch’ (Bernard 2003: 273). It had become the lingua franca for
groups such as the Serakat Islam and other Muslim anti-Dutch groups (Bernard 2003: 272).
Thus, the Second Congress of Indonesian Youth which was held in 1988 formally adopted
Malay as their language, renaming it Bahasa Indonesia or the Indonesian language
(Alisjahbana 1976).

The Japanese occupation further promoted the use of Malay, as the Japanese banned
the use of Dutch. Dutch had previously been an important language of education for the same
reasons that English had been in the colonies of Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines. It was
the language of upward social and economic mobility. By the 1920s, some Dutch felt that too
many locals were now able to speak their language as these people started clamouring for more
privileges and better positions, a possibility foreseen by Maxwell in Malaya in the same period
when he justified the teaching of useful skills to the Malay fishermen and farmers, as we saw in
the previous chapter.

With the end of the war and the defeat of the Japanese, Indonesia proclaimed
independence. The Constitution of 1945 enshrined Bahasa Indonesia (BI) as the national
language. The language of the state shall be the Indonesian language. The proponents of BI
were now faced with similar problems to those faced in Malaysia and the Philippines in trying to
develop BI into a modern language. As we saw earlier, both the Philippines and Malaysia
established national language academies to undertake this task. Indonesia proved no exception
and in 1942 — while still under Japanese occupation — the Indonesian Language Committee
was set up. Its task was to write a grammar of BI and to provide BI with an ‘adequate, uniform,
technical, and scientific terminology’ (Alisjahbana 1976: 69). Remarkably, the committee was
initially overseen by a Japanese, seconded from the Ministry of Education. According to a
member of the committee and the head of the Working Committee on the Indonesian Language,
which was set up in 1947, the Japanese soon lost interest in the proceedings, so the committee
was also able to take on the role of promoting BI as the language of Indonesian unity and
resistance to the Japanese. In the first fifteen years of the existence of the National Language
Institute (Lembaga Bahasa Nasional) which was established a little later and which is now
known as the Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa, 321,710 new terms were coined
(while the Malaysian equivalent, the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, coined 148,442 new terms).
Many of these are old Malay words pushed into new service, some are new words and some
are loan words and ‘all of them pushed aside many other old words and concepts of the Malay
language’ (Alisjahbana 1976: 26). The respective national language institutes also worked to
create a unified Malay and Indonesian orthography, a task which was completed in 1972.

Despite the work of these committees and language institutes, Alisjahbana remains
pessimistic, feeling that the task of BI in replacing Dutch as the language of modern culture has
not been successful. Modern culture is a culture of universities, banks, and factories, not one of
temples, churches, and mosques (1976: 116). In further arguing that there are simply not
enough modern books in BI and that the task of translating modern scientific and technological
texts into BI is insurmountable, he concludes that, if BI cannot modernize quickly enough, then
English must be used in secondary and tertiary education (1976: 118). The view that BI remains
inadequate as a language of modernization is shared by Montolalu and Suryadinata. BI and the
vernacular languages are not sufficient to catch up with the rapidly developing world. Foreign

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 39

languages, especially English, are the keys to the gate of the scientific and modern
technological world and other world civilizations. (2007: 43)

While attempting to make BI a modern language, the Indonesian Language Institute was
also occupied in making it the national lingua franca. It is worth remembering that, at the time of
independence, Malay was spoken as a mother tongue by less than 2% of the population. The
development of BI as the national lingua franca has been remarkably successful. For example,
in the ten years between 1980 and 1990 the percentage of people who reported using BI daily
rose from 49% to 68%. During the same period the percentage of those reporting that they did
not understand BI dropped from around 40% in 1980 to around 17% in 1990 (Montolalu and
Suryadinata 2007: 47). This figure will have decreased further, not least because the medium of
almost all education is Bahasa Indonesia.

Language Education Policy in Indonesia

The language education policy in Indonesia has focused on the teaching and learning of
the national language, BI. In the early years of the Sukarno regime, local languages were
promoted, as Sukarno needed the support of their speakers. This policy was to change after
Suharto’s coup of 1965 and his assumption of the presidency the following year. It will be
remembered that these were the years of the war in Vietnam and the Cultural Revolution in
China. There was the real concern of communism spreading throughout Southeast Asia —
indeed, as was reported in Chapter 1, this fear was one of the motivating factors for the
establishment of ASEAN itself in 1967. As was the case in Singapore, local Chinese —
especially the Chinese-educated — were viewed with suspicion. Suharto’s coup involved a
violent strike against the Indonesian Chinese. Not only were thousands of so-called communists
killed, but the Chinese language was banned (Bernard 2003: 278). Suharto made the promotion
of BI the priority and it became, and remains, the medium of instruction from primary through to
tertiary education. Certain local languages, however, can be used as the media of instruction for
the first three years of primary (Bernard 2003: 278).

In 1987, the government moved to allow more instruction in local languages in the hope
of ‘preserving the values and cultures of local ethnic groups’ (Bernard 2003: 279). However,
only five languages were allowed and these included the two major languages, Javanese and
Sundanese, along with Batak (with about six million speakers) and Balinese and Buginese
(each with about four million speakers). Textbooks are only available in Javanese, Sundanese,
and Balinese.

The Fifth Language Congress held in 1988 saw the publication of the first BI grammar.
But this was by no means the first grammar of Malay. The first glossary of Malay was compiled
as early as 1521. The author, Pigafetta, was a member of Magellan’s fleet and he worked on
the glossary while the fleet was anchored in Tidore (Alisjahbana 1976: 33). The Dutch produced
several Malay grammars and the first ‘non-Dutch’ grammar of Malay was written in 1884 by Lie
Kim Hok (Budianta 2007: 53).

With the fall of Suharto in 1998, the government has followed a policy of decentralization
and allowed more regional autonomy. This has helped revive some ethnic languages. Table 3.1
is slightly adapted from Montolalu and Suryadinata (2007: 48).

Vernacular language speakers in 1980, 1990, 2000

Language 1980 1990 2000

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 40

 Javanese 40.44% 38.08% 34.70%
Sundanese 15.06% 15.26% 13.86%
Madurese 4.71% 4.29% 3.78%
Batak 2.12% 1.97% 1.91%
Minangkabau 2.42% 2.23% 2.06%
Balinese 1.69% 1.64% 1.42%
Buginese 2.26% 2.04% 1.91%
Indonesian (BI) 11.93% 17.11% 34.00%
Others 17.48% 17.11% 4.57%

While the table shows that the percentages of the Indonesian population who speak the
seven ethnic languages listed have declined slightly, the figures appear remarkably stable over
a twenty-year period. However, these are relatively major languages, so this is perhaps not so
surprising. What is noteworthy is the increase from almost 12% to 34% of the population who
now say they are L1 speakers of BI, along with the very significant drop from 17.11% to less
than 5% of the population who now say they speak ‘other’ vernaculars. This would suggest that
BI is displacing the smaller languages with fewer speakers. Even where the local language
provides a strong sense of identity, as is the case of Achenese, the language of the small
province on the westernmost tip of Sumatra, where there have been regular calls for more
Achenese autonomy and independence, BI remains strong, as people recognize its national
importance (Bernard 2003: 285).

As indicated earlier, however, official support is available only for five of the major
languages. Without official support for the smaller languages, their future would seem to be
under threat, a phenomenon that can be seen throughout the region. In the absence of official
national support, ASEAN itself shows no sign of providing support for these local regional
languages. Help in preserving the language of the Cia-Cia tribe, who live on Buton Island in
southeast Sulawesi, has not come from an ASEAN organization, but from the South Korean
Hunminjeongeum Research Institute. According to the Research Institute’s website, the written
version of the language has been developed using the Korean phonetic script, Hangul, in what
is thought to be the first time Hangul has been used in this way outside Korea.

With regard to Bahasa Indonesia itself, however, it is clearly a great success story. The
current absence of the significant presence of a Western language has been helpful, as
Indonesian has been able to take on the position of the language of modernity and progress
(Simpson 2007b: 334), although, as Alisjahbana has indicated above, much work remains to be
done. English has yet to make significant inroads into the education system. Indonesia is the
only country in ASEAN which has not made English a compulsory part of the primary
curriculum. However, it is commonly taught in primary schools as an optional subject (Siti 2008).
Although it has been regarded as the first foreign language since the 1950s (Dardjowidjojo
2000), the number of people who can use it with any real fluency remains low. Interestingly, and
perhaps significantly, this does not seem to have hindered Indonesia’s progress towards
becoming a modern democratic state. The success of the recent elections and the smooth re-
election of President Yudhoyono, along with the increasing influence and role that Indonesia is
playing regionally and internationally, would suggest that English is perhaps not the sina qua
non of modernization many in the region believe it to be.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 41

The Case of Thailand
Along with Indonesia, Thailand was one of the founding members of ASEAN, but
uniquely among all the ASEAN member states, was never a colony. English was brought to
Thailand, not by a colonial power, therefore, but by the modernizing Thai king, Mongkut, or King
Rama IV (r. 1851–68). Keen to ensure that Thailand modernized itself before having
modernization thrust upon it (Luangthongkum 2007), he encouraged Western learning and the
learning of English. One episode from this period of Thai history has become extremely well-
known. King Mongkut appointed an English governess, Anna Leonowens, to teach English at
court. This was described in Margaret Landon’s novel, Anna and the King of Siam, later much
romanticized in the musical, The King and I. Thus, English was being taught at the Thai court
(although the country was still known as Siam at the time) through the invitation of the king
himself, not too long after British imperial expansion had seen its arrival in neighbouring
Malaysia.

Rama IV was not the first or only Thai king to have had significant influence on language
and language development, although it was Rama IV, who, while still a monk, discovered the
stele of Ramkhamhaeng, a king of the thirteenth century. On this stele is inscribed the history of
the period. If the stele is authentic, it shows a standardized alphabet as early as the thirteenth
century (Diller 1991). More recently, Vajiravudh (Rama VI) was the first member of the Thai
royal family to be educated in the West and he brought back a host of modernizing ideas, not all
of which were received with warmth by his people (Simpson and Thammasathien 2007). His
work on language has been significant, however, and the volume Principles of the Thai
Language stemmed from work done by Rama VI in the early 1900s. This book provided the
basis for later Thai language textbooks (Keyes 2003).

This linguistic standardization represented just one strand in Rama VI’s desire to
establish a national Thai identity. Rama VI died in 1925 and the person most closely associated
with promoting the goal of a national Thai identity was Phibun Songkhram, who became prime
minister in 1938. A year later, the name of the kingdom was formally changed from Siam to
Thailand and the government announced that all inhabitants of Thailand would be called Thais
and would be required to study Thai (Simpson and Thammasathien 2007). A series of decrees
to this effect were promulgated from 1939. Thais were required to become literate in Thai, which
became the sole medium of instruction. Thus, for example, Chinese schools now had to teach
through Thai (Keyes 2003). The Thai language has thus been a major tool in the creation of
national unity and identity.

As well as being the only country of the ASEAN group not to have undergone a period of
colonialization, Thailand is also distinctive in that its population is less diverse than the
populations of other ASEAN nations. This is not to say that it is completely homogeneous, but,
out of a population of over sixty million, the great majority of more than fifty million report
themselves as monolingual speakers of Thai (Luangthongkum 2007: 183). In addition, 99% of
the population are Thai nationals. Thai identity has thus been related to the concept of ekkalak,
or one characteristic. Until relatively recently, the Ekkalak Thai Office campaigned for national
unity and security on the basis of ‘one language and one culture in Thai society’
(Luangthongkum 2007: 181). A significant switch occurred in 1997, however, when the concept
of ekkalak was officially replaced by pahulak, or pluralism, but the shift appears to be more
rhetorical than real.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 42

 This homogeneity is only relative, of course. Some sixty other languages are spoken in
Thailand, but the total number of speakers of these languages at four million represents less
than 5% of the overall population. One would therefore predict that many of these languages will
come under threat, especially as the perceived need for all to learn English becomes
increasingly felt. As is the case in all countries under discussion here, the role of English as the
international lingua franca and language of modernity has resulted in an enormous demand for
it. Currently English is taught as a foreign language in all Thai government schools, starting from
primary. Yet the lack of qualified teachers and resources, especially in the countryside ‘has
caused a disaster as far as English language teaching and learning is concerned’
(Luanthongkum 2007: 189). As reported in Chapter 1, one response to the lack of English
teachers was for the Thai government to advertise in 2006 for thousands of native English
speakers to apply for jobs as English teachers in the Thai schools. Perhaps luckily for the
government, the salary offered was not very attractive and they received only eleven
applications.

English is spoken well by only the educated elite, especially those involved in business.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, with his Eton and Oxford education, is an exception among
politicians whose linguistic needs are to be able to speak in various dialects of Thai to show that
they and their constituents are as one. Not surprisingly, given the instrumental motivations that
dominate language learning, the other language which is in demand is Mandarin. Mandarin has
a long history as a school subject in Thailand, first being taught in the eighteenth century. As
was noted above, the teaching of Chinese was proscribed in the middle of the twentieth century,
but is now taught in increasing numbers in government high schools. As also noted earlier, the
Chinese government has opened several Confucius Institutes in Thailand.

The result is predictable. While Thai remains entrenched as the medium of instruction,
the major languages that are taught in schools are English and Mandarin. Local and regional
languages are neglected. Religious schools have, until recently, provided the only exception to
this, with Pali and Arabic being learned in Buddhist monasteries and private Muslim schools and
mosques respectively (Luangthongkum 2007: 191). However, in recent years, the study of ‘local
wisdom and local culture’ has become a part of the school curriculum, perhaps reflecting the
government’s confidence that Thai identity has now been firmly established (Simpson and
Thammasathien 2007: 406) and this has meant local languages can now be taught as subjects.
How secure this concept of national Thai identity is can be open to question. Not only has the
country been politically unstable for decades, seeing ten successful coups and seven aborted
ones since 1932, the current political situation suggests deep divisions among the Thai. Since
the 2006 coup which ousted the then prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, regional and class
division has become apparent. The south of the country is battling a separatist movement which
is being driven by powerful elements of the Muslim minority. The north and northeast feel
increasingly sidelined and disadvantaged as the centralization policies introduced by earlier
governments take effect.

The Case of Burma

Burma, or Myanmar as the current military regime re-named it in 1989, is mainland
Southeast Asia’s largest country (Callahan 2003) and is an ethnically and linguistically
diverse country. Accurate figures are hard to come by, but estimates of the number of
languages spoken vary from seventy to more than a hundred (Watkins 2007). The three main
language families represented are Tibeto-Burman, Tai-Kadai and Mon-Khmer.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 43

 After a series of Anglo-Burmese wars, the first of which ended in 1826, the British
finally annexed Burma as a whole in 1886. This was some fifteen years after the Treaty of
Pangkor saw Malaya under British control and more than a decade before the United States
colonized the Philippines. English was the language of government and administration during
the colonial period. Use of English was welcomed by many, including the local Indians and
Chinese. At the same time, Burmese was promoted and local people were permitted to study
in their respective languages. Christian missionaries developed orthographies for several
indigenous languages, including Kachin and Lahu (Kyaw 2007: 151).

Opposition to British rule and the official use of English developed in 1920s and 1930s
was orchestrated by a student organization entitled Do Bama Asiayone, or Our Myanmar
Association. This organization was dominated by the Burmese elite and they promoted the
notion of Burma as ‘our country, our language, and our literature’ (Callahan 2003). Its policies
included a universal system of Burmese education with Buddhism at the ‘core of cultural,
religions and personal identity’ (Watkins 2007: 271). The movement ultimately failed as it was
unable to develop ‘a strong, convincing and all-encompassing Myanmar’ identity (Kyaw 2007:
153) and was thus seen to be exclusive and anti-foreign. Indeed, British rule was popular
among many of the ethnic minorities precisely because they feared oppression by the
majority Burmans after independence. The current regime’s change of the name to Myanmar
signals the goal of the regime as being one of Myanmarization at the expense of the minority
groups, and as an attempt to distance the country from the colonial and pre-military era
(Watkins 2007).

The war years of 1942–1945 saw the Japanese occupation. Independence came in
1948 under the leadership of Burma’s first prime minister U Nu. Aung San (father of Aung
San Su Kyi), the founder of the Burmese independence movement and the one person seen
as able to unite the disparate Burmese tribes, had been assassinated by political opponents
in 1947. U Nu, a Buddhist scholar and literary figure, became his reluctant replacement when
the time came to appoint the prime minister. Aung San had earlier successfully persuaded the
initially resistant minority groups to be part of the new Union of Myanmar. They agreed on the
condition that they could choose to secede from the Union after ten years. This gives some
idea of the fragmented state in which Burma was at the time. Language was also a sticking
point, but the minority groups finally accepted Burmese as the official language, considering it
easier to learn than English. It was also made the medium of instruction in primary and
secondary schools, with English being taught as the major foreign language. Foreshadowing
reasons for the promotion of Malay in Malaysia, one reason for making Burmese the official
language was to weaken the power of Indian and Chinese merchants (Kyaw 2007). The
various states also received promises that they would be able to use their own languages. In
the event, the 1947 Constitution only granted this linguistic right to the Shan and the Kachin
States (Kyaw 2007).

U Nu remained prime minister until 1958, when he was deposed by General U Ne

Win. However, he stood up against the military and successfully lobbied for a further round of
elections, which he won handsomely, thus becoming prime minister for a second time in
1960. On this occasion, however, he only lasted two years before Ne Win toppled him in a
second coup. In a strange accident of history, U Nu was to be appointed prime minister once
more in 1990, when the National League of Democracy (NLD) won an overwhelming victory

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 44

in the polls, but he was promptly placed under house arrest by the military junta (as was the
leader of the NLD, Aung San Su Kyi). He died in 1995.

The years 1962–1988 were dominated by U Ne Win, the army and the ‘Burmese road
to socialism’ under the Burmese Socialist Programme Party (BSPP). During this period,
Burmese remained the official language and the role of English was significantly weakened,
as Burmese was made the medium of instruction in all university subjects. The government
attitude to minority languages was initially liberal, however, and the 1966 Education Act
required the teaching of minority languages up to Grade 2. Textbooks were published in
some of the minority languages, including Mon, Shan, Karen, Chin and Kachin (Kyaw 2007:
162). However, the current military regime provides no support for the maintenance or
development of any language other than Burmese itself (Watkins 2007: 286).

The strength of the army has increased exponentially over the years to a total of about
half a million today, the great majority of whom are Burmans and this has had a significant
linguistic consequence (Callahan 2003). The increase in the number of Burmans in the army
has seen the need for members of the minority groups to learn Burmese in order to negotiate
with the army. This, together with the policy which closed all minority language newspapers
and forced all publishing to be done in Burmese, has meant that the minority groups now all
have proficiency in Burmese. Indeed, the opposition National Council for the Union of
Myanmar now uses Burmese as its lingua franca. Ironically, therefore, Burmese has thus
become the language of rebellion as well as of control (Kyaw 2007: 171), especially as
the minority groups are now able to communicate with the monolingual Burman opposition.

It took the failure of one of U Ne Win’s daughters to be accepted into university in

England because of her poor English that led to a re-think of the Burmese-only language
policy and the revival of English. The author was one of the first of five academics to enter
Burma in 1984 in response to the Burmese governments’ request for English language
experts. Despite the government’s apparent wish to revive English, however, this has proved
to be a difficult task for a number of reasons.

✓ First, at least one generation of Burmese has not studied English.

✓ Second, the 1988 coup saw the schools and universities closed for several months
and the removal of all foreign teachers.
✓ Third, since 1988 the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) (later
renamed the State Peace and Development Council or SPDC) has also seen frequent
disruptions to schools and universities, including their regular closure for significant
periods of time. These disruptions have meant that education as a whole has suffered
under the SLORC regime.
✓ Fourth, many educated Burmese who speak English have left the country, some at
considerable personal risk. There are thus very few qualified and proficient English
teachers left in the country.
✓ Finally, resources and materials are poor. The role of English in Burma is thus
restricted to the elite and to a small number of domains, mostly involving the few
NGOs and aid programmes which remain. Instead, Burmese has become the
language of the regime and the resistance and provides an example of a ‘foreign’

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 45

 language providing an effective language of resistance even when it is also the
language ‘of a political and military opponent’ (Watkins 2007: 284).

The Case of Laos and Cambodia

The next three ASEAN countries to be considered, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam,
experienced significantly different colonial histories from those countries considered above
and in Chapter 2. Most notably, in the context of language education and language education
policy, the colonial language each inherited was French. Each country also had a period of
Soviet dominance when Russian was the major common language. Common to all three
countries has been the choice each has had to make concerning the relative position of
French and English within the school curriculum. All three have, to a greater or lesser extent,
chosen English as their country’s major foreign language.

Laos joined ASEAN in 1997, the same year as Myanmar. It had previously been part
of the French Protectorate when the French colonized the Kingdom of Luang Prabang as
Laos. Laos officially gained independence in 1948, although this was only fully achieved in
1954 with the French defeat at the hands of the Vietnamese in Dien Bien Phu in 1954 (Keyes
2003). Laos has a population of six million, but, in contrast to Thailand, Laos is not as united
by language. An attempt to convince the population that they all derive from the same ethnic
group resulted in the division of the country into three so-called ‘Lao’ areas, namely Lowland
Lao, Midland Lao and Upland Lao. But, as Watkins (2007: 409) points out, these three groups
are linguistically quite separate. The Lowland Lao, who make up about 65% of the
population, are speakers of Tai. The Midland Lao, who comprise about 25% of the
population speak Mon-Khmer languages and the remaining 10% of Upland Lao are speakers
of TibetoBurman languages. These languages are not mutually intelligible and many dialects
of them can themselves be subdivided into several smaller mutually unintelligible groups.

Although the French developed a standard Lao based on spoken Lao, it did not really
become the national language until the communists, the Pathet Lao, took power in 1975
(Keyes 2003: 199). Lao was also viewed with suspicion by those who did not support the
Pathet Lao. It is worth noting that when the Pathet Lao took power in 1975, as many as 10 %
of the population fled the country. A large number of the Lao ethnic group remain in Thailand
and now see themselves as Thai. While Lao acts as a lingua franca within Laos (Keyes
2003), it does not act as a language of unity, as Thai does in Thailand and Bahasa Indonesia
does in Indonesia. Nor is it a language of cultural identity, as Malay is, for example, for ethnic
Malays. Indeed, certain minority groups, including the Hmong, refuse to learn Lao.

In recent years, English has become the first foreign language and is now taught in
schools. The most recent ministry pronouncement rules that English will be introduced from
Primary 3 (Phommanimith 2008), despite the desperate shortage of qualified teachers and
suitable materials. This, along with the overall shortage of resources, means that only a small
minority of the elite have proficiency in English. This in turn has meant, among other things,
that those who have proficiency in English, rather than those with the relevant expertise, are
selected to represent Laos at ASEAN meetings.

Cambodia

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 46

 Cambodia was the last of the current member countries to join ASEAN, becoming a
member in 1999. While both Vietnam and Laos had undergone extremely harsh times during
the Vietnam War, few countries can have suffered at the hands of foreign incursion and local
despotism as much as Cambodia has since independence in 1953. The political situation has
been fluid since independence, to say the least, and a brief account of this is necessary in
order to contextualize the current position of English in Cambodia.

The first years after independence were, in fact, relatively stable years when
Cambodia operated as a monarchy, with Norodom Sihanouk as king (Clayton 2006).
Sihanouk owed his position to the French who, believing he would agree to their policies,
elevated the young prince to the monarchy, hoping that by so doing they would be able to
counter the influence of pro-independence factions. In the event, in 1953, at a time when
French control in the region was almost at its end, Sihanouk dissolved parliament, announced
martial law and declared independence (Neau 2003). In 1960, he also renounced the throne
in order to become head of state, a position of real political power.

The relative calm was disturbed by the Vietnam War. The Americans had been
providing aid and support to Cambodia. In 1963, Sihanouk sided with the North Vietnamese
and allowed them to enter Cambodia. This led to the American bombing of the country, and
Sihanouk being deposed in 1970 in favour of the more pro-Western Lon Nol, who gained
initial popularity for his anti-Vietnamese stance. Through a combination of repatriation and
massacres, he halved the Vietnamese population in Cambodia (Heder 2007). Once people
sickened of his ‘virulent ethnonationalism’ (Heder 2007: 300), Lon Nol’s popularity quickly
waned and this period saw the rise of the Cambodian Communist Party, the Khmer Rouge,
culminating in their succession to power under the leadership of Pol Pot in 1975. Four years
of brutal repression and subjugation of their own people by the Khmer Rouge followed. As
many as a million fellow Cambodians may have been put to death by the Khmer Rouge. Pol
Pot’s reign was ended by the Vietnamese invasion of 1979 and the installation of a
Vietnamese-backed government in Cambodia, which lasted for ten years (Clayton 2006).

Linguistically, Cambodia is relatively homogeneous. The great majority of the

population (more than 90%) are Khmer. Khmer is indisputably the national language and
successive governments of all political hues have aggressively promoted the policy of
Khmerization (Heder 2007). When the French withdrew in 1953, Cambodia re-introduced
Khmer into the school curriculum and Khmer gradually replaced French as the medium of
instruction in primary and secondary schools (Clayton 2006).

French remained the first foreign language until the years of the Pol Pot tyranny,
when no foreign languages were taught. Indeed, nothing was. It has been estimated that,
during the Khmer Rouge years, 90% of school buildings were destroyed and 75% of
teachers, academics, and administrators were murdered (Neau 2003).

The ten-year rule of the Vietnamese-backed regime saw Vietnamese and Russian
as the two foreign languages. These were replaced by French and English in 1989. The
arrival of United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) and Cambodia’s
subsequent and continuing move to rejoin the international community including their
membership of ASEAN, has meant that French is being relentlessly squeezed out in favour of
English. Clayton (2006: 1–2) relates a telling account of a 1993 student demonstration at the

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 47

Institut de Technologie du Cambodge (renamed from the ‘Kampuchea-Soviet Friendship
Higher Technical Institute’ as it had been known during the Soviet period). The dispute arose
over the Institute’s medium of instruction. As aid for the Institute was being provided by the
French francophone agency, AUPELF, not surprisingly, AUPELF insisted that the medium of
instruction be French. This was not what the students wanted. ‘Rather, they wanted to study
in English’ (Clayton 2006: 1). In the end, a compromise was reached; French would be the
medium of instruction but special classes in English as a foreign language would also be
provided.

In the years since this dispute, English has increasingly gained ground. When the
Royal University of Phnom Penh allowed students to select which foreign language they
wanted to study, over 80% chose English (Clayton 2006). A ministry official interviewed by
Clayton argued that ‘teaching French instead of English is in fact an indirect punishment for
students because it so clearly limits their opportunities’ (2006: 222). In a thoughtful analysis,
Clayton suggests that Cambodia represents a good example of where the role of English is
not simply post-imperial but ‘post-Anglophone’ (2006: 246). Within Cambodia itself, English is
essential for most jobs with foreign agencies. NGOs and aid organizations from all over the
world currently operate in Cambodia and all require English. Only a minority of these
agencies are Anglophone. Even French agencies require their employees to speak English.
Membership of ASEAN is also a significant factor in the promotion of English. Clayton (2006:
230–1) quotes several government officials emphasizing this:

“If we don’t know English, how can we participate? We need to know English so that
we can defend our interests. You know, ASEAN is not a kissy-kissy brotherhood. The
countries are fiercely competitive, and a strong knowledge of English will help us protect
Cambodian interests.”

This post-Anglophone role of English is also understood by other ministry officials

interviewed by Clayton. The following is a typical quote: ‘You know, when we use English, we
don’t think about the United States or England. We only think about the need to communicate’
(2006: 233). This attitude was also captured by a Cambodian English teacher who said that:
“In the future I hope that more and more Cambodians will speak English because we
understand about the advantages of English. We cannot live without English because we
have to (make) contact (with) the world. We have to do business with the world. We have to
develop our country with the world …”

This is not to say that the increase in the use of English has not led to concerns.
Following the example of many other countries of ASEAN, Cambodia established a National
Language Institute in 2000. Its major task is to strengthen and modernize Khmer. While
Khmer remains the medium of instruction in the universities, it is recognized that Khmer lacks
technical vocabulary in many domains. The rector of the institute is thus concerned that
Khmer will be displaced by English in higher education (Clayton 2006). Within the school
system, Khmer is the medium of instruction. English or French — but it is mainly English — is
taught from Primary 5 for two to five hours per week ‘according to the school availability of
local resources’ (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport 2004: 10). The 2000 Country Report
on English language teaching identified many problems:

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 48

 ✓ all of which are familiar and include the low level of teachers’ salaries (who therefore
moonlight on a regular basis);
✓ the poor English proficiency of many English teachers;
✓ lack of resources;
✓ and the lack of adequate teacher training (Neau 2003).
✓ Overall school drop-out rates are also a concern. While 80%–90% of all children enter
primary, only 20% go on to secondary, and only 10% of the original Primary 1 cohort
will graduate from secondary school (Heder 2007: 304). Retention rates are, however,
said to be gradually improving.

Until recently, indigenous groups were disadvantaged in the education system, as Khmer
was the sole medium of instruction. This meant that most children of minority groups either
did not attend school or dropped out early (Clayton 2006, Thomas 2002). In 2002, however,
some experimental schools were established in which indigenous students can study in the
vernacular before gradually switching to Khmer medium of instruction (Thomas 2002).
Allowing students to study in their vernaculars is crucial in attracting them to school in the first
place, and then in keeping them there, a point which will be emphasized again in Part III.
In a repeat of what is happening throughout ASEAN, the language other than English
which is being increasingly studied in Cambodia is Chinese. Chinese has an interesting
recent history in the country, as it was banned in 1970 by the Lon Nol government, for the
same reasons that it was banned in many other countries of the region: it was the language of
communism. The ban was lifted in 1992, since when the number of Chinese primary,
secondary, and private schools has mushroomed. Most students entering the Chinese
primary schools are Chinese Cambodians who speak Khmer. The curriculum also includes
English as a subject (Clayton 2006). One significant difference between the modern Chinese
schools and those which were in operation before the 1970 ban, is that the medium of
instruction is now Mandarin, while, in the past, Chinese dialects had been the media of
instruction (Clayton 2006).

In summary, English has become Cambodia’s first foreign language, with Chinese also in
demand. The role and influence of French has declined dramatically. Khmer itself is under no
threat, although its domain use in higher education is likely to become increasingly
challenged. Some indigenous languages are acting as media of instruction in experimental
bilingual schools. In general, however, the linguistic repertoire of Cambodians will be Khmer,
with English and then Mandarin Chinese as learned languages.
The Case of Vietnam

While Cambodia has suffered the harshest conditions in recent years, Vietnam’s long
history has also been punctuated by war and hardship. It was ruled by China for a thousand
years up to the tenth century before becoming independent (for the first time) in 1938 (Wright
2002). The Vietnamese inherited Chinese and the Chinese script (Chu Nho), but in the
thirteenth century developed a new script, Chu Nom, which rendered Vietnamese in Chinese
characters.

The country was ‘torn by strife’ during the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries (Wright
2002: 226). Contact with the West started at this time, with the Portuguese arriving in 1515,
bringing in their wake a host of missionaries. As has so often been the case, the missionaries
proved to be catalysts and agents of linguistic change. In the seventeenth century, Alexandre

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 49

de Rhodes developed an alphabetic script for the language which was called Quoc Ngu
(national language) (Wright 2002: 227). At the time, however, its use was restricted to
missionary schools and it was not until the French gained control of the country in 1862 that
Quoc Ngu slowly started to become more widely used. The first schools to use Quoc Ngu as
a medium of instruction were established in 1864 (Lo Bianco 2001).

On gaining power in Vietnam, the French divided the country into three parts:

❖ the southern part they called Cochinchina,

❖ the central part was called Annam and
❖ the northern part Tonkin.

In 1884, the Indo-Chinese Union was established, which included Cambodia. The
strength and role of the various languages and scripts differed according to geographical
location. Quoc Ngu became more popular in the south, but Chinese remained important in
the north. The Chu Nom script operated only in restricted domains throughout. In 1918,
Chinese characters and Chu Nom were both formally abolished, with documents written in
only French and Quoc Ngu.
The French aim was assimilation, and they saw Quoc Ngu as an aid to this, not least
because the adoption of Quoc Ngu would weaken Vietnam’s ties to China (Thaveeporn
2003). Eventually it prevailed over Chinese and Chu Nom. Quoc Ngu was easier to learn than
Chinese, became associated with modernization, and, crucially and ironically, with
Vietnamese liberation and independence from the French. All this hastened its success.
Today, it is used throughout all administration and education.

French colonial rule was marked by ‘active defiance, revolt and resistance’ (Wright
2002: 232). At the end of the Second World War and the defeat of the Japanese, Ho Chi
Minh took control of the north and declared Vietnam independent. Vietnamese and the
Quoc Ngu script became symbols of unity and independence (Thaveeporn 2003) and
Vietnamese became the medium of instruction across all levels of education. Ho Chi Minh’s
declaration of independence was not, however, accepted by the French who entered a long
campaign to try and regain control of the entire country. This ended in their defeat in 1954 at
the decisive battle of Diem Bien Phu.
The Geneva Conference (1954–1956) divided Vietnam into north and south, a
division only erased in 1975 with the American defeat in the Vietnam War. The Americans
had, of course, brought English to Vietnam, especially the south. With the American defeat,
those who had learned English ‘found it expedient to forget it quickly’ (Wright 2002: 235). Ho
Chi Minh and the north were, not surprisingly, extremely antagonistic to American culture and
influence (and thus English) and French. The languages of the enemy were not to be
promoted. This makes the contrast with the language policies of today even more striking.

Today, Vietnam has a population of around seventy-five million, of whom the great
majority are Vietnamese, comprising nearly 90% of the population. There are fifty-four other
ethnic groups (Thaveeporn 2003: 212). As we have seen, after independence there was a
move to establish Vietnamese and Quoc Ngu as the sole national language and script
respectively, and Vietnamese was made the medium of instruction. At the same time,
however, Ho Chi Minh recognized how much he depended on other ethnic groups for
support, so, in the north at least, minority languages were promoted.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 50

 Vietnamese comprises a range of dialects. One of the major tasks of the Institute of
Linguistics, which was established in 1968, is to standardize the language and develop a
Vietnamese lexicon. The goal is for the lexicon to be national, popular, and scientific. That is
to say, the lexicon should avoid the adoption of imports wherever possible and the terms
adopted should be easily understood (Le and O’Harrow 2007: 431). As a result, ‘[t]he
complex Confucian/Chinese and Catholic styles of writing gradually disappeared’
(Thaveeporn 2003: 227). At the same time, the use of Quoc Ngu script by Vietnamese
authors greatly added to its prestige and aided its popularization (Le Minh-Hang and
O’Harrow 2007).

In the 1960s, the minority languages that had scripts were taught in primary schools
and this was the policy after re-unification in 1975. In 1980, the government decreed that
Vietnamese would be the lingua franca for all ethnic groups. The government also endorsed
bilingualism and asked for more proficiency in Vietnamese and ethnic languages. Studies to
support the romanization of ethnic languages were supported. The Education Law of 1991
states that ethnic minorities have the right to use their own languages in primary schools as
auxiliary media of instruction alongside Vietnamese. Twenty-six of the fifty-four ethnic
languages now have a writing system (Thaveeporn 2003: 237).

Despite these forward-looking government policies, however, by the early 1990s only
13 out of the 201 provinces were teaching the minority scripts. One major reason for this was
that the policy was to use the scripts of the minority languages to teach the children Quok
Ngu rather than their own language. Thaveeporn (2003: 231) reports that this policy had three
negative results:

• Many ethnic minority children simply stopped going to school. School

attendance rates among certain ethnic minorities had never been high, but
Thaveeporn reports that less than 7% of Yao and Hmong children attend
school;
• The number of children who dropped out of school has increased; and
• The number of children having to repeat classes has increased.

Using literacy in the L1 with the express purpose of teaching literacy in Vietnamese is
unlikely to be successful. If efforts are not made to promote minority languages, preservation
will only slow the degradation of dying languages (Diffloth 1994: 52–53). In this context it is
important to consider the Vietnamese government’s motivation behind the initial promotion of
ethnic languages and scripts. This was not really to maintain and preserve the minority
languages. Ho Chi Minh had been heavily influenced by Stalin’s policy towards minorities,
which was first to accommodate them, but with the ultimate intention of assimilation. In other
words, the support provided to local languages was designed only to accommodate them in
the first instance so that they could be assimilated into mainstream Vietnamese culture (Le
and O’Harrow 2007: 436). A second reason for the declining interest in local languages is that
all understand the importance of Vietnamese. Many parents would rather prefer their children
learn Vietnamese than their mother tongues. A third reason is the increasing demand for
English and languages which are seen to provide opportunities for socio-economic benefit.
Some ten years after unification, the Vietnamese government decided to open the country to
the world and to participate in globalization. Thus, the Doi Moi policy was introduced and this
unleashed the demand for English.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 51

 The foreign language curriculum is now dominated by English with over 90% of
children learning it (Baker and Giacchino-Baker 2003). As discussed in the first module,
Vietnamese had unsuccessfully requested that French be adopted as a working language for
ASEAN in preparation for its joining the organization in 1994. The role of English as ASEAN’s
only working language is one obvious factor in increasing the demand for English. However,
there is also increasing demand for both Putonghua (Mandarin) and French. The AUPELF
has the ambitious goal of 5% of Vietnamese secondary school students graduating through a
French-Vietnamese bilingual system by 2010 (Wright 2002), and the agency now has more
Vietnamese students studying French than at any time during the colonial period.

The Vietnamese school curriculum provides a good example of how pressures to

learn the national language along with regional and international lingua francas mean that
local languages are in danger of dying out. Typically, Vietnamese children will learn through
Vietnamese as a medium of instruction. English is a compulsory subject from Grade 3 in
primary school and will be the first ‘other’ language learned. Either Putonghua or French will
be the next most popular languages. Given that these languages are not cognate and, while
Vietnamese now has an alphabetic script, it is different from the English/French scripts, and
given that Putonghua has a logographic script, the linguistic demands placed on the L1
Vietnamese child are challenging, to say the least. If the child comes from one of the ethnic
minorities, the challenge is even greater. The chances of ethnic children retaining their mother
tongues once they enter school are remote. The chances of them finding the linguistic
demands of learning in, what is for them, a foreign language may well lead to many dropping
out of school early. This is a scenario that can be painted for almost all the countries under
discussion here, The table below, adapted from Ho and Wong (2006: 385), summarizes the
current place of English and the national language in the education systems of the member
states.

Country Medium of First Foreign Language (Year of

Instructions Introduction)
Brunei Malay and English English (Primary 1, from Primary 4 as
MoI)
Burma Burmese English (Primary 1)
Cambodia Khmer English (Primary 5) (French also offered)
Indonesia BI English (Secondary 1)
Laos Lao English (Secondary 3)
Malaysia Malay and English English (from Primary 1 as MoI)
Philippines Filipino and English English (from Primary 1 as MoI)
Singapore English Malay/Mandarin/Tamil (Primary 1)
Thailand Thai English (Primary 1)
Vietnam Vietnamese English (Primary 3 in selected schools)
Conclusion

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 52

 In this module, the role and development of local languages and the place of English
in six member states of ASEAN has been described. These are all countries in which English
has played few institutional roles, as they were either colonized by non-Anglophone countries
or, as in the case of Thailand, were never colonized at all. Burma has been included in the
chapter because Burmese replaced English as the language of administration with U Ne
Win’s takeover of the country in 1962.

As English is now playing an increasingly prominent role in all these countries — and
not least because English is the sole working language of ASEAN — we can now query their
classification as ‘expanding circle’ countries. In all but Burma and, possibly Laos, English is
playing an increasingly important role, especially as a language of communication between
them. It is, however, perhaps instructive to note that English does not appear to be a sine
qua non of either economic or political development. While it is true that countries such as
Burma and Laos are stagnating, this has more to do with their repressive political systems
than with their lack of proficiency in English. Two countries which have been successful are
Vietnam and Indonesia. Both countries have strong national languages which are spoken or
understood by the great majority of the population. In Vietnam’s case, this is the language of
the great majority of the Vietnamese people. In Indonesia’s case, in contrast, Bahasa
Indonesia was originally a language spoken by a small minority group and has only relatively
recently developed into the national lingua franca. While English is becoming more widely
used in Vietnam, it is still only spoken by a small minority of the population. This is also true of
Indonesia. It would appear, then, that economic progress and political development can be
successfully achieved without mass recourse to English.

OFFLINE ACTIVITY

Instruction: Complete the table below by browsing the net. Identify the English Proficiency
Index of the ten members of the ASEAN region and identify its ranking in Asia and the world.
On the last column, identify the implications of their English proficiency level considering their
linguistic diversity and the entrance of English in the educational system. (You may modify the
table formatting)

ASEAN English Asian World Implication

Nation Proficiency Ranking Ranking
Index
Brunei
Burma
Cambodia
Indonesia
Laos
Malaysia
Philippines
Singapore

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 53

Thailand
Vietnam

V. DISCUSSION BOARD
Instruction: Answer the following questions concisely based on your understanding of the
module. Write your answer on a separate sheet of paper.

1. What is language accessibility and language loss?

2. What are the issues and challenges in language accessibility and language loss (in the
ASEAN region) and how it can be resolved?
• Brunei
• Burma
• Cambodia
• Indonesia
• Laos
• Malaysia
• Philippines
• Singapore
• Thailand
• Vietnam

VI. POST-COMPETENCY CHECKLIST

Post-Test (Formative Assessment)

QUIZ 3
Direction: Read the questions and options carefully, then choose the letter of the CORRECT
answer.

1. All these countries have embraced English as a major foreign language

EXCEPT_____.
A. Burma C. Laos
B. Cambodia D. Vietnam
2. Although Javanese has 75 million speakers or almost 40% of total population in
Indonesia, it was not adopted as the national language. Why so?
A. Because it was the language with most speakers which makes it discriminatory
of minority languages
B. Because Javanese is so complex that learning it entails learning variety of
languages
C. Because it is unsuitable to be the national language
D. Because Indonesians want a democratic language which was not spoken by
powerful group
3. What might happen to the other ethnic languages in Indonesia (in the ASEAN bloc, as
a whole) if five languages only were allowed to be taught in schools?

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 54

 A. Local cultures and ethnic values will be diminished
B. A genocide might occur
C. Language loss is of high possibility
D. All of the above
4. It is the only country in ASEAN region which was not colonized?
A. The Philippines C. Thailand
B. Singapore D. Vietnam
5. What could be the cause/s of the disaster in English language teaching and learning in
Thailand?
A. Lack of resources C. Either A or B
B. Lack of qualified English teachers D. Neither A nor B
6. Why did the Do Bama Asiayone movement fail in their plight?
A. Because their aim is not pluralistic
B. Because the French popularity is powerful enough to threathen the ethnic
minorities
C. Because they are unable to develop a strong, convincing, and all-
encompassing Myanmar identity.
D. All of the above
7. Although Lao is considered as the lingua franca in Laos, many are still reluctant in
learning it for a number of reasons such as ________.
A. Because Lao is not a language of culture C. Both A and B
B. Because Lao is not a language of unity D. Either A or B
8. Which among the following country was the last to join the ASEAN bloc?
A. Laos C. Vietnam
B. Cambodia D. Burma
9. Which among the following problems are common to some ASEAN nation in terms of
English language teaching?
A. Inadequate resources
B. Poor English proficiency of many English teachers
C. Lack of adequate teacher training
D. All of the above
10. What is the goal behind the establishment of Vietnamese Institute of Linguistics?
A. To standardize the language and develop a national, popular, and scientific
Vietnamese lexicon
B. To write a grammar of Vietnamese language with adequate, uniform, technical,
and scientific terminologies
C. To establish a Vietnamese identity through linguistic standardization
D. All of the above

ASSESSMENT 1
[Week 6]

General Instruction: Read the article titled “Teaching English in ASEAN: The Voices of
English Teachers in ASEAN Nations” by Peter Waterworth (2015) which examined the roles

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 55

of English language in the ASEAN region as well the perspective of L2 teachers in teaching
English. It also explored the policy and challenges in the implementation of English in the
curriculum. After reading the article, comprehensively answer the following questions:

1. As future teachers, what is your stand in the use of English as medium of instructions
(MOI) in our educational system? State the legal basis of using English as MOI. (5pts)
2. Although the ASEAN region is linguistically diverse, they choose English as the only
working language with neither objections nor debates (Muttaqin, 2014). Do you think
they choose English because of its linguistic advantage and for power advantage? Why
or why not? (5pts)
3. Explain Kachru’s (1986) categories of countries in relation to English language. (5pts)
4. Argue for or against Floris (2013) conclusion that “there are far more L2 speakers in the
world than L1 speakers of English. Show statistics if possible. (5pts)
5. Explain the role of L1 (mother tongue) in learning L2. State language theory/ies that will
strengthen your answer. (10 pts)
6. What is Research as an ASEAN Language (REAL)? What is/are its purport/s? (5pts)
7. As future teachers, what is/are your motive/s in advancing the competence and
confidence of your students in speaking English? How important is the ability of
speaking English nowadays? (10pts)
8. Argue for or against the notion that the best teachers of English are native speakers of it.
State a language theory/ies that will support your answer. (10pts)
9. Cite at least 3 challenges in teaching English in ASEAN as stated in the article,
specifically in the Philippine context. (5pts)
10. Explain the roles of English language in the ASEAN region as stated in the article. (10
pts)

Note: The article will be uploaded in the VLP and in the Google Classroom. As you answer the
questions you will certainly get and cite ideas from other sources (e.g., books, journal article,
search engines) and as future teachers you must know the value of intellectual property, hence
you must cite your sources properly whether in-text or in reference citation. Please follow 7th
edition of APA format. You may browse this site to guide you in proper referencing:
[Link]
a_change s_7th_edition.html. Moreover, you are responsible in submitting original work/output,
thus you must submit your paper to an online plagiarism checker with accurate percentage and
a report of it together with your work. The allowable percent for direct quoting from your sources
is 10% only. BEST OF LUCK!

MODULE 4
Chapter 2 Linguistic Features of English as a Lingua Franca
in Asia
(Pronunciation, Intelligibility and Lexis)
[Week 7, 8 & 9]

I. INTRODUCTION

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 56

 This module describes a selection of the phonological and lexical features of ASEAN
speakers of English. It will focus on describing the selection of phonological features identified in
ASEAN English lingua franca speech which appear to be shared by speakers from different
countries, despite the differences in the speakers’ L1s and the local contact languages.
Relevant reference will be made to the phonological features of specific varieties. After
describing and illustrating a selection of shared features, the question of mutual and
international intelligibility of ASEAN English as a lingua franca will be considered.

At the end of this module, you are expected to analyze the different phonological and
lexical features of ASEAN speakers of English; identify the distinctive features of Philippine
English; and differentiate the English varieties of those countries who were colonized from
those who were not.

II. PRE-COMPETENCY CHECKLIST

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
Direction: Define the following terms.

1. Pronunciation
2. Intelligibility
3. Lexis

III. LEARNING RESOURCES

Following are the resources used in the discussion of this module. For further
understanding of the topic, please access the supplementary material/s provided here.

LR1 E-book (in PDF form)

[1]

LR2 Lecture-Video Presentation

IV. EXPLORE
MODULE 4
LESSON DISCUSSION

Linguistic Features of English as a Lingua Franca in Asia

Pronunciation and intelligibility

➢ Consonants
As is common with many new varieties of English, including native speaker varieties
(Fabricius 2002), speakers of ASEAN English as Lingua Franca (ELF) regularly do not
produce word-final consonant clusters. This is not altogether surprising, as consonant clusters
are difficult to pronounce, especially if they do not exist in the speaker’s L1. Examples from
the data include the single consonant sounds in final position of words. Thus, ‘firs’, ‘Eas’, ‘wol’
(world), and ‘expec’ are typical examples from the ELF conversations and ‘mon’ (months),

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 57

‘produc’ (product), and ‘draf’ (draft) from the SEAMEO meeting. Mesthrie and Bhatt (2008:
128) report three ways in which speakers reduce word-initial consonant clusters, namely:

• drop one of the consonants;

• insert an epenthetic vowel; and
• when the initial consonant is an [s] sound, add a vowel in initial position so that, for
example ‘start’ becomes [is-stat].

The second two options are more likely to be found in the speech of basilectal
speakers. Only the first option — the dropping of one of the consonant sounds as illustrated
above — is found in the ASEAN ELF. It should also be stressed, however, that several
speakers do sound consonant clusters. For example, a Thai speaker at the SEAMEO meeting
produced /tapt/ (tapped) and /linkt/ (linked).

Another common phonological feature of ASEAN ELF is the replacement of voiceless

and voiced TH with a plosive. This is common in the data where dental fricatives are regularly
realized as [t]. Examples illustrating the use of [t] for TH in the speech of ASEAN ELF
speakers are:

• Speaker from Singapore: …and I think [tiŋk] er anyway you all may er join in the…
celebration
• Speaker from Laos: new many thing [tiŋ] from Singapore
• Speaker from Vietnam: I don’t have to teach theories [tiriz]
• Speaker from the Philippines: we have er seven [taƱzәn] one hundred islands in the
Philippines
• Speaker from Malaysia: and English is like a third [tȜ: d] language, we have they ss-
have to study three [tri] languages
• Speaker from Myanmar: three [tri] times.
(Deterding and Kirkpatrick 2006)’

Speakers of many varieties, including so-called native speaker varieties such as Irish
and New York English use some form of dental sound where standard RP uses a fricative
(Wells 1982: 429, 515). Indeed, varieties which use /θ/ and /ꝺ/ are a minority and thus these
sounds are excluded from Jenkins’ lingua franca core. It is perhaps not surprising therefore to
note that the data set above indicates that speakers from Singapore, Laos, Vietnam, the
Philippines, Malaysia and Burma do this. This is, of course, not to say that they always realize
word-initial TH with a dental, but that this occurs. Hong Kong provides an interesting
exception, as speakers of Hong Kong English commonly use [f] or [v] in this position (Bolton
and Kwok 1990; Hung 2000). This is supported by research which analyzed the speech of
fifteen English majors from a Hong Kong tertiary institution who were recorded during
interviews. All were first language speakers of Cantonese. The tables below show the report
of the pronunciations of voiceless TH in initial, medial, and final positions.

Pronunciation of voiceless TH in initial position (Hong Kong speakers)

Word Pronunciation of /th/
[θ] [f] [t]
think 18 7

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 58

 three 2 5 1
theme(s) 4 1
thing 2
thirteen 1
thank 1
TOTAL 27 14 1

Pronunciation of voiceless TH in medial position (Hong Kong speakers)

Word Pronunciation of /th/
[θ] [f] [t] zero
something 4 2 2
everything 1
methods 1
TOTAL 6 0 2 2

Pronunciation of voiceless TH in final position (Hong Kong speakers)

Word Pronunciation of /th/
[θ] [f] [t] zero
youth 4
both 2
fourth 1
month 1
months 1
TOTAL 2 6 0 1

This tendency to use [f] for voiceless TH is nicely exemplified in an advertising slogan
used by a popular chain of tea houses in Hong Kong. On the walls in these tea houses is the
cyber-speak invitation ‘RU34T’ or ‘Are you free for tea?’, where the pronunciation of ‘3’ is
considered a homophone of ‘free’.

Another shared feature of most Southeast Asian varieties of English — and this is also
true of many other varieties of English — is that vowel length is not distinctive (Mesthrie and
Bhatt 2008). For example, the Englishes of Brunei, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the Philippines and
Singapore merge long and short vowels (Deterding 2007; Gonzalez 1996b). In other words,
the distinction between minimal pairs such as ‘ship and sheep’, ‘baht and but’, ‘caught and
cot’ and ‘pool and pull’ is not realized in these varieties of English.

This lack of a distinction between long and short vowels is common among many
Asian varieties of English and in ASEAN ELF. This tendency to shorten sounds extends to
the monophthongization of certain diphthongs. For example, Deterding and Kirkpatrick (2006)
report the monophthongal realization of the FACE and GOAT vowels in ASEAN ELF. This
has also been recorded for Malaysian English (Baskaran, 2004), Vietnamese (Honey, 1987)
and Thai (Smyth, 1987). The ASEAN ELF examples are:

Speaker from the Philippines: you learn the language in a natural way (weː)

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 59

 Speaker from Indonesia: we can go to another place (pleːs)
Speaker from Brunei: it’s not the type of food you usually take (teːk) yeah
Speaker from Thailand: a three-day holiday (hɒlide) right
Speaker from Singapore: I better not say (seː)
Speaker from Myanmar: they (ꝺe) can go (goː) to the monestary

The tendency to reduce vowel length is also evident in making triphthongs bisyllabic.
This can be seen in RP (received pronunciation) also where the vowels in words like ‘tyre’
and ‘tower’ may become homophones and pronounced [a: ә] (Cruttenden 2001), rather than
as triphthongs as in [taꞮә] and [taƱә]. In the ASEAN data, these would be pronounced with a
[w] between the syllables, as in these examples of the pronunciation of ‘our’ and ‘hour’.

Myanmar: in our [aƱwә] time we have to memorize some er most of the vocabulary in
our [aƱwә] mind
Cambodia: we have to develop our [aƱwә] country with the world
Brunei: for our [aƱwә] high school we get good results
Indonesia: an hour [aƱwә] in the airport
Cambodia: two hours [aƱwәs]

Lack of aspiration on initial plosives is also found, although there is no suggestion

that this occurs with all initial plosives. A further distinctive feature which is shared by many of
these speakers is the lack of reduced vowels. The lack of reduced vowels is reported in
many new varieties of English (Deterding, 2010) and is almost certainly caused by contact-
induced change from influence of the many Asian and African languages which show a
tendency towards syllable-timing. As Mesthrie and Bhatt (2008) point out, ‘the number of new
English varieties which exhibit tendencies towards syllable timing is impressive’.

Speakers of stress-timed languages — and many native speaker varieties of English

are stress-timed — will naturally use unstressed vowels in normal speech. This is why the
schwa is so common. Speakers of syllable-timed languages, on the other hand, tend to give
equal prominence to each syllable and this leads to a lack of reduced vowels. As will be
further discussed below, this tendency towards syllable timing may constitute an aid to
international intelligibility for these new varieties of English, with clear implications for English
language teaching.

Linked to this and possibly also to the linguistic typology of many Asian languages
allowing null subjects and thus being classified as pro-drop (Li and Thomson 1976; Kirkpatrick
1993; Mesthrie and Bhatt 2008), pronouns often receive stress when in subject position as
illustrated below:

Indonesia: I bought in the Muslim mmm restaurant

Myanmar: and HE has been in Singapore er three times
Thailand: when I have to speak
Cambodia: when we er conducted lesson or teach them er THEY cannot perform very
well.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 60

Object pronouns also often receive stress:
Singapore: and it’s difficult for you to actually teach THEM and all that
Indonesia: OK, I just er waited for HIM an hour in the airport
Brunei: so I had so m-, I grew up with a lot of languages around ME

Finally, heavy-end stress is also common, as exemplified in the following examples:

Singapore: er we do not er teach grammar the incidental WAY
Laos: ah, yes we can follow the ... er ... teaching plan that we HAVE
Vietnam: I mean this for the er for the sub er for the grammar subject itSELF, it’s not
for interpreter SKILLS

Heavy-end stress also frequently occurs on repeated words:

Malaysia: because there are a lot of students who are weak in English and they go to
such schools just to learn ENGLISH
Myanmar: I love teaching and I enjoy TEACHING
Thailand: it was meant for only a h- a holiday a three-day HOLIDAY
Cambodia: erm English is very new and very few people speak ENGLISH

Deterding and Kirkpatrick (2006) suggest that this use of heavy-end stress has the
communicative function of signalling the end of an utterance, especially when it is
accompanied by a falling tone. This is to be compared with the function of heavy-end stress in
native speaker varieties where it often signals new information (Levis 2005), who also argues
that this difference in function of end stress may be features of inner and outer circle
Englishes respectively. The use of heavy-end stress to signal the end of an utterance
appears to be a characteristic of ASEAN ELF.

Features of pronunciation which are shared by ELF speakers are listed in the table
below (adapted from Deterding and Kirkpatrick 2006).
Feature Example (s)
reduction of consonant clusters first – firs
dental fricative /θ/ as [t] many thing [tiŋ]
merging of long and short vowel sounds [i:] and [Ɪ] to [Ɪ]
monophthongization of FACE and GOAT
diphthongs
reduced initial aspiration they will teach [diːtʃ]
bisyllabic triphthongs in our [aƱwә] time
lack of reduced vowels to [tuː] visit
stressed pronouns and HE has been in Singapore
heavy end-stress the incidental WAY

A key question that needs to be addressed in any discussion of distinctive

phonological features of specific varieties or of English as a lingua franca is the extent to
which these features may hinder intelligibility for speakers of other varieties. This is of
particular importance in lingua franca communication as, by its very definition, a lingua franca
needs to be intelligible across linguistic and cultural boundaries. However, intelligibility is a
complex concept and has proved difficult both to define and investigate. Smith, perhaps the

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 61

seminal figure in intelligibility research (cf. Smith and Rafiqzad 1979; Smith and Bisazza
1982; Smith and Nelson 2006) has distinguished three levels of understanding: intelligibility,
comprehensibility, and interpretability.
➢ Intelligibility refers to the ability to recognize words and utterances;
➢ comprehensibility refers to the ability to understand the meaning or locutionary force
of utterances; and
➢ interpretability refers to the ability to understand the illocutionary force — the
pragmatic meaning — of an utterance.

Smith has shown in tests of intelligibility which involved asking subjects to note down
specific words when listening to native and non-native speakers from a range of different
countries that ‘the native speaker was always found to be among the least intelligible
speakers’ (Smith and Rafiqzad 1979: 375, cited in Nelson 2008: 300). In a later study into
comprehensibility which checked how much people understood when listening to speakers of
different varieties of English, Smith and Bisazza (1982: 265) found that ‘[t]he American
speaker was easiest … and the Indian was most difficult. They also found that familiarity with
a speaker’s variety of English was crucial as, for example, the Japanese listeners found the
Japanese speakers the easiest to understand. They concluded that ‘one’s English is more
comprehensive to those people who have had active exposure to it (1982, cited in Nelson
2008).

Interpretability — Smith’s third level of understanding — is particularly hard to research

(Pickering 2006), not least because cultural values and frameworks often need to be
understood (Nelson 2008). In studies into the overall intelligibility of Singaporean English
(Kirkpatrick and Saunders, 2005) and Hong Kong English (Kirkpatrick, Deterding, and Wong,
2008), tapes of Singaporean and Hong Kong speakers in conversation with a native speaker
were played to an international audience who were required to answer comprehension
questions on what they had heard and to indicate whether they found the speakers likeable
and or intelligent and to say why. While these studies involved one-way communication in that
the listeners were unable to provide feedback which would be normal in real-time faceto-face
conversation, the results of both studies showed that the speech of the Singaporeans and
Hong Kongers was relatively easy to understand (and thus comprehensible) and the
messages intended by the speakers relatively easy to interpret (and thus interpretable). For
example, almost all the listeners to the Hong Kong speakers scored more than 80% on the
comprehension exercise after only one hearing. Most listeners were also able to justify their
evaluation of the speaker’s intelligence and likeability by making reference to the respective
speaker’s remarks. Those that fared less well were all themselves second language speakers
of English and their poorer results may reflect their own lower levels of English proficiency.

One reason for the international intelligibility of new varieties of English may well be linked
to their lack of reduced vowels and tendency towards a syllable-timed rhythm and this may be
to their advantage in this respect. As Hung (2002) has argued, most speakers of syllable-
timed languages ‘would in fact find stress-timed English less intelligible than syllable-timed,
on account of the massive reduction and neutralisation of unstressed syllables’. He thus asks
(2002) why and when should teachers modify their learners’ phonology of English. For

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 62

example, why would it be considered important to coach learners into a stress-timed pattern
when their ‘natural’ syllable-timed pattern is an aid to international intelligibility?

In this context, it is thus interesting that the ASEAN ELF data shows remarkably few
occasions where communication was affected by the use of distinctive phonological features.
While there were relatively few misunderstandings, these did occasionally occur. It should
also be noted that the speakers’ communicative strategies were primarily aimed at enhancing
communication and ensuring that participants did not lose face in some way.

LEXIS

While phonology may be the most obviously distinctive characteristic of any variety of
English — someone’s accent is the first thing people notice — the use of distinctive lexis is
also a core characteristic of all varieties of English. For example, the following list of words
used to describe cars/automobiles and lorries/trucks in British and American English
respectively, could lead an ‘innocent’ bystander to wonder how the respective speakers could
be describing the same object.

British American
bonnet hood
boot trunk
gear lever (stick) shift (knob)
bumper fender
exhaust (pipe) tail pipe/ muffler
windscreen windshield
number plate license plate
reversing light back up lights

There are countless examples of the use of different words to describe the same object or
phenomenon across varieties of English. Further differences are caused by the need to adopt
words from local languages to describe indigenous phenomena, as no ‘English’ word for such
things exist. The three objects people routinely identify with Australia — boomerangs,
kangaroos and koalas — are all words taken from Australian Aboriginal languages and which
have become part of the vocabulary of not just Australian English, but international English.
Other ‘international’ examples include the following words adopted from Japanese: sumo,
kimono, sake, sushi, sashimi and karaoke. Locally adopted words which become
internationally understood tend to describe flora, fauna, foods and local cultural artefacts or
traditions. There are many others which may only be understood by speakers of the specific
varieties of English. Thus, few non-Australians might understand the word ‘corroboree’, an
Aboriginal dance ceremony of some sort, or non-Malays the Malay-English word ‘adat’, which
is an overarching term referring to traditional Malay cultural practice. Most people will know
the Malay-English word ‘satay’, but fewer will know ‘atap’ (a palm thatch used for huts).

A third cause for differences in the meaning of words in different varieties of English is
that a word with one meaning in one variety takes on a different meaning in another. A good

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 63

example of this is the word ‘bush’ in Australian English. As Butler (2002) has pointed out, its
specific Australian meaning of the Australian ‘countryside in general as opposed to the towns’
and its importance to Australian culture means that it collocates with many other nouns in a
special way. The dictionary of Australian English, the Macquarie, lists ninety-seven
compounds with bush, including bush ballad, bush carpenter and bush tucker and defines
these three compounds as:
➢ Bush ballad: a poem in ballad meter dealing with aspects of life in the Australian
bush
➢ Bush carpenter: a rough amateur carpenter
➢ Bush tucker: simple fare, as eaten by one living in or off the bush

By contrast, the New Oxford Dictionary lists only thirty-seven compounds with bush
and most of these are from Australian English. In addition to taking on a new meaning in this
way, words can also become broader or narrower in their semantic scope. Thus, in
Singaporean English, the word ‘alphabet’ refers to an individual letter of the alphabet so that,
in Singaporean terms, English has twenty-six alphabets. An example of this semantic
narrowing from Singaporean English is the use of the word ‘Christians’, which refers only to
Protestants. An example of semantic broadening and narrowing respectively from Chinese
English is the use of cadre on the one hand, and migrant workers on the other. Xu (2010)
explains that ‘cadre’ refers to leaders in general in China rather than to ‘a small group of
trained people who form the basic unit of a military, political or business organization’ or ‘a
member of such a group’ as the word is defined in the Cambridge Advanced Learners’
Dictionary. ‘Migrant workers’ on the other hand, refers, in China, to migrants from the
countryside who have migrated to the towns. It does not mean foreign workers. ‘Migrant
workers’ thus has a more restricted meaning in Chinese English than in many other varieties.

A new variety of English may also reflect its cultural values in the way it uses lexis.
Australians value informality and this is lexically realized by ‘clipping’, whereby many words
get shortened and end in a vowel sound. Thus ‘afternoon’ becomes ‘arvo’, ‘politicians’
become ‘pollies’ and ‘journalists’ become ‘journos’. People’s names get the same treatment.
‘Martin’ becomes ‘Marto’, Barry becomes ‘Bazza’ and people with surnames which begin with
Mac or Mc as in McKenzie and MacNamara will be referred to as ‘Macca’. Occasionally, the
need for a final vowel sound can lengthen the word. For example, a ‘tinnie’ refers to a can of
beer and the name John almost invariably becomes ‘Johnno’.

Cultural values and norms can also be reflected lexically as they can determine what
people choose to talk about. Moody (2007) compares occurrences of the lexical items ‘to eat’
and ‘food’ in five of the international corpora of English (ICE), namely, ICE Great Britain, ICE
Hong Kong, ICE India, ICE Philippines and ICE Singapore.
ICE Great ICE Hong ICE India ICE ICE
Britain Kong Philippines Singapore
To eat 137 202 152 312 242
Food 181 296 354 260 265
TOTAL 318 498 506 572 507

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 64

 It is remarkable that all the ‘Asian’ corpora contain many more references to ‘food’ and
‘eat’ than the British corpus does. This is perhaps even more remarkable when we remember
that the Asian varieties of English have their own words for food — makan in Malaysian
English, for example — and that these are not included in the figures. This would strongly
suggest that food is a more popular topic among people from the Asian cultures represented
here than it is among the British. This may not be considered all that remarkable by people
who have eaten in Britain and in these Asian countries.

While new varieties of English need to coin new words or adopt words from other
languages in order to describe local phenomena, it can take a long time before these new
words become accepted. It is sobering to think that the first dictionary of Australian English,
the Macquarie, was not published until 1981, more than two hundred years after Captain
Cook reached Australia. Butler (2007) nicely captures the different views of the prescriptive
and descriptive grammarian to the Singaporean meaning of the word ‘alphabet’ by comparing
the definitions given in the following examples. The first is taken from the Times Dictionary of
Problem Words by George Jenkins (Times is a Singaporean Publishing House) and the
second from Adam Brown’s Singapore English in a Nutshell:

The noun alphabet means all the letters used in a written language. The
individual letters are not called alphabets; they are called letters of the alphabet. (Jenkins
1988)

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
How many alphabets are there here? If you are not Singaporean you may find this a
strange question, as the answer is so self-evident — one, the Roman alphabet. In that case
you will be surprised to find out that Singaporeans will answer that there are 26 alphabets
here … (Brown 1999)

Thus, while several dictionaries of Asian varieties of English have been published, not
all users of these varieties are prepared to accept the new coinages recorded in them. A
person who has striven to provide recognition for Asian Englishes through the publication of
dictionaries is Susan Butler, who was also the publisher of the Macquarie Dictionary. Among
the dictionaries Butler has been involved in include a Singaporean version of the Macquarie
Junior Dictionary, and the Anvil-Macquarie Dictionary of Philippine English for High School.
The Macquarie Junior and the Anvil-Macquarie were both specifically aimed at the school
market. The Macquarie Junior included common words of Singaporean and Malaysian Englis
as illustrated below:

ang mo a white person

ang pow A red envelope with money in
it, given at Chinese New Year
atap A roof made of nipa
Blur (of a person) confused
Daching A set of scales

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 65

 Godown A dwarf
Havoc (of a person) outrageously
daring
Kaypoh Busy body

On the back cover of the dictionary the following claim was made: The Macquarie
Junior Dictionary is therefore the ideal language reference for the students of Singapore,
Malaysia and Brunei because it takes into account their needs in developing English
language skills, while at the same time recognising their experience and culture.

Despite this reluctance to accept local lexis as part of standard English, these words
constitute a defining characteristic of all varieties of English. Locally-derived idioms and code-
mixing also give many new varieties of English their distinctive flavour. One source of this is
the translation of idioms from the speakers’ L1 into English. Examples include these two
expressions used by the Chinese writer Ha Jin: a ‘flowered pillowcase’ to describe someone
who may look attractive, but has no depth; and ‘they breathe through the same nostril’ to
describe people who are always in agreement with each other. A Japanese example provided
by the Japanese scholar Nobuyuki Honna is ‘a son will chew on his parents’ shins’, which
means that a son may remain financially dependent on his parents for many years.
Prodromou (2007) cites the Serbian expression, ‘one should not mix frogs with
grandmothers’ (one should not mix or compare things that are incomparable). Hybrid words
— words which are creatively made up of words from the local language and English —
provide another rich source. Two examples from Hong Kong/Chinese English are ‘Cantopop’
and ‘dandan noodles’ (a type of spicy noodle dish from Sichuan).

In Malay, a ‘dadah addict’ is a drug addict and to ‘run amok’, or to become

uncontrollable with anger or panic, is now part of the international vocabulary of English.
Filipino English has these examples: buco juice (the juice of a young coconut), pulot boy (a
ball boy) and common tao (an ordinary person). This use of hybridization as a way of
creating new words is a part of code-mixing, and code-mixing is very common in multilingual
societies such as those of ASEAN.

This use of lexical items and idioms with meanings specific to a language variety —
what Seidlhofer (2001) has called ‘unilateral idiomaticity’ — along with code-mixing of
various degrees of sophistication, are characteristic of language use in multilingual societies.
However, one would not expect their use to be effective in lingua franca communication, as
the specific lexical meanings would often be unknown to at least some of the participants.
Code-mixing would be an unlikely phenomenon in lingua franca communication because its
use requires proficiency in specific languages, and in lingua franca communication one could
never anticipate that all participants could possibly be familiar with all the possible languages.
After all, that is precisely why the participants in lingua franca communication choose a lingua
franca in the first place.

CONCLUSION
While a great deal of phonological variation would be expected in the lingua franca
English of speakers from ASEAN, due in part to their different linguistic backgrounds and in

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 66

part to the different models of English to which they have been exposed, a number of
phonological features are shared by many of the speakers. Many of these have also been
reported in other vernacular varieties of English, both new and traditional. These features
seldom caused any problems for intelligibility and understanding.

One feature that has been reported here is the tendency to avoid the use of reduced
vowels along with a related tendency towards syllable timing. This is possible in native
speaker varieties of English — for example, when one is spelling a message out slowly to
someone, possibly in a semi-humorous or sarcastic tone as in ‘Let-me-repeat-this-one-more-
time-to-make-sure-weboth-un-der-stand-pre-cise-ly-where-we-stand’ — but it is used for
creating a special effect. In ASEAN ELF it is the normal standard way of speaking, and, far
from interfering with mutual understanding may actually enhance it. This has interesting
potential implications for English language teaching.

Lexically, it is interesting to note that the distinctive lexis of individual varieties of

English — including borrowed words, neologisms, idioms, hybridization and code-mixing —
do not occur in the data. This makes ASEAN ELF quite distinctive from the various varieties
of Asian English spoken in the region, all of which are necessarily characterized by the use of
lexis to describe local phenomena and cultural values. The reason for this is not hard to
explain, however. As a lingua franca is, above all, intended for cross-linguistic
communication, it is only natural that speakers would try to avoid the use of lexical items
which they feel other participants in the interaction might not understand. In terms of the
identity-communication continuum (Kirkpatrick 2007a), this ASEAN ELF can be placed at the
communication end of the continuum, while new varieties of English occupy the identity end
of the continuum.

V. DISCUSSION BOARD
Instruction: Write a short speech (of 500-1000 words) about the role of English in the ASEAN
region particularly in education. After writing, record yourself as you deliver your speech using
the Filipino accent vis-à-vis Filipino phonological variation. Turn in both your speech in pdf file
and your video recording. Your output will be rated using the rubric below:
For written speech:
Rubrics Point
Content (Emphasis) 20%
Coherence & Cohesion 20 %
Organization 20%
Mechanics (Writing SOP) 20%
Langauge Use 15%

References (In-text citation) 5%

TOTAL 100%
For recorded speech:

Rubrics Point

Correct Pronunciation 50%

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 67

 Facial Expression and Gestures 20 %
Accent Use 20%
Phonemic Awareness 10%
TOTAL 100%

VI. POST-COMPETENCY CHECKLIST

Post-Test (Formative Assessment)

QUIZ 4
Direction: Read the questions and options carefully, then choose the letter of the CORRECT
answer.

For item 1-5, identify which word corresponds to a certain phonetic symbol.

1. /Ʒ/
A. There C. Sheep
B. Genre D. Zebra

2. /dƷ/
A. Just C. Breath
B. Singer D. Mouth

3. /θ/
A. This C. Vision
B. Fishing D. Brush

4. /tʃ/
A. Should C. Bridge
B. Teacher D. Taft

5. /ŋ/
A. There C. Three
B. Think D. Thank

6-10: Give at least 5 lexicon common to Filipino which is accepted as English word and can
be found already in the Meriam Dictionary or any other English dictionary. Give its meaning
and use it in a sentence.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 68

 MODULE 5
Chapter 2 Linguistic Features of English as a Lingua Franca
in Asia
(Features of English as a Lingua Franca in Asia)
[Week 10-11]

I. INTRODUCTION
In this chapter a selection of syntactic and discourse features and pragmatic norms is
illustrated. The first part of the chapter will provide some examples of grammatical variation in
the dialects of British English. In this way, the reader can see how common and wide-ranging
grammatical variation is within a traditional variety of English. Examples of grammatical variation
in new varieties of English will also be illustrated, as this will help demonstrate that the type of
variation and non-standard forms that are emerging in Asian varieties of English and in the use
of English as a lingua franca are not particularly surprising. Rather, they represent natural
language development and a consideration of the possible causes of these developments will
be given. Examples of distinctive grammatical features identified in the SEAMEO and ASEAN
ELF data will then be provided and discussed.
At the end of this module, you are expected to analyze the syntactic and discourse
features and pragmatics norms of ASEAN English speakers and analyze a material exploring
its surface and deep structures as well as its subtleties.

VI. PRE-COMPETENCY CHECKLIST

Direction: Pronounce the following words using British Accent. You may watch the examples of
words with British pronunciation on Youtube.

1. Water
2. Queen
3. Popular
4. Beautiful
5. Disaster
6. River
7. Majesty
8. Teacher
9. Student
10. Computer

VII. LEARNING RESOURCES

Following are the resources used in the discussion of this module. For further
understanding of the topic, please access the supplementary material/s provided here.

LR1 E-book (in PDF form)

[1]

LR2 Lecture-Video Presentation

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 69

VIII. EXPLORE
MODULE 5
LESSON DISCUSSION
Linguistic Features of English as a Lingua Franca in Asia

Features of English as a Lingua Franca in Asia

Variation in British English

Crystal (2004) provides an informative and detailed account of historical variation in
British English. One series of changes which is of particular significance to this study is that the
inflectional system of English has gradually become less complex over time. For example, a
complex system of declension on nouns has all but disappeared. The declension of the
masculine noun from Old English (450–1150) ‘stan’ (stone) showed inflections for case and
number (Blake 1999: 65

Case Singular Plural

Nominative stan stanas
Accusative stan stanas
Genitive stanes stana
Dative stane stanum

With the exception of the ‘whom’ accusative and the ‘-en’ plurals in words like ‘oxen’ and
brethren’, standard British English retains only the plural marker ‘-s’ (stones) and a possessive
marker (stone’s/stones’), although even the possessive marker is being used less frequently,
especially with inanimate nouns.
Standard English has also seen the simplification and regularization of verbal morphology.
Regularization traditionally takes place over a significant period of time, but changes due to
these factors may be taking place more quickly in new varieties of English. In Old English (OE),
as today, past tense was marked in one of two ways. One way was to change the internal
vowel. Verbs which do this are known as strong verbs. The second way was to add a suffix.
Such verbs are known as weak verbs.
Examples of strong forms were:
Findan – fand (find/found) beran – baer (bear/bore)
sprecan – spraec (speak/spoke) (Blake 1996: 67–68)

Examples of the weak forms include:

Endian – endode – endod (end/ended/ended)
cysson – cyssede (kiss/kissed) cepan – cepte – ceped (keep/kept/kept) (Blake 1996: 69)
Gradually there has been a change as weak forms have become increasingly common
and replaced the strong forms, while the system has also become simpler. For example, the

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 70

past tense of today’s ‘help’ had, in Old English, both a singular form ‘healp’, a plural form
‘hulpon’, and the past participle was realized by yet a third form ‘holpen’. These three forms
have been simplified and regularized into the single form ‘helped’ (Chambers 2009: 20). A
similar motivation has seen the original past tense form of ‘work’, ‘wrought’, which still exists in
its original meaning as ‘worked’ in ‘wrought iron’, being replaced by ‘worked’. Today, nearly all
new verbs take ‘-ed’ as their past tense marker (Burchfield 1985: 43). Lieberman and his
colleagues (2007) have even developed an algorithm which they claim can predict which strong
form will be the next to regularize and become a weak form. ‘Irregular verbs regularize at a rate
that is inversely proportional to the square root of their usage frequency (2007: 714). In other
words, the less frequent the use of the verb, the more likely it is to regularize. Their prediction is
that the next verb to regularize will be ‘wed’, so that ‘wedded’ will replace ‘wed’. ‘Now is your last
chance to be a newly wed. The married couples of the future can only hope for wedded bliss’
(2007: 715).
Regularization and simplification can also account for some of the variation which exists
between the past tense systems of non-standard dialects and standard English. Chambers
(2009: 19) has suggested that the principle ‘make past tense and past participle the same’
reduces the number of irregular forms and, as irregular forms have to be memorized, the move
to regularization reduces cognitive load. Thus reducing cognitive load is one possible
explanation of regularization. Examples from nonstandard dialects of the past participle form
being the same as the preterit form are (Britain 2007: 89):
I draw I drawed I’ve drawed
I do I done I’ve done
Strong standard verb forms may be realized as weak forms in the nonstandard:
I grow I growed I’ve growed
The same move towards simplification and regularization can be seen in the marking of
the present tense in standard English. Today, only the third person singular form is marked, as
in ‘he works’. No other marking is needed for person or number. Traditionally, present tense in
standard English was marked as follows (King 1997: 176):
First person singular: zero
Second person singular: -e(st)
Third person singular: -(th)
Plural: zero, or -(e)n
However, as with past-tense markings, non-standard dialects of British English display
variation in the marking of the present tense (as well as across other grammatical features). The
dialects of England vary in respect to how and whether they mark present tense verbs (Britain
2007: 86). And while ‘-s’ represents the standard form of the third person singular, there is
considerable variation in its use in British dialects (Ihalainen 1994: 228), as many dialects
preserve older uses. One famous example is the so-called northern subject rule (McCafferty
2003), where present tense ‘-s’ is used on verbs when their subjects are plural nouns and plural
pronouns. Verbs adjacent to plural pronouns, on the other hand, receive no marking. Thus the
following sentence is grammatical, following this northern subject rule:

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 71

 Present tense marking for plural nouns is also seen in the English of the Southern
United States, so that ‘folks sings’ is a grammatical formulation in this variety (Bailey 1997: 259–
60). Note also the use of variable ‘-s’ marking in the following example of African-American
Vernacular English (CukorAvila 2003: 98). The instances of ‘-s’ usage and non-use are bolded.
There is also an instance of ‘zero BE’ here, in ‘She a real young girl’.
What’s her, what’s her name that cooks them? She a real young girl. She bring ’em in every
mornin’. An’ they, an they sells ’em, an’ they sells ’em for that girl there in that store.
In the dialect spoken in East Anglia in the Southeast of England, present tense verbs
were not marked at all. Trudgill (2002) explains this through the large number of non-native
migrants who moved to Norwich causing the need for the use of a lingua franca for
communication between them and the locals. There is evidence, however, of some speakers
now beginning to mark the third person singular with ‘-s’ in this dialectal variety (Britain 2007:
87).
Other types of linguistic variation in non-standard dialects of British English include the
examples below, which, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from Britain (2007: 75–104).
The double comparison (i.e., the comparison being marked by the use of both the
inflectional ending and the analytic marker) is common in a number of varieties:
it’s a lot more easier than it used to be the most wonderfulest trip I’ve ever been
on
The tendency to use ‘less’ instead of standard ‘fewer’ with countable nouns is also
common. The examples below comes from an Australian speaker.
The chief is saying that we have to run on less resources than what we have
before. (Kirkpatrick 2007a: 75)
Multiple negation is extremely common, as is regional variation in the use of negated
forms:
they canna walk any further he diven’t do it
There are a wide range of non-standard prepositional uses:
I’m going up my friend’s house
My dad needs to go _ the opticians
The announcer on the Oxford to Banbury train advises: ‘We will shortly be arriving
into Banbury. Banbury is our next station stop.’
Finally, the invariant tag question, ‘innit?’ is becoming increasingly common. These
examples of non-standard forms represent only a small fraction of the non-standard forms that
exist. Britain (2007: 78) suggests the grammatical features listed below represent a core of non-
standard features which are common across many dialects of British English:
‘Them’ as demonstrative (‘fetch me them eggs from the cupboard’ — and notice also the non-
standard use of ‘fetch’)
Absence of plural marking on measurement nouns (‘that’s three mile away from here’)
‘Never’ as past tense negator (‘I never did’)

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 72

‘There’s’/‘there was’ with notional plural subjects. (A related example comes from the recent
BBC documentary about the destruction of the city of Carthage by Rome. The historian Richard
Miles says, ‘I tell you who was busy. That was the undertakers.’)
Present participle using preterit rather than continuous form (‘I’m sat at a desk all day and I
don’t even have a window’)
Adverbs without ‘-ly’. This is also seen in the irregular form, as in ‘he does not play as good as
before’. (Kirkpatrick 2007a: 74)
The use of ‘ain’t’ and ‘in’t’
Non-standard uses of ‘was’
These examples all serve to show that variation and the use of nonstandard forms is
endemic in varieties of British English. Below, examples will be given of comparable variation in
new varieties of English.

Variation in new varieties of English

In a study of forty-six non-standard varieties of English from different parts of the world,
Kortmann et al. (2004–07) noted that the following grammatical features were frequently
realized as non-standard forms:
Pronouns, noun phrases, verb phrases (tense and aspect, modal verbs, verbal
morphology), adverbs, negation, agreement, relativisation, complementation, discourse
organisation and word order.
For example, half of the forty-six new varieties they surveyed frequently did not mark the
third person ‘-s’. In a study of English as a lingua franca being used by Europeans with a wide
range of different linguistic backgrounds, Breiteneder (2009) found that ten of the twenty-five
speakers used zero marking for the third person singular at least once, but that all these
speakers also used the ‘-s’ marking on certain occasions. Through studying the context in which
marking did occur, she pointed out that it is often retained in set phrases such as ‘this means’
and ‘it depends’, but that it is often not marked when the noun is grammatically singular but
semantically plural, as with ‘community’ and ‘minority’. Whether to treat these nouns as
grammatically singular or plural has been the subject of long-standing debate among
grammarians and English teachers. Breiteneder also makes the interesting observation that, as
English is a non-pro-drop language and therefore requires a subject in subject position, the use
of ‘-s’ to mark the third person singular is redundant. This would suggest that those new
varieties of English which developed in contact with pro-drop languages would have more need
of marking the third person singular, especially if they do not require explicit subjects. As many
of the speakers in the ASEAN ELF and SEAMEO data speak L1s which are pro-drop (Chinese
and Malay, for example), we might therefore expect regular and consistent marking of this ‘-s’.
However, as we shall see, this turns out not to be the case, even though the use of non-marked
forms is not prevalent.
Mesthrie and Bhatt (2008), using data from sub-Saharan African, Amerindian and Irish
Englishes as well as from the Englishes of South and Southeast Asia, identified a range of
grammatical features which commonly occurred in these Englishes, but were not found in
standard English.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 73

 The possible causes of non-standard forms and their apparent frequency of occurrence
in many varieties of English are questions which are the centre of significant recent research.
Mesthrie and Bhatt drew a distinction between the new varieties of Englishes which they
classified as ‘deleters’ — with Singaporean English the best example of such a variety — and
those that they classified as ‘preservers’ — with Black South African English as the best
example (2008: 90–92). As the terms suggest, ‘deleters’ describes those varieties whose
speakers commonly leave out grammatical elements, and ‘preservers’ describes those that
‘disfavour the deletion of elements’ (2008: 92). Their explanation for the ‘deleter’ — ‘preserver’
dichotomy is that it is ‘usually dependent on the characteristic syntax of the substrate
languages’ (2008: 90), and that those varieties of English with
Chinese substrates — such as Singaporean English — are the most prone to favouring
the deletion of grammatical elements. However, the examples Mesthrie and Bhatt give to
illustrate features of the ‘preservers’ suggest that these add rather than preserve features, and
then only in specific contexts. For example, there are examples of the addition of the ‘to’ where
the bare infinitive would be expected in standard English along with a number of examples of
pronoun copying. This is common in Asian varieties of English. Mesthrie’s and Bhatt’s
examples, all of which are taken from Black South African English, are (the ‘preserved’ items
are italicized):
Come what may come
He made me to do it
The fact has made me to conclude
As you know that I am from the Ciskei
My standard time, I have enjoyed it very much
The man who I saw him was wearing a big hat
As I made it clear before, I am going to talk about solutions not problems As it is the case
elsewhere in Africa, much can still be done for children.
(2008: 91)
The occurrence of so many comparable non-standard grammatical features across so many
varieties of English has led some scholars to suggest that a set of vernacular universals exist.
Chambers (2004: 129) has proposed the following candidates for Vernacular Universals:
(ng) or alveolar substitution in final unstressed ‘ing’ (walkin’)
(CC) or morpheme final cc simplification (pos’office)
Final obstruent devoicing (hundred — hundret; cupboard — cubbert)
Conjugation regularization or leveling of irregular verb forms (yesterday John seen the eclipse;
Mary heared the good news)
Default singulars or subject-verb nonconcord (they was the last ones)
Multiple negation of negative concord (he didn’t see nothing)
Copular absence or deletion (she smart; we going as soon as possible)

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 74

 In calling these Vernacular Universals, Chambers is arguing that they exist in all
vernacular varieties of English (and that they have their counterparts in other languages). This
claim has been disputed. For example, Szmrecsanyi and Kortmann argue that the
morphosyntactic features found in the survey of the forty-six varieties of English referred to
above may be caused for different reasons in different languages (2009). They argue that
variables such as the typology of the language and the geographical area in which the language
is, and the influence of other languages may all play a part in the development of specific
grammatical features. The relationship between Vernacular Universals and language contacts
and the extent that these can be distinguished are key questions in contact linguistics (Filppula,
Klemola and Paulasto 2009b: 8).
Mufwene (2001, 2009) has argued that all Englishes develop through the same
processes, with the level of contact being a matter of degree. Thomason advises that a
dichotomy between Vernacular Universals and contact-induced change should not be drawn
because ‘many linguistic changes involve both kinds of process — that is, various processes of
contact-induced change and also universal tendencies of various kinds’ (2009: 349).
More localized influences also need to be considered. Mesthrie and Bhatt acknowledge
the importance of text type in this context and cite Sand’s research into article usage, using the
ICE corpora of Indian, Jamaican, Kenyan and Singaporean Englishes (2004). She showed that
informational writing contained the most use of articles, while informal colloquial speech the
least. Sand concludes, ‘[i]n all varieties, differences across text types are observable and genre
differences within one variety are practically always more pronounced than overall variation
across varieties’ (2004: 294–5). This is a salutary lesson not to draw overall conclusions about
the linguistic features of specific varieties of English based on data of single text types.
As Mesthrie and Bhatt themselves point out (2008: 39), a problem with the analysis and
description of new varieties of English is that we often do not know enough about the speakers’
linguistic and educational backgrounds, nor about the relative frequency grammatical items may
appear either in the speech or writing of individuals or within the variety as a whole. Whether the
data is collected from informal basilectal speech, or more formal acrolectal speech and/or
written genres is likely to be significant in determining usage. Each of the international corpora
of English (ICE, described in Chapter 4) comprises one million words taken from a variety of
spoken and written texts. The SEAMEO and ASEAN ELF corpora are much smaller and
comprise only spoken data in formal and semi-formal settings.
However, we need very large corpora before we can make firm judgements about the
status and use of new and distinctive linguistic features. As Britain (2007: 76) has cautioned, we
do not know answers to questions like:
Who uses the non-standard form to whom and is there social stratification in its use?
Where is the non-standard form used?
What are the social, geographical and linguistic contexts in which the nonstandard form is
used?
We thus clearly remain some way from being able to answer the questions posed by
Bamgbose more than a decade ago (1998: 13) in determining whether an innovation is a norm.
These were:
How many people use it?

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 75

How widely is it used?
Who are the people who use it?
Where is the use sanctioned?
Is the use accepted?
To underline the number of non-standard forms shared by many different varieties of
English, a list of shared syntactic features of African Englishes is presented below. This is taken
from Schmied (1991: 58ff). Many of these have been referred to above and will also be seen as
features of Asian Englishes and ASEAN ELF.
(i) Inflectional endings are not always added to the verb but general, regular and
unmarked forms are used instead.
(ii) Complex tenses such as the past perfect and certain conditionals tend to be
avoided.
(iii) The use of Vb+ing constructions is extended to all verbs resulting in examples
such as ‘I am having your book’ and ‘I was not liking the food in the hotel’.
(iv) Phrasal and prepositional verbs are used differently. For example, ‘I will pick you
at 8’o clock tonight’ (= ‘I will pick you up at 8 o’clock tonight’).
(v) Verb complementation varies freely to give phrases such as ‘Allow him go’ and
‘They made him to clean the whole yard’.
(vi) Noun phrases are not always marked for number and case, or are treated
differently to give ‘informations’, ‘a cattle’, ‘an advice’.
(vii) Relative pronouns (whom, whose) are avoided to give ‘Adult education which its
main purpose is to help adults …’.
(viii) The use of plural is overgeneralized (luggages, advices).
(ix) Articles and determiners are often omitted (‘I am going to post office’).
(x) Pronouns are not always distinguished by gender.
(xi) Adjectives may be used as adverbs to give ‘I can obtain the food easy’.
(xii) Pronoun copying is common (‘Many of the fish, they have different colours’).
(xiii) Negative yes/no questions are confirmed by responding to the form of the
question so that the answer to ‘He isn’t good?’ becomes ‘Yes (he isn’t)’.
(xiv) There are invariant question tags, for example, ‘Isn’t it?’ and ‘You wanted to
leave for Nairobi, not so?’.
(xv) The interrogative word order is retained in indirect speech to give ‘I cannot tell
you what is the matter’.
(xvi) There is freer word order, so ‘In my family, we are many’ becomes common.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 76

 As also reported earlier, eight non-standard features were also identified as potential
features of European ELF in the VOICE corpus. (The roman numerals after each example
below refer to Schmied’s numbering where, it will be seen, many refer to the same features and
others to comparable ones.)
(a) the non-marking of the third person singular with ‘-s’ (i);
(b) interchangeability of the relative pronouns, ‘who’ and ‘which’ (vii);
(c) flexible use of definite and indefinite articles (ix);
(d) extended use of ‘general’ or common verbs;
(e) treating uncountable nouns as plural (vi, viii);
(f) use of a uniform question tag (xiv);
(g) use of demonstrative ‘this’ with both singular and plural nouns; and(h) use of
prepositions in different contexts (iv).
Variation is common across a wide range of varieties of English. For a number of
possible reasons, a large number of similar non-standard forms occur across a wide range of
varieties. A wide-ranging list is provided by Hickey (2004: 586–620). I now turn to giving
examples of a selection of non-standard grammatical features from the ASEAN ELF and
SEAMEO data, while also providing comparable examples from relevant varieties of Asian
English.

Non-standard features of ASEAN ELF

Distinctive article use is commonly found in Asian varieties of English. Bautista (2000:
151) identifies two usages which have become standard in educated Filipino English. These are
‘the use of majority without an article and the use of research with an indefinite article’. Indeed
the terms ‘a research’ and ‘some researches’ are both common across many varieties of Asian
English, so it appears to be being classified as a countable noun. McArthur (2002) shows that
articles are used less frequently in colloquial Singapore English (you have pen or not?), and
Gupta (1988: 42) demonstrates that this also is evident in written texts of Singaporean English,
‘mortality rate is high’. Mesthrie and Bhatt also provide examples from Singaporean English
(2008: 49–50). However, as we noted above, Sand (2004) in a comparative study of Indian,
Kenyan and Singaporean English, has observed a continuum whereby articles are used less in
informal spoken contexts but more often in formal written contexts. Mesthrie and Bhatt also
describe article usage in Irish English and cite Filppula’s 1995 study in which he identifies
seventeen functions of the definite article ‘the’. They conclude that ‘there appear to be two
different classes of New Englishes in respect to article usage (2008: 52) with some, such as
Irish and Other Celtic Englishes, using them more frequently and those that use them less
frequently. It would also appear, however, that the great majority of varieties of new Englishes
use articles less frequently than standard English. Examples of this are also found in the
SEAMEO data where all the speakers are highly educated senior representatives of their
respective countries’ delegations. These examples are all of the non-use of articles, indicated by
an underscore, _. The L1s and/or nationalities of the speakers are provided in brackets.
A1: I know when we touch _ money issue it can be very controversial …
(Indonesian)

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 77

 A2: Each centre can send _ representative to be ... (Thai)
A3: I just took it from _ document (Vietnamese)
A4: We haven’t addressed seriously _ on-line database (Indonesian)
Examples of non-standard article use from the ASEAN ELF data are surprisingly rare.
Some can be attributed to a Laotian speaker whose English proficiency is not as high as the
majority of the participants. Here, the non-standard forms are caused by the non-use of an
article or by the use of a definite article rather than an indefinite one. Two examples are:
A5: In my province lack of the teacher who —
A6: We have the big class with sixty students
It should also be said that identifying non-standard forms of article use is difficult, not
least because it is so often associated with the treatment of nouns as count or non-count nouns.
And, as we have seen and as will be shown in the following discussion, many varieties of
English treat standard English non-count nouns as countable and vice versa. Examples of these
and non-standard forms of number are therefore provided next.

IX. DISCUSSION BOARD

Direction: Choose the word or phrases which are NOT acceptable in formal written English.
Choose E if there is no error.

1. We, his friends, did not learn about he being promoted until this morning.
Select one:
a. NO ERROR
b. learn about
c. We, his friends, did not
d. until this morning.
e. he being promoted

Question 2
Question text
He is the kind of a stateman who distinguishes himself when called upon in difficult situations.
Select one:
a. who distinguishes himself
b. when called upon
c. in difficult situations.
d. He is the kind of a stateman
e. NO ERROR

Question 3
Question text
The curly old woman who took the seat next to ours was anything but kind.
Select one:
a. was anything but kind
b. who took the seat
c. NO ERROR
d. The curly old woman
e. next to ours

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 78

Question 4
Question text

With regards to the terrorism problem, the President said that the Cabinet and the military were
closely monitoring the activities of the foreign nationals.
Select one:
a. the activities of the foreign nationals
b. With regards to the terrorism problem,
c. were closely monitoring
d. NO ERROR
e. the President said that the Cabinet and the military

Question 5
Question text
Many advocate for women in development emphasize the need for greater equality between
men and women.
Select one:
a. Many advocate for women
b. NO ERROR
c. the need for greater
d. equality between men and women.
e. in development emphasize

Question 6
Question text
His dedication to hard work could be attributed to the fact that he came from a poor family.
Select one:
a. NO ERROR
b. His dedication to hard work
c. to the fact that he came
d. from a poor family.
e. could be attributed

Question 7
Question text
Many of his men believe as he do, but I know of some who believe quite differently.
Select one:
a. Many of his men believe
b. but I know of some
c. NO ERROR.
d. as he do,
e. who believe quite differently.

Question 8
Question text
“All are not lost when hope lingers” the mother said to her son who was inflicted with pain.
Select one:
a. when hope lingers”
b. NO ERROR
c. “All are not lost
d. son who was inflicted with pain

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 79

e. the mother said to her

Question 9

Question text
In other countries, there is a strong trend in favor of distance learning and part time programs.
Select one:
a. in favor of distance learning
b. NO ERROR
c. is a strong trend
d. In other countries, there
e. and part time programs

Question 10
Question text
The policemen had hardly gone a hundred arms’ length from the park that they heard cry of
Murder!”
Select one:
a. NO ERROR
b. a hundred arms’ length from
c. cry of Murder!”
d. The policemen had hardly gone
e. the park that they hear

VI. POST-COMPETENCY CHECKLIST

Post-Test (Formative Assessment)

Direction: Explain the social meaning of each of the following utterances.

1. Chill out dude.

2. In my day, we didn’t do things like that.
3. So, he walks into the cube farm and tells me that I am uninstalled.
4. And like this guy, like he’s like cute.
5. Way cool.

ASSESSMENT 2
[Week 12]

Internatonal Phonetic Alphabet was developed in the 19th Century to accurately

represent the pronunciation of language. It aims to provide unique symbol for each
distinctive sounds in a language—that is, every sound, or phoneme, that serves to
distinguish one word from another.

General Instruction: Make a video while performing the IPA sounds below. Make sure to
pronunounce the word properly.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 80

 MODULE 7
Chapter 3 Implication for Policy and Pedagogy
(Implications for Language Education Policy & Pedagogical implications:
The multilingual model and the lingua franca approach)
[Week 15, 16, & 17]

I. INTRODUCTION

This module wraps up the discussion of the role of English in the ASEAN region. It
discusses the implication of the English language on the language education policy in the
ASEAN nations particularly the integration of English as Medium of Instruction (MOI), when
shall English be introduced, and the balance of mixed languages that results to students being
multilingual.

At the end of this module, you are expected to determine when English language be
introduced in the curriculum; decide whether English be introduced as a discipline or medium of
instructions; draw implications for the language policy in the ASEAN nation; and demonstrate
understanding of multilingualism.

II. PRE-COMPETENCY CHECKLIST

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
Direction: Analyze the questions below and give your thoughts about them.

1. When should English be introduced into the school curriculum? Justify your answer.
2. Should English be introduced as a subject or as a medium of instruction? Justify your
answer.
3. How can a mix of languages be equitably balanced in education?

III. LEARNING RESOURCES

Following are the resources used in the discussion of this module. For further
understanding of the topic, please access the supplementary material/s provided here.

LR1 E-book (in PDF form)

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 81

 [1]
Kirpatrick, Andy. (2010). English as a lingua franca in ASEAN: A multilingual
model. Hongkong University Press. Hong Kong.
LR2 Journal Article
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2018). Looking ahead: Future directions in, and future
research into, second language acquisition. Foreign Language Annals, 51, 55-72.
Okal, B.O. (2015). Benefits of multilingualism. Universal Journal of Educational
Research, 2(3), 223-229.

II. EXPLORE
MODULE 7
LESSON DISCUSSION

Implication for Policy and Pedagogy

Implications for Language Education Policy

When should English be introduced into the school curriculum?

As we have seen, almost all the member states of ASEAN have made English a
compulsory part of the primary school curriculum, many countries teaching it from Primary 1.
This has led to serious problems throughout the region, deriving from a lack of adequate
resources. The situation in the Philippines and the problems associated with the lack of general
resources in its government schools have been starkly recorded by Martin (2005). These
problems are common in rural areas of the Philippines, but are not restricted to them. It should
be recalled that, under the Philippines Bilingual Education Policy (BEP), Filipino primary children
learn in Filipino and English from Primary 1. However, it is important to note the linguistic
challenges these places on Filipino children in which Martin’s stark description underlines how
desperately short government schools are of even the most basic resources.

Schools simply do not have teaching materials and parents cannot afford them. Insisting on
the teaching of (and in) English from Primary 1 adds tremendously to the cognitive burden on
children and the financial and resources burden on schools and parents. a change of mindset
about when and how to introduce English can help greatly alleviate these burdens.

Similar problems with resources and funding are reported in Indonesia, where teachers’ low
salaries force many to moonlight and take other jobs and where class sizes can make language
teaching difficult even for the most experienced and dedicated teachers (Dardjowidjojo 2000).
Results of many years learning English in primary and secondary schools are not good. In a
comment which recalls Bautista’s depressing summary of the situation in the Philippines where
it pays to be middle class and have Tagalog as a first language, Dardjowidjojo writes: ‘With few
exceptions, generally a high school graduate is not able to communicate intelligibly in English.
Those who can are suspected of having taken private courses or come from a certain family
background (2000).

The Question of Teachers

The early introduction of English into the school curricula in so many countries has also
led to serious problems connected with the shortage of adequately trained and linguistically
proficient teachers of English. This led to the desperate measures taken by the Thai government

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 82

when they advertised for 10,000 native speakers of English. As was also mentioned earlier, it
was fortunate that this recruitment campaign failed, otherwise Thai schools could have been
flooded with literally thousands of untrained and unvetted English teachers, appointed solely on
the basis of being native speakers. Despite the failure of this particular campaign, however, it is
common for governments in ASEAN and the region to try to overcome the shortage of local
English teachers by recruiting native speakers, solely on the grounds that they are native
speakers. This is a short-sighted and potentially dangerous policy. Here it simply needs to be
pointed out that any decision to introduce English into the primary curriculum as a compulsory
subject will require a large number of suitably qualified and linguistically proficient teachers. No
country in ASEAN has anything like an adequate number of such teachers. This alone should
be reason enough to delay the teaching of English.

Linguistic demands on the child

The early introduction of English can also place heavy linguistic demands upon a child.
One reason for this is that English is not of the same language family as any Southeast Asian
language. In this respect, ASEAN provides a very different situation from the European Union,
where most of the languages are members of the same Indo-European language family. Thus,
children learning a selection of the major European languages of English, French, German,
Italian or Spanish, are learning languages which belong to the same family. There are many
points of familiarity between the languages, including a large number of vocabulary items. In
addition, and very importantly, the scripts are the same, so that literacy in one lead to literacy in
the others.

This is not the case in ASEAN. English is not cognate with any of the languages of
ASEAN. This makes it more difficult to learn. And while many of the scripts of Asian languages
share the Roman alphabet with English, many do not. Thus, a Thai child who learns English has
to learn two different scripts. While this is by no means impossible, it does mean that it takes
more time. It also means that English will appear foreign with no points of reference or
comparison. When we recall that the foreign language other than English which is most
commonly found in the school curricula is Chinese (Putonghua), with its ideographic script, the
linguistic demands being placed on children look overwhelming.
As another example, a child from one of Vietnam’s ethnic minority groups will face
particular challenges, especially if the child’s ethnic language has no script. Even though about
half of Vietnam’s ethnic minority languages now have scripts, the use of them in schools has not
been successful in retaining ethnic minority children in the school system, as they have been
used not to teach literacy in the mother tongue, but as a way of teaching literacy in the
Vietnamese script, Quoc Ngu. This has been one cause of less than 10% of Hmong and Yao
children attending school (Thaveeporn 2003). But an ethnic minority child who does remain in
school will have to learn Vietnamese (and the script), then English and then possibly Putonghua
Chinese (and yet another script). In other words, in addition to the child’s mother tongue, the
child will have to learn three further languages — none of which are linguistically related to the
mother tongue — and two different scripts.

The privileging of English

The privileging of English in ASEAN and its consequent early introduction into the school
curriculum has, as its counter, the relative lack of attention paid to local languages. Once

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 83

English is introduced, there is little or no room for other languages, with the exception of the
respective national language. This has serious consequences.
➢ First, it means that children have no opportunity to learn local languages, other than their
national language. As will be shown below, this also means that it is rare for children who
come from ethnic minority backgrounds to receive education in their mother tongue. In
this sense, English is privileged at the expense of local languages.
➢ Second, English is regarded as the language of knowledge creation and dissemination,
and as the language of modernization. In this sense, English is privileged at the expense of the
respective national language, and is a reason why English is sometimes adopted as the medium
of instruction for Math and Science, although, as will be argued below, there is no theoretical
justification for this, especially at the level of primary school. As a consequence, scarce
resources are channeled into the teaching of English when they might be better channeled to
developing the lexicon of the national language. It is important to cite that various national
language institutes have been made responsible for making the national language a language of
modernization. For example, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam have all
established national language institutes to work on this issue. It is interesting to note that two
outer circle countries in which English has a colonial history and an institutional role, Malaysia
and the Philippines, have been less successful in this enterprise (cf. Gill 2007, Garcia 1996)
than either Indonesia or Vietnam, where the attempts to modernize national language have
been more successful. There are certainly no theoretical or linguistic reasons why well-
established languages with scripts should not perform perfectly adequately as languages of
modernization. There is no doubt, however, that resources are needed in order to develop the
vocabulary and produce dictionaries and text books. Governments should ensure they strike a
sensible and practical balance between providing resources for the teaching of English and the
development of the national language.

Should English be introduced as a subject or as a medium of instruction?

Although several of ASEAN’s member states have introduced English as a medium of

instruction, sometimes as early as in Primary 1, there are several reasons why this policy should
be seriously questioned.
The first reason for opposing the policy is that children need to attain a certain
proficiency in the second language before they can use it as a medium of instruction
through which to learn content. This is a point agreed upon by many scholars. For
example, Benson (2008) argues that it is best for children to learn through the home
language until at least Grades 5 or 6, as children require at least five years of L2
learning before they can learn content or academic subjects through the L2. Being
taught academic content through the L2 represents a multiple burden for the learner
(Benson, 2008). Ideally, therefore, children should learn the second language for at least
five years before the second language can become a medium of instruction. This is
supported by the research findings of Cummins who shows that children can transfer L1
skills to learning the L2, but that this takes time. In a study of immigrant children in
Canada, Cummins (1981) showed that, after the age of six, children took between five
and seven years to attain academic proficiency in English, although they were able to
develop oral proficiency more quickly.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 84

 In the case where more than two languages are involved, however, even more time is
needed. To take yet another example from ASEAN, a Filipino child from the area around
Cebu will speak a local language as the mother tongue and will speak Cebuano as the
regional lingua franca. It will be remembered from previous modules that speakers of
Cebuano and its related dialects number more than six million, compared with the four
million native speakers of Tagalog. This bilingual child will enter Primary 1 and be
expected to learn in two new languages, namely Filipino and English, one of which bears
no relation to the child’s mother tongue at all. The child will also be required to use both
two new languages as media of instruction. English is used for Maths, Science and
English communication arts. Filipino is used for the other subjects. In other words, the
child will be required to learn mathematical and scientific concepts through English, a
new and ‘foreign’ language. Along with all other Filipino children for whom Tagalog is not
a first language, the child will have to learn the other subjects through another ‘foreign’
language. The child will therefore have to learn through two foreign languages from
Primary 1 (Benton, 1996). It is not surprising then, that such children can end up as
‘semi-linguals’, as was the case in a study of Balara Primary 3 children (Maminto, 2005).
While it is clear that introducing English early into the primary curriculum even as a subject,
let alone as a medium of instruction, can cause problems in terms of resources, teachers and
learning, governments are increasingly adopting this policy. Why, then, are governments
adopting this policy?

Three Myths of Language Education

Benson (2008) has identified the following three tenets (which she terms ‘myths’) as
being, at least in part, the cause of current government policy in language education:
(i) the best way to learn a second language is to use it as a medium of instruction;
(ii) to learn a second language, you must start as early as possible; and
(iii) the home language gets in the way of learning a second language.

Questioning the first myth

Maths and science as ‘neutral’ and modernizing

Two reasons why Math and Science are commonly chosen as subjects to be taught
through English are that they are seen to be culturally ‘neutral’ on the one hand and that, as
they are crucial to development and modernization, they should be taught through the language
of modernization on the other. However, it has been forcefully argued by the Filipino scholar,
Bernardo (2000), that, ‘there seems to be no theoretical or empirical basis … to obligate the use
of English in teaching mathematics’ and that, there are clear and consistent advantages to using
the student’s first language … at the stage of learning where the student is acquiring the basic
understanding of the various mathematical concepts and procedures.

As Bernardo stresses, the stage where the student is acquiring basic understanding is
particularly important. In other words, Math and Science, especially at the early stages, should
be taught in the child’s first language. The other argument promulgated in favor of the teaching
of ‘culturally neutral’ subjects such as Math and Science is that they can be happily taught
through a culture-free language such as ‘scientific’ English. Putting aside the idea that maths
and science somehow live in a cultural vacuum, far from being used to teach supposedly

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 85

culture-free subjects, English should be used to teach culture-rich subjects such as crosscultural
communication.

The first tenet above could therefore be rephrased to read:

A child needs at least five years’ instruction in a second language before it can be used
as a medium of instruction to teach complex concepts.

Questioning the second myth

‘To learn a second language, you must start as early as possible.’

All things being equal, this may be true. However, for successful language learning to take
place at an early stage, several conditions need to be met. These include

• access to resources
• the availability of competent, qualified, and linguistically proficient teachers
• a supportive language learning environment, and
• a motivated learner who has already developed proficiency and literacy in the first
language.
As has been illustrated above, these conditions are seldom met in ASEAN contexts. The
only children fortunate enough to find that these conditions are met will be members of the elite,
who speak the national language as their first language and who live in urban centres. The
overwhelming majority of ASEAN learners of English do not fall into this category. Instead, they
come from the poorer socio-economic classes, have access to limited resources and
overworked teachers, whose own levels of proficiency may be low. These children may also be
learning two or more local languages as they acquire a regional lingua franca as well as a
national language alongside their mother tongue. To force children from these backgrounds to
learn English, even as a subject, from Primary 1 is to condemn them to cognitive overload and
failure.

Start early or start late?

While there is research evidence to show that starting young is particularly valuable if you
want to master the phonology of the language in the sense that you want to sound like a native
speaker, this is the only area of language acquisition where starting early offers a clear
advantage. However, with a pluricentric language such as English and its myriad varieties,
both traditional and new, all with native speakers with significantly and noticeably different
pronunciations, and with the countless billions of multilingual speakers using English as a lingua
franca worldwide, the need to sound like a native speaker in today’s post-Anglophone world
needs to be seriously questioned. To put this another way, why would anyone of the speakers
described in previous module necessarily need to sound like a native speaker of standard
American or standard British English? If no reason can be found, even the phonological reason
for an early start is removed. This is significant because, along with the research evidence
showing the advantage of an early start for the acquisition of a native speaker accent, there is
abundant research evidence to show that late learners can learn languages extremely
successfully. A recent study that appears to be aimed at proving the importance of an early start
in the acquisition of ‘nativelikeness’, can be interpreted to show the opposite.

Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam (2009) identified second language learners of Swedish who
passed as being native speakers. They were perceived to be native speakers of Swedish by

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 86

native speakers of Swedish. Then, in order to determine whether these ‘interloper’ Swedes
really had complete native speaker competence in Swedish, the researchers subjected them to
a battery of ten tests to measure their phonological and grammatical knowledge and
competence. The ten tests were deliberately chosen to examine grammatical features
renowned for their complexity. For example, the grammaticality judgement tests, which were
both oral and written, included tests of: subject-verb inversion; reflexive possessive pronouns;
placement of sentence adverbs in relative clauses; and gender and number agreement. They
also used a 300-word cloze-test where every seventh word was deleted. Their results were then
compared with the results achieved from testing ‘real’ native speakers.

The authors summarized the results of their experiment by saying that ‘only a few of the
early learners and none of the late learners exhibited actual, linguistic nativelikeness across the
board when their performance was examined in detail’ (2009) and concluded that estimates and
rates of ‘nativelikeness’ needed to be treated ‘with caution, even suspicion’ (2009).

The results of this research can be interpreted in such a way as to be of value to applied
linguistics and those engaged in ‘real-world’ language teaching and learning. Three points are of
particular note in this context:
(i) starting early did not guarantee nativelikeness (as defined by the researchers and
measured by them in their tests);
(ii) native speakers failed to score 100% on all these nativelikeness tests (does this mean
they were therefore non-nativelike?); and
(iii) all the non-native speakers — including all those who started learning Swedish later in
life — were considered to be native speakers of Swedish by ‘real’ native speakers of Swedish.

This would suggest that there is (a) no real advantage in starting to learn a language early,
and (b) no real disadvantage in starting to learn a language late, as both sets of learners were
assumed to be native speakers of the language by ‘real’ native speakers of it. This raises the
important related question of the language learning target against which language learners are
measured.

Second language acquisition (SLA) and language learning goals: Cognitivist SLA or
social SLA?
In the study described above, the goal of second language learning is seen to achieve
native speaker competence. This is the traditional position of second language acquisition (SLA)
researchers. As second language learners’ goals are assumed to be native speaker proficiency,
their language is routinely measured against native speaker norms. When their language does
not match native speaker norms, it is classified as deficient in some way. In this way, a
dichotomy is created between the native speaker and the non-native speaker. The non-native
speaker’s task is to achieve native speaker norms. However, this cognitive view of language
acquisition has recently been challenged by a number of scholars. In a well-known article
published in 1997, Firth and Wagner argued that the concepts of native and non-native speaker
had led to an idealized native speaker providing the norms against which non-native speakers
were measured. The nonnative speaker was then judged to be ‘a defective communicator,
limited by an undeveloped communicative competence’ (199). In a more recent article, they
argued that dominant SLA concepts ‘were myopic vis-à-vis learning as social practice and
language as social phenomenon’ (2007), and that SLA theory was not able to account for the
use of English as a lingua franca. However, they concluded that, while the native speaker
remained the baseline target for language learners, studies exploring second language
acquisition from a socio-cultural and socio-interactional perspective had become more

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 87

numerous. This is a point also made by Swain and Deters (2007) who give examples of second
language acquisition research which prioritize socio-cultural and contextual factors and
recommend that we need to ‘pay balanced attention to social, cognitive and affective aspects’ in
second language learning.

The call for socio-cultural and contextual factors to be considered in SLA research has
been made by a number of other scholars including Jenkins (2006). She makes a useful
distinction between the goals and attitudes of traditional SLA, which, in the context of English,
she labels English as a foreign language (EFL) and those of English as a lingua franca
(ELF). The table below contrasts these positions (slightly adapted from Jenkins 2006, &
Kirkpatrick, 2007d).

EFL vs. ELF

EFL ELF
part of modern foreign languages part of world Englishes
deficit perspective difference perspective

metaphors of transfer/interference/ fossilization metaphors of contact/evolution

code-mixing and switching are seen as interference code-mixing and switching are seen as bilingual
errors resources
The major difference between the two positions is that the ELF paradigm allows for
diversity and sees this in a positive light, while the traditional ELF paradigm characterizes
variation as deviation from a fixed and established standard norm. In multilingual societies such
as those throughout ASEAN, insisting on a single target norm is inappropriate, impractical and
unnecessary.

Larsen-Freeman (2007) provides a useful overview of the different perspectives of

cognitivist or mainstream SLA and the more recent sociocultural SLA. Basic differences are
that, in the cognitivist view, language is a mental state, while in the social SLA view,
language is a social construct. In the cognitivist view, therefore, the context in which learning
takes place makes no difference to the acquisition process, while in the social SLA view, context
is crucial. The primary research focus of cognitivist SLA is on how people learn a language. The
primary research focus of social SLA is how people use language. In cognitivist SLA, learners
are thought to have successfully acquired the language when their language matches that of the
target. In social SLA, there is no real ‘end’ to language learning. I would add that the goal of
language learning in cognitivist SLA is native speaker proficiency, and this is the linguistic
benchmark against which the learner is constantly measured. In social SLA, on the other hand,
the goal is functional proficiency. In other words, the learner learns a language in order to be
able to use it successfully, and this is therefore the benchmark against which the learner should
be measured. (Note: For further undertstanding of this topic, I will be attaching Larsen-
Freeman’s article which discusses SLA).

As Larsen-Freeman and Firth and Wagner point out, cognitivist SLA remains the
mainstream perspective and this is the approach adopted by ministries of education throughout
the member states of ASEAN. This perspective translates as the following beliefs:

✓ The goal of the language learner is to achieve native-like proficiency in the language.
✓ Progress towards the achievement of the goal needs to be measured against linguistic
benchmarks derived from an idealized native speaker model. (In some countries this is a
British model, in others it is an American model.)
✓ As an early start is crucial for achieving native speaker proficiency, children should start
learning English as soon as possible.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 88

 ✓ As learning content is an excellent way of second language learning, English should be
used as a medium of instruction.

This helps explain, therefore, why so many governments accept the first two of Benson’s
‘myths’ and introduce English into the curriculum so early, and why English is often used as a
medium of instruction. However, a shift of perspective towards social SLA in the context of
learning English, especially as the major role of English within ASEAN as a lingua franca is
needed. Speakers and users of English within ASEAN need to be measured against their ability
to use English as a lingua franca in ASEAN and international settings. They do not need to be
measured linguistically against idealized native speaker norms. Not only is the language
learning goal not the acquisition of native speaker proficiency, the idealized norms of the native
speaker of English are less relevant in today’s post-Anglophone world.

In the multilingual world of ASEAN, we must adopt a new position. As Beacco and Byram
have argued in the context of encouraging the learning of languages in the European Union,
‘the teaching of English should be conceived so as to stimulate speakers’ plurilingualism and
not block its development in the name of a monolingual ideology’ (2003). It is important to note
how plurilingualsim is defined here. It is not the acquisition of native speaker competence in a
range of languages. Rather, it is the ‘ability to use several languages to varying degrees of
proficiency and for different purposes’ (Beacco and Byram 2003). One immediate consequence
of this is the rejection of using native speaker norms to measure a learner’s success in
language learning. In Garcia’s words, we must understand that a bilingual education ‘doesn’t
accommodate to monolingual standards’ and we therefore must ‘avoid the inequities in
comparing bilingual children to a monolingual child in one of the languages’ (Garcia 2009).

All this means that the second tenet or myth can be reformulated in the following way: To
learn a second language, you do not have to start as early as possible.

Questioning the third myth

‘The home language gets in the way of learning a second language.’

It is hard to know the origins of this belief, as all research shows that the opposite is true.
In other words, far from getting in the way, the first language acts as a bridge to second
language learning. What is important, however, is to ensure the child develops fluency and
literacy in the first language. As Benson points out (2008), building a strong foundation in the L1
helps the learning of a second language more than early exposure to the second language.
Children are able to transfer the first language skills they have developed to learning later
languages (Cummins 2008). For this reason, support for the first language is a key principle in
the Canadian immersion programme (Swain and Johnson 1997). In order to facilitate second
and later language learning therefore, governments would do well to invest in children’s first
language learning. The initial focus should be on developing fluency and literacy in the child’s
first language. Once this has been achieved, the child’s readiness and ability to learn second
and later languages will be greatly enhanced. This also argues for a later introduction of English
in the ASEAN school curriculum.

Reformulating the tenets/myths

Benson’s three tenets/myths can be reformulated in the following way:

➢ only use a second language as a medium of instruction after at least five year’s instruction in
it;
➢ to learn a second language, you do not have to start early;

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 89

 ➢ developing fluency and literacy in the first language will help the learning of second and later
languages.

When should English be introduced into the school curriculum?

English should be introduced as a subject once the child has a solid grounding and
literacy in the first language. In the context of ASEAN, curriculum time should also be given to
other local languages, before the introduction of English. In other words, where the national
language is different from the child’s mother tongue, the child should be taught first in the
mother tongue — at least for the first three years of school — and then move to the national
language. In certain circumstances, where many local languages are spoken and it is
impractical to offer the first three years of schooling in all of them, then it may be practical to
teach first in a regional lingua franca and then the national language.
English need not be introduced until late primary or indeed secondary school, as it is
quite possible to attain functional proficiency in English as a later learner in five or six years.
The focus in primary schools should be on local languages.

Should English be introduced as a subject or as a medium of instruction?

English should first be introduced as a subject. Of course, content of some sort is always
needed to teach language, but subjects with complex concepts such as Science and Math
should not be taught through a second language (English in this case) unless the child has at
least five years’ prior instruction in it. Generally speaking, the use of English as a medium of
instruction should be delayed until secondary school, where it can be used to teach subjects
such as cross-cultural communication rather than Science or Math.
The MTB-MLE of the Philippines which was implemented on SY 2012-2013 is in support
with this claim considering that the medium of instruction for content subjects is the mother
tongue from K-3. Developing a strong foundation of L1 (first language) through the
implementation of MTB-MLE program will help ensure success in the learning of L2, in our
case English.

How can a mix of languages be equitably balanced in education?

In general terms, a very useful contribution to this topic is provided by Cenoz (2009) in
the form of her concept of ‘the continual of multilingual education’ (2009). In the ASEAN
context, a general rule should be that primary schools should be concerned with the teaching
of local languages.
These should be the child’s mother tongue and the national language. Where this is
impractical, the child’s mother tongue can be replaced by a regional lingua franca. English can
be delayed until secondary school. At the same time, resources should be provided to promote
local languages, especially in the areas of script development and teaching materials.
Resources should also be provided to develop the national language so that it can serve as a
language of modernization. In the school context, subjects of ‘modernization’ and technology
should be taught in the national language rather than English.
The need to focus on local languages in multilingual contexts is well recognized by
experts. The table below which is adapted from the UNESCO report, Education for All by 2015
(UNESCO 2007) identifies main challenges facing a selection of countries in ASEAN and
suggests measures to help meet these challenges. The measures are all connected with the
provision of bilingual and mother-tongue education designed to improve retention rates up to
Primary (Grade) 5.

Education for all: Challenges and measures

Country Main challenges Measures to help
reduce low levels of retention to develop bilingual education
Cambodia
Grade 5

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 90

 reduce low levels of retention to add mother tongue education for
Indonesia
Grade 5 early grades
reduce low levels of retention to
Laos develop multilingual materials
Grade 5
Philippines reduce low levels of retention to make curriculum flexible to allow for
Grade 5 cultural diversity
decrease number of children out of develop bilingual education for ethnic
Vietnam
school minorities

Pedagogical implications: The multilingual model and the lingua franca approach

The current situation: A summary

As illustrated in earlier chapters, all the member states of ASEAN are paying increasing
importance to English and this is reflected in the introduction of English as a compulsory subject
into the primary school curricula in all countries except Indonesia, often as a subject from
Primary 1 and sometimes as a medium of instruction from Primary 1.

Major reasons for this increasing attention to English are that English is seen as the
international language on the one hand, and as the major language of knowledge creation and
dissemination and modernization on the other. In other words, these motivations are entirely
instrumental and represent a demand for linguistic capital (Rappa and Wee, 2006). It is
assumed that countries need English in order to modernize and to participate in and to benefit
from globalization. The motivation is driven by an ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ mentality and
this motivation is not restricted to the member states of ASEAN. In South Korea, for example,
learning English is linked to national survival, as exemplified in the Korean proverb, ‘in order to
win, know your enemy’ (Tollefson and Tsui, 2007). This is also the motivation for the increase in
spending on learning Arabic and languages spoken by ‘troublesome others’ in the United
States. These reasons for language learning seem far distant from the integrative motivations
for language learning which were traditionally proffered, such as learning to see the world
through another’s eyes, developing crosscultural understanding, and enhancing cognitive ability.
In ASEAN, the reasons for learning English are predominately instrumental.

Thus, despite the existence of established varieties of English in several of ASEAN’s

member states, the preferred model remains either a standard British or standard American
model, as these are the models most closely associated with modernization. This privileging of
British and American English gives advantage to native speakers of English and disadvantages
to others. Multilingual speakers of the local varieties of English are considered to provide
inferior, if not deficient, models of English. Resources are spent on hiring so-called native
English teachers (NETs) instead of on the training of local multilingual English teachers (METs).
NETs are funded at the expense of METs.

The privileging of English — and a standard American or British English at that — and its
consequent introduction into the primary curriculum also means that local languages are
displaced from the curriculum. Instead of children being allowed to learn their mother tongue, in
many cases the mother tongue and other local languages — with the exception of the national
language — are not taught at all. Children most commonly learn English as the first foreign
language. Sometimes they are asked to learn through English. However, this is not the case

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 91

 anymore in the Philippines as the Department of Education implemented the Mother Tongue-
Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE).

It is not only the local languages which are neglected as a consequence of the
privileging of English. The region’s national languages are also under-resourced. Instead of
putting resources into developing the national languages as languages of modernization,
resources are poured into the teaching and learning of English. However, if the current
language education policies continue to be implemented, the likely outcomes include the
following. (I mean the privileging of English)

❖ Increasing failure and drop-out rates

Children will continue to fail to learn English and other subjects and drop out of school.
Far from being a ladder to the path of success, English, if introduced too early in the curriculum
provides a barrier to learning (Pennycook 2010). Children from rural and lower socio-economic
backgrounds — and these represent the vast majority — are at particular risk.

❖ Increasing inequality

If this is allowed to continue, the gap between the haves and the havenots will increase.
The current policies, while probably designed with the intention of allowing all children access to
English, actually breeds inequality, as only children of the elite will be presented with the
conditions in which they can learn English successfully. But it should be noted that their success
in English often comes at a significant cost. It is becoming more and more common for middle-
class parents to choose to send their children to schools where English is the medium of
instruction, or even overseas (Wang, 2007). In doing this, they often sacrifice proficiency and
literacy in the local language on the altar of English. These elite can only be considered
linguistic ‘haves’ in a very restricted sense of the term.

❖ Increasing dominance of English

If English is allowed to increase its dominant position, local languages, especially those
with relatively few speakers, will continue to die out at an alarming rate. It has been estimated
(Dalby, 2002) that 2,500 languages will be lost this century. The Endangered Languages
Project at the University of London estimates the number of endangered languages to be even
higher, suggesting that half of the world’s 6,500 languages are under the threat of extinction. The
major reason for this is that children and young people are learning national and international
languages at the expense of local and minority languages (Hans Rausing Endangered
Languages Project Annual Report, 2008). Linguistic repertoires will increasingly comprise an
instrumental form of bilingualism, the national language and English (and possibly Putonghua).

The multilingual model

The ‘multilingual model’ is represented by multilinguals from ASEAN countries. No doubt

readers will be quick to point out that this is not a single model and that there may be as many
‘models’ as there are multilinguals. But this is to miss the crucial point. If a more social
perspective of second language acquisition is to be adopted, then language learning ‘success’
is not measured solely against the acquisition of linguistic features derived from an idealized
(i.e., unreal) speaker of a variety of standard English. Instead, success in language learning is
measured against the ability to use language in real contexts. In short, learners need to be able
to use the language in lingua franca contexts more than they need to be able to replicate the
linguistic features of some imported exonormative standard of English. It is nevertheless
possible to identify classroom models in a number of ways. In addition to measuring success

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 92

and proficiency against the ability to engage in lingua franca communication, countries in which
a variety of English has been codified — and these include Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and the
Philippines — can use the educated formal variety of the variety as the standard. These
varieties are, by definition, multilingual. However (and possibly because of their multilingual
nature), these local varieties of English are often considered only suitable or acceptable as
vernacular varieties by many key stakeholders in these countries. That is to say, these varieties
are not considered as a possible source of classroom norms, hence their remaining
dependence on the exonormative standards of British and American English. Again, we see the
tyranny of using the norms of the monolingual native speaker being used to benchmark the
multilingual. As an alternative to using a codified local variety of English, linguistic targets can
be derived from speakers who are recognized as having successfully attained the goal of
multilingual proficiency.

Coupled with the adoption of a multilingual model is the adoption of a lingua franca
approach to language teaching. Seeing language as social practice requires accepting that it is
more than just a finite system of rules. As Canagarajah has pointed out, English as a lingua
franca ‘does not exist as a system out there. It is constantly brought into being in each context
of communication’ (2007). This is true, of course, of all language use, not just lingua franca
communication. In the context of multilingual speakers, however, we need to understand the
rich linguistic backgrounds such speakers bring to lingua franca communication and to see
these as resources to be valued, and not as the cause of interference and mistakes. Pennycook
(2007) refers to this as a translingual model of language. Adopting a multilingual model has a
number of significant implications for pedagogy.

➢ The inherent authority of the native speaker of English is removed, as to replicate

standard norms is no longer the goal of language learning. This also removes the
authority traditionally attributed to monolingual speakers, as standard norms are always
derived from the idealized speech of the monolingual native speaker. In today’s
multilingual and post-Anglophone world, norms, as defined as the linguistic forms
produced by idealized monolingual native speakers, no longer have much meaning.
Instead, the ways multilinguals make meaning and ensure meaning is successfully
communicated become more important. This also means that multilingual teachers now
become not only the role models for their learners, but, crucially, they also become their
linguistic models. And by linguistic models, we mean not only of the language they
produce but, crucially, also of the way they use language. The linguistic aims of studying
English need to be aligned to the role of English as a lingua franca. Linguistic
benchmarks derived from monolingual speakers of standard American or British English
against which the linguistic proficiency of the students need to be abandoned. ‘Reliance
on a native speaker model as the pedagogical target must be set aside’ (McKay, 2009).
Instead, benchmarks need to be adopted which are derived from multilingual speakers
using English as a lingua franca. Garcia’s plea (2000) that we avoid the ‘inequities’ in
measuring multilingual children against monolingual children. Instead, the second
language speaker should be measured against the bilingual or multilingual speaker
(House, 2003).

V. DISCUSSION BOARD
Journal Article Critique

General Instruction: Read and analyze the journal article of Okal, B.O. (2015). Benefits of
multilingualism. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 2(3), 223-229. Then, answer the
question below. Each question has a corresponding point. The article will be attached here.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 93

 1. How did Okal define ‘multilingualism’ in his article? (3points)
2. What is diglossia? How is the phenomenon of diglossia evident in the Philippine society?
(5 points)
3. How did Okal differentiate ‘mother tongue’ from ‘vernacular’ language? What mother
tongue and vernacular do you use? (5points)
4. Okal noted that “despite the fact that many African countries attained independence over
50 years ago, … they still ended up adopting the foreign languages of the colonizers as
official.” Why do you think this is so? (5points)
5. What are the five consequences of multilingualism according to the article? (10points0
6. The Mother-Tongue Based Multilingual Program of the Philippine Government was
implemented in 2013. Can you cite 3 challenges that are being experienced by
elementary teachers in implementing this program? (6 points)
7. In order for the MTB-MLE program to be successful, what needs to be done? (6 points)

POSITION PAPER

General Instruction: Write a 1000-2000-word position paper on the topic designated to you with
respect to your field of specialization.

For BEED Students: Although MTB-MLE has been implemented already, I still want to know
your stand with regards to this program (language policy) considering that you will be
implementing this as well once you become part of the Department of Education. If you are in
accord with this language policy considering what you have learned in the module and the
actual reality of its implementation, justify why you agree, otherwise provide a convincing
argument why you disagree.
For English, Math and Science major Students: Write a position paper about the Bilingual
Policy in Education in the Philippines specifically on the use of English language as medium of
instruction in teaching Math and Science. As you future teachers, do you think teaching Math
and Science concepts in English will yield better result than using learner’s L1 or vernacular
language?

Your position paper will be rated using the criteria below:

Criteria Description Percentage
Content and Takes a strong, well-defined 50%
Development position; uses at least five
appropriate reasons supported with
strong and coherent details for each
reason. Counter-arguments were
smoothly addressed.
Organization and The paper was clear and ideas and 20%
Structure transitions can be easily followed.
The use of transitional devices was
excellent. The ideas are structured
coherently.
Convention/Mechanics The paper is free from syntactical 20
errors such as grammar rules,
spelling, punctuation marks,
indention, capitalization, and diction.
Format The paper follows an I-B-C format. It 10%
conforms to the lengths as

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 94

 mentioned in the assignment.
TOTAL 100%

VI. POST-COMPETENCY CHECKLIST

Post-Test (Formative Assessment)

QUIZ 6 (Short Response Quiz)

Direction: Read and analyze the questions carefully, then provide a concise answer. 10
points each.

1. As future teachers, how can you help address the issue of language loss due to the
privileging of English?
2. Argue for or against the idea that English should be introduced to high school students
only.

REQ ASEAN INTEGRATION IN EDUCATION/FOREIGN LANGUAGE: COURSE MODULE 95