Singapore has launched a bilingual education policy nationwide, which leads to three main home language environments amongst Chinese families, namely, Chinese dominant, Chinese-English bilingual families and English dominant families. However, little is known about the development of early reading abilities among Singapore children from these family backgrounds. Moreover, against the backdrop of technological advances in the digital age, how the use of digital technology may affect the development of early reading abilities remains understudied. In this study, 225 7-year-old Chinese Singaporean children with different home language environments were recruited from mainstream primary schools in Singapore to complete the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study reading comprehension tests and questionnaires. Evidence revealed that children’s reading ability and digital technology use in Chinese varied across home language environments. Also, the use of digital technology in both English and Chinese positively predicted the reading abilities in both languages respectively for children from English dominant families. The results provide interesting insights into the role of bilingualism and digital technology use in the development of early reading abilities. In view of the results, we also discuss and put forward suggestions on online reading education policy.

Humour plays an important role in making and mediating human relationships. While scholarship on workplace humour is voluminous, there is scarce literature on interactional humour in non-Western yet culturally diverse settings. This article looks at humour in multi-ethnic Singaporean workplaces employing both citizens and temporary migrants, with a particular focus on blue collar and service workers. We argue that Singlish forms a linguistic and aural humour template for workers to bridge significant language, racial and cultural differences through language play that is devoid of the aggressive disparagement humour that frequently characterizes shop-floor humour in the Anglosphere. What evolves is a humorous metrolingua franca (Pennycook, A., and E. Otsuji. 2015. Metrolingualism: Language in the City. London: Routledge.) that is specific to the way everyday multiculturalism operates in diverse Singaporean workplaces.