The Lee Kuan Yew Fund for Bilingualism will support three more proposals to improve bilingual learning among young children here, bringing the total number of supported proposals to 16.

The funding will go towards developing bilingual reading resources and songs for children. These include a free monthly bilingual magazine with bite-sized local news in English and Malay for pre-schoolers published by the Singapore Press Holdings' Malay-language newspapers Berita Harian and Berita Minggu. The newspapers will also produce a mobile application with multimedia and interactive content for young children like word games and puzzles.

The second proposal is a bilingual picture book on the art of Chinese opera published by media production company Brainchild Pictures, and the third is a series of 15 songs and music videos in English and Chinese composed by author and composer Ms Annie Lim, who is from the media and education industry.

The fund was set up by former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew in November 2011 to promote the learning of English and mother tongue, and has since received over 100 proposals. It is currently launching its third call for the public to submit proposals on improving bilingualism at the pre-school level.

A spokesman for the Fund said that proposals should promote language learning in the context of Singapore, and could take the form of teaching and learning resources, programmes and events. Interested applicants can obtain more information at www.bilingualism.sg