Multilingualism Essay

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INTRODUCTION
Multilingualism is the usage of more than one language proficiently (Valdés, n.d.). In Singapore, bilingual is a form of multilingual because almost all Singaporeans are forced to master English and their ethnic "Mother Tongue". In this paper, we will compare how multilingualism differ across age group, ethnic group and gender. We will also discuss ways multilingualism is conceptualised in both linguistic and policy terms. I argue that the extent to which Singaporeans are multilingual depends on their economic gains and gender.
RESULTS
Chinese Malay Indian
Agree 270 (23%) 239 (37%) 190 (34%)
Disagree 618 (52%) 229 (36%) 211 (38%)
Neutral 292 (25%) 163 (25%) 153 (28%)
Table 1: All Singaporeans should learnt all four official …show more content…

This shows that they regard the interest language of higher importance than the other ethnic group "Mother Tongue". Yet, we should be aware that they have relatively low proficiency in these interest language as they are only influenced by the popular culture and trade (Li Chang & Hyojung, 2017) (Wharton, 2010). The minority group do not take on interest language as there are more practical language for them to learn and are aware of parochial language proficiency where only 5% of the population can master more than three languages (Yeo, 2017). Hence, most Singaporean are multilingual in at most 3 languages with one language that is lower …show more content…

The Chinese medium schools officially became history in 1987 (Ho, 2016) so it affects the 41 years old and beyond age group. This is shown by the drastic drop in grading themselves above average from the 26-40 age group, and the 41-55 age group. Since, they began their formal education in Mandarin, they might feel relatively insecure in their proficiency in English. Yet, we do see that they do not rank their proficiency in Mandarin high either for the 41 and above age group. This is because of the widespread use of dialects before the Speak Mandarin Campaign in 1979 (Lim & Yak, 2013) resulting in older generation being better in speaking dialects

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