Malay ESL Research Articles

Speaking Anxiety Among Malay ESL Learners at A Private University: A Gender-Based Study

Speaking is found to be the most anxiety-inducing facet of language learning and is one of the many variables that could hamper successful language learning. Several studies have suggested gender to be a factor forspeaking anxiety, with some findings indicating speaking anxiety was more prevalent in female participants and others that detected no statistical difference between female and male participants. This present study aims to identify students’ anxiety levels based on the personality and environment variables and to compare the level of speaking anxiety between male and female students. This quantitative research involves 60 male and 69 female students from a private university in Perak who were second-year students taking an English Proficiency class that was carried out for 14 weeks. A 5-likert scale questionnaire adopted from Horwitz's Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) was administered to the students at the end of the semester. Based on the study conducted, it was found that the participants experienced a moderate level of speaking anxiety in the second language classroom, with the males recording a slightly higher speaking anxiety level than females, and while personality did not show a significant impact on students’ anxiety levels, environmental variables did.Keywords: second language learning, ESL, motivation, personality, comparative

Overpassivisation in L2 Acquisition: An Examination of L1 Malay ESL Tertiary Students’ Passivisation of Intransitive Verbs in English

Overpassivisation, a phenomenon in which passive morphology is applied to intransitive verbs, is a common feature in the interlanguage of L2 English learners. This study examines overpassivisation among L1 Malay ESL tertiary students concerning the type of intransitive verb and English proficiency level. A total of 499 L1 Malay ESL students in higher educational institutions in Malaysia completed a grammaticality judgment test involving items with unaccusative and unergative verbs. The students have completed at least 10 years of formal English instruction in school and have considerably more exposure to English than ESL learners in a foreign language setting. As predicted, the participants overgeneralised passive morphology to the intransitive verbs, and more so with unaccusative than unergative verbs. Further, students’ competence in rejecting overpassivised forms decreased with learners’ increasing proficiency in English. The findings show that while overpassivisation is committed by the L1 Malay ESL students, unaccusative verbs contribute more to overpassivisation than unergative verbs. It indicates learners’ processing of the different underlying structures of the two classes of verbs. Also, the passive rule is progressively acquired as a reduction of overpassivisation is observed for both verb types with increasing English proficiency. L1 Malay ESL tertiary students in Malaysia at lower English proficiency levels have yet to work out intransitive structures, particularly those involving unaccusative verbs. The findings suggest that receiving L2 input in a high-exposure environment does not necessarily allow learners to bypass the developmental stages in acquiring the passive rule.

GENDER AND POWER RELATION IN ENGLISH REFUSAL STRATEGIES OF ESL UNDERGRADUATES

Refusal refers to a face-threatening act (FTA) for it can risk one’s face in communication. It encompasses turning down someone’s request, offer or suggestion. The speech act of refusal has been one of the most prominent areas of interest for many scholars. However, there is a dearth of such study in Malaysia, particularly within the Malay community. Aimed to fill the gap, this study examined the refusal strategies used in English by Malay ESL undergraduates, observe the differences and similarities in the refusal strategies of male and female undergraduates, and analyse whether relative power has an influence on the choice of their refusal strategies. This study employed the Discourse Completion Test (DCT) which was distributed among sixty Malay ESL undergraduates, consisting of 30 males and 30 females where they were required to refuse requests from three addressees (lecturer, friend, junior) in five different situations. The collected data were then analysed quantitatively. The findings showed that 32 out of 41 types of refusal strategies were used by the participants. Both male and female students employed more indirect refusal strategies regardless of the person’s relative power. Furthermore, relative power did influence the participants' choices in refusal strategies.

Alliance Formation During Disagreement in Group Discussion Among ESL Learners

The study examines how disagreement is managed by 32 intermediate level Malay ESL students in a Malaysian higher education setting in group discussion in terms of alliance formation. The group discussions in a group of four on a controversial topic were video-recorded to capture how they manage disagreements through the way they formed alliances among themselves throughout the discussion when they expressed opinions using English. The data analysis involved pragmatics as the approach to analyse speech acts and discourse strategies utilised by the participants when they manage disagreements in the discussion. The findings indicate that the participants draw themselves into alliance with one another using various discourse strategies. They managed disagreement in multiple ways using indirect speech acts, and various discourse strategies that are evident in the alliance-making process. The findings could have implications for future studies researching disagreement discourse. Apart from that, implications are also highlighted in terms of pedagogical approaches, and practices, especially in ESL settings. This encompasses the teaching content (e.g.: the importance of pragmatic competence), methodology (e.g.: useful expressions and strategies), and possible activities (e.g.: group discussion) that are effective in assisting teachers to get students to communicate in ESL classrooms.

Production Errors and Interlanguage Development Patterns of L1 Malay ESL Learners in the Acquisition of the English Passive

Studies have shown that Malay ESL learners face difficulties in acquiring the English passive, but not much is known about their acquisition patterns as they advance in their proficiency in English. This study investigated the interlanguage development patterns of L1 Malay learners by examining the production errors of learners at varying English proficiency levels. Students from tertiary institutions in Malaysia completed tasks designed to elicit production of the English passive. The results indicated that overall, the main errors committed by the learners were related to the be-auxiliary and the past participle verb form, which are non-existent in their L1. Certain types of errors diminished at higher English proficiency levels, whilst certain others persisted in high proficiency learners. These results point to underlying differences in sources of errors where some types of errors are more resistant to change, while others may be resolved as the interlanguage system develops to approximate the target language. Differential pedagogical interventions may be indicated for learners at different stages of L2 acquisition.

A Cross-Cultural Study of Criticism Strategies: Iraqi and Malay ESL Learners

Criticism, as an evaluative criterion, is a significant speech act for English language learners to improve their speech and actions in their academic life. Yet, it is realized differently across diverse cultures. Few studies have shown that the linguistics forms of one language are different from those available in another language. Hence, this study aims to investigate the cross-cultural similarities and differences between 60 Iraqi and Malay university learners in the use of criticism strategies. The data are collected using a Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and a Focus Group Interview (FGI). The data are coded based on Nguyen’s (2005) coding scheme of criticism in terms of the realization strategies. Qualitative and quantitative approaches are used in the analysis of data. The findings evidently uncover that both groups use similar categories of criticism strategies, but Iraqis use more direct criticisms than Malays who opt for indirectness in their criticisms. Finally, some pedagogical implications for teachers of English as a second or foreign language are provided in this study.

Social Interaction Strategies among Malay ESL Learners: Preserving Harmony in L2 Oral Communication

Aside from conveying intended messages, maintaining social harmony in oral communication is one of the communicative goals in oral interactions. This could be done by employing Social Interactions Strategies. With English being recognized as a second language (ESL) in Malaysia, the current study seeks to examine how Malay ESL speakers employed such strategies in their conversations and subsequently, maintained social harmony with their interlocutors. The oral data obtained were mapped according to Kumar and Rose’s (2010) categories of Social Interaction Strategies namely, Solidarity, Showing Tension Release and Agreeing which are adapted from Bales’ (1950) concept of three positive social-emotional interactions. The data were elicited from video-recorded oral interactions in students’ role play assessments at one public university in the east of peninsular Malaysia. The results showed the emergence of various types of Social Interaction Strategies that relate to Showing Solidarity, Showing Tension Release and Agreeing. These include showing solidarity by praising and agreeing to other’s ideas by showing attention through words of encouragement. Since the respondents consisted of Malay students, the findings led to a suggestion that the use of Social Interactions Strategies did not only promote harmony in their oral interactions but were also in line with the Malays’ non-confrontational behaviour as highlighted in past literature. Additionally, the findings also indicated the influence of one’s culture and behavioural traits on his or her language use.

Lexical Verbs in Verb-Noun Collocations: Empirical Evidence from a Malay ESL Learner Corpus

Previous studies have shown that verbs are indeed one of the essential lexical items that seem to dominate a text. At tertiary levels, learners are often presented with a list of verbs that are essential for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses such as academic writing. However, it is believed that the learning and teaching of these verbs goes far beyond the lists of EAP verbs. This is because knowledge of lexical verbs entails not only the knowledge of grammatical structures, but also the knowledge of semantic and syntactic structures. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how commonly used lexical verbs are used in learner writing in the perspectives of grammatical, semantic and syntactic features of verb-noun collocations. To achieve this, a corpus-based study using WordSmith Tools was employed on a learner corpus of Malay ESL learners to identify most-commonly used lexical verbs. These verbs were further given a linguistic analysis using a phraseological-based approach. The findings revealed that the use of transitive verbs led to several occurrences of verb-noun collocations and that the phraseological patterns of these verbs are bound by both lexical and grammatical patterns. This leads to the conclusion that the teaching of lexical verbs, specifically Verb-Noun collocations in academic writing should not only include the semantic elements, but also the syntactical elements of the verbs. It is then recommended that a lesson on lexical verbs should incorporate the teaching and learning of both lexis and grammar. Keywords: English for Academic Purpose; lexical verbs; phraseological-based approach; verb-noun collocations; learner corpus research

Discovering Writing Difficulties of Malay ESL Primary School Level Students

Writing is perceived to be one of the most difficult skills for English language learners to master. Although studies on challenges faced by ESL students in writing are replete, most of them have focused on students at secondary and tertiary levels of education. Studies on learners at lower level have been scarce. Thus, this paper aims to fill the gap by examining the major problems faced by ESL primary school level students in writing in English. Survey and interview sessions were conducted to fit the purpose of the study. Data were collected from a class of 26 students from Year/Standard 6 of the primary school level in Malaysia and an interview session with the English teacher of that particular class. The findings indicate that the major difficulties charted are rooted in the students’ poor mastery in vocabulary, inability to spell words correctly and L1 interference. Thus, in order to enhance the students’ skills in writing in English, the teacher implemented some remedial measures during the teaching and learning sessions. The findings have essential pedagogical implications on understanding students’ struggle to write in English at the lower level of education.

A Case Study of How Malay ESL Learners Build Vocabulary Using Multimedia Technology

This study explored the process of how Malay primary ESL learners build English vocabulary using multimedia technology. With this purpose, students’ choices of multimedia technology tools and the reasons behind the choices were investigated. The qualitative approach was employed in this study by conducting semi-structured interviews with three Malay primary school students aged 12 years old from a public school in Kuala Lumpur. The findings revealed that the students chose three main types of multimedia tools namely audio, audio-visual, and video games. The participants revealed three reasons behind their preferences of the multimedia tools which are acquisition of additional information, presence of visuals, and convenience. It was also found that the process of vocabulary-building using the preferred multimedia tools can be organised into four stages namely (i) first encounter, (ii) cognitive dissonance, (iii) establishing equilibrium, and (iv) remembering. The findings suggest English teachers to include multimedia tools in the teaching of vocabulary because it facilitates the process of vocabulary building among students as the words are learned in context and enhanced with visuals.

Is that Different from the?

English is a language with overt morphological representations of articles. On the other hand, Malay and Mandarin Chinese have none. In Malaysia, pupils are exposed to English articles as early as four years old. Despite early exposure, articles, or the definite article the specifically, appear to be a marked grammatical property for Chinese-speaking and Malay-speaking learners, two languages without articles. Based on the Fluctuation Hypothesis and Article Choice Parameter, this study seeks to investigate and compare the role of first language (L1) transfer on the article acquisition of the 77 L1 Chinese and 116 L1 Malay ESL learners, who were teacher trainees recruited from three teachers’ training institutes in Malaysia. The respondents were tested utilising a production task and a comprehension task. The statistical analyses of the participants’ performance revealed that only the advanced and intermediate groups of both L1 Chinese and L1 Malay ESL learners registered clear distinctions between the usage in the ‘Unique and salient’ and ‘Unique and non-salient’ categories and that usage in the ‘Non-unique’ category. The high accuracy rates suggest that L1 lexical transfer contributed to the positive performance by the ESL learners. The advanced and intermediate L1 Chinese and L1 Malay learners continuously interpreted the singular definite descriptions as referring to uniquely immediate salient entities similar to the demonstrative descriptions, making interpretations of the and that seemed similar.

Dependency on Verbal Versus Graphic Representations among Second Language Learners When Reading Illustrated Expository Materials

The use of graphic representations is ubiquitous and essential in science-related domains. Research into learners’ reading of materials that incorporate verbal and graphic representations (i.e. multi-representational materials) however suggests that graphics receive very little attention compared to text. Such a tendency is not ideal as comprehension of multi-representational materials requires learners to attend to the graphics and integrate information contained in these representations with those in the text. This field of research, however, has focused primarily on native language learners. Since the number of people learning in their non-native language is growing rapidly, it is crucial to understand how they engage and learn with these materials. The present paper is part of a larger study that focuses on the multi-representational reading of 42 Malay ESL undergraduates. Their eye fixations during the reading of a science passage and an accompanying diagram were collected and analyzed. To our knowledge, no such study has been undertaken in the Malaysian context. Hence, the findings will be significant contributions to this field. The results indicate that similar to the reading of multi-representational texts by native speakers in other contexts, the multi-representational reading by the Malay ESL undergraduates was also heavily text-based.

Request Strategies: A Contrastive Study Between Yemeni EFL and Malay ESL Secondary School Students in Malaysia

The aim of this study was to investigate the types of request strategies employed by Yemeni and Malay secondary school students in English language. It also aimed at investigating the influence of social power and social distance on the students’ choice of request strategies. The data was collected through a discourse completion test (DCT) and the analysis used both Blum-Kulk’s et al. (1989) Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Patterns (CCSARP), and Scollon and Scollon’s (1995) politeness system. The findings of the study showed that both groups often use non-conventionally indirect request strategies by means of query preparatory. The analysis revealed that both groups do not take into consideration the social power and the social distance between the interlocutors because they always use the same strategies with any person. The students have this sociopragmatic knowledge in their mother tongue; however, both groups are not sensitive to the social power and social distance existing between the interlocutors as they lack the sociopragmatic knowledge in the target language. Moreover, the students almost use the same strategies even though they have different cultural backgrounds, and this might be attributed to their assimilation in the school learning environment which is a positive indicator for conductive learning environment.

Gender, Metacognition and Vocabulary Learning Strategies of Malay ESL Learners

Research has shown that female students are likely to be more successful in language learning when compared to male students due to the differences in their metacognitive learning strategies1. This study aims to investigate if there are differences in metacognition, vocabulary learning strategies and the vocabulary size between male and female students. The instruments utilised study were a Vocabulary Learning Strategy Questionnaire2 and the Vocabulary Levels Test3. 113 pre-university ESL learners participated in this study. A quantitative research design was employed. Findings of this study showed that there is no significant difference between the vocabulary size and metacognitive learning strategies used by male and female students. A better understanding of metacognitive strategies, vocabulary size and gender will enhance teachers’ and learners’ awareness of the use of the said strategies for a more effective vocabulary acquisition. The findings provide beneficial pedagogical implications relevant not only to language instructors but also educators and researchers alike.

The Use of Adverbials in the Verbal Production of Malay ESL Learners: A Processability Approach

This study investigates the development of verbal usage of adverbials by Malay ESL learners at the tertiary level. It aims to find out the developmental differences between low and intermediate learners’ acquisition of adverbials. Using Processability Theory (Pienemann, 1998; 2005) and taxanomy of adverbials (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999) as the frameworks, this study explains the extent to which Malay ESL learners at the tertiary level have developed their use of English adverbials. For data collection purposes, a picture-cued task was administered on 60 Malay ESL students in which they were required to elicit each process in each picture. The results indicate that, in terms of their use of adverbials, most of the Malay ESL students from both proficiency levels were considered to have reached Stage 6 of the Processability Theory developmental stages and only a number of elementary level students were found to have only reached Level 2. The findings suggest that ESL practitioners should follow the developmental routes suggested by the Processability Theory in teaching grammar components to students.

A Corpus-Based Comparative Study of Malaysian ESL Learners and Native English Speakers in Compliment Patterns

Even though many language learners are concerned with to master target proficiency, owing to years of meticulous studies, immersion in TL environments, access to multimedia and educational amenities, in addition to availability of affluent sources or merely thanks to God-given language talents, many will seldom take off from conspicuous learner-language and might never produce authentic language either in speech or in writing. In recent years, however, with corpus linguistics gaining currency in academia, a new light has begun to glimmer at the end of the tunnel that corpus-based materials and data-driven language instructions can actively and consciously engage learners and acquaint them with what authentic language is rather than what the text books prescribe it to be. Already, a growing body of research has been dedicated to data-driven learning across the world to survey the effectiveness of incorporating corpora in ELT. As such, the purpose of this research is to investigate the patterns of compliments in writings of the Malay ESL students and compare the findings with native English speakers. The results showed that the Malay ESL learners used a rather different number of syntactic patterns compared to the English native speakers and their frequency of patterns outgrew those of the natives.

Analysing and Synthesising Morphemes: The Case of Malay Pre-University ESL Students

The importance of morphological awareness in the development of a learner’s vocabulary size has been well documented. A learner’s ability to analyse and synthesize morphemes at the word level, or coined as morphological awareness, is said to be a significant contributor to his or her vocabulary development. Thus, a learner who has morphological awareness would be able to rely upon their knowledge of a known word to help them derive the meaning of a related though unfamiliar word. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the analytic and synthetic aspects of morphological awareness of 100 Malay pre-university ESL learners. A modified version of the Morphological Awareness Test was used for this purpose.1 Findings of this study revealed that, the students were better able at forming morphologically complex words as compared to their ability to identify morphemes at the word level. The overall results also showed that this group of participants’ morphological awareness level was somewhat low. This study has some practical implications for EFL vocabulary-strategy instruction in the Malaysian setting.

The Impact of Classroom Interaction Strategies on Malay ESL Students’ Speaking Performance

Based on Interaction-Based Instruction, the strategies of classroom interaction are means to achieve the samples of the target language. Therefore, preparing learners to make use of the English language and communicating with each other in the classroom context is vital. The problem is rooted in this matter that learners are not aware instinctively how to communicate with each other in the classroom context. This study presents some instructional techniques tackling the difficulties that ESL instructors encounter to cater for a communicative classroom environment. These techniques are the strategies of classroom interaction including the questioning techniques and modification by means of cooperative method of learning. The participants included 50 Malay ESL students at a private university in Malaysia. The design of the study is an experimental design, including a pre-test, post–test. 25 studenst were randomly chosen as an experimental group and 25 students as a control group. The results of the study showed that the experimental group ourperformed the control group on their speaking performance. The implications of this research would be for language instructors, language learners and language syllabus designers. In this regard, instructors can utilize the techniques of classroom interaction to improve the learners’ speaking performance and develop their interest in English language learning.  Key words: Classroom interaction strategies, Interaction-Based Instruction, Malay ESL students, Speaking performance

Exploring Peer Revision as a Strategy in the ESL Writing Classroom

One of the issues affecting the efficacy of peer revision in the writing classroom is that of the knowledge of peer reviewers. Do peer reviewers have sufficient knowledge of content and language to critique the works of their peer writers? Do they provide feedback on content as much as they do for language? Proponents of social constructivism posit that learners learn best when they are involved in exploring, discovering and transforming their ideas and those of their peers through interaction, negotiation and collaboration. In the writing classroom, student writers and reviewers are given the opportunity to build meaning based on their own experiences. This study examined the types of comments made by Malay ESL peer reviewers and their perceived usefulness towards improving peer writers’ composition. Comments on peer writing were collected from ten upper secondary school peer reviewers for equal number of peer writers through reviewer feedback form, peer conferencing session, reviewer field notes and writers’ multiple drafts. Findings of the study show that peer reviewers were able to provide revisions in both areas of content and language. Additionally, the strategies used to providing feedback on content included alteration and reordering, clarification and suggestion, as well as praise and criticism. Overall peer revision has a positive impact on writing and this has implications for teaching and learning, more so for teachers who are overburdened with marking.

Malay ESL college students' spoken discourse: The use of formulaic expressions

Abstract For communication purposes, formulaic expressions can be an easy and efficient way to impart information. Very often campaign slogans are built on using such expressions. Because the context and implications are transparent to the listening public, further explanations are usually not required. But once people get used to such a paratactic mode of expression, orally oriented language users may be lulled into thinking that, when they use such a mode of expression, there is no need for further elaboration of an issue at hand. This study examines whether literate Malays (undergraduates) use formulaic expressions in the spoken texts they produce. And in the event that they do, the study also hopes to determine the nature of topics that draws the use of such expressions. The results of the study show categorically that urban students do not use formulaic expressions. However, there is a tendency among rural students to use such expressions especially when discussing topics which are context reduced, i. e. when topics are more abstract.