Bilingual Education: Southeast Asian Perspectives

Introduction

Questions regarding whether a rst or a second/foreign language should be used as a medium of instruction (MOI) in schools (and if yes, for whom, and when) have been enthusiastically debated in recent years in Hong Kong. The public debates, however, have largely not been able to benet from the existing international body of research in bilingual and immersion education or the educational experiences of other regions. The reason is that such knowledge is often either couched in specialized, technical language or scattered over diverse journals and books, which are often off-putting to teachers, parents, school principals, policymakers and the general public. There is an urgent need to critically integrate and review the international research literature with a view to informing public debates and policymaking regarding the medium of instruction in Hong Kong schools. In January 1999, we obtained a research grant from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government’s Standing Committee on Language Education and Research (SCOLAR) to embark on such a study. The objectives of the study were: • To identify and critically examine the theories, concepts, and various options and models relevant to an understanding of using L1/L2 as a medium of instruction in schools; • To identify and critically examine practical studies and empirical research on the use of L1/L2 as a medium of instruction, and various options in using different languages as instructional media at different stages of education which may be relevant and applicable to the Hong Kong context; • To identify and critically examine the best current practices in the world on using students’ L1/L2 as a medium of instruction, giving special consideration to the experiences of countries or areas reverting from using a second language to using the mother tongue as an instructional medium; and • To identify the conditions under which successful practices elsewhere might be applicable in the local context to assist language planners, policymakers and school Introduction xii Bilingual Education: Southeast Asian Perspectives practitioners to make informed decisions about the language(s) of instruction in schools to raise language standards in Hong Kong. The critical literature report we wrote in response to the task set for us by SCOLAR has become only the starting point of the present book. Over the years, we have witnessed signicant changes in both the policies of the Hong Kong government and those of other Southeast Asian societies. The present book has come a long way from our starting point, and now includes coverage of the recent developments of bilingual education policies in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. The book can be divided into three main parts. Part I consists of three chapters that give an overview of the basic principles and prototypical models of bilingual education originating in NorthAmerica and Europe. It provides the reader with a general background for understanding key issues in immersion education, a category within bilingual education, and their implications for other Southeast Asian societies. Part II consists of two chapters. Chapter 4 focuses on discussing the bilingual education policy changes that happened after Hong Kong was returned to China by Britain. Chapter 5 summarizes signicant research studies on Hong Kong’s bilingual education policy and practice, to provide a picture of what we already know and what we still do not know about the bilingual education situation in Hong Kong. Part III consists of two chapters. Chapter 6 compares the divergent paths in language education policy taken up by Singapore and Malaysia since independence. While Singapore has taken a consistently pragmatic path from day one, Malaysia’s nationalist MOI policy since independence and its recent policy to bring back English as MOI for science and math subjects in the schools reects a difcult, tension-lled negotiation between nationalist and globalization imperatives. Chapter 7 outlines different theoretical frameworks and models for language-in-education (LIE) planning and proposes and discusses the pros and cons of a range of policy options based on these frameworks. In concluding this introduction, we want to thank Professor Jim Cummins for his encouragement and support for our work all through these years. We hope that this book will serve as a bridge between international research and local research on bilingual education and inform the debates in policy making regarding MOI issues in Hong Kong as well as other Southeast Asian societies. As we are putting the nishing touches on this manuscript, the Hong Kong government has just announced that the labels of EMI and CMI schools in...