Malaysian English Language School Curriculum

KSSR

 CONCEPT
- National standard
 PRINCIPLE
- the four language skills of the ESL syllabus were organized in a modular structure with a
few new aspects including the phonics approach for basic literacy, penmanship,
language arts, and an emphasis on critical and creative thinking skills (CCTS) especially
higher order thinking skills (Ministry of Education, 2011).
- emphasized the ―4Cs‖ (communication, critical thinking, creativity and collaboration) of
21st century learning
- back to basics: building a strong foundation of competencies in basic literacy skills ;
reading through phonics ; penmanship, basic listening and speaking
- learning is fun, meaningful, purposeful : activities are contextualized, meaningful and
purposeful;fun-filled activities, integration of skills
- teaching is learner-centred : learner;s needs and salient learner factors
(environment,family, language use contexts,entry behaviour)
- integration of salient new technologies : use of ict to facilitate and encourage
meaningful language practice, creative and innovative use of the new technologies by
pupils to enhance language learning in the classroom
- character-building infused: inculcating moral values
 MODELS
- Objective model

CEFR

 CONCEPT
- Internationally accepted standard
 PRINCIPLE
- a. This curriculum reform adopted the CEFR levels (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, and C2) as a
guiding framework for curriculum development; teaching and learning (including
learning materials); and assessment
- Its most innovative feature was the action-oriented approach which brought curriculum,
pedagogy, and assessment into a closer interaction by including the use of ―I can / can
do” descriptor statements to specify a learning outcome, a learning focus, or imply an
assessment task (Little, 2013).
- The SBA required teachers to assess their students‘ formative language proficiency (all
four language skills) with a score of 1 to 6, from weak to advanced learning respectively.
The summative component (central assessment) on the other hand reported past
learning achievement of the students. Hence, the formative and summative components
complemented each other in providing a more realistic estimate of students‘ overall
achievement (Ong, 2010).
- ‘We wish our students to grow into aware and responsible citizens.’ At a slightly lower
level, aims also show how the curriculum will seek to achieve this, e.g.:
- • ‘They will learn to read newspapers, follow radio, TV and internet media critically and
with understanding.’
- • ‘They will be able to form and exchange viewpoints on political and social issues.’
 - Language objectives: • learn vocabulary of specific news topic areas • distinguish fact
and opinion in newspaper articles. Language-learning objectives: • infer meaning of
unknown words from context. Non-language objectives: • confidence, motivation,
cultural enrichment. Process objectives, i.e. with a focus on developing knowledge,
attitudes and skills which learners need: • investigation, reflection, discussion,
interpretation, co-operation.
-
 MODELS
- Naturalistic model

GLOBAL SUSTAINABLITY

- SDG 4 Quality Education

- SDG 1 No Poverty
- SDG 13 Climate Action
Factors in Designing the new curriculum in relation to aspiration

There was a need for the implementation of a national curriculum as opposed to the existing
subject-oriented curriculum.

 Most of the subject matter contained foreign elements, which made it difficult for the students to
relate to.

 There was no emphasis on basic education, that is the acquisition of the three R’s — reading,
writing and arithmetic — at the primary level.

 There was a need for a curriculum to equip students with skills and knowledge that would enable
them to enter the job market or further their education after school.

 It was important to be proficient in English in order to acquire knowledge in the field of Science
and Technology.

 ELT in Malaysian schools should emphasize more oral activities that would help students relate the
language to the environment. (Source: Foo & Richards, 2004, p. 234)

 “to ensure the relevancy of the schooling with the current needs by enhancing students
learning with the acquisition of new skills in thinking, communication, entrepreneurship,
innovation and creativity” (Mohamad Yusof, 2008, p. 9 see also Bapoo Hashim, 2009).
 due to the deteriorating standards of English language proficiency among students and
graduates, specifically their poor communication skills (Sen, 2011), the overemphasis on
rote-learning and the examination-oriented education system, which hinders students’
creativity and critical thinking (ASLI-CPPS, PROHAM & KITA-UKM, 2010)
 The rationale behind revising and updating existing educational curricula is thus to provide
learners with the very best opportunities and progression in local and global communities
(Airini et al., 2007; Fullan, 2007; Oloruntegbe, 2011).
 In other words, education must continue to change and curricula should be regularly altered
in order to fulfil this pressing need. Indeed, the argument for change or reform in education
has become “indisputable” (Bantwini, 2010, p. 88), and change is “inevitable” (Fullan, 1993,
p. 4) and an on-going process of constructing meaning (Airini, McNaughton, Langley & Sauni,
2006; El-Okda, 2005; Hallinger, 1998; Jacobs & Farell, 2001).
 The recent ELT curriculum reform in Malaysia is hence proposing transitions and changes in
line with local, regional and global needs (Selvaraj, 2010).

Factors in implementing the new curriculum in relation to aspiration

he first approach is to train teachers to write their own assessment materials whichwill produce the
necessary evidence of learning. The second approach is to provideteachers with a bank of
assessment materials to achieve the same results and teach themto implement and interpret these
materials (Sishi & Poliah, 2006).Despite repeated and continued attempts to pursue the former
strategy of training teachersto become assessors and evaluators (see, for example, Fok, Kennedy,
Chan & Yu 2006,Sithamparam, 2011), this approach consistently fails. Even with extensive and
targetedtraining, teachers consistently prove to be poor assessment designers, regardless ofwhether
they are designing traditional tests (Coniam , 2009) or school-based assessmentmaterials. The
reasons for this failure relate to knowledge and culture.Designing assessment tasks requires an
extraordinary amount of knowledge about testingand assessment, language acquisition, how
language is structured, the skills involved innegotiating a range of texts and task design itself (Hamp-
Lyons, 2009; Koh, Lee, Gong &Wong, 2006, Scott, 2009).Understandably, acquiring and applying this
knowledge is difficult for teachers, even shouldthey be motivated to do so. Research has shown us
that teachers have difficulty aligningtheir assessments to the instructional goals, thereby ensuring
the validity of the assessment(Koh, Lee, Gong & Wong, 2006; Yu, 2007). There are issues designing
tasks that focus onwhat children

can

do rather than on their mistakes (Lee, 2007; Lo, 2006), that produce thekind of interaction required
by the assessment (Hamp-Lyons, 2009), that are not pencil andpaper based,

or based on children’s being able to regurgitate rote

-learned knowledge, that

assess a range of skills in a ‘fun’ way

that does not engender stress (Goh & Mohamed,2006) and that assess c

hildren’s higher

-order thinking (Koh, Lee, Gong & Wong, 2006; Yu,2007). Additionally, integrating assessment tasks
and task types across class levels (e.g.Year 1 and 2) has been found to be problematic (Lo, 2006).In
interpreting the assessment, teachers vary in their understanding and evaluation of bothverbal and
non-verbal learner performance (Butler, 2009; Lo, 2006), and are found toevaluate children on the
basis of ethnicity, communication style, or on perceived behaviouralproblems unrelated to the
assessment task (Lo, 2006).These issues are exacerbated by uneven affective-cognitive and
proficiency developmentthat characterises young language learners, (McKay, 2006; Scott, 2009), a
particularly

problematic area for Malaysia’s SBA, as there

appears to

an expectation that children’s

demonstrated competencies

will fall under one of the 6 Band ‘levels

brought about by someof the training on SBA done during 2011.

Cultural factors play an even greater role in teachers’ failure to become assessment

designers. In many Asian countries, there is a long tradition of norm-referenced, summative,high

stakes examinations from primary through to the end of secondary education
decide on the teacher’s roles in the designing and implementing the curriculum, by referring to 5
speeches in line with global sustainability

 Natalie Haas- A certified elementary pedagogue and political scientist. TEDxDonauinsel. Why
and How to teach the SDGs in Early Childhood.
“ That if we want a future world where the sustainable development goals become a lived
reality, we should give the youngest of our societies the chance and opportunity to shape
the world that we are living in. We need to give them the chance to have heard of and
experienced what sustainable development means and we need to give them the chance to
make it part of their construct of values.”

 Dr Mazslee Malik.Former Ministry of Education.A press conference after a visit to SK Presint

Putrajaya.
"When he met Tun Mahathir he agreed on the matter and asked to continue his early
struggle as Minister of Education in 1971 to make the Malaysian community of high value
and hard work,"
 Tun Dr Mahathir Mohammad. Prime Minister of Malaysia. A meeting for United Nation in
New York 26/9/2019.
"Malaysia views the Multilateral Environmental Agreements as an important formula for
balancing the responsibilities of the planet, the responsibility of its people to ensure the
right to food, clothing and shelter and to balance the rights of its people to rise from
poverty, and to seek long-term, sustainable and united prosperity for the nation, ”
Former Deputy Director of Education (Education Operations Sector), Datuk Ahmad Tajuddin
Jab,
 “Nowadays, subjects are too many and it does not focus ,meanwhile, the new industry is
more focused on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). Therefore, the new
curriculum to be developed needs to have a particular focus.”
Task 1-Written Assignment

Expound the role of the teachers agents of change in the transformation of the Malaysian Language
Teaching (ELT) school curriculum in meeting global sustainability as current educational aspiration.