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Singapore is a melting pot of various cultures and ethnicities. Though the educated elite speaks Standard english, much of the population speaks their version of english. Any non-standard form of english is also colloquially referred to as “Singapore english” or “Singlish.”
Here, I will describe four different problems young learners, whose second language is english, face when they enter the government schools in Singapore.
Firstly, these children face a lot of difficulty acquiring grammar. This is because in the various first languages in Singapore, the syntax is structured very differently. For example, in english, when we ask, “Where are you going?” the chinese and Malay equivalent would be “ You go where?” To reduce cognitive load, sentences are kept short and even ungrammatical, as long as the message gets through.
Secondly, in the area of pronunciation, students of chinese background typically have problems with the “r” and “l”, while indians find it hard to differentiate the “v” and “w” sounds. Therefore, a word like “Wallet” could end up with multiple colloquial pronunciations like “Vollet” (indian) or “Warret” (chinese). Consonants found at the end of words (e.g. “t”, “k” and “p”) are usually ignored as well. Native speakers of english tend to find it a challenge to understand Singlish, simply because there are just too many variations.
Thirdly, students whose first language is chinese, Tamil or Malay tend to adapt the accent of their native tongue to english speaking. This tends to cause many misunderstandings in verbal communication. Sometimes indian accents can be so strong that it may be incomprehensible.
Lastly, because of the cultural mix in Singapore, there are some words that have been substituted by a Hokkien or Malay equivalent. However, there are also some Singlish words with no english equivalent. For example, while “Kaypoh” means a busybody, a nosey-parker, words like “aiyah” or “aiyoh” have different meanings in different contexts. Both words could mean “Oh no!” or “Never mind”, depending on the situation. Because of the Singaporean culture that is intact, Singaporeans find using Singlish more relevant in daily expression. This also decreases the use of proper english.
One solution commonly used in elementary schools and tuition centers is the “book flood”. In contrast to students learning by means of structured, audiolingual programs, those children who are exposed to an extensive range of high-interest illustrated storybooks, and encouraged to read and share them, are consistently found to learn the target language more quickly. (Elley 1991)
The government has also stepped in and built 24 accessible public libraries for Singaporeans to enjoy. In 2002, Singaporean officials unintentionally made cinematic history by slapping a restricted rating on a film not because of sex or violence or profanity, but because of bad grammar. (Time Magazine 2002) While some young learners adapt quickly by code switching, these problems in english acquisition continue to impede the progress of poorer students from illiterate backgrounds. Perhaps one possible idea is to increase the number of boarding schools in Singapore where students of such backgrounds can grow up in an environment with Standard english as the main language of communication.
