Malaysian English Research Articles

Offensive language and sociocultural homogeneity in Singapore

Offensive language use in Singapore’s languacultures appears to be underpinned by cultural norms and values embraced by most if not all Singaporeans. Interviews with local informants and perusal of Singapore’s linguistic and cultural resources led to the identification of eight offensive words and phrases deemed representative of Singaporean coarseness. This set was narrowed down to a smaller set of common words and phrases, all Chinese Hokkien, all culturally laden. The finding that, although originally Hokkien, all of them are accessible not only to the Chinese-speaking population but also to speakers of Singapore Malay, Singapore Tamil, and Singapore English is compelling. The words and phrases studied in this paper are full-fledged members of the lexicon of these local non-Chinese languages, without loss or distortion of meaning. They are accepted as part of the local linguistic scene and of local cultural knowledge. At least in certain situations, people of different ethnic backgrounds who live and work together can rely on them as a testament of common identity which, in a curious way, gives voice to the sociocultural homogeneity this society unrelentingly pursues.

Lexical Features of Malaysian English in a Local English-Language Movie, Ah Lok Café

English, like other languages, is subject to change and diversity. The myriad of ethnicities in Malaysia contribute to the unique characteristics of English spoken by Malaysians, known as Malaysian English (ME, henceforth). The unique features of ME can be seen in various levels of linguistic analysis such as phonology, lexis, syntax, and semantics. Previous research on ME mainly has included sources from classrooms, media advertisements cartoon strips, TV talk shows and internet chat-rooms. Not much research, however, has been done on Malaysian films. This apparent absence makes this area a fruitful avenue for study. Thus, this study attempts to look at locally produced English-language movies as another source of ME, with a particular focus on its lexical features, aiming to establish the extent to which the data contributes to the defining characteristics of ME. This study employs a qualitative approach in data analysis, based on the transcribed dialogues and lexical features of ME established in previous studies; comparison with standard British English (SBE) is also made accordingly. The comparison is not intended to prove that ME is a sub- or non-standard language, but rather to establish its uniqueness as a variety of English that warrants linguistic explanation. It is hoped that English-language films produced in Malaysia will continue to be a useful source in the study of ME as an established variety of English.

International Students’ Attitudes towards Malaysian English Ethnolects

Language attitudes are learned and formed in our social environment through hearing others referring to certain groups or people’s languages and cultures, and also by exposure to particular varieties spoken in the context. This might lead to stereotyping English and its native speakers (McKenzie, 2008). In this sense, it is pedagogically significant to unveil learners’ language attitudes towards a target language in order to prevent negative impression towards that certain variety and consequently inevitable communication failure with the members of that particular speech community. The present study explores the attitudes of international students living in Malaysia towards Malaysian English. The main objective was to examine the respondents’ attitudes towards the Mesolectal variety of Malaysian English spoken by the three main ethnic groups: Malay, Chinese-Malaysian, and Indian-Malaysian. A matched-guise questionnaire was used to elicit information from the students and obtain their responses towards six samples of Malaysian English accents from both male and female speakers. International students from selected Malaysian universities were asked to listen to the recorded speech samples and were then asked to rate the speakers using 15 bipolar adjectives on a Likert scale which were split into two sections of speaker’s style of English speaking and social attractiveness, and finally they were asked to guess the ethnicity of the speakers. The findings show that there is a positive linear relationship between attitude towards the Malaysian English variety spoken by each ethnic group, and the intelligibility of that certain variation, which directly affects the listeners’ evaluation of the speaker’s social attractiveness too.

International Students’ Linguistic Awareness of Malaysian English and its Impact on Intercultural Communication Effectiveness

With the rapid development of communication and transportation technology, globalization has brought people of diverse cultures, ethnicities, geographies, and religions together. English is now the primary lingua franca, which is used to communicate with speakers of different native languages throughout the world. However, today the world is faced with the rapid emergence of many new Englishes with their own specific features and markers. Thus, learning only standard British and American English and lack of familiarity with the other English language varieties causes misperception, negative attitude, and communication failure with the speakers of those certain varieties. The present research is aimed at exploring how much international students are aware of Malaysian English and whether the level of their linguistic awareness affects their intercultural communication effectiveness with Malaysians. The data was collected from a survey administered to 372 international students who were studying at three selected public and private universities in Malaysia. Three focus group discussions followed up the survey to triangulate the quantitative findings. The findings suggest that a majority of the students appear to be moderately communicating ineffectively with Malaysians, and their lack of familiarity with Malaysian English makes them to perceive it as a wrong deviated form of English. The results also reveal that the respondents’ misperception of Malaysian English influences their intercultural communication effectiveness negatively. Keywords : Malaysian English, Linguistic Awareness, Intercultural Communication Effectiveness, International Students, World Englishes

Robust Accent Recognition in Malaysian English using PCA-Transformed Mel-Bands Spectral Energy Statistical Descriptors

The standard speech feature extractors such as Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and Linear Prediction Coefficients (LPC) fail to perform well under noisy conditions. In this paper two noise less-susceptible features are proposed to mitigate the deficiency of MFCC and LPC. Statistical descriptors of Mel-Bands Spectral Energy (MBSE) is applied to the traditional filter-bank analysis, however, this technique increases the feature size. This issue is tackled by proposing a transformation using principle component analysis to generate a new PCA-MBSE feature set. Two types of utterances namely isolated words and continuous speech were elicited from 103 university volunteers in a controlled room to collect speech signals from three main ethnic groups in Malaysia. This study employed two classifiers namely K-nearest neighbors and artificial neural networks to recognize between the Malay, Chinese and Indian accents. Experimental results using independent test samples technique indicated promising accuracy rates of 92.7% and 93.0% using the proposed PCA-MBSE features to recognize between the Malay, Chinese and Indian accents on the male and female datasets respectively. It was found that under severe noisy conditions, the standard MFCC and LPC features started to deteriorate faster than the MBSE-based features. PCA-MBSE features showed the most robust quality where its performance was just slightly deteriorated by 17.1% and 13.6% as compared to MBSE features i.e. 33.1% and 31.3% on the male and female datasets respectively. Further poor results of LPC features were obtained indicating deterioration rates of 40.2% and 32.7%, while that of MFCC features of 35.7% and 36.8% for the male and female datasets respectively. As a conclusion, Malaysian English is a not a uniform English variety colored by its diverse ethnic nuances. Incorporating accent analyzers using the proposed techniques in automatic speech recognition can contribute a substantial improvement in noisy environment.

Statistical Descriptors of Mel-Bands Spectral Energy Features with Feature Reduction for Robust Accent Recognition in Malaysian English

To date, Malaysian English (MalE) accents arises from different ethnics of its populace are scarcely investigated using empirical methods that give a decisive conclusion to treat MalE as either uniform or non-uniform variety. The popularly used Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCC) and Linear Prediction Coefficients (LPC) as feature extractors fail to perform well under noisy conditions. This paper proposes two new methods and noise less-susceptible feature extractors to mitigate the deficiency of MFCC and LPC. Statistical descriptors of Mel-Bands Spectral Energy (MBSE) is an enhancement of traditional filter-bank analysis, however, increases fourfold as much the feature size. This issue is tackled by proposing a transformation using principle component analysis to generate a new PCA-MBSE feature set. Experimental results indicated promising accuracy rates of 92.7% and 93.0% using the proposed PCA-MBSE features to recognize between the Malay, Chinese and Indian accents of MalE speech for the male and female datasets respectively. It was found that under severe noisy conditions, the standard MFCC and LPC features started to deteriorate faster than the MBSE-based features. PCA-MBSE features showed the most robust quality where its performance was just slightly deteriorated by 17.1% and 13.6% as compared to MBSE features i.e. 33.1% and 31.3% for the male and female datasets respectively. Further poor results of LPC features were obtained indicating deterioration rates of 40.2% and 32.7%, while that of MFCC features of 35.7% and 36.8% for the male and female datasets respectively.

Effects of SES on Executive Attention in Malay–English bilingual children in Singapore

Thirty-four 4 to 6-year-old Malay–English bilinguals (both balanced and dominant) characterized as low SES on income and parental education were tested on the child-Attentional Network Task (ANT) (Rueda, Rothbart, McCandliss, Saccomanno & Posner, 2004) measuring executive attention. Although SES measures fell below the Singapore median, Malay children's performance on the child-ANT remained high when compared to other age-matched monolingual and bilingual children previously tested with the child-ANT (Yang, Yang & Lust, 2011), and Chinese–English Singaporean bilinguals (Yang, Yang & Kang, 2014). None of the three SES measures – father's and mother's education, and income – significantly correlated with child-ANT components. Regression analyses confirmed that none of the SES measures significantly predicted performance on the child-ANT. Both balanced and dominant bilinguals displayed high executive control. We consider the possibility that cultural variations, (e.g., simultaneous and pervasiveness of bilingualism in Singapore, or pervasive code-switching), may ameliorate potential negative effects of SES on executive control development.

The “Permission/Possibility/Ability” Modals in Malaysian English Textbooks: A Corpus-Based Analysis

Malaysian learners are observed to be error-prone in terms of semantic functions of modal auxiliary verbs in English. ESL Malaysian learners’ challenges in terms of using modal auxiliary verbs suggest that there might be some inadequacies in the syllabus, which could have led to the problems encountered by these students. Thus, the semantic functions of four modal auxiliary verbs, can, could, may and might, used by and introduced to Malaysian learners in Forms 1–5 textbook corpus were the focus of this study. Apparently, the findings show that these textbooks offer a relatively one-sided picture, overemphasizing the minor semantic functions and overlooking the frequent functions used in the presentday English. It is also argued that although there are invaluable insights available in terms of modal auxiliary verb forms and their semantic functions in major corpus-based studies, this real-life language has not been well presented in Malaysian English language textbooks. The findings of this study contribute to the improvement of the pedagogical practices in the teaching of the modal system, and emphasize that the semantic functions of each core modal in the teaching materials should be given adequate importance.

Examining linguistic proficiency in the multilingual glocal workplace: a Malaysian case study

The study was conceived from the concern that the twenty-first-century workplace in Malaysia lacks locally sited and empirically based research that provide evidence for a grounded view of language proficiency and use beyond the dominant idealized notion of Standard English language models for education policy. A qualitative case study of a Malaysian airline company was conducted to provide an analytic description of the features of linguistic proficiency and their use in the multilingual glocal workplace. Using emails, interviews and field observations, the findings point to a pluralistic view of linguistic proficiency that embraces functional business English, Malaysian English, English as a lingua franca and the use of other language codes. While the English language is shown to be dominant in the workplace, the data demonstrate the importance of a pluralistic view of linguistic proficiency in diverse glocal contexts. The study also provides insights into how language pedagogy in higher education can support diversity in the workplace.

International Graduate Students’ Academic Writing Practices in Malaysia: Challenges and Solutions

This article focuses on the challenges faced by non-native English speaking international graduate students in their academic writing practices while they studied at a university in Malaysia as well as the solutions they employed when faced with the challenges. Academic Literacies Questionnaire was used to collect data. Based on 131 participants, the findings indicate that non-native English speaking international graduate students faced challenges in their academic writing practices in the instructional settings where English was used as a medium. In addition, the results revealed that some challenges those students face were mainly attributable to the fact that English in Malaysia is not the native or first language. This study suggests policies and programmes to meet the unique academic writing background needs of these students and ensure their academic success.

Performance of variable selection methods in predicting language proficiency using language learning proficiency

The goal of this study was to compare two multiple regression models generated using two different variable selection methods in order to determine which variable method was more reliable in constructing a better model. Two hundred thirty pre-university students of UMS participated by answering a self-report questionnaire called the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL), a background questionnaire, and then sat for the Malaysian English University Test (MUET). Selected statistical tests were used to compare models.

Agenda Setting of Iraq Image in Malaysian English Newspaper

Mass media news on certain country itself can affect their image on society. image that will appear could be positive, negative or neutral depending on the content in it. This study employs content analysis of Agenda Setting of image in Malaysian English newspapers indicated that NSTP and the Star. In total, 535 articles and news stories were obtained from three periods before, during and after the occupation of Iraq. Findings showed that the Agenda Setting for NSTP focused on the issue of The Malaysia’s policy towards Iraq, The US policy and the occupation of Iraq and The impact of war on Malaysia. While, the Star focused on Iraq’s needs and suffering. In summary, the newspapers seem to take great care in transmitting images of other countries particularly the Islamic country, which could affect Malaysia and its neighbors politically, economically and socially. Thus it can be concluded that the media’s ownership position plays vital role in shaping countries image in media coverage. current study indicated that the positive and neutral image of in NSTP are considered important to the Malaysian government to advance its domestic and foreign policies to Malaysians, and also due to its political and economic interests with which is a Muslim country. Contrarily, the Star seemed to oppose government policies but this opposition is marginal and issue specific in nature depending upon the involvement of Malaysia interests and intensity of the government media differences on those issues.

Evaluation of Malaysian Primary English Language Textbooks

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the contents of in-use Year 5 and Year 6 textbooks in Malaysian primary schools in exploring the strengths and weaknesses of the textbooks. Does it really apply all the methods and suitability for the pupils? It is also aim to study whether the textbooks fit to all level of pupils’ proficiency in English language and whether it giving attention on the pupils’ proficiency level in language learning. Sample of the study consists of 32 English teachers chosen randomly from primary schools in Selangor. In this study, the textbook is evaluated in terms of general attributes and learning content categories and evaluation checklists proposed by previous researchers are distributed as instrument used. The findings revealed that the textbook for each year is very highly useful. It is also found that the textbooks are suitable for either for low proficiency or vice versa.

The emergent nature of strategic mediation in ESL teacher education

This article concentrates on a practitioner-driven approach to teacher education aimed at advancing ESL teachers’ instructional knowledge about writing. Based on activity-centred interaction between a group of Malaysian English teachers and their teacher educator, the discussion demonstrates (1) the emergent, unplanned nature of strategic mediation in teacher education, as well as (2) the evolution of teacher thinking in the context of ESL writing instruction. Three forms of strategic mediation are illustrated: drafting teacher participation in challenging instructional circumstances; supporting teachers in crafting working definitions for key concepts; and establishing instructional ground rules for carrying out writing lessons in ESL classrooms. Additionally, the article discusses how a three-part activity structure formed the basis of demonstrating, implementing and reflecting on writing lessons, and how this structure paved the way for teachers to reshape their ways of thinking about ESL writing.

The pronunciation of TH in word-initial position in Malaysian English

Mesthrie & Bhatt (2008: 125) note that ‘all New Englishes varieties treat [θ] or [ð] as something other than an interdental fricative’. Malaysian English, as a variety of New English, constitutes an interesting case study. In Malaysian English, what Mesthrie & Bhatt (2008: 125) call ‘something other than an interdental fricative’ is realized as the dental stop [t] (e.g. thought), which in this paper is dubbed ‘a new [t]’ or presented orthographically as [th > t], whose acoustic quality is strikingly different from the ordinary alveolar stop [t] (e.g. taught).

Status of English in Malaysia

This paper attempts to explain the status of English in Malaysia and the constructivism learning theory which is of interest to the researcher for educational research and practice. Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory is one of the foundations for constructivism which promotes learning contexts in which students play an active role in learning. A teacher should collaborate with his students in order to help facilitate meaning construction in students. Therefore, learning becomes a reciprocal experience for the students and teachers.

Examining the Role of the English Literature Component in the Malaysian English Curriculum

This paper examines the role and the position of the English Literature component in the current Malaysian English curriculum. A brief historical overview of the role and the position of English literature in the Malaysian curriculum will be provided. English literature has been through volatile changes throughout the years and is often seen to play a secondary role to help increase English proficiency of students. In the preliminary National Education Blueprint (2013 – 2025), once again English literature is juxtaposed as a tool to help increase English proficiency. Given the many revamps the curriculum in Malaysia has undergone, this paper argues that there is a general state of ambivalence towards the role and position of English Literature in the curriculum. This paper proposes that English Literature as a subject should be reconceptualised given its potential to help educate and prepare young Malaysians for the impact of globalization and the vibrant changes and challenges in the Malaysian political and social context. Literature should no longer be considered merely as a tool to increase English proficiency; it should serve as a bridge to educate young Malaysians about their rich literary traditions, heritage and culture.

Benchmarking Year Five Students’ Reading Abilities

Reading and understanding a written text is one of the most important skills in English learning.This study attempts to benchmark Year Five students’ reading abilities of fifteen rural schools in a district in Malaysia. The objectives of this study are to develop a set of standardised written reading comprehension and a set of indicators to inform ESL teachers about the exact ability of the students. A sample of 788 primary school students from the rural areas was involved in this study. The instrument utilised in this study was a set of standardised written reading comprehension test which was developed in line with Malaysian English Language Syllabus (2003), the revised Barrett’s Taxonomy of Reading Comprehension (Day & Park, 2005) and the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy (Anderson et al. 2001). The set of standardised written reading comprehension questions consists of 50 multiple-choice questions at elementary, intermediate and advanced levels. The findings show that many Malay respondents were categorised at ‘below expectations’ and female students perform better than male students. Finally, the researcher suggested several recommendations.

English

The language of advertising has a powerful impact on the branding of automobiles and sustaining its customer’s loyalty. This study aims to identify the arguments used in advertisements; particularly on its claims, warrants and data to influence the automobile buyers in a diverse international market. It analyses the rhetorical devices and language equivalence used in the English and German print advertisements. A contrastive analysis of three cars’ print advertisements, namely Mercedes Benz, BMW and Volkswagen from the German and Malaysian English dailies was carried out using Toulmin’s model to identify the arguments and the rhetorical devices used in the advertisements. The study reveals two main similarities, particularly in the arguments put forth as well as the stylistic approach of the advertisements. The BMW and Mercedes Benz focused on their technological superiority and advancements, while the Volkswagen focused on its affordability. The German adverts were more persuasive and directed the buyers for action compared to the English adverts that provided more data and warrants. The BMW adverts also utilised a closed form compound adjectives such as “ConnectedDrive” to sustain the “hybrid concept” stylistic in line with the contemporary automobile advancement that focuses on hybrid cars. The use of figurative language was more prevalent in the English adverts compared to the German adverts to portray its internationalisation status of the car. These elements contribute to the pedagogical implications of teaching and learning foreign language; particularly for diverse writing purposes as well as planning business language for the different genres. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/GEMA-2014-1401-10

Personal Problems and English Teachers: Are They Always Bad?

Personal problems involve things that are difficult to deal with, felt or experienced by certain people; in this particular study, Malaysian English language teachers. The relationship between personal problems and teaching reflection practice is researched quantitatively as there is a significant concern in the current education system that English language teachers are not doing well in educating the current generation, hence the professional developments needed to be carried out (Masilamani, et al., 2011; Schleicher, 2011; Schleicher, 2011). Based on the authors’ readings, there has yet been any research regarding this matter done in the Malaysian context. Hence, different types of personal problems have been identified via a validated questionnaire specifically made for this purpose. 45 English language teachers participated in this action research; all of whom are currently teaching in the same district in southern Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. Although the results showed that personal problems affected teaching reflection practice negatively, it is hoped that future research will look into how teachers can utilize their problems as personal intrinsic motivators to obtain positive reinforcements and achieve success in their careers.