An error analysis of the English language proficiency of the future HR pool: A comparative study of Bumiputera students from Chinese schools and Bumiputera students from government schools in Sabah and Sarawak / May Liu Siaw Mei... [et al.]

ln a multicultural country like Malaysia, most learners of the English language not only have their mother tongue as their first language but also an additional second language in the backdrop of their language learning schemata. Historically, this situation used to exist more for students from the Chinese and Tamil-medium schools in Malaysia, where the majority of students were either Malaysian Chinese or Malaysian Indians respectively. ln recent years, however, there has been a growing trend of Bumiputera students enrolling in Chinese­ medium schools, which is indicative of an emerging group of Bumiputera students with a different combination of first and second languages (i.e. Bahasa Malaysia and Mandarin). Thus, first and/or second language interference undeniably exist and influence the production of the target language (English) during the interlanguage phase. ln this study, the researchers were interested to identify the errors in English made by these Bumiputera students who have now reached the university level. Using an Error Analysis framework, this study compared these students with their conventional counterparts - Bumiputera students who went to national schools where the medium of instruction was the same as their mother tongue, Bahasa Malaysia. The sample was confined to two different states in Malaysia - Sabah and Sarawak. An understanding of the similarities and differences of the learners' production of the target language may explain intralingual or interlanguage factors. The results show that the students had grasped certain aspects of the two tenses - Simple Present and Present Continuous - which were being tested, but had difficulty with certain rules governing the two tenses. The results of this study can be indicative of the English language proficiency of the future human resource pool of Malaysia, as the respondents were all undertaking various courses of study at the university level.