LITERACY DEVELOPMENT THROUGH THE INCORPORATION OF LITERATURE IN LANGUAGE EDUCATION FOR MALAYSIAN SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS

Literacy is a major concern among educators in the Malaysian education scenario.  Various programmes have been identified and implemented in primary and secondary schools to raise the standard of the English language among students.  Among them is the implementation of various English language reading programmes.  This move has been seen as necessary as part of the Malaysian government’s efforts to make all Malaysians proficient in the English language.  To this end, the Malaysian Ministry of Education has incorporated literature into the English language subject.  Despite the concerted efforts from the various sections of the Ministry of Educations,  the effectiveness of these programmes has been unclear.  This study looks into the various programmes implemented in the Malaysian primary and secondary schools. Using a questionnaire, the study attempts to identify students’ perception on the types of literary genre they enjoy reading. The study also looks into the various activities carried out by English teachers and students’ views on the types of activities they enjoy and found useful in the classroom. Keywords:      English as a second language,  literacy, literature, reading programmes, literary genre

Get The Teachers Prepared First

ENGLISH LANGUAGE education in Malaysia is again the focus of attention Even as the government is considering whether Mathematics and Science should continue to be taught in English the Education Minister was reported to be considering making English Literature a subject at the primary school level

ESL LEARNERS' USE OF ENGLISH MODALS IN NARRATIVE COMPOSITIONS: SYNTATIC AND SEMANTIC ACCURACY

This study investigated use of modals in two written tasks by Form 4 Malaysian secondary school ESL learners. The aim was to investigate the use of English modals at the syntactic and semantic levels from data made available by the EMAS Corpus. The research design comprised a qualitative technique through discourse analysis supplemented with some descriptive statistics derived from a concordancer. The concordancer identified modals used by the students at the form 4 level. The research findings showed that two modals not stipulated in the syllabus, would and shall, were also found in the narrative compositions. The secondary school English language syllabus indicated varied meanings to the modals, but it was found that students repetitively used only a few of the same modals for these various functions. It was concluded that there were some inadequacies in the syllabus that led to the problems encountered by ESL students. In order to circumvent the problematic items identified in the study, and to further improve the teaching and learning of modal auxiliaries among ESL learners, several recommendations are proposed

Enhancing the self-esteem of undergraduates in a Malaysian higher education institution through bibliotherapy

The purpose of this study was to explore the use of bibliotherapy or therapeutic experience of reading young adult literature among a group of young adults in developing their self-esteem. Participants consisted of six undergraduate students pursuing a degree in a Malaysian higher education institution. The phenomenological method was employed to explore the participants’ reading of young adult literature. These participants read young adult literature, and shared their thoughts, feelings and experiences on the reading phenomenon through dialogue journals. Data triangulation was carried out by analyzing and comparing findings from observations made by two informants, researcher’s field notes, in-depth pre-and-post interviews. The study discovered that the undergraduates are aware of the importance of self-esteem and how their personal struggles have affected their level of self-esteem. Some of their challenges include identity crisis, lack of self-confidence and poor family relationship. The reading process has contributed to the success of developing self-esteem among the participants. Reading young adult literature has helped the participants to experience a new level of self-confidence, gain new understanding of self, feel less different, and inspired them to grow positively. Five reading characteristics contributing to the effectiveness of reading young adult literature for self-esteem emerged. The five types of reading characteristics include intentional, relational, reflective, transporting and pleasure. The findings of this study suggest that literature can be a catalyst for personal development for young adults in the Malaysian educational institutions

Pre-service teachers' reflection in reading of literary texts in weblogs

This qualitative study examines twenty-five preservice English language teachers' reflective level in their reading of literary texts. 189 weblog entries were analysed. The five levels of reflection identified were Identification, Association, Integration, Analysis, and Transformation, with Identification and Association levels considered a 'surface learning' while the remaining three as 'deep learning'. The results indicated while the percentage of reflection at all levels was almost equally distributed, the combined percentage of the 'deep learning' constituted almost seventy percentage of the total number of weblog entries. This outcome indicated that weblogs were useful for reflection of reading literary texts

Connecting Linkin Park and Good Charlotte to ESL learners

This paper documents students’ response to popular songs in the language classroom and asserts that songs can be a form of useful resource in the language classroom for purposes of language development and to connect learners to issues that are of interest to young adults. This paper reports the findings of a study which used two popular songs in a language classroom to develop reading, writing and speaking skills. The researchers use songs to connect their learners to both the issues in the texts and language elements. The study indicates that students were able to express their viewpoints in relation to the issues in the songs and that the songs, which were familiar to the learners, encouraged them to participate in the classroom activitie

Now read on : a course in multicultural reading

This book brings together literatures in English from around the world, combining an excellent choice of texts with sounds methodological guidance.xvi, 220 p.: ill.; 23,5 c

Now read on : a course in multicultural reading

This book brings together literatures in English from around the world, combining an excellent choice of texts with sounds methodological guidance.xvi, 220 p.: ill.; 23,5 c

Now read on : a course in multicultural reading

This book brings together literatures in English from around the world, combining an excellent choice of texts with sounds methodological guidance.xvi, 220 p.: ill.; 23,5 c

Now read on : a course in multicultural reading

This book brings together literatures in English from around the world, combining an excellent choice of texts with sounds methodological guidance.xvi, 222 hlm, 23,7 x 16,2 c