Language policy and language education

This chapter deals with the language and language-in-education policies in the ten Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries. It describes the national, regional and international language ecologies and discusses the challenges faced in implementing language policies in relation to English and English language education. ASEAN has increased the pressure to reduce language policy debates to national and local languages that have been given some status versus English. However, unlike countries that have an Anglophone past and developed nativized varieties of English, there is little evidence of a Thai variety. Indonesia followed many continental countries in seeing English as a language that will bring specific knowledge, information and technology, accelerate economic development and a vehicle to secure many types of employment. Until 1955, French was the language used as the medium of instruction in education, the language of written legislation, of intra-government documents and the language of commerce and banking.