TSL 3112: Language Assessment

- TUTORIAL WEEK 1

Examine the contributing factors to the changing trends of language assessment.

The Ministry of Education aims to develop students who are operationally proficient in Bahasa Malaysia and English language.

Compared to Bahasa Malaysia, Malaysian students performance in English language is weaker. Only 28% of students achieve at least a credit benchmarked to Cambridge 1119 in English language SPM.

Performance in English language also varies by ethnicity, all three major ethnic groups fall significantly a short of the target 70% proficiency target.

Lower students performance in English language appears to be driven by low proficiency among the English language teachers. When a sample of over 7500 English language teachers took CPT, a significant number did not meet the minimum proficiency standard required for teaching English language.

There is also a mismatch between subjects that teachers were trained to teach and the subjects they end up teaching.

Approximately, 30% of the English language teachers were not originally trained to teach English, while approximately 3600 that were trained to teach English language are teaching other subjects.

Source: Education Blueprint. (2013). Ministry of Education: Kuala Lumpur.