Students’ attitudes towards the usage of Bahasa Melayu in ESL classrooms / Mohd Ridzwan Rulam Ahmad

The study investigated the students’ attitudes towards the usage of Bahasa Melayu in
ESL classrooms. This study involved 60 Form 5 students from Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan
Sungai Pusu, Gombak, Selangor. The findings of the study indicated that the majority of students
have positive attitudes towards L1 which is Bahasa Melayu to be employed in the English
language class. Besides that, the findings also revealed that most of the students preferred using
Bahasa Melayu in English class depending on the needs and the specific purposes such as for the
grammar explanation, vocabulary translation, clarification of difficult activities and other
purposes which could help the students to enhance their learning process towards the second
language acquisition. However, the teacher should be aware of the excessive usage of L1 in ESL
classrooms which sometimes could hinder the second language mastery among the students.
Recommendations for future studies and solutions were discussed in order to give a clearer view
for the teachers in implementing suitable approaches and methods in ESL classrooms.