Singlish as a resource in Singapore's classrooms: implications for Global Englishes

Abstract

This talk draws from a definitive attempt at implementing bidialectal pedagogy in Singapore in a mainstream secondary school, with the researcher (myself) also acting as the teacher. The study involved strategies for teaching Standard English and Singlish as two separate registers appropriate for specific contexts. Lessons were 1 hour per week, over 8 weeks, and were taught to two classes of 13-year-old Secondary One students. Findings demonstrate that students were able to negotiate and contest the appropriateness of Singlish in specific situations, while deploying Singlish and Standard English features appropriately in written tasks (i.e., designing advertisements for various products). This suggests that Singlish can be a useful pedagogical resource in the development of critical language awareness (Alim, 2005), and that prevalent discourses surrounding the use of Singlish and Standard English by Singaporean students severely underestimate the proficiencies that they possess. I further reflect on some of the challenges when implementing such pedagogy in the classroom, arguing that the main barriers to implementing such pedagogy in Singapore are not in terms of a lack of resources (eg teaching material or teacher training), but primarily ideological (in terms of global linguistic markets and the state’s own definitions for language within nation-building goals). Yet, the fact that I could gain access to a school in order to conduct this study is indicative of changing attitudes. Therein also lies opportunities for other societies where localised varieties of English have become widespread and established among the community (including Hong Kong English?).

Biography

Luke Lu is currently Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Before academia, Luke was a secondary school teacher for five years. He is primarily interested in approaches to interactional sociolinguistics and ethnography, pertaining to issues such as transnational mobility, education, language rights, language planning and policy, and ethnicity. Such research have been published in Language Policy, TESOL Quarterly, and Language in Society. His most recent funded projects involved examining the pedagogical value of Singlish in ELT classrooms, and recovering a grassroots and transnational history of Chinese language reforms in Singapore.