Week 13

When I started reading chapter 4 in McKay and Bokhorst-Heng, the first thing that caught my attention was the word "politicking". The term language politicking refers to the worldliness of language in the context of language planning and policy activity. With this language planning, it has intensified with globalization as a strong organizing force in human interaction and has added a new layer to previously largely nationalist-driven agenda with language planning. I found it interesting that Singapore of all countries that teach English is one that spends a lot of time in English education. "Small in size, big on language", Singapore has a densely multilingual population, and bilingualism is very big, where about 50% of the class time is dedicated to language learning. I believe that American schools should look at Singapore as a good example to follow. We should encourage our students to learn and speak other language aside from their mother tongue, or the nation's main language of English. If we don't encourage this kind of language education, our world will indeed become a monolinguistic place. The death of language needs to be prevented because with the loss and death of languages comes the loss of cultures and identities, each of which belong to people all around the world. This is what worries me the most.