Name	Ministry of Education Language Centre
Abbreviation	MOELC
Address	11 Bishan Street 14 Singapore 579782
Country	Singapore
Town	Bishan Bishan is a small neighbourhood of the city-state of Singapore situated in the Central Region, measuring approximately three by three kilometres. ...
Established	1986
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 and 2 Secondary education - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... For the Indian grade 11 and 12 schools, see Junior College A junior college is a two-year post-secondary school whose main purpose is to provide a method of obtaining academic, vocational and professional education. ...
Website	link

The Ministry of Education Language Centre (MOELC) 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. Japanese secondary school students in uniform A school is most commonly a place designated for learning. ... Students having assembly in the hall of a Singapore secondary school. ... Bishan is a small neighbourhood of the city-state of Singapore situated in the Central Region, measuring approximately three by three kilometres. ... The Ministry Of Education is a ministry of the government of Singapore that directs the formulation and implementation of policies related to education in Singapore. ...

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. A foreign language is a language not spoken by the indigenous people of a certain place: for example, English is a foreign language in Japan. ... The Malay language, also known locally as Bahasa Melayu, is an Austronesian language spoken by the Malay people who reside in the Malay peninsula, southern Thailand, Philippines, Singapore, central eastern Sumatra, the Riau islands, and parts of the coast of Borneo. ...

Exemption is typically invoked if the student 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 ethnic language groups of Singapore — namely the Malay language, the Chinese language or the Indian languages. An expatriate (in abbreviated form expat) is someone temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of their upbringing and/or legal residence. ... Chinese (written) language (pinyin: zhōngw n) written in Chinese characters The Chinese language (汉语/漢語, 华语/華語, or 中文; Pinyin: H nyǔ, Hu yǔ, or Zhōngw n) is a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. ... The article describes the languages spoken in the Republic of India. ...

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 concede two points off their O-level score (a lower number is considered better in in total O-level scoring) as long as some other minimal requirements are fulfilled. ^[1] French (français, langue française) is one of the most important Romance languages, outnumbered in speakers only by Spanish and Portuguese. ... German (called Deutsch in German; in German the term germanisch is equivalent to English Germanic), is a member of the western group of Germanic languages and is one of the worlds major languages. ... Japanese (日本語, ) is a language spoken by over 127 million people, mainly in Japan, but also by Japanese emigrant communities around the world. ... Students having assembly in the hall of a Singapore secondary school. ...

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 fot 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 for bilingualism. Grades are reported quarterly to the students' respective schools. Secondary education - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... The Singapore-Cambridge General Certificate of Education Ordinary Level Examinations (GCE O Level) is an exam which is set by both the Ministry of Education and the University of Cambridge. ... A diploma (from Greek diploma) is a certificate or deed issued by an educational institution, such as a university, that testifies that the recipient has successfully completed a particular course of study, or confers an academic degree. ... The term multilingualism can refer to rather different phenomena. ...

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, but the years taken goes on record and 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. 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. Lycée Louis-le-Grand (on the right) in Paris is one of Frances most famous lycées, with a rate of success to baccalauréat usually above 99%. The baccalauréat (IPA: ), often known in France familiarly as the bac, is an academic degree which French students sit...

Generally Indian students whose mother tongue is something other than the Tamil language and not offered by his or her 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 a private replacement instead. Tamil (தமிழ் ) is a classical language and one of the major languages of the Dravidian language family. ...

History

The Language Centre was created in 1986. 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. The building was recently renovated. Establish on 1 April 1992, ITE is a statutory board under the Ministry of Education in Singapore. ... Public transport in Singapore covers a variety of transport modes such as bus, rail and taxi and is widely utilised by her population. ...

Admission and student cohort

There is no paid tuition for the MOELC, although students will have to buy their own material and textbooks, which varies among languages. As a sample, the cost of materials for the French course for the first year range 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), or other sometimes there are too few vacancies and are further admitted or not admitted based on their PSLE score. 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, and there are MOELC students from secondary schools which do not have high PSLE-score average intakes. There are no primary school students. Tuition means instruction, teaching or a fee charged for educational instruction especially at a formal institution of learning. ... The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... SGD redirects here. ... A dictionary is a list of words with their definitions, a list of characters with their glyphs, or a list of words with corresponding words in other languages. ... The Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) is a national examination taken by all primary School students in Singapore before leaving for secondary school and is administered by the Ministry of Education. ... Secondary education - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... For the Indian grade 11 and 12 schools, see Junior College A junior college is a two-year post-secondary school whose main purpose is to provide a method of obtaining academic, vocational and professional education. ...

Because of the kanji nature of the Japanese language and a strong grasp of logograms is needed to study the Japanese language, generally only students who have taken the Chinese language before as a PSLE subject study the Japanese language, although there can be 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. Japanese writing Kanji 漢字 Kana 仮名 Hiragana 平仮名 Katakana 片仮名 Uses Furigana 振り仮名 Okurigana 送り仮名 Rōmaji ローマ字 Kanji ( ) are the Chinese characters (Hanzi) that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (平仮名), katakana (片仮名) and the Roman alphabet. ... The Chinese logogram for glyph or logogram. A logogram, or logograph, is a single grapheme which represents a word or a morpheme (a meaningful unit of language). ... Primary or elementary education consists of the first years of formal, structured education that occurs during childhood. ...

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. The word citizen may refer to: A person with a citizenship Citizen Watch Co. ... Permanent residency refers to a persons status such that the person is allowed to reside indefinitely within the country despite not having citizenship. ...

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.

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 mall and is separated by Bishan Street 14 and a large field. Access to the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) network occurs through Bishan MRT Station. Establish on 1 April 1992, ITE is a statutory board under the Ministry of Education in Singapore. ... Bishan Bus Interchange is a bus station serving Bishan New Town in Singapore. ... The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota — the third-largest in the world. ... The logo of the Public Transport System A C751B train at Eunos MRT Station. ... Bishan MRT Station is the only ground station in the current MRT network. ...

The MOELC has two main gates, but the students usually use the smaller gate, with the larger one used for delivery or parental pickup. The student canteen is generally the first main point of access and social gathering before and after class, and houses several dozen tables. 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 over 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 which can be used for presentations, lectures or screening foreign language films. All of the classrooms have multimedia support. Multimedia is the use of several different media (e. ...

References

1. ^ "Benefits of studying a third language." Ministry of Education. URL accessed on May 8, 2006.

Several countries have government departments named the Ministry of Education Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Japan) Ministry of Education (India) Ministry of Education (New Zealand) Ministry of Education (Israel) Ministry of Education (Malaysia) Ministry of Education (Singapore) See also: Minister of Education, Department of Education This is... May 8 is the 128th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (129th in leap years). ... 2006 (MMVI) is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

• General information
• Ministry of Education Language Centre learning web site