Page 260 - Beyond Methods

248 Ensuring social relevance public seek native speakers from English-speaking countries for pur-
poses of English language education.
SINGAPOREAN ENGLISH AND STANDARDIZATION
In Singapore, English is an official language along with three oth- ers: Malay, Mandarin, and Tamil. All Singaporeans are at least bilin- gual, the common language being English. One in five uses English in family settings. In fact, it is stated that “English can be used in all aspects of daily life. There are a few Singaporeans who seldom, if ever, need to use any other language; who perform all their work life, all their emotional life, and all their commercial transactions in English” (Anthea Gupta, 1998, p. 123).
The issue of standardization has been made simple and straight- forward by declaring Standard Singapore English (SSE), which is closely modeled on Standard British English, as the norm to follow both for writing and for speech. For purposes of accelerating indus- trialization and modernization, for ensuring effective international communication, and for providing equal opportunities (as well as equal challenges), Singapore decided to opt for British Received Pronunciation (see Foley, et al., 1998, for more details) as a matter of government policy.
In order to implement its English-language policy, Singapore has been actively recruiting native speakers from Britain and other English-speaking countries to be teachers and teacher educators. In addition, most of the textbooks used in schools and colleges have been written and produced by native speakers of English. Singa- pore has also sought the expertise and the experience of The British Council, which, along with local institutions such as the Regional Language Centre (RELC), have been making a concerted effort to spread “proper” English.
Sustained institutional efforts seem to have yielded good results in that most educated Singaporeans are considered to speak stan- dard English. However, also creeping in has been Colloquial Singa- pore English (CSE), or, more popularly, Singlish, which is a blend of simplified English with words and sentence patterns from local lan- guages. When, during the early 1990s, there was a proliferation of TV shows that used Singlish, the government-run Singapore Broad- casting Corporation (SBC) decided not to allow Singlish on TV. It