Affiliation:
1. West Island School, Hong Kong
Abstract
English as an academic language has always been an ocean of uncertainty for multilingual students across the Asia Pacific who are thrown into it often without their consent. This can result in a state of confusion and at worst, chaos in the many languages and multicultural identities they inhabit. This chapter seeks to unravel some of these historical factors over the past 25 years. It reviews the available wisdom around systemic functional linguistics and the theoretical foundations provided by experts of language and learning such as Cummins and Halliday. IB support programmes offer solutions to multilingual students for whom even the most well-intentioned IB schools in the Asia Pacific create dilemmas. There is a case for IB support programmes to bring together student well-being, as an affirmation and exploration of their cross-cultural identities. Finally, it suggests an update and further applications of the excellent support document called Language and Learning in IB Programmes to suit the realities of a new decade in the Asia-Pacific region.