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Language-in-education policies in Southeast Asia

Language-in-education policies in Southeast Asia. Kimmo Kosonen Consultant to SEAMEO SIL International & Payap University Chiang Mai, Thailand. Many ethnolinguistic minority (and other) groups face a ‘ language barrier ’ in education. ‘Language barrier’ – Quality.

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Language-in-education policies in Southeast Asia

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  1. Language-in-education policies in Southeast Asia Kimmo Kosonen Consultant to SEAMEO SIL International & Payap University Chiang Mai, Thailand

  2. Many ethnolinguistic minority (and other) groups face a ‘language barrier’ in education

  3. ‘Language barrier’ – Quality Thailand – surveys on educational quality • Minority children with poor Standard Thai skills had 50% lower learning results than Thai-speaking students in all main subjects • About 13% of Grade 2 students could not read or write Standard Thai • Over 25% of students in 10 education areas have problems in reading and writing Standard Thai • A reason: teachers and students speak different languages

  4. Language policy • Legislation on (and/or practice of) the use of languages in a society Language-in-education policy & practice: • Language (or medium) of instruction (LoI) • Language of literacy

  5. Number of Languages spoken in Asia Country Languages • Indonesia 742 • India 427 • China 241 • Philippines 180 • Malaysia 147 • Nepal 125 • Myanmar 113 • Vietnam 104 • Lao PDR 86 • Thailand 83 • Pakistan 77 • Iran 75 • Afghanistan 51 • Bangladesh 46 • Kazakhstan 43 Country Languages • Uzbekistan 40 • Tajikistan 33 • Kyrgyzstan 32 • Bhutan 31 • Singapore 30 • Turkmenistan 27 • Cambodia 24 • Timor Leste 19 • Brunei 19 • Japan 16 • Mongolia 15 • Sri Lanka 7 • Korea, South 2 • Maldives 2 • Korea, North 1 TOTAL: ~ 2200 Source: Ethnologue (2005) (30 countries)

  6. National or Official Languages in Asia • Portuguese, • Russian 2, • Sanskrit, • Santhali, • Sindhi 2, • Sinhala, • Southern Pashto, • Tajiki, • Tamil 2, • Telugu, • Tetum, • Thai, • Turkmen, • Urdu 2, • Vietnamese, • Western Farsi • Assamese, • Bengali (Bangla) 2, • Bodo, • Dogri, • Dzongkha, • Eastern Farsi (Dari), • Eastern Punjabi, • English 4 (1), • Filipino, • Gujarati, • Gurung, • Halh Mongolian, • Hindi, • Indonesian, • Japanese, • Kannada, • Kashmiri, • Kazakh, • Kirghiz, • Khmer, • Konkani, • Korean 2, • Lao, • Maithili, • Malay 3, • Malayalam, • Maldivian (Diwehi), • Mandarin Chinese 2, • Marathi, • Meitei, • Myanma, • Nepali 2, • Northern Uzbek, • Oriya, (50 languages) (22 in India) Source: Ethnologue (2005)

  7. Linguistic diversity is evident • Few monolingual nations • Many education systems use only one language

  8. Languages-in-education: SEA • National languages used as the main media • Brunei, Malaysia, thePhilippines and Singapore use several languages as media of instruction (including English) • Brunei, Laos and Singapore do not use local languages at all • Laos uses national language only • Myanmar has NFE in LLs by NGOs only • Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam have pilot MLE projects which use local languages • Cambodia, Thailand and Timor Leste reviewing their language-in-education policies (inclusion of local languages?)

  9. Regional Trends in the Use of Local Languages in Education • Promising pilots in several SE Asian countries • Increased interest in the use of local languages by govt agencies, UN agencies, INGOs, local NGOs • Local languages used more in NFE than FE • Local languages used orally quite widely, even without official endorsement • NGOs provide more education in local languages than governments • Policies on paper vs. implementation & practice

  10. Thank you! kimmo_kosonen@sil.org

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