English Medium Education in a University in Brunei Darussalam: Code-Switching and Intelligibility

Abstract

Although Malay is the official language of Brunei Darussalam, English is also widely used, especially in formal domains such as education, as it is the medium of instruction for most classes in secondary school and at the main university, Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD). This chapter traces the historical background for adopting English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) in Brunei, and it then discusses recent developments at UBD, particularly for the new undergraduate programme, called GenNEXT, adopted in 2009, and the number of students graduating from English-medium and Malay-medium programs is analysed. Finally, the use of code-switching among university undergraduates is discussed, particularly the incidence of misunderstandings arising from the use of Malay that occurred when UBD students were talking in English to people from elsewhere, and it is shown that, out of a total of 152 tokens of misunderstanding that have been identified in three and a half hours of conversation, 12 involved the use of Malay.