Research Monograph

The widespread acknowledgement of English as a ‘global language’ has led Malaysia, like other countries in the South East Asian region, to some changes in its policies and practices concerning English as a medium of instruction. As a result of such socio-political atmosphere, English was used as a medium of instruction in all preschools in Malaysia under the KSPK curriculum from the year 2010 onwards. Under this curriculum, teaching must be conducted in English for half of the instructional time during school hours. This decision was made based on the belief that greater exposure to English would improve preschool children’s communicative ability before they enter Primary One. As the Ministry of Education of Malaysia required that teachers use English to teach for part of the instructional tasks, preschool teachers’ lack of English language proficiency has drawn some attention from the general public and academia as one of the obstacles to be tackled for successful implementation of the Malaysian Kurikulum Standard Prasekolah Kebangsaan (KSPK) curriculum.