ESSAY WRITING: The challenges in using English in Malaysia

People who acquire excel in English language are given a lot of advantages. Even though English is not a main daily language in Malaysia, but English is very important since it provided mass distribution compared to other languages not only in education, entertainment, marketing trade and also our country’s economic growth. However, we cannot deny the fact that English usage in Malaysia was oversimplified for some duration of times.

Being a Malaysian, with Bahasa Melayu as the national language of more than half citizens in the country could contribute to the challenges in practicing the English language in Malaysia. This is because, they are rather comfortable to converse in their own mother tongue language than using English for the reason that the language is not being used predominantly as their own colloquial. Though there are certain groups especially youth who familiarized themselves with English in daily uses but it was tainted still with ‘Manglish’ terms so the usage of proper English itself is limited.

Besides, the reason why using English become a challenge in Malaysia because the native speakers are lacking of assurance and confidence in using the language. For instance, some of them are embarrassed of their low language proficiency in English so it takes them quite a real bear to actually use the language neither in public nor privately. Not only that, they also are verily worried about making grammatical errors and pronunciation mistakes because they feared of getting taunted by some typical language shaming troop in the community.

Of course, there are also some old-fashioned mindset who presume that using English is not important compared to the national language itself and this factor has become one of the challenges in using English in Malaysia. Some of the local consider that English language is irrelevant to be used as they inclined to think that spoken English would give them no gain since everyone is conversing in own mother tongue language between each other regardless where they are. Indeed, they also thought that English language is just another subject to pass and it has no necessity to be practiced in the future.  

Written by;

Layyinna Zul Iman / 2019