Do MFL Learners in Malaysia Need ‘Mandarin for Travelling’?

Abstract

Tourism is an important part of foreign language learning as visiting the target-language country will provide the best environment for learners to use the language. ‘Mandarin for travelling’ which focuses on the travelling purposes in China, is one of the popular themes of Mandarin learning for specific purposes for adult MFL (Mandarin as a foreign language) learners from different countries of the world. However, ‘Mandarin for travelling’ has not been offered as an individual subject for MFL learning in any of the tertiary institutions in Malaysia. Hence, this paper aims to investigate whether there is a need to include ‘Mandarin for travelling’ in the MFL curriculum in Malaysia. A large number of samples totalling 2,534 student-respondents from five public universities in Malaysia, namely UiTM, UPM, USM, UKM and UM, were invited to fill out the questionnaires. The results of the investigation indicate that half of the MFL learners in Malaysia showed no interest in visiting China. The majority of the other half wished to visit China for travelling purposes, and joining a tour was their preference. With all arrangements done by a tour guide, ‘Mandarin for travelling’ may not be useful to learners, and indirectly the learning of vocabulary for travelling purposes is not very important to MFL learners in Malaysia. Since the findings imply that majority of the MFL learners in Malaysia did not intend to use Mandarin in China, ‘Mandarin for travelling’ will not be important for MFL learners in Malaysia either in the short or long term.