1 a) Malaysia has a heritage of various ethnic groups and cultures, the Malay language is the national

language used by all while the Chinese, Indians and other ethnic minorities maintain the knowledge
of their mother tongue as well as use them actively (Tan, 2005). In line with that, the 2013-2025
Education Development Plan (Pelan Pembangunan Pendidikan, 2012) outlines several measures to
be taken in this education transformation effort. One of the measures is related to the usage of
language inside the teaching and mastering process. Language policy and planning can help efforts
to change a nation and society in radical methods as language making plans is a vital device of
revolutionaries’ alternate. This implies that the Upholding the Malay Language and Strengthening
the English Language policy (MBMMBI) is an effort that desires to be heightened. Meanwhile,
English language is widely used in each social and expert purposes. This situation enables Malaysia
to have its people professional in a couple of language. This is the Malaysian identification that
desires to be illuminated; that Malaysians are multilingual – their mother tongue, the Malay
language and the English language.

b) The government’s stance on the acquisition of an additional language (L3) is the 2013-2025
Education Development Plan (Pelan Pembangunan Pendidikan, 2012) focusing on higher education
where the students should be proficient in Bahasa Melayu and English and encouraged to learn one
additional global language. Besides that, the national education system is a catalyst for bilingualism;
In national schools, Bahasa Malaysia is the medium of instruction and English is taught as a subject.
In the context of contemporary practice, some of international languages like, Japanese, Arabic,
French, German are provided in certain schools. These options will provide the students to analyze
an extra language wherein they actually consistent with the Education Development Plan. This
includes the learning of Mandarin Chinese and Tamil as additional subjects if there is a demand for
them.

2.My own English learning journey commenced from my household. My father speaks English most
of the times where my siblings and I had to pick up the language since small. They always
encouraged and supported me to learn English. At the age of four years old my mother always
bought many flashcards, book with picture, puzzle and colouring book for me. At the age of six years
old, my mother had sent me to kindergarten. At there, I started my first formal lesson with English.
The teacher teaches us about the letter A to Z, number 1 to 10, spelling and pronunciations. When I
entered primary school by the age of seven years old, I already used a few English words in my daily
conversation. Besides reading books and a formal lesson in school, another environment which also
gives big influence for me to learn English is through watching English cartoons and movies. In early
ages, English cartoon program such as Sesame Street, Barney and Friends, Blue’s Clues and Totally
Spies helped me to communicate and understand English. Sesame Street encourages me to learn by
demonstrating how people use various strategies, such as observing and predicting, to explore the
world around me. Watching cartoon in English helps to hone my listening skills and learn how
English is spoken. In addition, through watching television, we learn with our desire and not by force
like in the classroom. So, I learned a lot by watching television. I also can learn about general
knowledge, science fact and recent news when I watch a documentary on National Geographic and
Discovery Channel. Another advantage of watching television is the learning of playing with words.
English taught in schools can be very rigid and sometimes the words are straight out of the book. My
life’s principle for learning language also helps me to improve my English skill. I believe that to
master a certain language desire is important for a person to explore and discover the language by
himself. It does not need a formal education to learn other languages. In a nutshell, language
learning is a continuum.
3. From my point of view, learning an L2 at a young age don’t have a negative effect on acquisition of
L1 or native language. Very young children readily learn through play-like activities. They are less
self-conscious than older learners and are willing to try out newly acquired language skills without
fear of embarrassment. Children at this age are also better at mimicking new sounds and adopting
pronunciation than are older learners. I started teaching children from two years old through stories,
games and songs and am always impressed with their speed of acquisition, their ability to imitate
sounds as well as their confidence at using this new language. Clearly, students will reap the most
benefits when they begin bilingual education early in their lives. Whenever I teach through
repetition of words, my students actively engaged in my lesson. When I was a student, my teachers
used physical demonstrations such as an expressive gesture and facial expression. Whenever they
pair nonverbal communication with vocabulary words, it assisted us to understand language and
remember language terms. Children who begin to study and master a foreign language achieve
greater confidence as they go along and gain the ability to communicate with people outside their
immediate language group. For instance, I grew up in a Malay neighbourhood where I managed to
develop confidence over time and can be encouraged to speak Bahasa Melayu with less anxiety
Most of my students study English through listening to songs .As the tradition Chinese proverb goes:
To learn a language is to have one more window from which to look at the world. Lastly, I find young
age is the most suitable age to learn an L2 based on my own experience and my teaching
experience.