Literacy brokering among the international students of a public university
The influx of international students to Malaysia in pursuance of tertiary education has created the urgency to ascertain the English literacy struggles faced by these students in the Malaysian classrooms as well as the suitability of the current pedagogical practices in addressing their existing...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2017
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10655/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10655/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/10655/1/13789-48269-1-PB.pdf |
| Summary: | The influx of international students to Malaysia in pursuance of tertiary education has created
the urgency to ascertain the English literacy struggles faced by these students in the
Malaysian classrooms as well as the suitability of the current pedagogical practices in
addressing their existing literacy practices. Insights on the aforementioned aspects could be
gained by examining the students’ literacy brokering engagements. Literacy brokering refers
to an act of seeking informal help in various forms from fellow language users when facing
unfamiliar texts or text-oriented practices and events. This case study therefore examined the
literacy brokering phenomenon occurring within a Malaysian university’s intensive English
Language class. The research participants consisted of 15 international students from five
different countries. The specific objectives of the study were to: (i) identify the themes
involved in literacy brokering interactions occurring in the Malaysian university English
language classroom context; and (ii) describe the literacy practices of the international
students in their English class. Through the methods of audio and video recording, 98433
words of transcribed data were collected. An in-depth analysis of the data revealed the
primary brokering theme to be the English language system, specifically aspects of grammar
and semantics. However culture and genre-based themes were also apparent. The brokerage
of culture and genre stemmed from the mismatch between the participants’ existing literacy
knowledge with those in their current context of living. The findings create an andragogic
importance to include learners’ socio-cultural schemata in designing and carrying out nonnative
language pedagogy. In the spirit of contextualising learning experience, future works
could focus on analysing the literacy brokering occurrences in other non-native English
Language classrooms such as Singapore and Hong Kong. |
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