The English Language Literacies Of Young Adults Of A National Youth Institute In Malaysia

This paper reports the research findings carried out on Malaysian youths at a Vocational Training Institute. While the overarching aim of the study was to investigate the youths' level of English language competencies and their literacy skills in relation to the required competencies for the 21st century, the scope of this paper highlights the case study of the teaching of English language skills at the vocational institute. It examines the extent to which the English language curriculum prepares the youths for English language use in the competitive and globalized era, and highlights the disparity between the level and type of language skills that they are taught with those that they need and should exit with for employability. The participants in this study were school leavers who had not been able to gain entry into public institutions of higher learning but had obtained entry to the goverment run skills training programme instead at the Institute of Skills and Vocational Training Malaysia. Data was collated through a questionnaire, interviews and document or content analysis. The findings indicated that the youth have not acquired or mastered the necessary English language and communicational skills, required for accessing and analysing information in the ICT and global era as they mainly lacked in linguistic and communicative competencies. Additionally, the findings indicated that they do not posses the needed critical literacy to access information in a meaningful and effective way for better paying jobs. Majority of the youth pointed out that they feel intellectually, socially and culturally marginalized as the content and skills taught to them lack in terms of linguistic needs, language use needs, content relevance and types of critical literacy skills. Based on these findings the paper advocates for a revision of the current English language for vocational purposes syllabus and instead introduces an English literacy curriculum that is based on the reflexive pedagogic approach framed from within a pluriliteracy view of learning.