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The preliminary study examined teacher and students' translanguaging practices in a preschool in Sarawak, Malaysia. Analysis of audio-recorded interactions of 15 students with their teachers in two preschool classrooms (1 English, 1 Malay) found 291 instances of teacher talk functions (English, 87; Malay, 204) and 222 instances of student talk functions (English, 71; Malay, 151). As the teachers were teaching English and Malay languages, the communicative function dominated, followed by management and academic functions. The teacher provided participation cues, affirmed students' responses and assessed their knowledge. However, in the Malay lesson where students were not limited by their language proficiency, the teacher also asked students to give clarification, and provided new information to expand students' schema. A large percentage of student talk functions in the English and Malay lessons were representational, followed by repetitions. Almost all (92.72%) student talk functions were performed in the medium of instruction in the Malay lesson, compared to 56.34% in the English lesson. The study shows the importance of translanguaging to provide the language support for the preschool students' less developed language.

Poor mental health of university students is becoming a serious issue in many countries. Malaysia -- a leading country for Asia-Pacific education -- is one of them. Despite the government's effort to raise awareness, Malaysian students' mental health remains challenging, exacerbated by the students' negative attitudes towards mental health (mental health attitudes). Relatedly, self-compassion and resilience have been reported to improve mental health and mental health attitudes. Malaysian students (n = 153) responded to paper-based measures about mental health problems, negative mental health attitudes, self-compassion, and resilience. Scores were compared with 105 UK students, who also suffered from poor mental health and negative mental health attitudes, to make a cross-cultural comparison, to contextualise Malaysian students' mental health status, using t tests (aim 1). Correlation, path, and moderation analyses were conducted, to evaluate the relationships among these mental health constructs (aim 2). Malaysian students scored higher on mental health problems and negative mental health attitudes, and lower on self-compassion and resilience than UK students. Mental health problems were positively associated with negative mental health attitudes, and negatively associated with self-compassion and resilience. While self-compassion mediated the relationship between negative mental health attitudes and mental health problems (high self-compassion weakened the impacts of negative mental health attitudes on mental health problems), resilience did not moderate the same relationship (the level of resilience did not influence the impact of negative mental health attitudes on mental health problems). Self-compassion training was suggested to counter the challenging mental health in Malaysian university students.

This study examined learner perspectives of the benefits of communication strategy training by analysing strategy diaries written by low English proficiency learners enrolled in an English for Occupational Purposes programme. The communication strategy instruction involved 23 students who were taught 13 lexical, negotiation, and discourse-based communication strategies during the 13- week training. Each session consisted of presentation, rehearsal, and performance stages, and closed with strategy diary writing. The students wrote 117 strategy diary entries related to the learning outcomes of the training sessions. Most diary entries (82.9%) were on English improvement, and the remaining (17.1%) were related to communication strategy use. Further analysis of the strategy-related entries indicated the communication strategies taught during the training helped the students to better explain themselves, increase their vocabulary, and speak more spontaneously. A longitudinal analysis of one student's diary entries revealed that the student did not develop greater awareness of communication strategies during the training. When the subject matter of the interaction became more technical, his reflection shifted from communicative and language skills to the topic of the lesson and activities. The findings suggest the need to train learners on reflective writing to obtain insights into the learner perspective of learning to use communication strategies.

The study examined the subjective ethnolinguistic vitality of an Iban community in Sarawak, Malaysia based on their language use and attitudes. A survey of 200 respondents in the Song district was conducted. To determine the objective ethnolinguistic vitality, a structural analysis was performed on their sociolinguistic backgrounds. The results show the Iban language dominates in family, friendship, transactions, religious, employment, and education domains. The language use patterns show functional differentiation into the Iban language as the "low language" and Malay as the "high language". The respondents have positive attitudes towards the Iban language. The dimensions of language attitudes that are strongly positive are use of the Iban language, Iban identity, and intergenerational transmission of the Iban language. The marginally positive dimensions are instrumental use of the Iban language, social status of Iban speakers, and prestige value of the Iban language. Inferential statistical tests show that language attitudes are influenced by education level. However, language attitudes and use of the Iban language are not significantly correlated. By viewing language use and attitudes from the perspective of ethnolinguistic vitality, this study has revealed that a numerically dominant group assumed to be safe from language shift has only medium vitality, based on both objective and subjective evaluation.

The study examined code-switching in retail encounters involving sales personnel of cars, credit cards, beauty products, and food products with a Chinese customer. Altogether 27 retail encounters were audio-taped and transcribed. Analysis of the 14,944-word corpus was conducted using Gumperz's [(1982). "Discourse strategies." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] model of conversational code-switching. The results showed that English and Hokkien were the main base languages for retail encounters involving a Chinese customer who could not speak Mandarin. English marked prestige of products, notably car and credit card, whereas beauty and food products were promoted in Hokkien or Malay. The main code-switching functions were referential functions and interjections (41.57% and 39.36% of 907 instances, respectively). The most common referential function was product description. Reiteration accounted for 9.92% of the code-switching instances but message qualification, personalisation versus objectivisation, address specification, and situational code-switching were minimally present. Product type did not influence frequency of code-switching for interjection but it affected referential functions and reiteration. Referential function was the least frequent in credit card retail encounters and reiteration was the most frequent in food retail encounters. The findings on the high frequency of reiterations and the minimal use of code-switching for personalisation showed that clarity is more important than solidarity in retail encounters.

The study examined determinants of primary school choice among parents in Malaysia, and the decision maker and social influences in the school choice. It draws on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 43 middle-class parents from three ethnic groups (Chinese, Malay, and Indigenous). Results showed that school proximity and ethnicity-related reasons are leading factors influencing parental school choice. Medium of instruction, school academic reputation, and feeder to a preferred secondary school appear to be separate reasons but act as a proxy to ethnicity as the primary factor determining the choice of Chinese- or Malay-medium primary school by parents. The results also showed that mothers are more likely to make school choice decisions than fathers, but the reasons for school choice are similar. The primary social influences on their school choice come from friends and education personnel in preschools and schools. The Indigenous parents tend to be more subject to social pressure in making school choices than the Chinese and Malay parents, who mostly enroll their children in Chinese- and Malay-medium primary schools, respectively. However, these findings on school choice and ethnic segregation are limited to this sample and constrained by the socio-political context of the education system.

Purpose: Research has shown that university students, particularly non-native speakers of English, encounter difficulties with various academic text-types and often lack the ability to organise the information in a structure considered effective by the discourse community or to use the significant language features of the text-type effectively to achieve the intended purpose. The study examined the persuasiveness of argument texts written by proficient and less-proficient undergraduates in a Malaysian university. The aspects examined were the organisational structure of the text and the language features significant for fulfilling the persuasive purpose of the text. Method: Forty argument texts were analysed: 22 written by undergraduates who were more proficient in English, and 18 by less-proficient undergraduates. The analysis focused on the organisation of the content of the argument text as well as selected language features, namely, connectors, modal verbs and passive voice. Findings: The results showed that the proficient undergraduates used the structure considered effective for argument texts but the writing of the less-proficient group was characterised by unclear or absence of statement of stance and restatement of stance. To achieve the persuasive purpose of the text, the proficient undergraduates made use of connectors, modal verbs and passive voice more than the less-proficient group. However, the connectors "because", "so" and "besides" were often used in a manner similar to spoken language, and there was an overdependence on the modal verbs "can" and "will". The lack of conditionals and nominalisations was obvious for both groups, suggesting that these are more difficult language features to master and greater pedagogical attention is needed. Significance: The paper explores differentiated focus in the teaching of academic writing at university level for students with high and low proficiency in English.

This study examines functions of teacher code-switching in secondary school English and science classrooms in Malaysia, where English has recently been implemented as the language of instruction for science. Classroom interaction data were obtained from two English lessons and a science lesson. Analysis of the teachers' code-switching using Gumperz's (1982) semantic model show that code-switching in the two English lessons were vastly different, with little code-switching in the teacher-facilitated lesson. The other lesson, in which English was taught as a content subject was similar to the science lesson in the frequent use and co-occurrence use of code-switching for reiteration and message qualification. The direction of the language switch from English to Bahasa Malaysia as well as the proportion of teacher talk in English suggests that the base language for teaching is still English, even for the science lesson, and code-switching is a necessary tool for teachers to achieve teaching goals in content-based lessons involving students who lack proficiency in the instructional language. (Contains 3 tables.)

The study investigated the language choices of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Chinese family business and the factors guiding their choices. Interviews were conducted with 17 CEOs of family businesses located in Sarawak, some of whom are the sons and grandsons of the founder of the business. The results showed that all the CEOs can speak their Chinese dialect, Mandarin and some other Chinese dialects. Their proficiency in English and Malay depends on their age. All of them can speak English, with the exception of two older CEOs in their 80s. Only one CEO in his 40s can speak Malay fluently but the Malay proficiency of the older CEOs is inadequate for transactional functions. The factors guiding the CEOs' language choices for business are: own language repertoire, accommodation to client's choice for communicative efficiency, language choice as a business strategy, relationship building, and absence of business terms in the language. The CEOs use their interlocutor's ethnicity as a proxy to determine the right language to use for communicative efficiency. The study showed that while the CEOs are accommodative in their language choices, they are aware that making the right or wrong choices can provide or restrict access to business opportunities.

The study examines the influence of gender, age and socio-economic status on attitudes of Foochow and Hokkien towards their ethnic language and Mandarin. The matched guise test results of 120 Foochow and 120 Hokkien participants in Kuching, Malaysia, showed positive attitudes towards Mandarin on all the 15 traits. The Hokkien participants were more positive than the Foochow participants towards speakers of their own ethnic language. Foochow speakers were perceived as loud, and the male Foochow speaker was rated unfavourably on five other traits. Multivariate analysis of variance results showed that gender significantly influenced the Foochow participants' ratings of the wealth of Foochow speakers and the Hokkien participants' ratings of the easy-going nature of Mandarin speakers, the gentleness and solidarity of the male Mandarin speaker, and the height and intelligence of the male Hokkien speaker. Age influenced the attributions of status to the female Foochow speaker and solidarity with the female Mandarin speaker. Socio-economic status influenced the ratings of the most number of traits. Interaction effects were also found. The underlying dimensions loaded onto one factor each for Foochow (easy-going and rich) and Hokkien (formal, strong solidarity) and two different factors for Mandarin, suggesting different stereotypes of dialect and Mandarin speakers.

The study examines the sustainability status of Sarawak indigenous languages through a survey on adolescents' language use using the Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS). The specific aspects examined were: the presence of ethnic languages in relation to other languages in selected domains of language use; the adolescents' use of the ethnic language across generations in the family domain; language use patterns of different indigenous groups; and demographic variables which influence use of the ethnic languages for the indigenous groups. The language use survey involved 568 indigenous adolescents in six schools in Sarawak, Malaysia. The results show that the domains of the ethnic language are shrinking because of the growing presence of Malay varieties (Standard Malay and Sarawak Malay), particularly for smaller groups. The ethnic language is still strong in the family and religious domains but has little place in the education and mass media domains. In the ethnically heterogeneous public domains of transaction and friendship, the ethnic language is for intra- and Malay varieties for inter-ethnic communication. The demographic characteristics which predict sustained use of the ethnic language are the vitality of the ethnic group, rural locality and lower socio-economic status. (Contains 6 tables.)

The study examined the use of code-switching by English and science teachers in secondary schools in Malaysia. It focuses on the functions of code-switching in multilingual classrooms where English is the language of instruction, examining in particular the reiterative function of code-switching and its association with translation. Thirty six lessons of teacher discourse in whole-class teaching for English and science were audiotaped, and 20 lessons were found to contain teacher code-switching. Analysis of the teacher discourse involving code-switching using Gumperz's semantic model of conversational code-switching showed that the most prevalent function of code-switching was for reiteration and quotation. Metaphorical code-switching for interpersonal reasons such as addressee specification, objectivisation and personalisation is not as frequent. The reiterative function of code-switching resembling translation is mainly for bridging comprehension gaps. The remaining instances of reiteration are for marking salient information and instructions. The teachers also reiterated messages in Bahasa Malaysia, either in combination with quotation to incorporate student input and text information into the lesson or with objectivisation to allude to authority beyond that of a teacher, as Bahasa Malaysia is the language of government directives. The findings suggest that code-switching facilitates learning. (Contains 1 note, 2 tables, and 1 figure.)

This preliminary study examines the languages used by parents with their children in Malay, Chinese Foochow and Indian Tamil families to find out how the similarity or dissimilarity in parents' ethnic language influenced the choice of language transmitted to children and how far standard languages have permeated the family domain in Kuching City in the Malaysian state of Sarawak. Standard languages refer to the three main written languages taught in the school system, namely, English, Bahasa Malaysia (Malay language) and Chinese Mandarin. Interviews were conducted with 17 families (6 Malay, 6 Chinese Foochow, 5 Indian Tamil). The results showed that the ethnic language is mostly still retained in the Malay and Indian Tamil families but has been pushed out by English and Mandarin Chinese in Chinese Foochow families. English has emerged in parental communication with children to different extents across ethnic group. Bahasa Malaysia, on the other hand, is spoken in Malay families with parents from West Malaysia. Factors found to be influencing the parental decision on language to use with their children include similarity/dissimilarity of the couple's ethnic languages, their educational background, family and social linguistic environment, instrumental value of languages and ethnic identity. (Contains 3 tables and 1 endnote.)