Making bilingualism work: Developments in bilingual education in Asean

Abstract

Abstract Systems of bilingual education in three neighbouring countries, Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei Darussalam are examined in an attempt to understand basic issues. These are ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries that fall into the category of Small Young Countries (SYCs) previously discussed in Pakir (1992a). A unifying feature is the fact that they are multilingual communities, with a vast range of complex linguistic and cultural traditions. A second feature is that they represent parallel cases of countries in which English has played an internal role historically. Third, these countries have Malay as the national language (albeit in Singapore, with a large Chinese majority and using English as a working language, Malay is not as widely used). Fourth, bilingual‐ism is a language policy, whether publicly advocated or implicitly sanctioned.