A Comparative Study Of English-Chinese Bilingual Education Policy In China & Singapore

In recent years, due to the development of the society, English-Chinese bilingual education has been widely concerned as an important part of the development and reform of education in china. But, in nowadays’ China, the foundation and the accumulation to develop English-Chinese bilingual education is still relatively weak, so it’s necessary for China to learn advanced experience from the foreign countries. Singapore is a world-wide example of imposing bilingual education,which also shares a lot of similarities with China in society, history, culture and other aspects. Thus, in a targeted manner to learn the successful bilingual education experience from Singapore in comparison is an important choice for China to develop English-Chinese bilingual education. By reviewing and comparing the background, practice and influence of bilingual education policy in both two countries with approaches of documents, comparative analysis and historicism, this paper summarizes the successful experience of Singapore’s bilingual education mainly lies in: the government has a clear positioning of the bilingual education policy; the government attaches importance to the development and improvement of bilingual education related policies and regulations; the government in the implementation of bilingual education always stand firm and hold clear principle; etc. While there are several kind of problems exist in China’s development of English-Chinese bilingual education, such as: the policy orientation is ambiguous; the lack of policy normativity, and the absence of legislation. So, the relevant aspects of Singapore’s successful experience is worthy of China’s reference. On the other hand, based on the analysis of the national conditions and the special bilingual phenomena of China, this paper recommends the implementation of bilingual education in China must be based on its national conditions. Chinese government must adhere to the "limited" principle, namely "school age limited in Higher Education", "bilingual education in national(regional) colleges and universities limited in higher education and the specific subjects", "Teaching(Curriculum) generally limited in specific subjects", etc. In this way, China can develop the English-Chinese bilingual education adapt to its own conditions, mother tongue education, and National language-Chinese bilingual education, and avoid the waste of educational resources.