English Usage in Malaysia Tan Wan Chew 25th October 2013 From what age do people get English

education? The formal primary education which is subsidised/ make compulsory by our government starts from the age of 7, which is the same age as we started all other subjects. However, most parents will send their children (around 3 5 years old) for preschool education for 2 4 years before entering primary school. This mainly depends on the financial background of the family, whether to send their children for these preschools (kindergarten) or not. In the kindergarten, they will learn English, Malay, Maths and Arts. The syllabus varies from each Kindergarten. Primary school programme is a 6 years learning program. I would like to classify Standard 1 to 3 as lower primary school education and Standard 4 to 6 as higher primary school education. The subjects in lower primary school education involve English Language, National Language (Malay Language), Maths, Moral, Arts, Music and physical education (PE). Generally, they are 3 types of primary schools in Malaysia, but they are also some private schools which I will not include in this context. We have Malay-medium National Schools and non-Malay-medium National-type Schools (Chinese and Tamil). This is mainly due to the 3 main races that we have in Malaysia.

And all 3 races of people believe that there is a need to learn their original languages and therefore agree to have the non-Malay-medium National-type Schools. In these schools, the Chinese and Indians can learn their languages, Chinese and Tamil respectively. English and Malay are compulsory subjects in these 3 schools as well. However, the parents can freely choose which type of school for their children to enrol in, not necessary depends on ethnic groups.

What language is used to teach English? Is only English used? Since I have mentioned there are 3 types of primary schools here, the primary school will teach their students using the native languages depends on the school type. Malay-medium National Schools use Malay; Chinese-medium National-type Schools use Chinese; Tamil-medium National-type Schools use Tamil. Whether the teacher would like to teach in fully English or partially English is also depends on the children progress rate. If they can understand well in full English, then the teacher will use full English. If the students do not understand certain words/ phrases, then the teacher will explain in either the 3 languages. However, mostly the teachers will teach in full English if possible.

Can many people use English in Malaysia? Do they frequently use English in daily life? This is a very hard question to answer. This is because I seriously do not have the statistics to show you. Well, mostly the people that I know so far can use pretty well communicable English. We enjoyed American movies as well; I mean we do not need subtitles for them. In daily lives, we use English to send Short Message Service (SMS), e-mails, faxes, facebook, etc most of the time. Some even use English as a communication medium at ho me. And English is also the second main language used in Malaysia (the main is the National Language). Some private companies will required the workers to communicate (report) in English instead of National Language as well. In Malaysia, Malaysian University English Test (MUET) is used to grade the English proficiency of people. According to the London-based Education First (EF) English Proficiency Index (EF EPI) 2011 report, Malaysia is ranked as having the highest proficiency in English among countries in Asia where English is not the mother tongue. Full report: http://www.ef.com/sitecore/__/~/media/efcom/epi/pdf/EF-EPI-2011.pdf However, English usage also depends on area and surroundings. Some rural areas citizens might not have chance to use English that frequent as compared to cities and hence lowering their English proficiency. As far as I am concern, there are even some graduates who cannot construct a proper English sentence without any grammatical error. This might be due to less practices or low confidence level. For your information, the tertiary education in Malaysia is all conducted by English except for the minor subjects.