Malaysia’s Globalization, Educational Language Policy and Nation-Building 37
corporations (TNCs) that use English as the in-house working language
and the advent of ICT that relies on English as its operational language
(Tan and Santhiram 2014). Both agents of globalization have increased
the instrumental value of English in periphery-English countries, leading
to the spread of English to these countries. For instance, in Russia alone,
50 million people are learning English. Meanwhile, English is the main
foreign language in China (Watson 2000), and proficiency in this language
is a key university entry requirement (Stanley and Lee 2011). What is
worthy of note here is that the number of speakers of English as a second
language (350 million according to one estimate) has exceeded the number
of native English speakers (Nettle and Romaine 2000). Among other things,
this spread of English is facilitated by increased emphasis given to English
via educational policy intervention. In fact, a United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization report (2002) notes that as the result
of challenges arising from globalization, educational systems around the
world are paying “special attention to foreign languages, first and foremost
it is English” (cf. Rizvi and Lingard 2010, p. 176). Consequently, educational
institutions become the sites where “the hegemony of the English language
is spread, reproduced, but also contested” (Coulby 2005, p. 279).
In the case of Malaysia, there was a radical change of educational
language policy from the early 1990s in response to the global spread of
English. This radical change of educational language policy began with
the decision of the government to allow selective courses at the public
institutions of higher learning to be taught in English. Such a radical change
of educational language policy had largely compromised the common
language policy upheld by the state since independence in 1957. This
common language policy was underpinned by the Malay language, the
national language of Malaysia as well as the language of the dominant
group, as the main medium of instruction in the national educational
system. It was meant to facilitate inter-ethnic interactions and to develop
a shared identity given that Malaysia is a plural society comprising three
main ethnic groups with diverse languages and cultures, namely, Malays,
Chinese and Indians.
This radical change of educational language policy was deemed
necessary following declining standard of English among Malaysian
students that stemmed from the phasing out of the English-medium school
system beginning in the 1970s. This decline in the standard of English
threatened, it was argued, the economic development of the country on the