Article Reviewed;

Bt JZ Nun Ramlan, N. F., & Maarof, P. D. N. (2014). Multicultural Education: The Influence of

Cultural Diversity on Second Language Acquisition. International Journal of English and

Education, 3(4).

Summary

The article which was published in International Journal of English and Education in 2014 and

written by Maarof, N. and Bt JZ Nun Ramlan, N., entitled, “Multicultural Education: The

Influence of Cultural Diversity on Second Language Acquisition”, sought to debate about the

influence of cultural diversity on second language acquisition among Malaysian students. This

study is predicated on analysis of selected articles, which palpable that learning and acquisition

of second language has influenced by cultural diversity.

It is clear from the abstract of the article that this can be no simple issue. In fact, the article if

fairly confusing for the primary couple paragraphs. The author starts by saying that Malaysia as a

culturally diverse country with many various ethnicities and religions and define that

multicultural education incorporates that every student should have a civil right to attend school

regardless their gender, ethnic, people and other cultural characteristics. In Malaysia, ethnicity

will always be linked with the language and education which is indicated by the continual of

Tamil and Mandarin schools. Students rouse school, not only differing racial and ethnic

heritages, but also a good range approaches to learning. Teachers must remember of their

students’ diversity in terms of their racial, ethnic, socio-economic, cultural and linguistic

background. briefly it's important for teachers to become more aware to students from different

cultures to create the classroom environment more conducive for teaching and learning. Hence,

this paper further reveals the insights of cultural diversity in classroom and the way it

might influence the second language acquisition in Malaysia. It encourages them to

figure together toward social change. The articled adopted, James Banks Five Dimensions which

are content integration, knowledge construction, prejudice reduction, equity pedagogy and lastly

empowering school culture, (Banks, 2006).

Plus, the article further talks about cultural differences and impact of cultural differences. Since

culture plays a critical role in learning, cultural competence may help teachers to

become intimate their students’ distinctive cultural backgrounds. Teachers may use the students’

different culture as a benefit for them to diversify their teaching strategies. It also helps

teachers to handle student achievement gaps and meet accountability requirement.

Furthermore, the articles have discussed about sociolinguistic competence contributes to

Malaysian student’s English language proficiency. Mohan, 2010 said that teaching

language isn't almost learning the rudiments of the language but also various cultural

refinements. As such, the Malay and Chinese speakers of English should acquire English

functional categories like tenses and agreement with their associated formal features in acquiring

English because the second language. Even so, as Malaysia is additionally made from different

background setting, the difficulty of rural versus geographic area places another dominant role in

language acquisition. Thiyagarajah (2003) asserted that the training of English in rural schools in

Malaysia has always been a serious problem for educators as they struggle to tug proficiency

levels up against a backdrop where the language is sort of non-existent apart from the few
periods of English per week for learners where English is viewed as a remote language.

Furthermore, Nalini, Shamim, Geraldine & Laura (2013) in a very study have investigated the

cultural influence among Malaysian students during group learning in an English class, which

focuses on the Malay and Chinese students’ commitment in group learning. The study also

revealed that the learners who are mostly Chinese improved at certain level by learning in

groups; however, there was no significant difference. Meanwhile a study by Kesumawati, Nor

Zakiah, Norsimah & Nor Hashimah (2011) has been conducted in three secondary schools in

Johor with 315 Form Two students because the respondents who had seven good years of

learning English showed the connection between the cultural factors related to the students’

target language acquisition. It also shows how students did not understand this grammatical form

because Malay language has no such form in its grammar rules. Chinese students used a

bigger number of word types than the Malay students, a sign that they'd a more diverse or wider

vocabulary.

To such an advanced issue the author sums the research up well by although the cultural

diversity has been viewed because the elements that bound the acquisition of the target language

by different syntactic and structures in both languages, Musa et al. (2012) has stated that there's a

powerful influence of the national language or Bahasa Malaysia over the educational of English

among Malaysian learners. this is often a result of cultural diversity. Many Malaysians have

viewed English as a difficult subject to find out that leads them to depend heavily on translation

and dictionary use to search out meanings. Finally, the author emphasized that, English teachers

that they must be exposed to more linguistic knowledge and multicultural competence to

raised equip in teaching the language and to higher serve students with different cultural

background.

Review and Evaluation (Critique)

The paper title of the article is clear and appropriate for the content of the article. It is well-

written article on a current topic that could be considered interesting by researchers and scholars.

From the Abstract to the Conclusion, every detail of the paper was well written and clear. The

use of more comprehensive words like cultural diversity, indifference, multicultural are among

others, and the detailed descriptions and discussions of the major parts of the paper as well as the

subheadings enhanced the clarity of the article.

As pointed out by Maarof, N. and Bt JZ Nun Ramlan, N (2014) in this article, they discuss about

the influence of cultural diversity on second language acquisition among Malaysian student. I

observe that their main focus was mainly on cultural influence on Chinese and Malay students. I

feel when it’s about second language acquisition among Malaysian students, then every ethnic

group should be included. Choosing only two doesn’t justify the studies.

Secondly, a research question, methodology, results is main driver of any research endeavour. It

implies the route of the research. Therefore, the validity and certainty of knowledge claims of an

adopted research can be measured by the findings as it provides the answer for the research

questions. In this article, the research never mentioned about any of it, though there were variety

of scholars evidence were used to prove their discussion but there is no validity to prove the

purpose or aim of this study. Clearly, in this paper the authors provide richly proves from scholar
to support their interpretation in each point. Thus, it took me long to conclude the claims made

by the authors whether its calid and align with their title.

Moreover, in the presentation and discussion of the on page 288, letter I (Organization of

ideas/Addressing the Prompt), it could have been more helpful to the readers if the authors could

attach some 1 or 2 sample excerpt of student’s paper which was rated by teacher. This could

have given readers a broader idea of the discussion of results stating that “participants have

influence of cultural differences in their language acquisition”. Additionally, the article was

published in 2010 International Journal of English and Education and the article written on that

year as well? Looking at the list of references, most of the sources were dated late 1992 and 2013

which gave me an idea that the article could have been written during this time also. However,

since there is no reference as to the exact year of writing, it could be surmised that the references

used were outdated. It could have been a credible research article if the sources used were up-to-

date and recent.

Overall, this article is very straightforward in the beginning until where the article is headed.

However, in order to have more people be engaged and read the whole article it needs a new,

more concise introduction. Once the reader gets to the really good validation from this, it

wouldn’t be skeptical as it is. Overall, it is a good, well-written article with an important message

for individual that concerns especially teachers who teach second language for multicultural

ethnic groups. The study never lays out a concrete way of approaching this complex problem but

as a whole is a relevant and very convincing in theory.

REFERENCE

Bt JZ Nun Ramlan, N. F., & Maarof, P. D. N. (2014). Multicultural Education: The Influence of
Cultural Diversity on Second Language Acquisition. International Journal of English and
Education, 3(4).

Banks, J.A. (2006). Cultural diversity and education, foundations, curriculum and teaching
(5th.ed.). Boston: Pearson.

Banks, J. A. (2001). Cultural diversity and education: Foundations, curriculum and teaching
(4thed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Mohan K. Muniandy, Gopala Krishnan Sekharan Nair, Shashi Kumar Krishnan, Irma Ahmad &

Norashikin Mohamed Noor. (2010). Sociolingustic Competence and Malaysian Students’

English Language Proficiency. English Language Teaching, Vol. 3, Num. 3.

Thiyagarajah, P. M. (2003). Learning English in Malaysian Rural Secondary Schools:

Difficulties, Learning Styles & Strategies and Motivation. Unpublished Paper at The Learning

Conference 2003: What Learning Means: Institute of Education. University of London

Nalini Arumugam, Shamim Rafik-Galea, Geraldine De Mello & Laura Christ Dass. (2013).

Cultural Influences on Group Learning in an ESL Classroom.Review of European Studies, Vol.

5, Num. 2.
Kesumawati Abu Bakar, Nor Zakiah Abdul Hamid, Norsimah Mat Awal & Nor Hashimah

Jalaluddin. (2011). First language influence on second language performance: A study of

common English grammatical errors among rural secondary school students. The Second

Biennial International Conference on Teaching and Learning of English in Asia : Exploring New

Frontiers (TELiA2).

Musa, N. C., Koo, Y. L. & Azman, H. (2012). Exploring English Language Learning and

Teaching in Malaysia. GEMA: Online Journal of Language Studies 12(1): 35-51.