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Research has seen a growing recognition of the crucial role pronunciation plays in teaching English as an International Language (EIL), in achieving effective communication and its close link to the mastery of other aspects of language teaching and learning. In spite of its recognised importance, pronunciation is still a marginalised skill in many EIL programmes due to EIL teachers’ lack of required phonetic and phonological knowledge, and the paucity of comprehensive coverage targeted at EIL learners. While there has been much research on phonetic and phonological features of world varieties of English, there has not been a strong research–practice nexus in the field. There is therefore a need to comprehensively review EIL pronunciation teaching, to document what previous research tells us, and to discuss how research can be translated into practice. This article aims to cover a range of current issues concerning EIL pronunciation modelling and theorising, and provides a brief articulation of the current issues surrounding the global spread of English and its theoretical development. Specifically, it considers current EIL research issues, challenges, and their implications for pronunciation practice. It also considers the implications of Gardner’s (2008) Five Minds for the Future for EIL pronunciation teaching and postulates the necessity of a sixth mind to navigate the field in the post-pandemic era.

This article offers finer-grained acoustic analyses of two aspects of the linguistic sound system of Japanese English (JpE): monophthongal vowels and rhythmic patterning. At the segmental level, th...

This chapter will bring together major published works on English in East and South Asia (EESA). It will be organised around themes such as (1) “General works on EESA” and (2) “Works on varieties of EESA”, i.e. Chinese English, Japanese English, Korean English, Indian English, Pakistani English and Sri Lankan English. Under the second theme, the bibliographic references will be categorised according to the three focal areas of the volume, namely, “policy”, “features” and “language in use”. Only published books, book chapters, journal articles, conference proceedings and unpublished doctoral dissertations will be included in this bibliography. Our aim is to provide an up-to-date resource for all interested in the research on EESA.

In 2011, “student-centric, values-driven” was introduced by the Ministry of Education as the theme for educational reform and innovation in Singapore, with the goal of ensuring all children the opportunity to develop holistically and maximize their potential. To actualize this ambitious and encompassing vision, Singapore has developed the Framework for 21st Century Competencies and Student Outcomes. By instilling in students core values and competencies deemed crucial in the 21st century, the expectation is that they can each grow into a confident person, a self-directed learner, an active contributor, and a concerned citizen. To achieve these desired outcomes of education, Singapore has been striving to ensure what has been termed “the 4 Everys”: every school a good school; every child an engaged learner; every teacher a caring educator; every parent a supportive partner. Since then, the priority of education in multicultural, multiracial, and multilingual Singapore has been diversity and multiple pathways to success, such that each individual child can reach his or her potential. Key to every good school is the quality of teachers and school leaders. Therefore, Singapore has developed a comprehensive and structured system in teacher/principal recruitment, deployment, preparation, and development. To make every school a good school, Singapore also invests heavily in education and resources schools for them to provide customized programs to satisfy the varied needs, interests, and talents of their students. To ensure that every child is an engaged learner, educational resources and extra learning support are provided to maximize educational opportunities. The curriculum is also constantly revamped to provide students with more opportunities for holistic development and support for their many capacities. For every teacher to emerge as a caring educator, teachers and school leaders are provided with a comprehensive and structured mentoring system to enable them to grow personally and professionally. To help every parent to be a supportive partner, efforts have been made to communicate with, engage, and educate parents via education materials, workshops, talks, and funds. In addition, there are close partnerships among schools, parents, and communities. Three principles guide Singapore’s education reforms: (a) maintaining a clear and progressive vision, (b) working both systemically and systematically, and (c) equitable leveling up. What binds the nation’s core principles of ensuring a progressive, long-haul vision of education is the unwavering belief that students sit at the center of all educational reform endeavors.

While teacher retention is a pressing issue for many jurisdictions, Singapore has a relatively low teacher attrition rate. Drawing on the experiences of student teachers from the sole institute for...

The ASEAN region is home to great ethnic, cultural, political and economic diversity and linguistically, represents a region where both Outer and Expanding Circle varieties of English are spoken. English is designated as the sole working language of the ASEAN region but in reality, it has a different status and performs very different roles in each ASEAN member state. This article first provides an overview of the spread of English in Southeast Asia. It then looks at English language policies in each of the Outer and Expanding Circle ASEAN countries, and discusses issues including models and norms of spoken English and intelligibility concerns. The article concludes by emphasizing that global–local tensions in the use of English in each of the ASEAN contexts should be taken into consideration. There is also the need to strike a balance between the existing tensions in order for the region to compete in the globally connected landscape of the 21st century.

This paper explores how thinking and values in student teachers are cultivated in the Singapore context, via a case study of a teacher educator selected based on having won excellence in teaching c...

Singapore’s education system is set against a multilingual landscape where students learn English and their ethnically ascribed mother tongue in schools, leading to ‘English-knowing bilingualism’. Deliberate language policy and planning, selective teacher recruitment, and rigorous pre-service and continual professional development programmes have all contributed to Singapore’s educational success. Education in the 21st century cannot ignore the forces of globalisation set against the backdrop of the fourth industrial revolution, where digitalisation, interconnectivity, and the breakneck speed of knowledge transfer are taken as a given, and where the problems faced at both global and local levels are highly complex. This chapter argues the need to re-think traditional paradigms and approaches to teacher education, and showcases language teacher education in the 21st century from a Singaporean perspective where bold steps have been taken both to conceptualise and actualise a teacher education programme that aims to prepare future-ready graduates.

This paper presents findings of an acoustic investigation of monophthong vowels produced by learners of English from Yunnan, China. Speech data for the present study were collected from 15 participants comprising five Han Chinese English majors, five Han Chinese non-English majors and five Yi minority ethnic English majors. The findings show that the three groups share more differences than similarities in terms of vowel duration but not in terms of vowel quality though the results of Euclidean distance show that the Han Chinese English majors and the Han Chinese non-English majors are different from the Yi minority ethnic English majors. Results of standard deviation reveal that the Yi minority ethnic English majors have the lowest inter-speaker variability, followed by the Han Chinese English majors and the Han Chinese non-English majors.

In this article, we examine quality teachers through teacher leadership development. Using Singapore as an illustrative case, we describe the redefinition of the teaching profession to include deliberate structures and multiple pathways designed to nurture teacher leaders, and the role of teacher leaders in supporting education reform. We go on to outline possible lessons or principles that could be educative to other systems regardless of local context or particulars. We end with reflections about the priorities that should be focal in the continuing quest for educational excellence—and equity—whether in Singapore or elsewhere in the world.

This chapter describes how two high-performing educational systems, Ontario, Canada and Singapore, create policy systems designed to ensure quality teaching across communities, and compares their systematic approaches to the much less coherent policy system in the United States. These cases are drawn from a recently completed study of international teaching policy, with colleagues, seven jurisdictions within five countries around the world that have worked to develop comprehensive teaching policy systems. The chapter explores a multi-method, multiple case study design to investigate the policies and practices that support teaching quality within education systems. It discusses the Ontario and Singapore cases here because in some ways, they are most like states in the US in their size and student demographics. Ontario is one of the highest-performing provinces in one of the highest-performing countries in the world; 28 percent of its students are immigrants, nearly twice the proportion in the United States.

Research on English in Singapore has been the topic of many studies from the late 1970s to the present. Past surveys on the topic have tended to focus on the phasing of the study of Singapore English, rather than on the broader issue of English in Singapore per se. From the late 1990s, we see the birth of a new generation of scholars on Singapore English whose doctoral dissertations have focused on Singapore English, and who have focused on the systematic, features-based linguistic description of Singapore English as well as the broader consideration of English in Singapore in general. The present paper takes its reference from an up-to-date compilation of published works of English in Singapore and doctoral dissertations, and attempts a meta-analysis via a systematic coding of all the works done. A critical evaluation of what existing research implies about the theoretical modelling of English in Singapore and areas requiring further research will be elucidated in the final section.

The subtle juncture cues in older varieties of English such as Received Pronunciation can be difficult for speakers of new English varieties to perceive. This study looks at the perception of word juncture characteristics in three varieties of English (British, Hong Kong and Singapore) among British, Hong Kong and Singaporean listeners in order to widen our understanding of English juncture characteristics in general. We find that, even though reaction time data indicates that listeners perform quickest in the variety they are most familiar with, not only are juncture differences in British English difficult for Hong Kong and Singaporean listeners to perceive, they are also the most difficult for British listeners. Juncture characteristics in Hong Kong English are the easiest to distinguish among the three varieties.

Previous work on the rhythm of Malaysian English has been based on impressionistic observations. This paper utilizes acoustic analysis to measure the rhythmic patterns of Malaysian English. Recordings of the read speech and spontaneous speech of 10 Malaysian English speakers were analyzed and compared with recordings of an equivalent sample of Singaporean English speakers. Analysis was done using two rhythmic indexes, the PVI and VarcoV. It was found that although the rhythm of read speech of the Singaporean speakers was syllable-based as described by previous studies, the rhythm of the Malaysian speakers was even more syllable-based. Analysis of the syllables in specific utterances showed that Malaysian speakers did not reduce vowels as much as Singaporean speakers in cases of syllables in utterances. Results of the spontaneous speech confirmed the findings for the read speech; that is, the same rhythmic patterning was found which normally triggers vowel reductions.

This paper examined undergraduate pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their expectations, fulfilment of these expectations and the relevance of their coursework for classroom practices during three different practicum attachments. These aspects were assessed using questionnaires implemented at the end of each attachment. One-way ANOVA with repeated measures was used to compare 76 pre-service teachers’ responses. The results showed significant differences in their perceptions across the three attachments. Pairwise t-test comparisons also found some significant differences between attachments. The findings of the study are discussed in the light of implications for continued programme development and enhancements to the practicum component that can help to bridge the theory–practice nexus in pre-service teacher education, and contribute to the development of teachers’ professional competencies.

The twenty-first century is a time of rapid changes in an increasingly diverse and complex world. The advent of social media and mobile learning means that we are living in an increasingly interconnected and media-saturated society. It is difficult to predict how the world will look like in the next decade, yet teachers need to prepare their students to meet the challenges of the global workplace and society in the new millennium. Students will need to grapple with new technologies and changing global and societal structures. They will also be facing many emerging and complex, social and environmental issues that are currently unfathomable and therefore almost impossible to predict.

In the span of a few short decades in its post-independent era, Singapore has moved from a relative unknown, to being “one of Asia’s great success stories” (OECD: PISA 2009 results: overcoming social background—equity in learning opportunities and outcomes, vol. 2. Author, Paris. doi:10.1787/9789264091504-en, pp 159, 2010). Singapore’s achievements seem remarkable given the absence of natural resources other than her people—who represent a diverse mix of racial groups, cultures, languages, and origins. As a city-state, Singapore constitutes an urban nation, or urban city-state—and an urban school system—that is employing educational policy to successfully enhance social cohesion and advance social mobility among its multicultural citizenry. In this chapter, we look at the universal goal to “educate all children” or to “educate other people’s children,” using Singapore as an illustrative case. We begin with a brief history of Singapore to establish a baseline, and then go on to outline the journey Singapore has taken to ensure quality education for all children, regardless of race, language, religion, culture or economic background. We offer two illustrations that allow us to ground our narrative in concrete contexts as we examine specific policies and practices that have had an impact on Singapore’s aim to achieve equity amidst diversity. We then move from the specific illustrations to a look across the two in order to surface possible lessons or principles that could be educative to other systems regardless of local particulars. We end with reflections about the priorities that should be focal in the continuing quest for educational equity and social justice—whether in Singapore or elsewhere in our world.

The chapter addresses the challenges that are facing Singapore’s education system in a post-LKY era, as highlighted by the contributing authors. It highlights two key educational imperatives to prepare students for the future—innovation and social cohesion—and the potential tensions between them before asking if Mr. Lee’s ideas continue to be relevant as we forge forward to educate in an increasingly complex and turbulent world. Recommendations are made on how to navigate the future and ensure that educational principles remain faithful to Mr. Lee’s educational legacy.

Singapore saw a signification milestone in 2015 as it celebrated its 50th anniversary of independence. When it gained its sovereignty in 1965, Singapore was a poor, small island with few natural resources and a lot of problems. Today, the once backwater underdeveloped economy is now a world economy and an education leader. The transformation was not a one-shot deal. With tenacity, foresight and political will, Singapore has been able to raise its education level that matches the best systems in the world, accomplishing significant improvements at each stage of its journey. Singapore’s education is premised on an “impact perspective”, which is reflected in the following four aspects (Tan in Educational Research for Policy and Practice 11:35–41, 2012). First, besides a high cognisance on reform and innovation, there is also an elevated awareness of the outcomes that are strategic to change, at the macro-level and micro-level that involve key stakeholders and partners.

Educational reform movements around the world are setting ambitious goals for student learning, and major developments in classroom practices largely rely on teachers who need support and guidance (Ball and Cohen in Teaching as the learning profession: Handbook of policy and practice, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, pp. 3–32, 1999; Fullan and Miles in Phi Delta Kappan 73:745–752, 1992). If schools are to produce more powerful learning for students, more powerful learning opportunities must be offered to teachers (Feiman-Nemser in Teachers College Record 103(6), 1013–1055, 2001). Unless teachers have access to serious and sustained learning opportunities at every stage of their career, they will be unlikely to teach in ways that meet the demanding new standards for student learning or participate in the solution of educational problems.

One of Lee Kuan Yew’s greatest concern when Singapore first gained independence in 1965 was the issue of what language/languages were to be used by the multi-ethnic communities living in Singapore and the newly formed government. The original goals of English-knowing bilingualism were to find a common language that is ethnically neutral (i.e. English) and to allow Singaporeans to learn their ascribed ethnic mother tongue so that they can remain culturally rooted. English was deemed to be able to provide the young nation state with both global economic benefits (to allow easy negotiation in international trade) and educational access (to the wealth of research, resources and curriculum materials written in English). There was also the urgent need to maintain peace and harmony amidst a newly independent multi-ethnic and multi-lingual society. This chapter will provide a meta-analysis of Lee’s bilingual education policy in Singapore, tracing the historical roots and original goals for introducing the Bilingual Education policy, implementation journey, challenges faced, lessons learnt and make suggestions for the way forward. In his later years, Lee dubbed Singapore’s bilingual journey to be “his lifelong challenge”, but amidst the difficulties and challenges faced, the link between English-knowing bilingualism and Singapore’s educational success will also be drawn.

Education is a dynamic social phenomenon and can change with social transitions such as globalisation. Consequently, facets of the education system, such as teaching and learning which are the school’s main core business and responsibility, must also be constantly updated to stay relevant. Specifically, it is important to ensure that school activities and resources are augmented to benefit both teachers and students. In the same way, various innovations in curriculum and pedagogy are regularly developed and experimented on to keep up with the fast-changing world.

Despite the small geographical size of the nation, the Singapore economy is one of the most prosperous in the world. Not only does it rank as the best country in the world to do business (Economy Watch in 2011 World Bank ease of doing business index, 2011), but Singapore has also been highlighted as a high-performing education system with features that other systems could learn from Barber and Mourshed (How the world’s best-performing school systems come out on top. McKinsey & Company, New York, 2007). The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD in Strong performers and successful reformers in education: Lessons from PISA for the United States. Author, Paris, France, pp. 159–176, 2010) also commented on the strong link between education and economic development in Singapore, as well as between policy formulation and policy implementation.

In line with the Ministry of Education's vision of the delivery of twenty-first century competencies amongst all students in Singapore, the National Institute of Education in Singapore employs service learning as a pedagogical tool to develop community outreach and engagement. This paper begins with a review of related literature on service learning as a means of enhancing the quality of pre-service teacher education programmes internationally. It then looks at how the teaching of the English language may be used as a principal means by which students can make an impact on a local community of their choice in the Singaporean context. It draws attention to the nexus of theory and practice via highlighting three service-learning projects where the vital relationship between the pedagogical methods area of study known as Curriculum Studies on English Language Teaching and the opportunity to practise English language teaching outside the traditional clinic field experience offered through practicum posting ar...

One of Theodore Roosevelt's most widely quoted sayings reads: “To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” All societies have endeavoured to educate their youn...

The English language has gone through cycles of prominence and decline in China since it arrived on Chinese shores in 1637 for the purposes of trade (Adamson, 2002). Since then the language has evolved in China from the stage when it was regarded as a language spoken by ‘barbarians’ (Adamson, 2002) in the 1700s to the present day which sees an unprecedented surge of enthusiasm for the language. This significant change in the attitudes of the Chinese people towards English has accelerated since China's open door policy gathered steam in the early 1990s. Conservative estimates place the number of people learning English in China at about 200 million. A recent estimate by Crystal (2008) suggests that the number of English speakers in China has, in fact, doubled, with the widespread enthusiasm for English generated by driving forces such as China's entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the hosting of the Beijing Olympic Games, international tourism, foreign investment, the development of Western China, and the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) launched on January 1, 2010.

Today's teachers are expected to use modern digital technology (DT) to optimise pedagogical effects. Singaporean policy makers have introduced directives to explicitly require teachers to apply DT in teaching. Inherent in such directives is an assumption that by requiring teachers to apply DT, they will perceive its value and use it in their teaching. This paper tests this assumption. Students in initial teacher education programs in Singapore responded to a survey on four variables about their use of DT: (1) compliance with requirements, (2) sense of competence, (3) perceived value and (4) frequency of DT application. Compliance was found to be negatively correlated with competence and uncorrelated with frequency, indicating that teachers who were more competent in DT were less likely to be compliant and those who were compliant may not actually apply DT in teaching. In contrast, both competence and value were positively correlated with frequency of application. Compliance differs for students in different programs and is higher for females. The results indicate that mandating use of DT may not be useful. A more productive approach may be to enhance the competence of teachers in DT so that they value its effectiveness and are confident to apply it in classroom activities. Practitioner Notes What is already known about this topic There is a global trend that education authorities require teachers to apply educational technology in classroom practices., Requiring people to comply with directives from the authority may not always lead to conformity., Self-perception of competence has significant positive influence on human behaviour., What this paper adds Teachers who are more competent with DT are less likely to be compliant., Teachers who are compliant may not actually apply DT in teaching., It is essential for teachers to see the value of DT and build up their competence to use technology effectively., Implications for practice and/or policy Teacher educators need to reconsider their training approaches in order to cultivate positive attitudes towards DT and develop preservice teachers' competence in using DT for teaching and learning., School administration should strive to create a culture that values DT in teaching and learning., Teachers need to have successful experiences in DT application that in turn change their perceptions and classroom practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, education systems around the world have been keeping a keen eye on rankings of student achievement as measured by internationally benchmarked tests. This has led to considerable attention being paid to teasing out success factors that may account for countries that have emerged top of the ranks or those that have shown the most rapid improvement from one test period to the next. Singapore’s education system, which has consistently emerged as one of the higher ranking countries has garnered much international attention as a consequence. Even as other nations are learning more about Singapore, it is timely for Singapore to share our expertise and experience to benefit other systems. In this article, one such effort of internationalisation is focused on i.e., teacher education and professional development programmes. The underpinning philosophy of internationalisation is to serve the global educational community. Three models of internationalisation are expounded upon, namely; building the local capacity of our partner countries, training the trainers, and the offering of executive leadership training programmes to an international market. The past and future challenges of internationalisation are also discussed. The article ends with how it began, in terms of examining Singapore’s internationalisation of its teacher education and professional development programmes in the light of whether we are indeed, paving the Fourth Way as espoused by Hargreaves and Shirley (2009).