Improving the English Speaking-Skill of Orang Asli Children with the Cultural Interface Pedagogy

Abstract

This research project investigates how teachers can improve the speaking- skill of the Orang
Asli children during English lessons. The proposed solution involves authentic Orang Asli
perspectives which is adapted from the Interface cultural Pedagogy in the curriculum in ways. It
can increase intellectual rigour and supported mainstream academic success for Orang Asli
children. Flash wood with Orang Asli meta-knowledge, particularly native knowledge of
pedagogy is used. The methodology employed in this work involves three main stages (i)
Ethnography (ii) Bringing the Orang Asli knowledge of Pedagogy to the classroom (iii) an
action research design which utilised an inductive approach to data analysis. Convenience
sampling was used when selecting the participants who were in the phase II (10-12 years)
where 77 Orang Asli children from three different locations in North Peninsular Malaysia were
selected. The flash wood was used during the implementation stage of the action research
process as an intervention to enhance children’s English language speaking skill. The findings
indicate that children who participated in the study had improved in their speaking assessments.
There were five themes identified, which included mispronounce words, incorrect use of
tenses, limited vocabulary, the interference of mother tongue and ungrammatical sentence
construction. Flash wood revealed the fluency of generating correct utterance techniques by
repeating after the teacher. Children’s speaking pieces were more logical, and they participated
actively during lessons. This enhanced the researcher’s teaching practice, which catered to both
visual and auditory Orang Asli children. The findings suggest that bringing the interface
cultural theory with the Orang Asli elements had a positive effect on Orang Asli children’s
creative speaking skill. This encouraged participatory teaching and learning, which can be of
benefit to many teachers seeking to engage Orang Asli children using alternate learning styles
especially involving their culture and environment.