AN ANALYSIS OF THE EFL SECONDARY READING CURRICULUM IN
MALAYSIA: APPROACHES TO READING AND PREPARATION FOR
HIGHER EDUCATION
What the article about
The article is about The general of the emphasis on EFL reading in the Malaysian EFL secondary reading curriculum, the EFL Curriculum Specifications document and the EFL textbook were analyzed. This approach was utilized in order to see the extent to which the instructional approach in the EFL textbook and the EFL Curriculum Specifications document were in alignment. Then, the data from the two documents were combined in the form of an overall percentage in order to generalize the instructional approach to EFL reading in the EFL secondary reading curriculum as a whole. The curriculum design were analyzed by examining reading tasks that focused on lower level text processing, such as phonological processing, word recognition, and word identification. The EFL secondary reading curriculum as a whole seems to be lacking CLT characteristics at the curriculum approach and design levels. The brevity of instructional guidelines in the EFL Curriculum Specifications document seems to cause misinterpretation of the intended communicative instructional approach. Such misinterpretation could be the cause of misalignment in instructional approach and design between the EFL Curriculum Specifications and the EFL textbook (Richards and Rodgers’, 2001). This article analyzes of emphasis on reading, types of reading tasks, and cognitive demands for reading tasks provide evidence for the extent to which secondary students are prepared to read effectively in the EFL at the university level. At the surface level, the findings on emphasis on reading indicate that reading skill is highly emphasized throughout the Malaysian EFL Secondary Curriculum. However, emphasis on EFL reading solely might not guarantee the success of EFL reading instruction in preparing students for university reading involving the EFL without the curriculum appropriately addressing other instructional elements at its design level. In terms of the types of reading tasks in the EFL secondary reading curriculum, in general, the findings suggest that the EFL secondary reading curriculum emphasizes important primary reading tasks such as identifying main ideas, identifying details, and making inferences, tasks that are important for effective reading comprehension (Sidek, 2011) The levels of cognitive demand analysis for reading tasks show that the reading tasks are primarily designed to require high cognitive demands. There is also a coherent alignment in core cognitive skill emphasis between those in the EFL Curriculum Specifications and the EFL textbook. This article suggests that the cognitive demands of reading tasks in the EFL Curriculum Specifications document and those in the EFL textbook are in alignment and therefore reflecting a coherent design and effort in preparing students for EFL reading at the tertiary education level. Nonetheless, although the curriculum emphasizes on high cognitive demand reading tasks, a significant emphasis seems to be highly placed on reading tasks that require students to analyze text information. Relating the analyzing skill to Marzano et al.‘s (1988) core cognitive skills definitions, by prioritizing the analyzing skill, the EFL secondary reading curriculum stresses the importance of learners‘ acquiring cognitive skills such as identifying details and identifying main ideas. The EFL secondary reading curriculum addresses the importance of teaching major reading tasks, Malaysian EFL readers at the university level are still reported not to have the ability to identify and make connection among text main ideas as well as to make inferences, the important reading tasks that students are required to perform competently in content area reading (Nambiar, 2007). It is significant for teachers to use these reading strategies mentioned above to develop higher thinking skills among Six Form students, In order to ensure that the teachers in upper secondary schools are moving in the right direction, there is a need to carry out further study on the types of reading tasks that are given by teachers in relation to the EFL secondary reading curriculum. There is further a need to examine the types and length of reading passages used in the classroom and what levels of cognitive demand of the reading tasks are reflected EFL secondary reading curriculum Teacher’s and Student’s Book which use communicative and structural approaches need to be examined and scrutinized (Ahmed, 2015). What you think about the article The overarching approaches to the second language reading instruction reflected in the Malaysian EFL secondary curriculum and how well this curriculum prepares students for tertiary reading in EFL. The findings indicate that the Malaysian EFL secondary reading curriculum frequently uses reading as an explicit skill to achieve the listed learning outcomes in the EFL Secondary Curriculum. Nonetheless, the curriculum is developed based on the cognitive information processing theory of SLA, Top Down theory of L2 reading reflecting Non-Interactive Whole Language instruction as well as learner roles that are primarily in the form of individual tasks. The findings on passage analysis show that the EFL textbook primarily uses narrative passages with the majority of passages below grade-level length. The curriculum, however, emphasizes reading tasks that require high cognitive demand as well as important types of reading tasks (Sidek, 2011). Every curriculum is based on a particular theoretical orientation about language teaching and language learning. In order for an educational curriculum to be effective and to achieve its goals, it has to be coherent at all levels including at its theoretical level. A coherent curriculum should be reflective of the intended approach. Many studies on curriculum found that an incoherent curriculum often defeats the curriculum goals. Such a consequence may be due to the misalignment between the classroom implementation, textbook development and the intended approach of the curriculum (Rahman, 2014). The ability to identify main ideas is crucial for reading comprehension. Past studies have also found that teaching students with major reading skills such as identifying main ideas impacts the efficiency of L2 reading comprehension process. Hence, such ability may affect students‘ academic performance in the content areas involving EFL reading (Ghaith & El-Malak, 2004). According to Koda (2007) there have traditionally been two opposing views of reading; a holistic view where reading is considered an indivisible whole, and a componential view where reading is considered to consist of a whole range of different components (Koda, 2007, p. 3). Koda argues that the componential view gives the better picture, and that if reading is viewed as a multifaceted activity it is easier to find out where the problem lies if there is a reading difficulty. That way it might be possible to address the problem and solve it instead of just saying that this person cannot read very well (Koda, 2007, p. 3). What your critique about the article is (concept of curriculum in the article). The issue of Malaysian graduates being weak and not proficient in the English Language has been constantly talked about at the national level. Teachers, lecturers and employers complain that students are way below the expected level of proficiency. The issue of weak and non-proficient graduates suggests that they are not well-equipped to deal with academic literacy. The curriculum was comprehensive in the sense that it covered all the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. The teacher mentioned many times the ideal but sometimes impractical objectives described in the curriculum, together with suggested activities, which to her defined the curriculum. The teacher interviewed knew about the curriculum specifications and she always kept a copy of it in the teacher’s record book for reference. She claimed that the curriculum was well designed whereby the goals and objectives were academically viable but at times were too ideal to be accomplished in practice. Thus, on the part of the teacher, a question of ‘how much can I apply?’ arose. Another vital issue raised by the teacher was that the curriculum failed to meet students’ needs as the educational system focused more on the orientation of examination, not really on the quality orientated system. The foremost priority was to get higher marks. Teachers rarely concentrated on the needs of students to master reading comprehension in preparation for tertiary education since they wanted to help students to obtain good marks in examinations (Sidek, 2011). Regarding the text of reading material, many aspects of the text might make the reading process difficult. Although the language of the text is known to be the major variable, there are other factors like aspects of text content, text type, text organization, and sentence structure. For instance, it is generally assumed that abstract texts will be harder to understand than texts describing real objects. The text will also be more readable if it is more concrete, imaginable and interesting. Certain types of texts are more suitable for specific ages and purposes than other types (Freahat, 2015). A number of theories and models have also recently been proposed on selected components and processes that occur while reading. Rayner and Reichle (2010) differentiated models of word identification, models of syntactic parsing, models of discourse processing and models of eye movement control. On models that focus on the identification of component skills, e.g. word decoding and vocabulary knowledge (Quinn, Wagner, Petscher, & Lopez, 2015). The second set of models they reported is concerned with the identification of various processes and the construction of a mental representation during reading, such as the Construction-Integration model (CI; Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978), which has become one of the most influential models among educators. Richards, J. C. & Rodgers, T. S. (2001). Approaches and methods in language teaching. New York: Cambridge University Press. Harison Mohd Sidek. 2011. Methods of EFL Secondary Reading Instruction: Preparation for Higher Education. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science Vol. 1 No. 3; March 2011 Marzano, R. J. et al. (1988). Dimensions of thinking: A framework for curriculum and instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press Nambiar, R. M. K. (2007). Enhancing academic literacy among tertiary learners: A Malaysian experiences. 3L Journal of Language Teaching, 13. Retrieved from pkukmweb.ukm .my/~ppbl /3L/.../5_Nambiar%203L2007revised.pdf Ahmed. Hamsa Hameed. 2015. Examining EFL Secondary Reading Curriculum. Jorunal of Applied Sciense. ISSN 1812-5654 Rahman, A., N. H. (2014). From curriculum reform to classroom practice: An evaluation of the English primary curriculum in Malaysia. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of York. Ghaith, G. & El-Malak, M. A. (2004). The effect of jigsaw II on literal and higher order EFL reading comprehension. Educational Research and Evaluation, 10(2), 105-115. Koda, K. (2007). Reading and Language Learning: Crosslinguistic Constraints on Second Language Reading Development. Language Leaning, 1-44. Nasser M. Freahat. 2015. Reading Passages and Skills in Jordanian High School and University EFL Textbooks: A Comparative Analytical Study. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 16-27, January 2015. ISSN 1799-2591 Rayner, K., & Reichle, E. D. (2010). Models of the reading process. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 1, 787–799. doi:10.1002/wcs.68 Quinn, J. M., Wagner, R. K., Petscher, Y., & Lopez, D. (2015). Developmental relations between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension: A latent change score modeling study. Child Development, 86, 159–175. doi:10.1111/cdev.12292