Open AccessThe Case of East Timor Education beyond Independence 2000-2008
Author(s) -
Yunita Reny Bani Bili
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
international journal of linguistics, literature and translation
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2708-0099
pISSN - 2617-0299
DOI - 10.32996/ijllt.2020.3.11.18
Subject(s) - language policy , national language , portuguese , first language , sociolinguistics , disadvantaged , language planning , multilingual education , political science , ethnic group , independence (probability theory) , linguistics , identity (music) , government (linguistics) , language shift , language education , sociology , medium of instruction , context (archaeology) , pedagogy , multilingualism , geography , law , philosophy , statistics , physics , mathematics , archaeology , acoustics
The strong motive of East Timor government to establish a national identity through education had brought serious issues. This writing primarily discusses about the drawbacks regarding to East Timor language policy in education sector during the period of 2000 – 2008. Spolsky’s framework was employed to analyze the sociolinguistics situation, working of national/ethnic/other identity within the community, minority language rights and English role as a global language. The study was done by thorough library research in the related fields. The results show that while community language practice was ignored, the top-down language policy put more emphasis on Portuguese as the national identity language, Tetun Dili and English as the global language. As a result, the teachers and students were disadvantaged due to the inability to speak Portuguese, Tetun Dili and English. Second, the strong socio-historical context and political affinity to Portugal and its language had given little role to local languages in Mother Tongue Based-Multilingual Education.