A Trilingual K-12 Program in Siem Reap: Reflecting on Successes and Failures

Siem Reap, with its proximity to the UNESCO Heritage site of Angkor Wat, relies heavily on travel and tourism. In this environment, multilingualism is valued, with English traditionally considered to be the key language. In response to more recent pressures for competence in Chinese, we established an integrated trilingual Khmer-English-Mandarin K-12 school, which is now in its seventh year of operation. In developing the curriculum, a central concern was the distribution of the three languages across available classroom time. We opted for a transitional immersion program in which English is prioritized in early years, transitioning to Khmer in the upper middle and secondary years, with Chinese as a foreign language throughout. In this chapter, we report on an evaluation of the program from the perspective of the three heads responsible for the respective language departments. Taking a phenomenological approach, the department heads were interviewed for their perceptions of the successes and failures of the program thus far. The findings indicate a lack of integration among the three languages and inter-departmental rivalry over student classroom time and school resources. In addition, cultural differences in teaching styles of the three teaching teams emerge as a source of some friction. The prioritization of English in the early years forms a major source of concern for the Khmer department, where there is uncertainty over students’ language proficiency at the upper-secondary level, especially in coping with complex content-based material in science and mathematics. Marginalized to only four lessons a week, the head of Chinese expressed real concerns over the language learning outcomes in his classrooms. The findings suggest the need for strategies to encourage greater inter-departmental cooperation, which we suggest may be achieved through clarifying expectations and promoting cross-department communication.