Friday 22 November 2013

More Tools To Boost Bilingual Learning by JunTian

Summary: More resources will be implemented to improve bilingualism education in Singapore. The Lee Kuan Yew Fund for Bilingualism announced that will fund 10 proposals that support the learning of English and mother tongue. The fund will pump in about $1.6 million to develop these projects over the next two years. 10 applications have been chosen based on their relevance and how much they can benefit the larger community. Many of the selections also have a “local flavour”. These applications are in the forms of books or musics. Ms Sim Ann, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Communications and Information, said there is a limited pool of resources that improve bilingual learning because “not many countries…devote as much attention to bilingualism”. The fund was set up by former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew in November last year. It has since raised $119 million in donations.

Opinion: I feel that the Ministry of Education as well as the Lee Kuan Yew Fund have done a lot to improve bilingual education for Singaporeans. This is very important for students in order to get a better command of both English as well as their mother tongue. English is the international language of communication while mother tongue binds students to their 'roots'. Thus, it is important that they are good in both. These apps also have strong local context so that students can learn the languages in a more comfortable way, at the same time identifying the problems in our society, or what is good about it.

No comments:

Post a Comment