Talk:Language education in Singapore

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Motivations for this page

Singapore has always had a reputation as a nation where a majority of her people are effectively bilingual. Many parents, especially those from the neighboring ASEAN countries, China and India, are sending their children to Singapore to pursue their education. It is thus interesting that Singapore is not at all mentioned in the Bilingual Education page. A further search on the Education in Singapore page reveals that the bilingual education policy is just a short section, without substantial information. The page Languages of Singapore presents also only a short section on bilingualism. More specifically, the abovementioned page is with regards to the entire language landscape of Singapore but not on the local education scene. Hence, this page was created out of the need to introduce and provide information on Singapore's language education to people who wants an overview of the general language landscape in Singapore.

Qkhuang1 (talk) 08:40, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Good job on writing the article! I encourage you to add content to the articles you mentioned above, as well. You also might want to add something to language education by region. Your help would be very much appreciated! — Mr. Stradivarius ^♫ 06:25, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Language education in Singapore/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: EddieHugh (talk · contribs) 17:57, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

I will post initial comments here soon. EddieHugh (talk) 17:57, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

At first viewing, this does not look close to GA standard. The main problem is criterion 3, breadth of coverage. I would expect an article entitled "Language education in Singapore" to include something on private sector provision and what is done at university, but these are not mentioned at all. I would also want at least one section describing language education successes/strengths/problems. There's also not much detail on what is actually done by pupils/teachers, but a lot of lists of aims and areas of assessment.

Criterion 1b is also a problem. The lead is much too short and does not summarise the main content. The lists can also be regarded as a problem for meeting 1b.

Work towards 2b is also needed. e.g., (starting at the beginning) ref 2 is 144 pages long, so a page number should be used; ref 3 states that "In 1966, a bilingual education policy introduced by the Government required all schools to teach English either as a first or second language", which is not the same as "The bilingual education policy was first introduced by the government in 1966"; ref 5 needs a page number; the English History prose section has no sources cited.

The prose (1a) also needs to be improved, especially for clarity for readers with little background in the topic. e.g., "During British colonial rule" (when was that?); "the local schools in Singapore" (local as opposed to what?); "in consideration of the merger between Singapore and Malaysia" (what and when was that?); "English emerged as the common tongue to be taught in school" (emerged how?); "All subjects are taught in English, and curriculum time is set aside weekly in all government schools for Mother Tongue lessons" (so MT lessons are taught in English?).

If these points are dealt with in the next 7 days (bearing in mind that the above examples are just a selection), then I will continue with a more detailed review. Otherwise, it will fail, as the basis for a reasonable article is there, but a huge amount of effort is required to make it a GA. EddieHugh (talk) 18:55, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

I am celebrating Chinese New Year and doubt I can address these issues within seven days. Feel free to fail the article after a detailed review. The Singaporean linguistics articles were written by a group of Nanyang Technological University students for an assignment. Impressed by the quality of the articles, I decided to polish them and your feedback is greatly appreciated. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 03:40, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

In addition to the above, then...

Mother tongue section. This needs a copy edit for ease of reading and clarity. The History bit stops 30 years ago, so needs to be updated. The intro to schooling (how many years at each level, etc.) needs to go at the beginning of the main text (before English) and an indication of ages should be added.

Mandarin Chinese section. This, and the ones that follow, is part of Mother tongue, so the hierarchy of headings should reflect this (or change the structure). Source needed for 1st para. Beware of terms such as "currently"; use "as of 2014" or similar. Copy edit again: use "between 1978 and 1997" or "the period 1978–1997" and dashes (spaced endashes or unspaced emdashes) instead of hyphens for things such as "schools – these schools" (these are not required for GA, but are best done anyway). The list of SAP schools can be cut, or moved to See also.

Malay. In the tables, it's more helpful to add a source for each item instead of clustering them in one of the headings. A basic copy edit is needed.

Outcomes. Who is Quentin Dixon? Keep to one method of citing.

There's a lot to take on... EddieHugh (talk) 11:52, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Nothing done, so failed this time. EddieHugh (talk) 21:06, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Language education in Singapore/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Jaguar (talk · contribs) 10:36, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Will leave some initial comments very soon and will focus on copyediting issues. Thanks! ☠ Jaguar ☠ 10:36, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose is "clear and concise", without copyvios, or spelling and grammar errors:

   B. MoS compliance for lead, layout, words to watch, fiction, and lists:

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. Has an appropriate reference section:

   B. Citation to reliable sources where necessary:

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects:

   B. Focused:

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content:

   B. Images are provided if possible and are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail:

Initial comments

Lead

• This is the biggest problem; the lead should be a minimum of three paragraphs for an article this size, summarising all the points in the article. At the moment it is comprised of two sentences and barely mentions any content in the article, for example the background, outcomes and every other section in the article.
• This currently fails the GA criteria and if it were to comply per WP:LEAD it would definitely need an expansion

Background

• "Singapore is a racially and linguistically diverse society" - this makes it sound like Singapore is a society and not a city-state!
• "During British colonial rule" - from when was that?
• "languages are no longer academic subjects and all content is taught in English" - unreferenced

Mother tongue

• "In 1976, the MOE accepted a new Malay spelling system which Malaysia and Indonesia had adopted in 1973" - should this be in one of the tables?

Outcomes

• "As Quentin Dixon[27] concluded," - ref after comma, and who is Quentin Dixon?

References

The tool server is currently down so I had to check the references manually. They all seem to be working and I couldn't find any that seemed unreliable, so this meets the GA criteria.

Close - not listed

I really hate having to do this (especially on the first go) but in its current standing the article does not meet the GA criteria and would need more work for it to reach a GA standard which cannot be done in this review. Seeing as this is its second review, I would recommend giving it a general copyedit and addressing all of those concerns above. If you'd like, once you have done that you could come and ask me again and I will review it again, saving a lot of time? I'd be happy to review it again. Regards ☠ Jaguar ☠ 18:42, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Editing & Enhancement

Greetings all,

A group of us from Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) would like to further enhance this page as part of our project HG2052: Language, Tech and the Internet. We would like to further improve this page by including information on the Higher Mother Tongue education in Singapore as a separate section in this article. Higher Mother Tongue is synonymous with the language education landscape in the country. As such, we feel that it would be useful for it to be included to further enhance the existing page.

In addition, we would like to contribute to the existing article by improving and including more information to the existing content.

We hope that our contributions will make this article into a better one, benefitting more visitors to this page.

Thank you.

ATQ001 (talk) 09:36, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Brief Review

My students revised this page for a course (HG2052: Language, Technology and the Internet) and I am adding a couple of comments as part of the final review. Francis Bond (talk) 07:52, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

• Extremely comprehensive cover, well structured and clear.
• marred by a few typos (most of which I fixed)
  • I am a little confused by "1967 MOE accepted new Malay spelling system adopted by Malaysia and Indonesia in 1973" was time travel involved?
  • also this: Focuses on Imbuhan (affixes), proverbs and compre. I assumed it was comprehension and fixed it.
  • some of the links to seab.gov.sg are broken (I suspect they reshuffled them)
  • some of the links to journals go through the NTU proxy and are thus broken if you are not from NTU
• if these are fixed I think it fulfils the GA criteria

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