Abstract
The common perception of Malaysians is that they are unable to speak fluently and communicate effectively in the English language as most Malaysians do not speak English as their first language. In a country that is full of diversity in terms of race and culture, it is only natural for Malaysians to be influenced by their first language when using English as their second language. This, however, creates a problem for undergraduates who are looking for job opportunities in both local and international companies because a potential employee’s ability to communicate smoothly in English is an important criteria used by employers. This study intends to shed light on the occurrence of speech disfluencies and mispronunciations among undergraduates of a Malaysian university as well as to provide an explanation for those mispronunciations by comparing the phonetic system of the English language with the Malay and Mandarin language. With the results of this study, it is hoped that actions and measures can be taken by the academic authorities and other relevant parties to gradually improve the oral proficiency skills of undergraduates and help them to be more marketable in the future.
Highlights
Background of the studyJobStreet, the largest online employment company in Southeast Asia, conducted a survey in August 2009 to gauge the importance of the English language in the workplace (Jobstreet, 2009)
This study sought to investigate the type of speech disfluencies, and mispronunciations that occur in English oral communication among Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) undergraduates and the linguistic factors that contribute to the mispronunciations
It is noticed that in more serious cases, two or three disfluencies can occur together, forming bi-disfluency or tri-disfluency respectively, which further shows the degradation of the English oral proficiency of the undergraduates
Summary
Background of the studyJobStreet, the largest online employment company in Southeast Asia, conducted a survey in August 2009 to gauge the importance of the English language in the workplace (Jobstreet, 2009). This study, which involved 1001 employers, concluded that 92% of employers agreed that conversational English is the most important when it came to looking for new hires. Hopeful candidates who are interested in getting a job do not even stand a fighting chance if they are not able to communicate well in English because the most popular method (84%) to screen potential hires is by a face-to-face interview. The decline of the performance of English communication skills among Malaysian university students is becoming a serious problem in the country. According to the Vice Chancellor of Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), out of the total of 6, 946 undergraduates who finished their tertiary programme last year, only 4, 478 of them were able to obtain a job. UPM had originally predicted that there would be approximately 78%
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