Singlish in the School: An Impediment or a Resource?

Abstract

In the Singlish-‘Good’ English debate, the use of Singlish (SCE) is viewed as an obstacle to the development of students' literacy skills in standard English (SSE) and so the practice of classroom codeswitching between the two varieties is strongly discouraged. Yet the presence of the vernacular in the classroom continues to be robust. This paper examines whether and to what extent the use of Singlish, the homegrown colloquial variety of Singapore English, may be said to adversely affect students' literacy practices and, more importantly, what students and teachers themselves believe. The paper is in three parts. Part 1 reports the collective findings of a group of teachers who were involved in investigating this thorny issue through a small-scale survey carried out as part of their course work during their BA study programme at the National Institute of English (NIE) in Singapore. Part 2 reports the findings of a related project, conducted with the same primary school students, which involved a comparison of the incidence of features of Singlish in student talk, recorded during completion of an oral group task, with that found in their written compositions. Part 3 explores the possibility of considering the use of Singlish as a pedagogical resource rather than an impediment.

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