PRODUCING GLOBAL MALAYSIAN SECONDARY STUDENTS THROUGH FOREIGN NOVELS: PERSPECTIVES

There are aspects of culture encapsulated in foreign literature in English that could potentially help students develop as global citizens. Students could examine the feelings, thoughts, cultural content and settings conveyed through literature and be able to apply them in their daily lives. This study aims to identify as to what extent the use of foreign literature in English chosen by the Ministry of Education expands students? perspectives as a global citizen, by applying Louise Rosenblatt?s Transactional Theory and concept of Global Citizenship. Data were collected through interviews and observations; and analyzed according to the different themes based on the perceptions of students and teachers in the study. Results showed that appreciation for the novel was greatly decreased as students were deeply rooted in the culture of studying for examinations. In conclusion, while the use of foreign novels was able to activate an understanding of global citizenship and instil values, the learning process itself may be hindered by multiple factors.


INTRODUCTION
According to the Malaysian secondary school syllabus, the literature component is included in the English curriculum for Form 1 to Form 5 students. This provides Malaysian secondary school students access to engage in wider reading materials from good literary novels, poetry and plays for their self-enjoyment and development.
Through this syllabus, it is hoped that students will be able to develop an understanding of other cultures, values and even traditions that will enhance their lifelong learning emotionally and spiritually. Such learning of values, characteristics and input are aligned with the learning of producing global citizens. In contrast to the beliefs conveyed previously, Malaysian secondary school students especially second or foreign English language learners, are often intimidated and scared of learning literature in English.
One of the biggest issues is that the Malaysian curriculum emphasises learning of language through literature rather than developing students into global citizens, while learning different cultures and values from literary works. Collie and Slater (2004) conveyed that literature should be utilised in the English language classroom not achieve this, Malaysian teachers are required to make use of any relevant and interesting course material that they are provided with or by finding printed or online resources to ensure active participation of the learners through activities and a strong amalgamation of language and literature. This paper explores the extent of foreign novels in English which could expand the students' perspectives as global citizens. To scaffold this study, two research questions were constructed: 1. To what extent are foreign novels which are taught in Malaysian classrooms used to develop global perspectives among students?
2. To what extent have foreign novels in English used in Malaysian classrooms expanded the students' perspectives as global citizens?

English Literature Education in Malaysian Secondary Schools
By adding literature components to the Form 1 till Form 5 curriculum, it has allowed Malaysian secondary school students to engage and read wider good literary writing, poetry and stories for their self-enjoyment and development (Sanub & Yunus, 2017). Through this syllabus, it is hoped that students will be able to develop an understanding of other cultures, values and even traditions that will enhance their lifelong learning emotionally and spiritually (Ganakumaran, 2003;Ganakumaran, Shahizah, & Koo, 2003). Such learning of values, characteristics and input are aligned with the learning of producing global citizens.
A diverse range of texts have been offered and applied in all Malaysian secondary school curriculums. This covers British, Malaysian, Australian, Singaporean, South African and most Asian countries' works (Vethamani, 2004). Through the application of texts from these countries, learners should be able to discover and adhere to a storyline or understand the figurative and literal meanings of poems and sonnets (Mohamad Naser & Abdul Aziz, 2017). This allows students to conceive their own personal responses to the text at hand. Thus, the application of literature education in learning English in Malaysian secondary schools is meant to nurture students into global citizens, by inculcating the values learnt and broaden their perspectives from their own skeptical and rigid outlook of Malaysian cultures, values and societies.

Benefits of Using Novels in Language Teaching
A novel can be used not only to master linguistics skills, but also to relate the students' life to the target language. Through the novels, characters often reflect what humans perform on a daily basis (Carter, 2007).
Furthermore, novels are able to enlighten human lives. The benefits of using novels in an English as a second language classroom are as follows:  Develops readers' knowledge about cultures and ethnicity.

 Increases motivation.
 Offers reflections to real life situations.
 Provides opportunities to develop students' creativity.
 Improves critical thinking skills.
 Encourages teaching of the target language's culture. (Khatib, Rezaei, & Derakhshan, 2011) Teachers may use novels to develop students' skills on spelling, handwriting, grammar and punctuation.
Besides that, teachers can also help students gradually improve their writing skills as well as organise materials into paragraphs by providing essay type tests. The questions constructed in the tests are not only fact-based questions that serves an as evaluation of comprehension, but also to develop critical thinking skills through open-ended questions (Dreyer, 2016;Hwang & Embi, 2007;Yusof, Lazim, & Salehuddin, 2017). Open-ended questions can be used to allow students to predict outcomes, make comparisons and draw conclusions. By compromising the main and supporting criteria, class discussions on the different novels should be able to lay out aspects such as who, what, when, where and how. Furthermore, topics and motions such as sexual harassment and abortion can be topics for critical thinking and debated through inter-class debates or forums.

Exam-Oriented Malaysian Classrooms
One of the biggest barriers of producing global citizens through literature teaching in Malaysian classrooms is that Malaysian teachers tend to conduct examination-oriented lessons. Teachers in Malaysia tend to focus extensively for examination purposes during English lessons, be it grammar, writing, reading or even literature (Suliman & Yunus, 2014). One of the prominent reasons for this is that at the end of secondary studying life, parents, teachers, students, scholars and even the Ministry will tend to look at good grades. Each student competes for a better grade each year as the education system in Malaysia is exam-oriented. In recent years, there may have been changes in the attitude of teachers, including views by the Ministry and school administrations where education is seen as formative rather than summative, but even through the curriculum, teachers and students are still burdened by examinations and are focused on teaching and studying for upcoming public examinations such as SPM or PT3 examinations.
Studies have shown what heavy influence examinations have on the mindsets of Malaysians as well as their curriculum development. According to Pillay and North (1997), "they have examined the role of the topics through an integrated approach and the way it is handled in the KBSM syllabus, textbooks and examinations." Through that research, they concluded that teachers faced a dilemma in what to teach their students, on whether to choose between criteria such as the official syllabus or examination syllabus. In between syllabi, one stresses on the topics or themes from the teacher's scheme of work. However, in public examinations, they tend to focus more on skills and grammar.

Theoretical Framework -Transactional Theory
According to Rosenblatt (2005), a transaction process is determined by a reader's stance which allows the reader to maintain their focus on their experience when reading the text. She claimed that this type of stance is required when reading fiction and poetry as it allows readers to imagine and enter into a whole new world, to try and live through the moment and experience the incited emotions.
Rosenblatt also stated that transaction between readers, texts and teachers are encouraged by personal responses, reflections, discussions and elaborations. However, this is only made possible if teachers are committed to listen and view students' personal responses when students are engaged in the text. This is a crucial factor. She conveyed that "the teacher needs to maintain the conviction that it is important to place the discussion of the text in this matrix of personal response" (1994, p. 68). Thus, instead of asking students to memorise the required information from poems or novels for specific purposes like examinations which are widely done in Malaysian secondary schools, she stated that through transactional theory, teachers must place emphasis to allow readers to make sense of the texts, along with discussions on the content of the texts in the classroom.

What is a Global Citizen?
With global engagement in every part of the world today, people are identifying themselves as global citizens and this creates a sense of togetherness in a world community. This is made possible due to the "forces of modern information, communications and transportation technologies that are increasingly relevant in today's society" (De Andreotti, 2014). By increasing world connectivity with the presence of these technologies such as the creation of the Internet, it will enable people to connect with any part of the world. This has allowed the participation of global economy, worldwide environmental factors, the feeling of empathy due to pictures and videos of humanitarian disasters in other countries or even just by creating spaces for today's society to travel around the world (Jewett, 2011;Martin, Smolen, Oswald, & Milam, 2012).
To people who view themselves as global citizens, they are not abandoning their own national or individual identities, ethnicities nor political beliefs. These new beliefs and values are able to give new meaning to those who viewed themselves as global citizens, and it will continue to shape who they will eventually turn out to be (Smolen & Martin, 2011).

What is Global Citizenship Education?
Global citizenship education is a problematic term to define and it is normally used without verifying the difference. There are divided opinions on this, while some argued that global citizenship education is a moral journey, other researchers view it to be a set of skills, for instance, ICT competence (Purnell, 2002). According to Oxfam (1997) a global citizen is someone who: "… knows how the world works, is outraged by injustice and who is both willing and enabled to take action to meet this global challenge". (Oxfam, 1997) Through the teaching of skills sets in global education, researchers stated that values and attitude will enable young people to be deeply engaged in global issues and will apply changes if needed to. It is essential for the development of global citizenship as "knowledge, skills and understanding to challenge social injustices and inequity, actively engage in peace building and cooperation to resolve conflict, respect and value diversity, commit to sustainable development and concern for the environment, and acknowledge globalisation and the interdependence of political, social, economic and cultural issues are some of the few factors that allow teenagers to grow as global citizens" (Meadows, 1991).

Schools as Contributors to Global Citizenship Education
Every school plays a role in citizenship education, making it one of the providers of global citizenship education. According to Reimers (2006), "schools have the potential to be aligned with transnational efforts in promoting global civility, the role of teachers can hardly be overstated." However, as research conveys, teachers can be ignorant when it comes to the purposes, methods and content in teaching global citizenship. For example, only a few were confident to teach global citizenship out of over 700 teachers in England who stated that global citizenship education is crucial (Falk, 1993). According to Hahn (1998), researches demonstrate that "the traditional notion of developing democratic understanding needs to be expanded to encompass attention to decision making, controversial issues and civic action set in multicultural and global contexts."

Research Design
This research employs a qualitative methodology based on a case study research design. According to Bhattacherjee (2012) a case study is "a method of intensively studying a phenomenon over time within its natural setting in one or a few sites." It can derive richer, more authentic, more contextualised interpretation of the phenomenon. Thus, a case study will be conducted to determine the success of using foreign texts to mold students into global citizens. This research design will enable the study of the research participants' perceptions so as to obtain detailed information. This study was divided into three phases. Classroom observations (first phase), document analysis (second phase) and interview (third phase) were means of triangulation. By triangulating the data obtained from all three instruments, it reduces potential biases that may exist in this study.

Participants
The participants in this study were students from a suburban secondary school in Langkawi. This school is identified as a high performing school in Langkawi and has conducted lessons on the novel based on the requirements given by the Ministry of Education. 30 Form 4 students, from upper intermediate to advance level of English proficiency were selected as participants for this study. The teacher is an English teacher from the English Language Department who has taught for 5 years using the novel used for this research. The novel used in this study was "The Elephant Man" by Tim Vicary. 10 respondents were chosen for the semi-structured interview.
The participants were selected based on their language proficiency, ability to convey what they have learnt from reading 3 novels in the past year and to recall the teaching methods of teachers when teaching these foreign novels. Therefore, through this research, we were able to extract crucial data to analyze the findings received from the students and teachers. This is a crucial factor because without being able to communicate proficiently, the students may not be able to convey what have they learnt or what they intended to convey.

Instruments
The first phase involved classroom observations of teachers re-teaching the given novels by the Ministry and the communication process between the students and their teachers during lessons. The objective of the classroom observations was to establish a base for the students to respond to the novels and observe their interpersonal factors while learning a foreign text novel. The responses and interactive sessions from the students within the classroom were observed and noted. The second phase were a series of documented analysis which the students produced based on the study of the novel for this research. The study drew upon multiple sources of evidence, namely the students' exercise worksheets, presentation materials of the novel and the English teacher's record book with designed lessons and activities for the current Form 3 students to engage in when learning the novel.
The last phase was a semi-structured interview which was conducted with a number of selected students in regard to their views and perspective of learning the novel. By conducting an interview, the study can expect more detailed explanation of the key factors through the observations and document analysis. This allows the participants to describe their attitude and beliefs of learning a foreign novel and obtain the teacher's opinions on the challenges faced whilst teaching the novel to the students. Burnard (1991) will be adopted in order to generate a systematic and organized record of the issues and methods for solving the barriers based on the teachers' opinions.

Global Citizenship
In this section, the questions were categorized into two segments: i) Activities performed to promote global citizenship.
ii) The novel taught me to be a global citizen.

Activities Implemented
The activities performed by the students were mainly written and reading exercises. The list of activities are as follows: Based on the observation process and listed activities in Table 1, most activities were carried out in class. They performed activities such as reading aloud, presentations on moral values, lessons and chapters from the novel, teacher guided HOTS questions which were related to past years' PT3 examination questions and role playing. The teacher began by introducing the synopsis and characters to the students to activate their schemata before proceeding to the read aloud session. Through the analysis of the students' exercise books, the exercises performed by the students were essay related questions and transcripts according to the chapters of the novel in preparing for the role playing activity as indicated in Table 1.

Lesson and values learned from the novel
The results of the finding for the second segment are as follows: According to the teacher, he stated that one of the main reasons for teaching literature in secondary schools in general is mainly due to examination purposes. He stated that a teacher "should teach all compulsory skills to enable students to achieve the grades pointed out by the school or the students themselves." In ordinary literature lessons, the respondent conveyed that the three main skills taught and practiced are writing, higher order thinking and vocabulary skills. This is due to the requirement by students to master those skills in order to answer the literature review questions during their public examinations.

Writing Skills
The teacher stated that in order to improve the students' writing skills in literature review, most activities as observed, were mainly reading the text and they were later forced to memorize important events, values and other possible criteria which could be developed as questions in their public examination. He conveyed that as students "memorized the texts, they can be immersed in the author"s writing style and indirectly improve their writing skills." The respondent also stated that he hoped by them reading and memorizing the novel, the students will value the language of the novel and communicate with the world on issues pointed out in the novel.

Higher Order Thinking Skills
According to the teacher, another set of skills that must be acquired by students in this current examination period is higher order thinking skills. During the interview, the respondent stated that "this skill is supposed to help the students think critically whilst answering the literature review questions during their examination." The teacher further elaborated that according to the objectives designed in the teacher's yearly scheme of work, students are required to acquire this skill not only for examination purposes, but also for better understanding and enjoyment of the novel.
Although the teacher explained that higher order thinking skills are taught for both literature enjoyment and examination, based on the classroom observations and activities, most activities performed were primarily used to promote excellence in examinations rather than teach values learned from the novel to promote global citizenship.

Vocabulary Skills
"In learning the novel, students were able to learn a wide range of vocabulary that is not normally seen in local English textbooks. By acquiring this vocabulary, students will improve their writing skills, understand the novel and at the same time be able to answer the questions during their examinations." The above was the transcript translated from the interview regarding the third skill acquired from foreign novels. The complex discourse from learning the foreign novel has certainly increased the confidence of the students whilst learning the novel. The teacher stated that the motivation levels of the students "were lower during the start of learning the novel. This is due to the complex vocabulary and word phrases in the novel which the students were unfamiliar with." Due to this fact, the students lacked confidence and were mostly quiet when the teacher first started teaching the novel. However, by the third observation, the students were more active after they were required to search the meanings of the words and memorise the important events of the novel.

Purpose of Learning
According to the respondents, there are three purposes for learning the novel: examination, interest and secondary school curriculum. Through the interview, it was agreed that the novel, The Elephant Man, is prominently learnt and memorized for the sake of their examination. All respondents conveyed that it was a crucial item to learn for their upcoming PT3 public examination. Respondent 3 stated that she reads "the novel just because of exams." Respondent 4 and 6 also agreed and highlighted the importance of learning poems in order to answer the literature reviews for the examination. At the end of the interview, all 10 respondents agreed to the statement that this novel was learnt for examination purposes. Through the classroom observations, some of the lessons and activities carried out by the teacher clearly reflected such purpose. Students were drilled into memorising the important events of the novel in order to enable them to answer examination literature review questions. Papers were given, enlisting chunks of texts of important events, themes, lessons as well as moral values for the students to review, memorise and apply to the literature review questions. Lesson plans and objectives prepared by the teacher clearly stated that one of the objectives in learning this novel is to help students answer examination questions.
In terms of interest, 8 out of 10 respondents agreed that they learnt the novel out of interest. They agreed that the content as well as the reality of the events in the novel moved and encouraged them to continue reading without the assistance of the teacher. Respondent 1 stated how the condition of Joseph Merrick who "is as ugly as an elephant really makes me want to know what happens next in the novel." Respondent 9 agreed to that statement, but with a different interest, stating that he loves "how the people in the novel tried to help Merrick and how he tried to survive the harsh world without showing any sign of remorse." As for the two respondents who disagreed that they are interested in the novel, they both agreed that they read the novel just because they were required to. During the observation, the teacher tried to incorporate activities like staging a play from chapters of the novel to enable students to engage in learning the novel. Students broke down the novel into transcripts to be memorized in their exercise books through group discussions.

Values and Lessons Learnt
All respondents stated that they learnt values and lessons from the novel. The values and lessons learnt from the novel are as follows: Respondent 1: "We must have kindness as a virtue." Respondent 2: "Kindness should be a norm in our society." Respondent 3: "We should never judge a book by its cover." Respondent 4: "We must respect each other as humans." Malaysians are different." She argued that though some students agreed that they have learnt the values and lessons, they will not apply it outside of the classroom as this novel was learnt "just for the sake of examinations."

Perception of Malaysian Secondary School Students on Learning Literature
It is undeniable that exam-based education is the root of the Malaysian education system. Even though the Ministry of Education has made efforts to pull the education system into a more formative way of assessment, the exam-oriented mindset has been deeply rooted in most Malaysians' minds, even at educational hubs or in job applications. Hence, teachers are forced to ensure all teaching and learning activities organized in or out of the class are towards achieving high grades in examinations (Lee, 1999). In terms of literature teaching and learning, some teachers may have thought of making lessons fun and engaging, however, due to the requirement, needs and responsibilities placed on the teachers and students, the minds of teachers and students will tend to fall back to whether the students have acquired any new skills or input for their future examination. Such perceptions are hard to overcome due to how deeply rooted the exam-oriented system is.

Purpose and Motivation
Based on the study, the students have conflicting opinions about learning literature. Some of the students tend to learn the novel for the sake of examinations, whereas some genuinely appreciate and embrace the values and messages shown and portrayed through the novel; the teacher eventually achieved the objective of instilling global values through learning of foreign novels. One of the biggest concerns for such an objective is the motivation levels of students while learning the novel.
The biggest factor in achieving the objectives of learning the novel for the sake of global citizenship is the students' attitudes. This is an important concept as it plays a crucial role in language learning and teaching. This statement was supported by Derakhshan, Salehi, and Rahimzadeh (2015) stating that the students' successes and failures in learning the novel was heavily influenced by how much they enjoyed the novel and the efforts given by the students towards learning and appreciating the novel. Through the study, we noted that students with a more positive attitude spent more time and effort to learn and read the chapters of the novel, understand the underlying messages and values and important events that occurred in the novel. In addition to this, these students tried to learn further by applying learning strategies such as asking and answering questions and volunteering information during literature lessons, as identified by Yeoh, Md Yunus, and Abdul Aziz (2018). Students who accepted the teaching and learning of the novel positively, may have perceived learning it as something that incorporates a journey of adventure into the life of the characters. This allows them to challenge their minds, read and listen to other people's experiences, leading to values that can be acquired to achieve global citizenship. With such positive benefits, the likelihood of the teacher to instil global values through real life world events were more well accepted.
Although some students may like English, the response towards learning literature, especially lengthy novels, may not be as positive. Some students who were more exam-oriented or whose learning styles are incompatible with the activities designed by the teacher to learn the novel, can react negatively, thus resenting their learning of the literature text or components. As a result, behaviours such as being less responsive, demotivated, sleeping in class, or unconscious random acts such as playing with their pens are signs that students resent learning of the novel. Based on a study by Nasharudin (2008), he conveyed that a group of students who love learning English found learning literature boring and tiring. Therefore, though the learning of the novel provides students with interesting and expressive information and activities, the students' acceptability towards learning the novel plays a major role in assisting the teacher to not only increase the English proficiency levels of the students, but also allows acquisition of global values through the novel.

CONCLUSION
The findings of this study were critically discussed and analyzed to justify how foreign novels in English has expanded the students' perspective as global citizens. The final product of this study clearly shows that the perception of learning novels as part of the school syllabus are mainly for examination purposes. The appreciation of the novel was greatly decreased as students were rooted with the culture of studying for examination during secondary school. Some students agreed that through the learning of that foreign novel they were able to acquire global citizenship values such as sympathy and empathy, although they were less convinced on how they were able to practice those values. Presentation materials also allowed students to see pictures and videos of how such values were practiced globally; though most students were able to think critically about how those values affect people worldwide, they were only able to recognize those values being practiced globally, but have not had the chance to do it in real life. This is due to the students' lack of exposure to real life events and world news though they should be aware or better yet, be involved in it. Most Malaysian secondary schools are still deeply rooted with the mentality where good grades and high achievements in academics are the main priority during secondary school life. If such perceptions go unchanged, teachers, students and even parents will continue to place academic achievements above cultivation of global citizenship values.

Funding:
The researchers would like to thank the National University of Malaysia (UKM) for its support for the publication of this research via Grant GG-2019-072. Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.