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Language Policy and Language Use in Multilingual Malaysia Reading…
Language Policy and Language Use in Multilingual Malaysia
Reading strategies : Drawing conclusion
1. Language Policy
Official document of a country that has to do with certain decisions about the use of languages.
Defined as an official decision made by the government of a country
Reflects the social, political, and economic context of public education and influences what each generation brings to the task of educating its children
2. Malaysia’s national language policy
Maintaining unity and promoting easy and effective communication within the society.
Through a common language use
Common communicative pathway that would allow increased interactions between the majority and minority groups within the country to happen
Influenced by the usage and popularity of the Malay language between Malay traders and their foreign partners at the time.
3. Medium of Instruction in National schools and National Vernacular schools
Malaysia has an education system that comprises two main types of schools: national and national type schools
Permits the operation of private schools which tend to cater to those who are either more economically endowed or families who intend to send their children overseas for higher education.
Taught through the medium of English with Malay usually serving as one subject to be learnt.
Be implementing the notion that as an official and national language, Malay must be learnt by all children attending Malaysian schools.
4. Language of importance, English
Considered an important second language in the country
Language of business and international trade and diplomacy
Taught as a subject both in national and national type schools
Prevails at institutions of higher learning.
Creates a chasm between learners from less privileged backgrounds with less confidence in English
Those from urban regions who have a more grounded use of the language.
5. Effectiveness of Malaysia’s National Language Policy
Helps to facilitate interethnic communication
Beginning of a socio‐economic divide by the schools that students attend and the language of instruction employed.
Difficulty in finding employment in the private sector where knowledge of English and other vernacular languages is required
6. Malay as the national language of a diverse multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country
To foster national unity and rally a diverse population around a single language.
The desire to maintain ethnic languages and cultural identity is strong
Education can play only a subsidiary or supporting role to promote unity.
Language becomes the supreme dividing force when intrinsic divisions are artfully maintained for political or other ends.
Language becomes a divisive instrument because, for instance, it brings these other inequalities into sharper relief