The English Language Syllabus of Singapore and Malaysia

1
The English Language Syllabus of Singapore and
Malaysia

• A Focus on Pragmatic Competence

2
The Questions in Focus

• How important is pragmatic competence in
  communicative language teaching? (slides 3-6)
• Background of the EL Syllabi in Spore Msia
  (slides 7-12)
• Does the syllabi in Malaysia and Singapore
  promote pragmatic awareness in students? (slids
  13-20)
• Does a lack of pragmatic competence impact on
  intelligibility/interpretability? (slides 21-30)

3
How important is pragmatic competence in
communicative language teaching?

• Mckay (2005) believes that the teaching of
  pragmatics is an important concern for teachers
  if they want to teach students how to use English
  appropriately.
• This would include
• Sociopragmatic competence (e.g. knowing when to
  apologize in a certain way)
• Pragmalinguistic competence (e.g. knowing the
  correct form to use depending on formality)

4
CLT and its impact on pragmatics

• A stress on communication should equate to a
  focus on the use of appropriate language.
• Students are taught Forms and Functions where
  they are exposed to prefabricated forms shared by
  speakers of the language to help increase fluency
  and familiarity with English.

5
The Role of Pragmatics in Language Learning

• Declarative knowledge (propositional knowledge or
  competence)
• Procedural Knowledge (knowing how to use the
  language in an effortless and coordinated manner
  performance)
• How do we marry the two knowledge and fluency

6
What to teach

• Both Sociopragmatic and Pragmalinguistic
  competence (e.g. when certain speech acts are
  expected and how the speech act should be
  expressed)
• The metalinguistic awareness of language is not
  stressed in a communicative approach to language
  teaching (e.g. Grammar, Semantics and Pragmatics)

7
Background

• Shared history within Straits Settlements and
  Malaya
• Chinese, Malay and English medium Schools right
  till the 1960s
• English medium education was of prestige and
  limited to urban areas of the country
• Raffles College (1929) and University of Malaya
  (1949) Carr-Saunders report on higher education

8
Colonial EL Syllabus

• Books and syllabus were imported from England
  with a focus on English Grammar, Literature and
  (Latin)
• English was taught as a first language by native
  speakers and also Indian / Ceylonese teachers.
• This meant the assimilation of British Culture
  through English literature and textbooks

9
Winds of Change Language Policies

• With independence both territories had different
  language policies
• English became an official language in Singapore
  and also its working language and since 1983 it
  has been claimed by many to be a language to
  express national identity (Tay 1983) and now its
  de facto National Language (Gopinathan et al.
  2000)
• English became a 2nd language in Malaysia and
  gradually lost its importance in Government and
  Education

10
1970s-1980s

• Malaysia abolished English medium schools and
  universities were forced to switch to Malay
  medium
• Singapore 1983 1984 the drastic decline of
  enrollment in mother tongue schools
• 1987 all pupils will be taught English as their
  first language

11
Winds of Change Linguistic Landscape

• Popularity of English in Singapore
• 1959 46 of Chinese students enrolled in Chinese
  medium schools vs. 0.7 in 1984
• More than 20 of households speak English as a
  home language in 2000
• English has emerged as the lingua franca of the
  Singapore resident population. Census of 2000

12
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13
English Curriculum Singapore

• Language is a system of making meaning and a
  means of communication and expression
• Language use is determined by purpose, audience,
  context and culture (MOE 2001 p3)

14
2001 Curriculum Focus on Speaking

• Pupils need to know how to communicate fluently,
  appropriately and effectively in internationally
  acceptable English. They need to understand how
  the language system works and how language
  conventions can vary according to purpose,
  audience, context and culture, and apply this
  knowledge in speech and writing in both formal
  and informal situations. Lets look at a short
  summary of the activities at secondary 4

15
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16
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17
2001 EL Curriculum Focus on Speaking

• 3 major areas of language use
• Language for information
• Language for Literary Response and Expression
• Language for Social Interaction

18
Secondary EL focus on Speaking

• Pupils will be given opportunities to speak for
  various functional, academic and creative
  purposes
• Able to understand internationally acceptable
  English and distinguish differences between
  formal and informal speech
• Able to speak and make presentations in
  internationally acceptable English that is
  grammatical, fluent and appropriate for its
  purpose, audience, context and culture.

19
Malaysian EL Syllabus Form 5

• Aims to extend learners EL proficiency in order
  to meet their needs for English in everyday life,
  for language acquisition and for future workplace
  needs.
• Enables learners to form and maintain
  relationships through conversation and
  correspondence, take part in social interaction
  and interact to obtain goods and services
• Enables learners to express ideas, opinions,
  thoughts and feelings

20
Curriculum Focus on Speaking

• Talk about their experiences and exchange ideas
  with friends and relatives
• Ask questions and respond to questions with
  relevant answers
• Make plans and arrangements with friends to do
  something or somewhere
• Obtain information from various sources and
  present these ideas to friends orally

21
The Enigma of Teaching Conversation

• The Fluency-Accuracy Dichotomy
• Richards (1990) discussed the enigma of teaching
  conversation
• The complex nature of conversation can be better
  understood when teachers and students are fully
  aware of the purposes of conversation

22
Purposes of conversation

• Richards (1990) identified two different kinds of
  conversational activity
• Transactional Function To exchange information
• Interactional Function To establish and Maintain
  Social relations
• Approaches to the teaching of both conversation
  and listening comprehension are fundamentally
  affected by the above 2 primary purposes of
  conversation.

23
Have we been neglecting Language for Interaction?

• It seems from the papers presented here there is
  a need to focus on talk as interaction.
• Purwati 2006 mentioned that it seems that talk as
  interaction helps her students to improve on
  their speeches but does talk as performance help
  talk as interaction?
• Lie 2006 and Agustien 2006 describes the
  importance of communicative competence and the
  importance of language and culture in the new
  Indonesian curriculum but does the syllabus
  addresses this nebulous concept?

24
Why have we been neglecting Language for
Interaction?

• Richards (2006) is of the opinion that talk as
  interaction is perhaps the most difficult skill
  to teach. This is because interactional talk is
  a very complex as well as subtle phenomena that
  takes place under the control of unspoken rules.
  Amongst some of these unspoken rules include
  conversational structure, discourse rules and
  politeness (one of the most difficult to teach).

25
Politeness Strategies

• Meaning of speech in human society is not just
  regulated by what is said but more crucially, how
  it is said. Now known as politeness strategies
  in Pragmatics
• These strategies minimize the threat certain
  demands might have on ones interlocutor.
• Social intelligence calls for a way in which
  these differences in desires (i.e. wants) be
  channeled by society in such a manner that does
  not fracture the existing harmony.

26
Politeness and Face

• Two basic desires to be liked or wanted
  (positive face) the freedom to do as one wishes
  or to be unimpeded by other (negative face)
• The mutual vulnerability of face any rational
  agent will seek to avoid these Face Threatening
  Acts (FTAs). or will employ certain strategies to
  minimise the threat. (Brown and Levinson,
  198768, emphasis mine).

27
Face and Face-Saving Actions

• Goffman (1967) describes face-saving actions as
  often becoming habitual and standardised
  practices (which are today known as politeness
  strategies / communicative competence).
• He suggests that face can be saved only in a
  certain number of ways, and each social grouping
  must make its selection from this single matrix
  of possibilities (Goffman 1967 13) Politeness
  Strategies (would you care to have some more?)

28
Intelligibility or Interpretability

• It is the contention of this paper that there has
  been insufficient emphasis given to the teaching
  of pragmatics
• Deterding, Brown and Low 2005 found that there
  was very little problem for native speakers to
  understand the speech of Singaporeans.

29
Barking up the wrong tree

• Does this mean that we have been barking up the
  wrong tree and that segmentals and
  suprasegmentals are not as important as
  interpretability?
• The answer is yes! Kirkpatrick (2004) found that
  amongst very diverse audience there is
  reformulation and recast of speech acts to ensure
  that there is full comprehension (see example
  below)

30
Extracted from Mckay 2005

• S Do they, do they write essays, do they write
  essays, do the pupils write compositions?
• M Can your students write an essay or paragraph
  S eh hm a composition?
• L yes, I think they can write because er as I
  /a// them to /rai/ er the story they can write
  and some mistakes I think thats ok for them
  because they have never learned English before?

31
Pragmatics to the rescue

• Since conversation is a multifaceted activity we
  therefore have to teach (Interactional) speaking
  skills differently and I will now put forth some
  suggestions on the teaching of conversation by
  Richards (1990) and Mckay (2005)
• Turn-Taking, Topics, Repair, Formal Features of
  Conversation and Speech Acts

32
Structure of Talk

• What happens at Openings,
• How to Maintain Talk
• How to Close conversation

33
Openings

• Whats at talk openings
• Typically, greetings and they must be at the
  beginning of the conversation.
• Hi John, would you like to go to town
• Good morning dear, what would you like for
  breakfast?

34
Atypical Openings

• There are also openings that do not begin with a
  greeting. These are made by people who do not
  consider the other as co-conversationalist
• Hey you dropped your handkerchief or Excuse me
  do you know where is the nearest toilet?

35
First Topic Slot

• It takes place immediately after the opening
  section and it is the only one that is free from
  topical constraints arising from prior turns.
• (Imagine a scenario that would be typical when
  you knock on your superiors door).

36
More on First Topic Slot

• -But the question we have to ask ourselves is
  that is it completely free?
• Can we bring up any topic? - Some yes but others
  no . Here is where you have to infuse culture
  and context!

37
More examples

• Here are more lines to show that we know some
  first topic slots to be odd
• I know this is odd but
• I hope you dont mind if I ask
• Please stop me if this is inappropriate
• I dont know if this is the right place to
  mention this but

38
Some features

• The content of the first slot is understood as
  the main reason for the talk/call.
• Hi, Mr Bourne, I wanted to talk to you about
• There is evidence for the preference of linked
  transitions from topic to topic.
• Oh yes related to this issue, I want to ask
  about

39
Some Features

• If there are marked transitions these are called
  jumps
• Jumps are manageable changes in the topic of
  conversation and they take place in most
  conversation
• There are usually markers that indicate jumps
  like by the way, incidentally,
• The jumps will have to be introduced as natural
  transitions in reference

40
What takes place at Talk openings in person?

• 1) Cognitive recognition
• 2) Identification displays e.g. smile raised
  eyebrows
• 3) Social recognition display e.g greetings

41
But what if a mistake has been made?

• - Corrections a take back is used when a
  recognition display is cancelled,
• e.g. oh, Im sorry I thought you were someone
  else.

42
LMS and Projectability

• A Local Management System governs turn-taking
  which is the control of the floor.
• A S will initially be assigned one of the turn
  constructional units at the end of a unit where
  there is a transition relevance place (TRP).
• The end of a turn or a TRP can be predicted and
  this is called projectability.

43
How do we select the next speaker

• Some of the techniques for selecting the next
  speaker could be quite complicated but some of
  the more direct ones include questions, requests
  or even by addressing the H
• Who You did what You mean

44
How can we help out students

• Turn management systems in some cultures are
  instilled on children. Do we allow a lot of self
  selection in our culture?
• Managing a conversation has a lot to do with
  ones ability to foresee what will take place in
  a conversation and this leads to projectability.

45
Understanding Speech Acts

• Pragmatic Ability includes the ability to
  understand speech acts.
• It is not the routine statements to perform
  functions like apologies, requests or compliments
  that is the issue here. It is rather the use of
  indirect speech acts.

46
The role of Pragmatics

• Pragmatics should not be ignored in any syllabus.
  Especially one which focuses on the
  communicative approach to language learning.
• We have to decide what to teach in Pragmatics
  and
• We have to devise a good interaction of teaching
  procedural and declarative knowledge in
  pragmatics so as to turn competence into
  performance

47
The call of Mckay 2005

• 1) Attention should be given to speech Acts that
  learners will use in their daily lives
• 2) General features of those speech acts should
  be taught based on its features. (e.g. Formal
  and informal situations)
• 3) Students should be encouraged to listen for
  how particular speech acts are used by native
  speakers. They will then become more sensitive
  to pragmatics in their own use of English

48
The call of Mckay 2005

• 4) Teachers should continually emphasize and
  sensitize students to the effect of P, D and R in
  language use and choices one makes
• 5) Students should be ultimately made aware of
  Sociopragmatic and Pragmalinguistic competence

49
How do we reconcile local with global needs?

• Malaysia
• As far as possible, teachers should use the
  Malaysian setting as a base to teach the language
  skills and language contents. Teachers should
  also use materials and emphasize the principles
  of good citizenship, moral values, and the
  Malaysian way of life
• Singapore
• The context for learning English is
  multi-cultural Singapore, Asia and the rest of
  the world. Pupils will be exposed to the
  cultures in Singapore as well as to other
  cultures outside Singapore, and to the different
  standard varieties of English spoken in other
  parts of the world.

50
Declarative and Procedural Knowledge interface

• Johnson 1996 recommends that teachers present
  declarative knowledge to students who have
  already proceduralised language
• Feedback and correction of errors are crucial for
  linguistic performance. The key lies in the
  ability of students to see that they have made
  malformation/mistakes. This is where the
  communicative approach has to be careful as
  students sometimes feel they can get by with the
  mistakes

51
Reactions from Singapore

• In the Singapore classrooms many teachers assume
  students have the declarative knowledge for
  correct proceduralisation and as such some
  incorrect proceduralisation are not discussed.
  Therefore there is the necessity for declarative
  knowledge to be taught (look at lessons) e.g.
  conversational routines to be taught.

52
RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
CURRICULUM AND PEDAGOGY REVIEW2006

• Overall, our students are competent in English,
  but there is significant scope for improvement in
  certain areas. Singapore students do fairly well
  in reading literacy, but standards of oral and
  written communication are highly uneven. Some
  employers have observed a decline in oral
  fluency, writing skills and the ability to
  communicate with impact.

53
RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
CURRICULUM AND PEDAGOGY REVIEW2006

• A CURRICULUM FOR THE SINGAPORE CONTEXT
• We have a diverse range of EL learners. There is
  a need to design a curriculum customized to
  Singapores needs. This involves adopting not
  just a first or second language approach, but a
  principled blend of both. A contextualized
  approach to EL learning will be complemented by
  systematic and explicit grammar instruction.

54
RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
CURRICULUM AND PEDAGOGY REVIEW2006

• Secondary EL Curriculum
• Consolidating Language Learning with Focus on
  Oral Skills
• Secondary students will revisit and build on
  foundational skills, in particular, grammar and
  spoken English. To ensure there is sufficient
  emphasis on the teaching of spoken English in the
  secondary curriculum, the weighting for the
  assessment of oral communication at N and O
  levels will be increased from 20 to 25 A
  Pragmatic Solution!

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The End

• Thank you for your attention!
• Beng_Soon_Lim_at_relc.org.sg