A FEW years ago, when I was involved in a one-year funded project to help improve English for schools using the New Straits Times as the main teaching and learning material, I saw for myself what our students were producing in written English.
During one workshop I conducted in a primary school, it took me more than 15 minutes to give instructions to a group of 100 primary schools pupils for a task that they had to complete. The reason being I did not want to take the shortcut of using their mother tongue during my session.
That Malaysia is ranked 14th out of 70 countries with high English proficiency in a survey by the EF English Proficiency Index surprised many who feel that the command of the language is wanting in our students.
We have witnessed at the workplace, of new graduates who achieved high grades in exams, but with very shaky command of the language, written and spoken. Lenient language grading during national exams is said to be one of the many problems which beset English language teaching and learning in the country.
The language grading issue is only the tip of the iceberg. Curriculum content, teaching methods and teachers not proficient enough in the language are all mentioned reasons for the decline of the language.
In 2013, the English Language Standards and Quality Council was set up to focus on the foundation and structural changes to help raise the standard of English in the country. The result is a Roadmap for English Language Education Reform in Malaysia spanning 2015 to 2025 — completed last year and approved for implementation in June — which includes a joint initiative with Cambridge English and with the Ministry of Education’s English Language Teaching Centre given the responsibility as the lead agency.
Key to the road map is the alignment of Malaysia’s English Language Education System with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) — an international standard that focuses on producing learners who can communicate and interact in any language, in this instance, English. CEFR would be an initiative that would play a vital role on the major reform in Malaysia’s English Language education system for the next 10 years.
The reason for CEFR as the framework of reference? Aligning the system with an international standard is also an element in the Malaysia Education Blueprint as part of the move to boost the level of education in the country.
CEFR for languages was developed by the Council of Europe more than 20 years before being officially launched during the European Year of Languages in 2001. Since then, CEFR has grown in popularity both in Europe and across the world. Besides Malaysia, Thailand too began the process of aligning their English language teaching with CEFR at the start of their new school year in May last year.
CEFR’s implementation is one that will present numerable challenges for it to take its place in the system. Based on poor record of implementing changes, there are genuine fears that anything new could suffer the same fate as previous well-intentioned programmes.
The first stage of cascade training for thousands of English teachers in the country on the CEFR began earlier this month.
Relying on cascade training as its central training paradigm might help cascading to the big numbers of teachers, as its principle is that you train a trainer to train other trainers who then train others.
Not only this exponential multiplication of learning aids development process and cut training time, it also preserves the training resources and maximise skill distribution. But, it is important, too, to examine if this is actually the best model for the purposes defined in the training targets of CEFR.
While cascading may be best suited to information transfer, changing attitudes and developing skills for both students and teachers need more support over extended periods of time. One major concern to consider is that, with the feelings of being overburdened and lack of desire to change the current operation principles, the teacher population might be reluctant to take part.
The CEFR framework consists of three levels, each with two sub-scales — Basic (A1-A2), Independent (B1-B2), and Proficient (C1-C2) — with reading, writing, listening and speaking skills tested at every level.
In 2011, as a move to raise the English language proficiency of all English language teachers, the Education Ministry also applied the CEFR so as to obtain a benchmark data for training them. With the data, a national teacher training program was carried out nationwide for selected English teachers with the aim that they reach an advanced level of C1.
Applying the CEFR by right should force all into productive language skills in which both teachers and students will have to start conversing throughout the grades in order to reach the higher CEFR bands.
Students are expected to achieve A2 by the time they complete primary school education and B1 by the end of secondary school. It is envisaged that the target is a high B1 or B2 before these students enter university and reach the band of B2 or C1 as they graduate. This also means there is the need to develop assessments that can measure students’ progress in accordance with the CEFR.
A new national examination for our students would then be required to assess reading, writing, speaking and listening abilities which means there will be more changes in the format of English exam papers soon.
The new assessment will need to be flexible enough to allow students opportunities to demonstrate their independent communicative abilities. Multiple choice assessments are clearly unable to assess skills as benchmarked by the CEFR.
A positive step towards raising the standard of English is always welcome, but it is going to take strategic planning and hard work to realise these goals of the reform.
Two measures that can improve the chances of this reform succeeding are: adequate support and training for English language teachers, and new communicative English language assessments.
Let’s hope the adoption of the CEFR would not suffer the same fate as other implementation of educational change.
Hazlina Aziz is NST’s education editor, and is an ex-teacher who is always on the lookout for weirdly-spelled words