page_title: Ministry of Education Language Centre
section_title: Courses
hierarchical_section_title: Ministry of Education Language Centre / Courses
caption_attribution_description: English: Ministry of Education Language Centre
context_page_description: The Ministry of Education Language Centre is a centralised educational institution for students in Singapore's education system to learn additional languages. There are two campuses located in Bishan and Newton, which are 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.
context_section_description: The Bishan MOELC offers the French language, German language and the Japanese language while the Newton MOELC offers the French language, Spanish language and the Japanese language under the Foreign Language Programme. The Malay language is not included in both as it 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.
  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 the MOELC does not issue a diploma per se upon students' graduation from their respective courses. Qualifications received thus take in the form of an O-level certificate. For students taking a foreign language as their second language, these second language qualifications are necessary to enter 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 (each making up 15% of the year-end grade), the first Semestral Assessment (25%) and the Final Examination (45%) contributing to a student's final grade. In some schools which offer the Integrated Programme, students are even allowed to replace their lowest scoring subject's results with their Third Language's results. However, the subject being replaced cannot be one of the Promotions Criteria subjects (subjects you have to pass in order to proceed to the next level of education, for example, English). And of course, the Third Language score has to be higher than that of the lowest scoring subject
  The other main purpose of the Centre is 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 third language course at 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 take several other foreign language examinations, such as the French DELF/DALF certification examinations 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 overseas; the language medium of their courses will be their third language (a national or official language of the destination country).
  Generally, Indian students whose mother tongues are neither Tamil nor among the languages offered by their schools do not apply to the MOELC to take an Indian language. As the MOELC does not offer these, such students will have to find an alternative centre instead (see the list of schools in Singapore).
  From 2008 onwards, Indonesian and Arabic are being offered as part of the Asian Languages programme, bringing the number of Third Languages offered by MOE from the original five to seven. The aim of the two new Third Languages is to facilitate future Singaporean engagement with Indonesia and to open up bridges into the Middle East, the latter being one of the world's fast-growing regions.
  From January 2014, Spanish will be offered to Secondary 1 students as a third language, and to first-year Junior College students in 2018.
caption: One of the campuses of The Ministry of Education Language Centre is located at Bishan Street 14, which was opened in 1998.
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