Papers by Stefanie Pillai
3L: Language, Linguistics, Literature, 2023
Studies in English Language and Education, 2023
Food, Culture & Society, 2023
The Melaka Portuguese are descendants of unions between the Portuguese, who conquered Melaka in t... more The Melaka Portuguese are descendants of unions between the Portuguese, who conquered Melaka in the early 16th Century, and locals. The language and culture of this minority hybrid community have survived to this day in Malaysia. Over the last decade, there has been a push to distinguish their food, and hence, cultural identity, from other communities in Malaysia. However, there has not been much focus on the cultural representation of this “home-grown” group of people in discourses related to food. To begin addressing this gap, this paper addresses the question of cultural identity represented in four Melaka Portuguese cookbooks. The focus of this paper is on the use of linguistic and visual elements related to food heritage in four Melaka Portuguese cookbooks to examine how they are used in the construction of cultural identity among the community. These elements were analyzed using a social semiotic approach. The linguistic elements in the texts were found to be related to the cultural identity of the Melaka Portuguese people through inclusion of their family narratives and stories in the cookbooks. Visual elements were also used to portray the Melaka Portuguese culture through depictions of traditional kitchenware and food preparation techniques.
Current Issues in Language Planning , 2023
The teaching of native languages is seen as being key to the development of cognitive skills, bet... more The teaching of native languages is seen as being key to the development of cognitive skills, better academic performance in early grades and a resource for linguistic (re)vitalization and cultural revival. This study examines the institutional challenges in teaching and learning native languages in Pakistan. The study uses teachers’ agency through the public sphere paradigm as a theoretical framework to investigate the concerns and opinions of teachers and their agency regarding the challenges to native languages policy. The majority of teachers overwhelmingly support native languages, and endorse their importance in education, particularly in the development of cognitive skills and better academic performance. However, several institutional challenges hold back the teaching of native languages in public schools in Pakistan. The participants argue that native languages need an effective language-in-education policy. In addition, students, teachers and parents are not likely to deem native languages as resources until they gain some economic value. The study suggests that the current policy regarding native languages should be reviewed and refashioned considering their importance to students’ academic performance. Further, a dynamic policy-making mechanism is proposed where stakeholders at every level are able to coordinate in policy formulation and its effective implementation
Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, Sep 10, 2021
The past 20 years have witnessed major shifts in language and education policy in Malaysia. This ... more The past 20 years have witnessed major shifts in language and education policy in Malaysia. This reflects a range of social, economic, and political forces that influence and shape the policymaking in this multi-ethnic and multicultural country. Past research has suggested that language and education policies in Malaysia tend to have two main stances and are generally related to Malay (the national language), English, Mandarin, and Tamil. One stance is related to issues of globalization and employability, and the other is related to national and ethnic identities. In view of these stances, this paper seeks to contribute to the discussion and debates on these issues by empirically investigating inherent ideological positions in official statements published in two newspapers in the past 20 years. Specifically, it adopts concepts from critical discourse studies, and uses methods from computational linguistics to examine official statements from a total of 30,508 Malaysian newspaper ar...
Melayu: Jurnal Antarabangsa Dunia Melayu, 2020
This study investigates the pronunciation of German monophthongs (L3) by Malay speakers. It also ... more This study investigates the pronunciation of German monophthongs (L3) by Malay speakers. It also compares the way the L3 monophthongs are produced with the monophthongs produced in Standard Malay (L1) and English (L2) to examine if there are any similarities in the way that equivalent vowels are produced. A total of 10 female Malay speakers who were learning German were recorded reading aloud carrier sentences containing the target vowels in a /bVd/ and a /bVt/ context in all three languages. All these speakers also speak English as a second language. Based on the formant frequency model, the first (L1) and second (L2) formants of the target monophthongs were measured. The duration of the vowels was also measured. Scatter plots of the vowels were also generated to enable comparison among similar sets of vowels within and among the three languages within the context of L3 acquisition. The findings suggest that speakers tend to produce equivalent vowels with similar acoustic propertie...
Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 2022
Previous studies have reported that second language (L2) learners filter non-native L2 sounds thr... more Previous studies have reported that second language (L2) learners filter non-native L2 sounds through their existing native or first language (L1) sounds when learning L2 sounds. The degree of similarity between L1 and L2 sounds can predict the ease of acquisition of non-native L2 sounds. In the context of English language learning in Indonesia, most learners are likely to speak two languages before they learn English at school; Acehnese is not wituout any exception. As a result, they have larger phonemic inventories to rely on when learning English sounds. This study seeks to investigate how Acehnese-Indonesian bilinguals perceive five sets of vowel contrast in English (i.e., /ɪ/ - /iː/, /æ/ - /ɛ/, /ʌ/ - /ɑː/, /ʊ/ - /uː/, and /ɑː/ - /ɔː/). A special focus is given to their perception of English vowel contrasts that are new, similar, and identical to Acehnese and Indonesian vowels. A group of 31 high school students (N=31) from an Islamic boarding school in Aceh participated in this...
Potsdamer Beiträge zur Hochschulforschung, Feb 9, 2021
Deans at Institutions of Higher Education are seldom recipients of effective or specific professi... more Deans at Institutions of Higher Education are seldom recipients of effective or specific professional management training, institutional mentorship, and coaching despite an increasing demand on them to play a more dynamic leadership role in the face of ever-changing local and global challenges. To address this deficiency, the inaugural Malaysian Chapter of the International Deans' Course (MyIDC) was held in three parts over 2019 and 2020. In this paper, findings related to feedback on the programme are presented and discussed. Responses from the participants from two sets of surveys, and written feedback provided by two IDC international trainers involved in MyIDC were analysed. These reveal potential areas of improvement for the forthcoming MyIDC programme, such as in terms of planning and organisation, duration, content, and delivery. The article explores the lessons learnt from the MyIDC 2019/2020 training programme and discusses the improvements that can be made arising from...
Studies in English Language and Education, 2021
Noticing has been regarded as an important theoretical construct in the mechanism of how correcti... more Noticing has been regarded as an important theoretical construct in the mechanism of how corrective feedback (CF) facilitates second language acquisition. However, to date, only a paucity of CF research has examined noticing triggered by different types of CF (i.e., recasts vs. prompts). The study is intended to fill in the gap by examining the relationships between type of CF and level of noticing. To that end, 105 Malaysian ESL learners were asked to perform four communicative tasks during which recasts and prompts were provided contingent upon the encounter of past tense errors. To assess noticing, the study has employed a triangulated method using multiple elicitation procedures including diary writing, stimulated recall, and exit questionnaire. The results of the study revealed that both recasts and prompts were able to induce noticing the corrective intent, noticing the target of CF or form, noticing the gap, and noticing the rule. However, contrary to what was expected, reca...
The Journal of English Language and Literature, 2017
English around the world is spoken in a multitude of accents, and this includes spoken Standard E... more English around the world is spoken in a multitude of accents, and this includes spoken Standard English. Yet, in some ELT contexts, there is still a fixation with using a native model of pronunciation. Such targets do not tend to take into consideration local English pronunciation features. This leads to either the teaching of English pronunciation being largely ignored in the classroom, or in teachers attempting to teach features that students are unlikely to hear in the local contexts. In this paper, I will explore some of the features of pronunciation in Malaysian English, and show how these do not align with the curriculum specifications for pronunciation. I will then discuss how teachers in other ELT contexts can deal with these issues in the classroom.
Previous research on Malaysian English (MalE) has indicated that there are differences in the way... more Previous research on Malaysian English (MalE) has indicated that there are differences in the way that different ethnic groups produce some segments in English possibly due to transfer from distinct first languages. However, thus far, no study has investigated the rhythmic patterns of different ethnic groups in Malaysia. The present study examines the rhythmic properties of speakers from three ethnic groups: Malay, Chinese and Indians. Since previous research has shown that speaking contexts can affect rhythm, this study also investigates the extent to which different speaking styles (read and spontaneous speech) affect rhythm in MalE. The data comprised audio recordings of 12 female speakers from three different ethnic groups in Malaysia: Malays, Chinese and Indians. The speakers who were between 40 to 45 years old were all fluent speakers of English based on their educational and professional backgrounds. The speakers were recorded in two speaking contexts. In the first, they read...
This article examines the intonation patterns used by Malaysian English (MalE) speakers when aski... more This article examines the intonation patterns used by Malaysian English (MalE) speakers when asking ‘wh-’ questions and ‘yes/no’ questions. Analysis on recordings of Malay, Chinese and Indian speakers revealed similar patterns in the intonation patterns of MalE wh- questions and yes/no questions regardless of the ethnicity of the speaker: wh- questions and yes/no questions tended to start with a level tone; yes/no questions ended with rises, while wh- questions ended with either falls or rises. These patterns cannot merely be attributed to the influence of the speakers’ first languages nor were they learner errors. However, whether these features are accepted as norms of MalE pronunciation will, to a certain extent, be dependent on the perception of MalE among Malaysians, which at the current point in time is generally inconsistent.
Code-switching can be used to express and create different meanings and ideologies, as well as di... more Code-switching can be used to express and create different meanings and ideologies, as well as different identities. Speakers can choose various codes in their linguistic repertoires to do these things. In academic settings in Pakistan, English is likely to be used with Urdu and regional languages, such as Pashto, resulting in the expression and construction of different identities. In order to examine the link between code-switching and identity in a multilingual academic setting, this paper examines the construction of identity that emerges from code-switching practices among a group of lecturers and students at a university in Pakistan. Data were collected through recordings of interactions supplemented with semi-structured interviews, which were then ethnographically analysed from a micro-macro perspective. The findings revealed a seamless and dynamic use of code - switching, which was mainly in English and Pashto. The fluid nature of the code - switching makes it seem as if spe...
3L The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 2020
Malaysian English is described as a variety of English that lacks perceivable lexical stress. Thi... more Malaysian English is described as a variety of English that lacks perceivable lexical stress. This, in turn, could affect its intelligibility to non-Malaysian listeners. This paper examines if lexical stress can be detected in Malaysian English. The findings were based on two listening tasks completed by 65 respondents from three neighbouring countries: Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. In the first task, they were required to listen to recordings of the Malaysian speakers, and mark the stressed syllables in the test words. In the second task, they wrote out the words they heard in the recordings. The findings indicate that most of the respondents were generally able to identify the stressed syllables in the test words. However, the more syllables a word had, the more difficult it was to identify the stressed syllable. Context was also an important factor as the listeners found it easier to identify, and make out the test words when they were placed in a sentence. Speakers who used less English in their daily interactions, and who declared a lower level of English proficiency had more difficulty identifying the stressed syllables, and making out the words being uttered by the Malaysian English speakers.
Journal of Modern Languages, 2020
The Journal of AsiaTEFL, 2019
The objective of the study is twofold: to investigate the effects of corrective feedback (CF) on ... more The objective of the study is twofold: to investigate the effects of corrective feedback (CF) on the accuracy of past tense use, and to compare the relative effectiveness of recasts and prompts on the accuracy of past tense use. The participants of the study consisted of 105 secondary school ESL learners in Malaysia. The target structure of CF was the regular and irregular past forms. CF was provided contingent upon the occurrence of past tense errors according to the type of corrective feedback (i.e., recasts, prompts and no corrective feedback) assigned to participants. By employing a pre-post-and delayed-post-test design, learning outcomes were measured by means of an oral production test (OPT), a written production test (WPT) and an untimed grammaticality judgment test (GJT). The results revealed that participants, regardless of type of corrective feedback, showed both short-term and long-term gains in accuracy of past tense use. However, on the delayed effects of CF, the findings suggest that the effects of prompts may be more durable compared to recasts or control. It was found that the effectiveness of corrective feedback was also affected by other mediating factors, including learners' proficiency level, prior knowledge and the morphological structure of the target linguistic feature.
Lingua, 2019
Pakistan is home to diverse multilingual practices. However, these practices have not been extens... more Pakistan is home to diverse multilingual practices. However, these practices have not been extensively explored. This paper unpacks the interactive practices of a group of students in a university in Pakistan from the perspective of translanguaging. In particular, the paper examines the languages students use in informal class discussions in a university setting and explores their motivations for using different languages within this setting. Data collected through observations, video-recording and semi-structured interviews were ethnographically analysed. The findings indicate that although the Medium of Instruction at the university is English, the students displayed unconscious use of translanguaging in their discussions of mainly English and Pashto (their native language), and some Urdu (the national language).
Education + Training, 2019
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the perspectives of Malaysian employers and studen... more PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the perspectives of Malaysian employers and students on the need for English language proficiency and skills for employment.Design/methodology/approachInterviews were conducted with employers from various organisations. Additionally, questionnaires were disseminated to undergraduates at four public universities in Malaysia. These were done to ascertain the perspectives of different stakeholders on the importance of English in securing employment, the effect of a marked regional accent or dialect on employability and industry’s expectations and requirements for new employees.FindingsEmployers and students agree that English plays a major role in employability. Whilst there was general agreement by both parties that good grammar and a wide range of vocabulary are important, the findings indicated several mismatches in terms of students’ perceptions and employers’ expectations. Among them is the use of the colloquial form of English at the...
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Papers by Stefanie Pillai
This edited book brings together chapters that provide insights into important issues that impact the Orang Asli’s way of life. These include:
• advocacy and customary land issues
• dissemination of information during the COVID-19 pandemic
• language and education
• indigenous knowledge of culture and heritage
• sustainable livelihood in the face of development
Written by scholars from the broad field of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, this book is a useful resource not only for policy makers, researchers, and students but for anyone interested in the various facets of Orang Asli communities.