Dr Fan Jing Hua, Li Min

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Abstract

Language is both the fruit and carrier of culture, and no matter a language is learned as a mother tongue or foreign language, the culture it embodies will be transmitted through the learning process. However, language, literacy and culture may not always be linked in the language learning process. The paper surveys and examines Singapore CL education in light of multiculturalist Sonia Nieto's five tenets proposed along the sociocultural and sociopolitical perspectives. The paper claims that with more and more Chinese families taking CL as a second language, CL education has found itself increasingly difficult to assume the role of cultural inheritance and continuity. As the largest community inheritor of Chinese culture outside its origin, Singapore Chinese cultural education has increasingly taken a transmission mode in the form of cultural capsule and exhibits more features of "Chinatownization." Through an analysis on the turn from intra-cultural heritance to cross-cultural communication, the paper concludes with some suggestions for cultural communication in foreign language education.

Keyword(s) :   Singapore; Chinese language and cultural (CL) education; cultural continuity; cross-cultural communication; cultural capsule; Chinatownization