SUMMARY OF THE PROJECT
‘Your Language My Culture’ is the name of a five-year supplementary reading programme in English specially prepared for use in all secondary schools in Terengganu, scheduled to start in January 2016.
The focus is on cultural enrichment through readings on local culture and through inter-disciplinary readings across textbooks.
The objectives are three-fold :
-
to provide local content (local knowledge, culture, tradition, literature, history, geography, etc.) for learners to draw upon in their performance of oral and written communication in English;
-
to develop a local reading perspective while recognising western perspectives embedded in the English language;
-
to develop an understanding of the inter-relatedness and relevance of other school subjects to the way of life of ordinary Malaysians.
For this programme to be fully implemented, three units of researchers have to work in tandem :
-
UNIT 1 (Material Development) is tasked with the writing and publication of teachers’ handbooks and students’ workbooks;
-
UNIT 2 (Research) is to conduct pilot and trace studies in selected schools and use data obtained as a basis for programme evaluation;
-
UNIT 3 (Training of Trainers/Teachers) is responsible for guiding trainers to use the teaching methodology required so that they can pass on the methodology to English Language teachers.
At the end of the five-year research, the main output will include the following:
-
a culture-based reading programme in English for secondary schools;
-
a publication of students’ workbooks and accompanying handbooks for English language teachers;
-
a training programme for trainers to pass on mission and method to English Language teachers;
-
an evaluative procedure to measure effectiveness of similar reading programmes.