Mukhlis Abu Bakar

Buku yang diedit oleh tiga orang editor ini meneliti tulisan dan sumbangan Masuri S N, seorang penyair dan penulis Singapura.

This report examines the home and school literacy practices of Malay and Chinese children of different socio-economic background and how these impact on their academic performance upon entering school. It is based on a longitudinal study of the home and school literacy experiences of seven Malay children and seven Chinese children from the time they attended kindergarten until they completed Primary 1 (roughly from 4 to 7 years old). The impetus for the study was in part due to the continuing unequal literacy outcomes between Malay and Chinese students on the one hand, and between students of different socio-economic classes regardless of ethnic groups, on the other. Data analysis show that participant parents, regardless of their socio-economic background, value their children's educational success, want their children to do well in school, and correspondingly see themselves as supporting their children in one way or another. The evidence, however, demonstrates a variation in familial perspectives and needs and a considerable distinction in how families of different background define literacy and which literacy they consider worth transmitting to the children. These in turn affect the way they foster their children's acquisition of literacy.

The ideologies underlying Singapore’s language-in-education policy drive home the message that students should feel some form of emotional connection to their mother tongue. At the same time, English is privileged leading many to index it with education, upward mobility, modernity and prestige. Singaporean parents are cognisant of these ideologies and play an important role in mediating their children’s affiliation to the respective languages and influencing their language use patterns. This study seeks to obtain a sense of how parents of 8-year old children struggle with competing ideologies when enrolling their children in one of two Islamic religious education programmes: English-medium Kids aL.I.V.E. and Malay-medium mosque madrasah. Parents of 35 children from the two programmes reported on their use of Malay and English, and their children’s proficiency in, and use of, the two languages. Their reports suggest that the children were equally proficient in both languages but English was their dominant language. Parents were highly supportive of the language medium of the respective programmes, but irrespective of which language they supported, many were strongly affiliated to Malay citing reasons that mirror the state ideology that calls on its citizens to stay rooted in their ethnic heritage through their mother tongue.

This paper is based on an on-going doctoral thesis which investigates the interactions that occur in the teaching and learning of Malay Language in secondary schools in Singapore. The research analyses the teaching and learning of the listening, speaking, reading and writing skills and also grammar in Secondary One Express stream classrooms. The research draws on the work of Sinclair and Coulthard (Pedagogic Analysis), Halliday (Systemic Functional Grammar), and Fairclough (Critical Discourse Analysis). The paper presents data on students eliciting and informing during Malay Language grammar lessons. Initial analysis seems to show that unequal power relations between teacher and students that are concealed in the Initiation-Response-Feedback structure have the effect of reducing students learning opportunities. This is especially true when students contributions are not optimised, students misunderstanding of concepts is not clarified and their queries are not well attended to. These would have an impact on students learning of the Malay Language. This paper suggests that the quality crafting of teachers responses and feedback are necessary in ensuring the effectiveness of the teaching and learning of the language.

This paper reports on one particular finding which emerged from a Singapore study of young Muslim children attending the last year of a four-year Islamic education weekend program. The program provides the 5–8-year-old young learners with a learning environment in which they not only memorise Qur’anic verses but also learn the relevance of Islamic values and practices in their daily lives through activities which are age-appropriate. Learning in the program is perceived to be holistic in that it recognises the roles of thinking (cognitive), feeling (affective) and reflecting (spiritual) as complementary within the learning process. Children’s account of what they have learnt suggests the emergence of the interplay between these learning dimensions. Such interplay, as argued in this paper, may lead to transformative learning experiences even as the program itself is concerned with a particular outcome (i.e., convergence with the Islamic worldview).

Dalam sistem pendidikan Singapura, dua bahasa wujud secara berasingan: bahasa Inggeris bahasa pengantar bagi semua mata pelajaran isi seperti Matematik dan Sains manakala bahasa ibunda dipelajari sebagai satu mata pelajaran. Kajian antarabangsa menunjukkan bahawa sistem seperti ini dalam suasana kehidupan masyarakat yang mengutamakan bahasa Inggeris bukanlah sistem yang terbaik untuk menghasilkan pelajar yang selesa dan cekap berdwibahasa. Kadar kanak-kanak Singapura yang lebih kerap menggunakan bahasa Inggeris di rumah daripada bahasa ibunda telah meningkat tahun demi tahun, menjejaskan pelestarian bahasa ibunda sebagai bahasa seharian. Kajian yang dilaporkan dalam kertas kerja ini menyelidiki cara buku dwibahasa digunakan dalam usaha mengembalikan minat dan keupayaan membaca dalam bahasa Melayu di kalangan kanak-kanak Melayu. Ia meneroka nilai strategi yang melibatkan kanak-kanak prasekolah dan keluarga mereka membaca bersama dalam bahasa Melayu dan Inggeris menggunakan buku dwibahasa. Sepuluh kanak-kanak tadika menyertai sesi membaca dengan ibu bapa mereka di rumah dan dengan rakan-rakan di sekolah selama enam bulan. Analisis nota lapangan dan data temu bual menunjukkan bahawa kanak-kanak sedar akan perbezaan morfologi, fonologi dan ejaan antara bahasa. Penggunaan strategi merentas bahasa termasuk amalan dwibahasa yang meliputi alih kod, terjemahan, dan pembinaan kosa kata dwibahasa. Satu kekuatan khusus buku dwibahasa ialah cara ia membantu kanak-kanak membaca dalam bahasa yang lemah. Walau bagaimanapun, peranan ibu bapa penting dalammemberi sokongan beterusan agar anak-anak berminat terhadap bahasa warisan mereka dalam suasana yang mana kanak-kanak ini sudah mula tidak menggunakan bahasa tersebut secara aktif.