ARTICLE REVIEW 7

Romli, N. H., & Aziz, M. S. A. (2015) The use of Bahasa Melayu in the English

Language Classroom by ‘Non-Optionist’ English Teachers. Procedia - Social and

Behavioral Sciences, 172, pp 770-777.

Introduction

Language Classroom by ‘Non-Optionist’ English Teachers’ written by Romli, N. H., &

Aziz, M. S. A. (2015) discusses the use of Bahasa Melayu to teach English in the

English Language Classroom. The article highlights the differences between an

inexperienced and experienced teacher in using Bahasa Melayu while teaching the

English Language. Even though there are few studies had been done highlighting

the use of Bahasa Melayu to teach English in the English Language Classroom,

those studies may overlook the differences between inexperienced and experienced

non-optionist teachers. The article emphasizes the extent of usage of Bahasa

Melayu by two different groups of ‘non-optionist’ teachers to teach English in

secondary school. According to the previous studies by Zuana Hanom (2003) and

Jahabar (2004), they have discovered that optionist English teachers did use Bahasa

Melayu to teach English in their classroom. Therefore, it must be pointed out that the

use of Bahasa Melayu is common but to use it excessively might create other issues.

In this paper, the article summary, critical reflections as well as comments about

selected aspects, and suggestions to the issue being raised are precisely presented.

Article summary

This article investigates the use of Bahasa Melayu by non-optionist English teachers

to teach English in secondary schools. In addition, this study also listed the situations
where teachers often use Bahasa Melayu and what are the reasons for using the

language. In Malaysia, English is taught as a second language in primary and

secondary schools since the introduction of the New Education Policy in 1970. Goh

Lai Kuah (2011) had described the non-optionist English teachers as those teachers

who are trained in other subjects but appointed to teach English for a temporary

period of time to overcome the shortage of English teachers in schools in the

country. This article also explores the factor causing the lack of proficiency in English

among recent graduates.

In this article, the researcher also highlighted the relationship and involvement of the

policy of the Ministry Of Education in utilizing the non-optionist English language

teachers to teach in English with the declining or lack of the proficiency of the recent

graduates. In previous studies, conducted by Zuana Hanom (2003) and Jahabar

(2004), they have shown that non-optionist English teachers did use Bahasa Melayu

in the teaching of English. The study was conducted among non-optionist English

teachers from three districts in Pahang. The outcomes and the findings show that all

the non-optionist English teachers acknowledged the issue of using Bahasa Melayu

to teach English. Based on the findings, the non-optionist teacher stated that they

frequently use Bahasa Melayu to teach English. The teachers are not trained to use

English in their lesson, and it causes some distortion and there is a high possibility

that they might have misunderstood the lesson.

Critical Reflection

The usage of the first language (L1) in the second language (L2) teaching is almost

impossible to be avoided from intermingling with the lesson. To be in context with the

issue featured in this article is the usage of Bahasa Malaysia (BM) in the English

lesson but highlighting the practice that is done by the non- optionist English
teachers. This research is important as it is not only focusing on the usage of the L2

in ESL classes but also addresses the issue of the shortage of English teachers in

school. So, instead of recruiting more TESL graduates who were trained to teach

English, they assigned the teachers who were trained to teach other subjects, and

apparently, they knew English better than other teachers to overcome the

insufficiency. Since they are not trained to teach English as a subject for the

students, they might have different issues or reasons on why and when they will use

the BM in their English lesson compared to the optionist English teachers. Hence,

the issues discussed are appropriate with the title of the research and improved its

clarity.

However, the researchers did not mention much the definition of the ‘non- optionist’

teachers and more importantly, they did not provide the criteria of the ‘experienced’

and ‘inexperienced’ non- optionist English teachers which can cause the ambiguity of

the upcoming discussions and result. Nevertheless, the researchers able to restrain

the flaws by came out with suitable objectives aimed specifically to focus on the

extent of usage of Bahasa Malaysia in English classes, in what situation and the

reasons for using BM to teach English, (Romli & Abdul Aziz, 2015) which validate the

relevancy of the research to be conducted.

In the literature review, the researchers list out the previous research that has been

conducted by other researchers from many countries regarding the implication of the

use of mother tongue in English classes. They also included the researchers that

proposed the guidelines on how to use L1 positively in a second language

classroom. These inclusions should be praised as they were not just listing out the

title of the studies, but they also include the focus of the studies, the number of

participants, and also the result achieved from the researches. The researchers also
mentioned the existing studies conducted in Malaysia about both non- optionist

teachers and the usage of BM in English lesson issues, but none of them highlighted

the topic on the use of BM by the ‘non- optionist’ English teachers. Thus, the details

are really helpful to support the relevancy of why they should conduct their research

regardless of the big number of existing studies about the same issue.

For the data analysis, the researchers have put an effort to get the participants in

various school settings to obtain the results from different perspectives. The size of

the population participating was suitable enough as the number of the non- optionist

teachers is not the same for different schools, some only have less than five and

some can have more than ten non- optionist English teachers because they are

short of English teachers. Plus, to involve the teachers from 25 different schools in

different districts is not an easy task to do. Even though the research was conducted

by the prestigious university, not all the teachers approached gave full cooperation to

the researchers as they were only able to collect 41 data out of 54 questionnaires

delivered. Hence, the method of collecting data can be improvised by combining the

qualitative method so that they will be able to get more varied and specific reasons

to answer the objectives. For the suggestion, they can also conduct the interview

with the teachers by themselves with many short yet intriguing questions or include

the suggestion or opinion sections in their questionnaires so the teachers can

provide them with ideas or the points that they missed out in the question lists.

Conclusion

This article study clearly proved that the non-optionist English teachers recognized

the issue of using Bahasa Melayu to teach in English especially for Mathematics and

Science because some of the terms and concepts are complicated and they prefer to

translate the explanation into Bahasa Melayu which is the L1 of the student to ease
the understanding. However, this teaching approach had caused some problems

especially in higher education as the context, syllabus, and term use is much

different from before. The challenges are greater, and the student will face problems

to master. This is the cause of the decline of English proficiency among recent

graduates. However, the non-optionist teacher should not be blamed as they did not

properly train to teach English as they were originally trained to teach other subjects

such as Science and Mathematics. To add, the government should provide proper

training for the non-optionist teacher to improve their lesson. Overall, the authors

have presented a comprehensive study in this article to achieve its’ objectives apart

from having a lack in defining the terms for experienced and inexperienced non-

optionist teachers.

Reference:

Jahabar Zainal Abideen (2004). The Use of Malay as a Support Language to Teach

English. (Unpublished master thesis). National University of Malaysia, Malaysia.

Romli, N. H., & Aziz, M. S. A. (2015) The use of Bahasa Melayu in the English

Language Classroom by ‘Non-Optionist’ English Teachers. Procedia - Social and

Behavioral Sciences, pp 770-777.

Zuana Hanom (2003). Using BM in ELT: Analyzing Language Teaching Instructions

to Low English Proficiency Students. (Unpublished master thesis). National

University of Malaysia, Malaysia.