COURSE: Issues in ELT curriculum and

instruction
CODE: BIP 60104
SEMESTER: 1
ASSIGNMENT 1

LECTURER : Assoc. Prof. Dr. Intan Safinas Mohd

Ariff Albakri
NAME : UVARANI RETNAM
MATRICS NUMBER : M20221001403
1.1 Introduction about CEFR in Malaysia and its implementation.

The English Language Education Roadmap 2015-2025 is a reform effort initiated by the
Ministry of Education (MOE) in its effort to enhance the English language proficiency level
among Malaysian students (Ministry of Education, 2015). This move is also seen as an initiative
to align our education system with international standards as the Roadmap adopts the Common
European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) to benchmark the target performance
of students as they progress from preschool to tertiary level and beyond.

The CEFR is a standard used to describe a person’s language ability, in this case, English. CEFR
is primarily intended as a tool for reflection, communication and empowerment. The CEFR does
not tell practitioners what to do, or how to do it. It is a tool for reflection for all professionals in
the field of foreign/second languages with a view to promoting quality, coherence and
transparency through a common meta-language and common scales of language proficiency. It is
designed to provide a transparent, coherent and comprehensive basis for the elaboration of
language syllabuses and curriculum guidelines, the design of teaching and learning materials,
and the assessment of foreign language proficiency.

In any education reform effort, teachers would be the most important group of people involved.
Regardless of how big or well-funded a reform is, it is the teachers who ultimately have to
execute the changes in the classrooms. Hence, it is crucial to listen to their thoughts on the
change, and to
gain insights from their experience in implementing the change. As this study is focusing on the
challenges faced by teachers, a review of related literature on this is deemed necessary.
1.2 Challenges
1.2.1 Disturbed environment of the class.

One of the challenges faced by teachers to implement changes in education disturbed

environment of the Class. There are many different types of learners, which teachers are
expected to take into consideration while planning and delivering their lessons. Among them are
those -the visually-impaired learners- who seek for their right to learn without any privileges.
The moment we realize that a class is composed of individuals (rather than some kind of unified
whole), we have to start thinking about how to respond to these solutions individually so that
while we may frequently teach the group as a whole, we will also, in different ways, pay
attention to the different identities we are faced with (Harmer, 2007). In his remarks that note the
significance of considering the inevitable learner differences in a classroom, Harmer also
emphasizes that teachers are expected to approach the learners in their classes individually
instead of seeing them as a single unit. This approach proves to be sensible since the learning
experience of each learner in the classroom as an individual is highly likely to be shaped by their
own learner characteristics. However, some teachers may fail to consider the effect of these
differences and get prepared for their teaching as if they were addressing a group of individuals
with uniformed learner characters.

Different students react differently to different stimuli and that different students have different
kinds of mental abilities (Harmer, 2007). Gardner (1983), in his outstanding book Frames of
Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, describes seven different intelligence types and
underlines that all people have all of these intelligences but in each person one (or more) of them
is more pronounced. Therefore, in order to better decide on the tasks and activities that will be
included in their lesson plans, teachers are expected to determine the dominant intelligence type
of each individual learner in their classes and vary the activities accordingly.

Different students react differently to different stimuli and that different students have different
kinds of mental abilities (Harmer, 2007). Gardner (1983), in his outstanding book Frames of
Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, describes seven different intelligence types and
underlines that all people have all of these intelligences but in each person one (or more) of them
is more pronounced. Therefore, in order to better decide on the tasks and activities that will be
included in their lesson plans, teachers are expected to determine the dominant intelligence type
of each individual learner in their classes and vary the activities accordingly. If we accept that
different intelligences predominate in different people, it suggests that the same learning task
may not be appropriate for all of our students (Harmer, 2007). While some learners may enjoy
games and interactive activities, others may benefit from class discussions. The activities
learners prefer seem to be a result of their personality traits and individual learning strategies.
Since it is almost impossible for teachers to please each and every individual in the class with a
single activity, teachers are expected to ensure variety in the tasks and activities they design or
plan in their classes.

1.2.2 Time constraints

Time is one of the greatest constraints to any change process. Time is often devoted to
workshops intended to promote individual learning and encourage classroom change. This may
not be the kind of time that is needed for organizational learning or school change. Shaw and
Perkins (1992, p. 175) defined organizational learning as the ``capacity of an organization to gain
insight from its own experience and the experience of others and to modify the way it functions
according to such insight''.
According to the teachers time was an essence to any change implementation but they were not
given ample time to prepare materials for the CEFR before the implementation commenced.
Teachers or students were not given enough time to get familiarized with the CEFR before they
were asked to implement it in schools. To me time is always the challenge as me a teacher was
not enough time given to get to know the CEFR first before we implement it in school,
they announce it, and we implement straight away...I think it is a hasty decision. It is thought
because that time was not to be familiar with the CEFR first, before it is being rolled out by the
authority.
Perhaps teachers were not given enough time to familiarize ourselves with the CEFR .Another
responsibilities were teachers had to bear such as keeping record of students’ result, attending
school meetings, planning and running school events, disciplining students and many others that
they had to complete apart from their core business of teaching. Hence, learning about the
CEFR would take up some of their time and this would be another task they had to shoulder. As
me a teacher “time alone is already a challenge if you want to see it from the challenges we
face...because not only we have to teach, think about our lesson plan, how to teach better in
class, disciplining is also our responsibility, where when our students do something wrong,
we have to be responsible for it, and plus, we have to plan school meetings, attend the meetings
also, many other things la...and now adding the CEFR in the list...pretty intense.
“Time is an issue also, there are a lot of things to do in school, not just teach, we also have to go
for meetings, planning for school events, teachers’ day celebration, and we also have to check
students’ assignments. In this vein, both participants believed that they needed the extra time
to get acquainted with the CEFR before would they be able to implement it properly.
Time being one of the challenges in the CEFR implementation has Journal of Nusantara
Studies 2021, Vol 6(2) 296-317ISSN 0127-9386
(Online)http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol6iss2pp296-317308indeed been pointed out by
Nurul Farehah andMohd Sallehhudin (2018) in their study where they highlighted teachers had
to be given more time to get familiar with the framework.

1.2.3 Students’ Proficiency

Students’ proficiency level is another challenge which as to be considered by teachers.
Students’ proficiency level is one of the limiting factors to a successful change implementation
in the classroom. In case of students could not understand basic instructions even though they
were given examples of such instructions like ‘please submit your work on my desk’ and ‘don’t
forget to refer to the example given’. The instructions were simple yet there were students could
not able to comprehend the instructions. Perhaps how are these students going to cope with
CEFR? The CEFR syllabus were away beyond a students’ level which to her or his
disheartening. Similarly, students being very ‘slow’ in learning the English language in the
classroom.
When a teacher tried to do speaking activity, asked them to talk about independence day
celebration at school, after forcing them to speak you know only two 20 of my thirty-five
students responded . Moreover attention to the issue with students’ low English language
proficiency level was not uncommon to teachers as ‘the issue of students’ low proficiency is
not new to teachers and has always been the challenge as far as teaching English language is
concerned even before the implementation of the CEFR. However, teachers viewed this
problem as even more worrying at the present time where the CEFR is brought to the classroom
because of the internationalized contents of the textbook they used in lesson delivery in
the classroom. Now is more challenging for the teachers because we need to teach based on the
standard set for international level. Furthermore it is more difficult because the textbook used
has contents that are based on international standard, no longer based on local context. In
addition, we teachers are concerned regarding the learning opportunity students could get
when the contents were too hard for them and learning seemed to be impossible especially when
students could not understand most of the contents of the lesson. This issue has also been pointed
out by Mohd Dzaquan (2020) where teachers were always concerned about the lesson
based on CEFR standard being too difficult for students to grasp. In discussing the issue of
internationalized contents of the textbook, it is stated that because the contents of the textbook
were not based on the local Journal of Nusantara Studies 2021, Vol 6(2) 296-317ISSN 0127-
9386.
(Online) http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol6iss2pp296-317309 context making it difficult for
students to understand and comprehend because it is not within their background knowledge and
not something that they were familiar with. In my view the textbook is not based on Malaysian
context...is more like it’s suitable for the other like overseas kids”. I believed that “if the content
is based on local context, maybe it is less difficult for them because they might have
experienced it before”. “I think if the content is something that students are familiar with like
Hari Raya celebration, maybe learning can happen”. Hence, it can be inferred that when students
learn about something that is not within the local context and something which is not familiar to
them, teaching and learning can be very challenging as Sumaryono andOrtiz (2004) stressed that
English language learners could be disconnected from the learning process if the teachers do not
display sensitivity towards their cultural identity. When this happens, the content that is
internationalized not only made it difficult for students to understand but also difficult for
teachers to make the lesson comprehensible for them.
Here they learn about thanksgiving, they don’t know this. We teachers tried hard to make them
understand, so difficult you know”. The concern regarding the internationalized contents of the
textbook being hardly comprehensible to students has been voiced out, among others by
Monihuldin (2018)and Star (2018). Hence, in dealing with the issue mentioned, participants
believed that localization of the material could be one of the initiatives to counter this issue. This
is supported by a recent study by Deswila et al. (2020) who believe that cultures should be
injected in the learning materials. This is warranted as the significance of localized materials has
been proven to be effective in influencing participants’ comprehension in a reading lesson
(Mahabadi, 2012) where it was revealed that students’ scores were higher when using a localized
content material due to the familiarity of contents.

Given that the implementation of the CEFR in the English language education system is still at
the stage of infancy, it is presumed that challenges revealed by this study namely teachers’
motivation, materials, time, students’ proficiency level and facilities are inevitable.
Improvements would stillbeneeded in the implementation of the CEFR. Nonetheless, constant
supportin terms of adequate time, sufficient materials andtraining from the authoritiesare
deemed necessary in order to intensify teachers’ readiness to implement the change because
Journal of Nusantara Studies 2021, Vol 6(2) 296-317ISSN 0127-9386
(Online)http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol6iss2pp296-317314when teachers are ready to
accept the change, alteration of actions will happen accordingly (Armenakis, Harris, &
Mossholder, 1993). Change is not always easy however, if change is necessary all will
have to come together and do their part to support it. The implementation of the CEFR is seen
as a promising reform in the English language education system and a step in the right direction
to ensure the standard of English language in our country is enhanced.

1.3. Conclusion

The move by the Education Ministry Malaysia to implement the Common European Framework
of Reference for Languages by means of Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2015 and
Roadmap for English Language Education 2015-2025 which is a step-by-step plan that aims to
improve teaching and learning, examination results, and the overall English proficiency of
school-leavers and graduates and teachers is seen as a positive move. However, there are
numerous challenges that would make the implementation of the framework difficult to achieve
such as the competency of the teachers, and the diverse proficiency levels of the students among
others. Nonetheless, there is general consensus among the stakeholders in the country that the
adoption of the framework is a vital step towards achieving its language goals and raising the
standards of English. It is hoped that the adoption of the framework is the first of many other
steps towards the raising of the standards of English in the country.

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