Ministry of Education Language Centre

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Name	Ministry of Education Language Centre
Abbreviation	MOELC
Address	11 Bishan Street 14 Singapore 579782
Country	Singapore
Town	Bishan
Established	1996
Community	Urban
Type	Government-run double session
Students	Mixed, multiple-school cohort
Uniform	Variable, students wear the uniform of their respective schools
Levels	Secondary 1 to 4, Junior College 1
Website	link

The Ministry of Education Language Centre (Abbreviation: MOELC; Simplified Chinese: 教育部语言中心; pinyin: Jiàoyùbù Yŭyán Zhōngxīn) is a centralised educational institution for students in Singapore's education system to learn additional languages. It is located in Bishan and is managed by the Ministry of Education of Singapore. Students attend the institution on top of the existing school they are attending.

Its primary purpose is to offer foreign language courses to students that will generally be their third language, within an official grading scheme reported back to their schools. However, it also teaches the Malay language as an institute where Malay can be learned as some schools do not have a Malay Department. In exemption cases, students can replace learning their mother tongue with a foreign language offered by the MOELC, as a second language is a requirement for all students in the Singapore education system.

Exemption is typically invoked if the student in question is returning from abroad and is not proficient in his or her mother tongue, or is an expatriate whose mother tongue is not one of the three "official" ethnic language groups of Singapore — namely the Malay language, the Chinese language or the Indian languages.

The Ministry of Education Language Centre is located at Bishan Street 14. Its current premises was opened in 1998.

1 Courses
2 History
3 Admission and student cohort
4 Facilities
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Courses

The foreign languages that the MOELC offers are the French language, German language and the Japanese language, not including the Malay language which is generally considered a mother tongue. The Malay language courses have both a Malay Special Programme and a Higher Malay track for different degrees of advancement in the language. Students of Higher Malay language are able to cede two points off their O-level score (a lower number is considered better in total O-level scoring) as long as some other minimal requirements are fulfilled. ^[1]

The main focus of the MOELC is at the secondary education level. Grading is examination-oriented. The formal goal of the MOELC is to have the students pass their GCE 'O' Levels for their respective languages, as there is no diploma granted upon graduated per se for the MOELC. Qualifications received thus take in the form of an O-level certificate. For second language students, these second language qualifications are necessary to get into most tertiary institutions in Singapore, due to the requirement for bilingualism. Grades are reported quarterly to the students' respective schools, with the two Continual Assessments chalking up 15% each, the first Semestral Assessment chalking up 25% and the Final Examination chalking up 45%.

However, the other main purpose of the Centre is also language enrichment and provision of grades back to the students' respective schools. This is because as the students progress through secondary school and junior college, the workload of their other subjects causes many students to drop their admission at the MOELC. The years that have been taken go on record and these can be used as partial qualifications later on in life.

Depending on the language taken, students may also aim to take several other foreign language examinations, such as the French baccalauréat and the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. The focus on the additional examinations picks up for Junior College students, who take at least the GCE 'A' Levels at the conclusion of their course. This is primarily for students who eventually intend to receive tertiary education in a country and language of which the students are currently learning is the primary language.

Generally, Indian students who have mother tongues that are neither Tamil nor languages offered by their school do not apply to the MOELC to take an Indian language. As the MOELC does not offer it, such students will have to find another alternative centre instead (see the list of schools in Singapore).

From 2008 onwards, Bahasa Indonesia and Arabic will be offered as Third Languages too, bringing the number of Third Languages MOE offers from the original five to seven. The aim of the two new Third Languages is to facilitate future Singaporeans in engaging with Indonesia, and act as bridges into the Middle East -- a fast growing region in the world.^[2]

[edit] History

The Language Centre was created in 1996. Formerly, there was no centralised institute, bur rather eight decentralised regional institutions that taught extra languages, with the decentralisation akin to that of the Institute of Technical Education (ITE). The Ministry of Education decided to combine all the faculty and resources into one centralised building for greater efficiency in teaching students. The side effect is that there may be long travel times from some parts of the country on Singaporean public transport, although the travelling time for one trip does not usually exceed more than fifty minutes. The building was recently renovated.

[edit] Admission and student cohort

There is no paid tuition for the MOELC, although students will have to buy their own materials and textbooks. This cost varies among the languages taken. As a sample, the cost of materials for the French course for the first year ranges around S$90-100, although after the first year most of the materials are reused, such as dictionaries. There are however academic entry requirements. The student generally must be in the top 10% in ranking of students who passed the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) for entry into the French, German and Japanese courses, and in the top 30% for entry into the Malay course. These requirements can be lowered for second language exemption cases. The bulk of the students are usually thus from secondary schools with a high PSLE-score intake average, but there is a significant population from the junior colleges, as well as MOELC students from secondary schools that do not have high PSLE-score average intakes. There are no primary school students.

Because of the kanji nature of the Japanese language, and the fact that a strong grasp of logograms is needed to study the Japanese language, generally only students who have previously taken the Chinese language as a PSLE subject are allowed to take the Japanese language course, with exceptions. Higher Malay is a continuation of previous Malay knowledge from primary school, so only students who took Malay as a PSLE subject are eligible for Higher Malay. Non-Malay students, or students who did not take Malay as a PSLE subject, can take the Malay Special Programme.

Officially, if a student is not a citizen or permanent resident in Singapore, he or she can only take Malay courses, although exceptions are common.

Classes at the MOELC take place within two sessions, one from 2.30 pm to 4.30 pm, and one from 4.30 pm to 6.30 pm. Examinations may take place either in the morning or the afternoon with variable timing. There are several hundred students per session on a particular day, and students attend two days a week, out of a possible five. This puts the total amount of admission per year at several thousand.

[edit] Facilities

The MOELC is located on Bishan Street 14 between the ITE Bishan building, the Bishan Stadium. It is located north of the Bishan Bus Interchange and the Junction 8 Shopping Centre and is separated by Bishan Street 14 and a large field. Access to the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) network occurs through Bishan MRT Station.

The MOELC has one main gate and 3 side gates, but the students usually use the smaller gates, with the larger one used for delivery or parental pickup. A walkway from one of the side gates has been built to facilitate entry into the MOELC in the event of wet weather. The student canteen is generally the first main point of access and social gathering before and after class, and houses several dozen tables, with a single snack stall. The lobby in the main gate is occupied by a security guard and is rarely used. Though there are well over a hundred separate classes, they are divided into two sessions that meet twice a week, reducing the requirement for the number of classrooms to several dozen. The school also has several IT labs, a multilingual library, and an auditorium that can be used for presentations, lectures and screening foreign language films. All of the classrooms have multimedia support.

The canteen at the MOELC offers quick snacks for the students, such as cup noodles, potato chips and bottled drinks. There are also vending machines which provide drinks dispensed in cups. However, recently, the prices of drinks from the vending machine have been increased by up to 25%, possibly because of the rise in sugar prices, and the canteen prices are noticeably higher than other vendors as it has the monopoly of food sales within the MOELC, unless students take a 5-minute walk to McDonalds.