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the only ASEAN country in the spectrum of a very high English proficiency
goes to Singapore. With 63.52 percent, Singapore ranks number one among
ASEAN countries, while Thailand gets only 47.21 percent, resulting in a near
bottom nation with a very low English level. This statistic shows such a huge
gap in national English skills of these two ASEAN countries. The reasons for
this are Singapores western colonization, more emphasis on English, and wider
usage of English in daily life. This essay will examine the causes of why
Firstly, the fact that Singapore used to be colonized by Britain made its
English language skills far better than Thailands. In the early nineteenth
century, Singapore was well-known as one of the wealthy British colony known
as the Straits Settlements. It was developed as a trading port for an East India
center for westerners to trade with Asian countries (M.J., 2015). This required
named English to be one of the four official languages of the nation. Whilst
Thailand has never been ruled under western powers, making its necessity in
using English less important than Singapores in the past. Thus, the country has
significance of English since the time the new government was formed after the
council have set the national language policy to use four languages Mandarin,
This indicates Singaporeans view upon the importance of English. On the other
hand, Thailands education policy requires almost every school to offer English
from Europe to Asia, the country is multicultural with many different ethnic
commonly among citizens, in this case, English language. For this reason,
have a chance to apply English skills in practice. In contrary, Thai society is not
an English-using environment. People use Thai language all the time including
Thai. Although there are many ethnic groups residing in the country, most of
them can speak Thai, so there is no need for means to communicate between
different ethnic groups. With small need to practice English in daily life,
Thailands national English proficiency ranks very low as people do not use this
usage in every-day society. These causes create a huge gap between these two
skills, other non-English countries could have emphasized more on this lingua
franca language in order to industrialize the nation to the same level as other
References
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