The case of east Timor education beyond independence 2000-2008

الملخص EN

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.