Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ) 

Volume 5, Issue 2, July 2019 

p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 

https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/IEFLJ/index 
 

31 

 

PRODUCING GLOBAL MALAYSIAN SECONDARY 

STUDENTS THROUGH FOREIGN NOVELS: CHALLENGES 
 

Tan Yuet Zhou  
Faculty of Education, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia 

Email: tanyuetzhou@gmail.com 

 

Azlina Abdul Aziz 
Faculty of Education, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia 

Email: azlina1@ukm.edu.my 

 
APA Citation: Tan, Y. Z, & Aziz, A. A. (2019). Producing global Malaysian secondary students 

through foreign novels: Challenges. Indonesian EFL Journal, 5(2), 31-40. doi: 

10.25134/ieflj.v5i2.1798. 

 

Received: 14-03-2019 Accepted: 23-05-2019 Published: 01-07-2019 
 

Abstract: The study of literature provides a civilizing effect on a society anywhere around the 

world. Through these English kinds of literature, there are aspects of English culture encapsulated in 

it. This could potentially help students to develop as global citizens, which understand not only the 

feelings, settings, culture and even thoughts conveyed through the literature but being able to apply 

it to the real world, as a global citizen. If young students are not able to get such valuable exposure 

in schools, where are they supposed to receive such valuable input? Through this study, it is aimed 

to provide an overview of how foreign literature English novels chosen by the Ministry of 

Education has expanded the students' perspective as a global citizen. This paper aimed to reveal the 

challenges faced by teachers in using these texts in completing the objectives of producing students 

as global citizens. Thus, by applying Louise Rosenblatt Transactional Theory, it scaffolds this study 

to examine the challenges faced by English teachers in incorporating global citizenship values 

through the teaching of foreign novels in English. Data was collected via classroom observations, 

document analysis and interviews on both teachers and students. The data collected from the 

interviews, observations and item analysis were analyzed and results were conveyed in different 

themes, on the challenges faced by the respondents.  

Keywords: ESL; global citizenship; literature learning; schools; transactional theory; challenges 

 

INTRODUCTION 

According to the Malaysian secondary school 

syllabus, the literature component is added to 
the curriculum for Form 1 to Form 5 students 

to learn English. This has allowed Malaysian 

secondary school students to be engaged in 

the wider reading of the good literary novel, 

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 studies, cultures, 

values and even traditions that will enhance 

their life-long learning emotionally and 

spiritually. Such learning 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 the idea of learning 

literature in the English classrooms. One of 

the biggest issues is that Malaysian 

curriculum emphasis on learning language 

through literature rather than developing 

global citizens out of the students while 

learning different cultures and values from 

the literary works. Collie and Slater (2004) 

conveyed that literature should be utilized in 

the English language classroom to not only 

provide valuable authentic evidence and 

input from literary works read but also to 

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Tan Yuet Zhou & Azlina Abdul Aziz 

Producing global Malaysian secondary students through foreign novels: Challenges 

32 

 

encourage personal engagement of the 

students while enriching the cultural and 

linguistic apparatus of the reader. Thus, to 

achieve this, Malaysian teachers are required 

to make use of any relevant and interesting 

course material that they are provided or by 

finding resources, printed or online, to ensure 

the active participation of the learners by way 

of activities and a strong amalgamation of 

language and literature. 

This paper explores the challenges faced 

by English teachers in incorporating global 

citizenship values through the teaching of 

foreign novels in English. To scaffold this 

study, a research question was applied: What 

are the challenges faced by English teachers 

in incorporating global citizenship values 

through the teaching of foreign novels in 

English? 

According to Rosenblatt (2005), a 

transaction process is determined by a 

reader's stance that allowed the reader to 

maintain their focus on their experience of 

reading the text. She claimed that this type of 

stance is required as it allows the readers to 

imagine and enter into a whole new world of 

the story from reading fiction and poetry and 

try to live through the moment of the world 

personally and experience the emotion 

incited. 

Rosenblatt too stated that transactions 

between readers, texts and also the teachers 

are encouraged by the personal response, 

reflection, discussion, and elaboration. 

However, this is only made possible if 

teachers are committed to listen and view 

students' personal response as a crucial factor 

when students are engaged with the text. 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 

needed information from the poems or novels 

for specific purposes like examinations, that 

are widely done in Malaysian secondary 

schools, she stated that through the 

transactional theory, teachers must emphasis 

on allowing the readers to make sense of the 

texts, along with a discussion of the content 

of the texts in the classroom. 

As for today, with global engagement in 

every part of the world, people are forming, 

and being identified as, global citizens that 

create a sense of belonging to a world 

community. This was 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 to 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 the people who viewed themselves as 

global citizens, they are not abandoning their 

own national or individual identities, 

ethnicities or political beliefs. These new 

beliefs and values can give new meaning to 

those who viewed themselves as global 

citizens, and they will continue to shape that 

they eventually turn out to be (Smolen & 

Martin, 2011). 

Global citizenship education is a 

problematic term to be defined and is 

normally used without making sure of the 

difference. The research literature on the 

topic is divided as while some argued that 

global citizenship education is a moral 

endeavor, some other researchers view it as a 

set of skills, such as 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, p.1) 

Through the teaching of the set of skills in 

global education, researchers stated that the 

values and attitude will enable young people 

to critically engage with global issues and act 



Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ) 

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p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 

https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/IEFLJ/index 
 

33 

 

for change if needed. It is essential for the 

development of global citizenship as 

knowledge, skills and understandings to 

challenge social injustices and inequity, 

actively engage in peacebuilding and 

cooperation to resolve conflict, respect and 

value diversity, commit to sustainable 

development and concern for the 

environment, and acknowledge globalization 

and the interdependence of political, social, 

economic and cultural issues are some of the 

few factors that allow teenagers to grow as 

global citizen (Meadows, 1991). 

Every school plays a role in citizenship 

education, making it one of the most critical 

providers of global citizenship education. As 

schools have the potential to be aligned with 

transnational efforts that promote global 

civility (Reimers, 2006), the role of teachers 

can hardly be overstated. However, as 

research conveys, teachers are mostly 

oblivious to the purposes, methods, and 

content of global citizenship education. For 

example, out of over 700 teachers in England 

who rated education for global citizenship as 

important, only a few were confident of their 

ability to teach it (Falk, 1993). Overall 

passive, and in many cases, skeptical, 

attitudes to global citizenship and related 

concepts eventually have resulted in the 

neglect of global citizenship education in 

many schools around the world. The growing 

amount of research, particularly comparative 

research, demonstrates 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" (Hahn, 

1998, p. 122). 

Teachers may use novels to develop 

students' skills in spelling, handwriting, 

grammar, and punctuation. Besides that, 

teachers can help students in gradually 

improving their skills in writing as well as 

organizing materials into paragraphs by 

providing essay type tests. The questions 

constructed in the tests are not only fact-

based questions that serve as a basis of 

evaluating comprehension but also to 

develop critical thinking skills through open 

ended-questions (Dreyer, 2016; Yusof, 

Lazim & Salehuddin, 2017). Open-ended 

questions can be made to allow students to 

predict outcomes, making comparisons and 

drawing conclusions. Class discussions of 

each novel event should comprise the main 

idea and supporting details, including who, 

what, when, where, and how. Details of 

various social issues such as sexual 

harassment and abortion, which are often an 

integral part of the plot, can provoke 

interesting debate. 

According to the Malaysian secondary 

school syllabus, the literature component is 

added to the curriculum for Form 1 to Form 5 

students to learn English. This has allowed 

Malaysian secondary school students to be 

engaged in the wider reading of good literary 

writing poetry and stories for their self-

enjoyment and development. Through this 

syllabus, it is hoped that students will be able 

to develop an understanding of other studies, 

cultures, values and even traditions that will 

enhance their life-long learning emotionally 

and spiritually (Ganakumaran, 2003; 

Ganakumaran, Shahizah & Lee, 2003). Such 

learning values, characteristics and input are 

aligned with the learning of producing global 

citizens.  

A diverse range of texts has been offered 

and applied in all Malaysian secondary 

school curriculums. This covers British, 

Malaysians, Australian, Singaporean, South 

African and even most Asian countries work 

(Vethamani, 2004). Through the application 

of texts from all these countries, learners are 

expected to be able to discover and adhere to 

a storyline or understanding the figurative 

and literal meanings of poems and sonnets. 

This is to allow students to have their 

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 learned and to 

broaden their outlook from their own 

skeptical and rigid outlook of Malaysian 

cultures, values, and societies. 



Tan Yuet Zhou & Azlina Abdul Aziz 

Producing global Malaysian secondary students through foreign novels: Challenges 

34 

 

One of the biggest barriers of Malaysian 

classrooms in producing global citizens 

through the teaching of literature is that 

Malaysian teachers tend to conduct 

examination-oriented lessons. It is common 

for teachers in Malaysia to focus extensively 

on examination purposes in English lessons, 

be it grammar, writing, reading or even 

literature. One of the prominent reasons will 

be at the end of secondary studying life, 

parents, teachers, students, scholars, and even 

the Ministry will tend to look at good grades. 

Each student will compete for a better grade 

each year. Lewey (1995) conveyed that the 

Malaysian education system is too 

examination-oriented. Though there may 

have been changes in attitude of teachers, 

school administration and the Ministry’s 

attitude in viewing education as formative 

than summative in the recent years through 

the curriculum employed, teachers and 

students are still compelled by the 

examination and will teach and learn 

according to what will be tested in the 

upcoming public examinations such as SPM 

or PT3 examinations. 

Several studies have been carried out to 

relate the heavy influence of examination has 

on the mindset of Malaysians as well as their 

curriculum development. According to Pillay 

and North (1977), they have examined the 

role of the topics in an integrated approach 

and the way it is handled in the 

KBSM syllabus, textbooks, and examinations. 

Through that research, they concluded that 

there was a dilemma by teachers on what to 

teach in the classrooms and to students due to 

a conflict between the official syllabus, the 

textbook syllabus, and the examination 

syllabus. In the official syllabus and the 

textbooks, it stresses on the topics or themes 

of the teacher’s scheme of work. However, in 

the public examination, they focus more 

on skills and grammar. 

 

METHOD 

The design applied for the study will be a 

case study. 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 contextualized interpretation of the 

phenomenon. Thus, a case study will be 

conducted to reveal the success of using 

foreign texts to mold students into global 

citizens. This research design will enable the 

study of the perception of the participants of 

the research to obtain detailed information on 

a small group of people or a specific context. 

This study will be divided into three phases. 

Classroom observations (first phase), 

document analysis (second phase) and 

interview (third phase) will be a mean of 

triangulation. By triangulating the data 

obtained from all three instruments, the study 

will corroborate findings across data sets and 

reduce the impact of potential biases that 

may exist in this study. 

The sampling method used in this study 

was based on purposive sampling. 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 advanced level of 

proficiency, will be selected as participants 

for this research paper. The teacher is an 

English teacher from the English Language 

Department and has taught for 5 years on the 

novel used for this research. The novel used 

in this study will be the Elephant Man by 

Tim Vicary. A simple purposive sampling 

method will be used to select 10 respondents 

for the semi-structured interview. 

These participants were selected based on 

their language proficiency and ability to 

convey what has their learning from the 

reading of the past year from 3 novels and to 

recall the teaching methods of teachers in 

teaching foreign novels. Therefore, the 

research would be able to get crucial data to 

analyze the findings received from the 

students and teachers. This is crucial as 

without being able to communicate 

proficiently, students may not be able to 



Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ) 

Volume 5, Issue 2, July 2019 

p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 

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35 

 

convey what have they learned, or any data 

intended by the students. 

The first phases involved classroom 

observations of teachers re-teaching the 

given novels by the Ministry and to observe 

the communication between the students and 

teachers while the lesson is on-going. The 

objective of the classroom observations is to 

establish a base for the students to respond to 

the novels and to observe the interpersonal 

factors while learning a foreign text novel. 

The response and interactive sessions by the 

students within the classroom will be 

observed and noted.  

The second phase was documented 

analysis of the students produced based on 

the study of the novel for the research. The 

study will draw upon multiple sources of 

evidence, namely the exercise worksheets of 

the students, presentation materials of the 

novel and the English teacher's record book 

in designing lessons and activities for the 

current form 3 students to be engaged in 

learning the novel. 

The last phase was a semi-structured 

interview to be conducted on several selected 

students on their views and perspective of 

learning the novel. By having an interview, 

the study will expect a more detailed 

explanation of the key factors through the 

observations and document analysis. This 

allows the participants to describe their 

attitudes and beliefs of learning a foreign 

novel and extracting the teacher's opinions on 

the challenges of teaching the novel to the 

students. Burnard’s framework (1991) will 

be adapted to generate a systematic and 

organized record of the issues and methods 

of solving the barriers from the teachers' 

opinions.  

 

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 

Challenges  

Exam-oriented 

Students are lacking the motivation to think 

critically 

Based on the collection data done, some 

students were found lacking in the 

motivation to think critically. Some of the 

students preferred to listen and read, rather 

than to think and speak. This is a challenge 

by the teacher, to encourage students to think 

critically and voicing it out during classroom 

presentations. Though the values and 

messages were clearly stated by the members 

of the group after their reading of the novel, 

some students chose to avoid thinking 

critically about the values and messages 

when inquired by the teacher. The teacher 

mentioned how students will choose the 

word "No or Don’t Know, then spending a 

little time thinking critically and linking it to 

global events when asked." Such behaviors 

have led to the teacher opting for the 

memorization of events, messages, values of 

the novel, and even examples of world events 

linking to the values taught through the 

foreign novel. Through the classroom 

observations, some students would standstill 

while waiting for the more active members of 

the group to do the thinking and speaking 

during the role play and presentation of the 

required task. 

Stimulus  

According to the teacher, the stimulus to 

enhance the understanding of the values and 

lessons incorporated while learning the 

foreign novel is the challenge that he has to 

face to get the students interested in the 

lesson. Through classroom observations, the 

teacher has used pictures and videos related 

to the novel to capture the interest of the 

students. Multiple pictures of the main 

character of the novel were used to activate 

the inner feelings of the students and to 

prepare them for the learning process of the 

novel. Besides that, videos were downloaded 

and used by the teacher to further enhance 

the effectiveness of the stimuli. However, 

without subtitles and the lacking of good 

speakers in the class, the audio was made 

hard for the students to listen and to 

understand what was being explained in the 

video. With the constraint of basic 

instruments that enhance the stimuli for the 

incorporation of values in teaching the novel, 

the teacher resorted to a more teacher-

centered lesson, where the explanation of the 

stimuli was made orally by the teacher. 

 



Tan Yuet Zhou & Azlina Abdul Aziz 

Producing global Malaysian secondary students through foreign novels: Challenges 

36 

 

Time constraint 

Another challenge faced by the teacher while 

trying to incorporate global citizenship 

values through the teaching of foreign novels 

is a time constraint. According to the 

timetable of the teacher, in a single week, the 

teacher was given 5 periods of classes, 

equivalent to 175mins. He conveyed that 

"with such limited time, trying to cramp all 

skills and lessons in a few periods of 

teaching and learning is impossible." The 

teacher too conveyed that because the lesson 

was cramped and hastened, some students 

were not able to catch up with the lesson, and 

later deem the lesson boring. This affected 

the motivation of the students to give up 

learning, as well as to think critically that 

could help promote global citizenship. 

Besides that, the teacher stated that "the time 

to prepare for lessons, such as videos, 

printed materials, PowerPoint slides 

required time." With other classes' teaching 

materials in need to be planned and ready, 

the time constraint is a huge obstacle. 

Different learning style 

According to the classroom observation 

done, designing a literature lesson for 30 

students was a challenge to the teacher. 

Multiple types of learning strategies were 

implemented by the teacher to cope with the 

learning styles of the students and to provide 

a variety of lesson materials and styles during 

the teaching of the foreign novel. Learning 

styles used by the teacher are group 

discussions, presentations, reading aloud, 

answering writing questions and teacher-

centered lectures. Though multiple learning 

styles were used, the teacher stated that "not 

all lessons were able to satisfy the students. 

Some were happy to talk in group discussion, 

but were yawning when I started talking in 

lectures about the novel." He conveyed that 

coping with students learning style is 

difficult, especially when the class was a 

mixture of advance to intermediate students. 

This could severely affect the motivation to 

learn what was being taught by the teacher, 

hence influencing the cultural values and 

messages to be learned from the novel that 

could eventually lead to global citizenship. 

Lack of exposure 

According to the novel, the setting of the 

novel was in the 19th century, in London. 

Due to the difference of time and country, the 

lack of exposure to the difference of norms 

and cultural practices were considered a 

challenge by the teacher to incorporate the 

global citizenship values that could be 

learned from the novel. The teacher stated 

that "though the values and lessons are 

universal, the ability for the students to 

imagine and practice the global citizenship 

values taught and shown from the novel 

could be an issue." Students were able to 

understand the value of the lessons and 

messages taught in the novel. For example, 

during the presentations, students were able 

to express and explain the moral value of 

sympathy that one should give to the deform 

main character.  

However, when the teacher asked how 

could the value be practiced out of Malaysia, 

most students kept silent and were unable to 

provide excellent examples of how those 

values were practiced out of Malaysia. In the 

exercise books of the students, students were 

able to explain the value and how the values 

can be practiced by people. However, most 

examples were generally about Malaysians, 

and rarely the examples given were events or 

organizations outside of Malaysia. Thus, the 

lack of exposure by the students to the 

outside world than Malaysia is considered a 

challenge by the teacher in incorporating 

global citizenship values through the 

teaching of foreign novels in English lessons. 

One of the biggest challenges of such 

deeply-rooted perceptions is how literature 

learning is perceived. One may argue that 

learning literature components such as 

poetry, novels and dramas are widening the 

mind of students in terms of global values, 

humanity and moral values, but in the end, 

Malaysian secondary school students and 

teachers may only learn literature for the sake 

of examination. 

The goals of the lessons designed by the 

teacher may have been pinpointed, but for 

students, they may only learn the novel for 

the sake of examination. When students 



Indonesian EFL Journal (IEFLJ) 

Volume 5, Issue 2, July 2019 

p-ISSN 2252-7427, e-ISSN 2541-3635 

https://journal.uniku.ac.id/index.php/IEFLJ/index 
 

37 

 

attend the novel learning classroom, their 

focus may entirely be on how that class may 

benefit them in school or public 

examinations. Open-minded questions, 

critical thinking, global event relations 

maybe some of the extra agenda for the class 

lesson, but lessons with such motives may 

end up with basic language enhance 

activities. Students are forced to memorize 

the memorable events of the novels; moral 

values, messages, and lessons are learned and 

memorized to avoid losing points when 

answering the novel literature questions in 

examinations.  

To sum up, for novels, students will have 

to read the novel, not to enjoy it, but to 

understand the novel vividly and to be able to 

cramp out as much information as possible 

for the literature review essay they are 

required to answer during the examination. 

Thus, it is quite clear that the teaching and 

learning of English literature in Malaysian 

secondary schools are basically for 

examination purposes and such perceptions 

are the main barrier for teachers to create 

activities that in incorporating global 

citizenship values through the teaching of 

foreign novels in English. 

One of the key motivations for English 

teachers in teaching students to enable their 

students to use the language effectively 

through personal, communal or professional 

contexts. For this study, teachers are looking 

into pedagogical methods of teaching into 

enabling students to use the language 

together with global values incorporated in 

the foreign novel. Though lesson designs, 

English teachers should motivate their 

students to explore the diverse identities, 

culture, and norms gained from reading the 

novel. Besides that, students will be able to 

think critically regarding their place in this 

world and build relationships within or 

outside of the classroom and country. This 

will foster a relationship to live positively 

and dynamically with the people around 

them. Furthermore, learning the novel will 

allow the cultivation of global values such as 

empathy, respect for diversity and the power 

to imagine in recognizing their standards, 

levels and place locally, nationally and 

towards the global communities. This will 

expand the students' thinking and horizons in 

developing critical literacy and so on, to a 

higher level of attainments of the global 

values acquired from the novel. 

Teaching approaches 

Based on the activities designed by the 

teacher for the students in learning the novel, 

the study can conclude that the teacher may 

have used a few teaching approaches in 

teaching the foreign novel while trying to 

incorporate global values into the learning 

process. According to Richards & Rodgers 

(2014), it is more beneficial if teachers are 

aware of the approaches that may best serve 

the needs of ESL students when learning the 

literature component.  

The language model 

This is the most common approach used by 

the teacher while teaching the class the 

novel. According to Carter and Long (1991), 

this approach can be referred to as the 

language-based approach. This is an 

approach that made the learners to study the 

text of the novel more systematically and 

methodically. This allows the students to 

exemplify certain specific linguistics features 

such as both literal and figurative languages 

or speech styles used in the novel. Such an 

approach has allowed itself to the repertoire 

of strategies that the teacher has used. For 

example, prediction exercises during the 

presentation by the teacher in introducing the 

novel, summary writing of the chapters as 

well as a role-playing of the chapters by the 

students according to chapters of the novel. 

All activities designed and practiced in the 

classroom was to serve specific linguistics 

goals such as for examination purposes. 

Unfortunately, these activities disconnected 

the students from the literary text of the 

novel, allowing little engagement by the 

students on the global values imprinted in the 

novel, as all focus are purely on the linguistic 

practices of the students for specific purposes 

such as examinations. 

The personal growth model 

The activities that the teacher designed to 

integrated the Personal Growth Model. In 



Tan Yuet Zhou & Azlina Abdul Aziz 

Producing global Malaysian secondary students through foreign novels: Challenges 

38 

 

this model, the activities designed and done 

were used to combine both the cultural model 

and language model, allowing the students to 

focus on both the language and context of the 

novel (Carter & Long, 1991). Students, 

through this model, were able to express their 

opinions, feelings and they can make 

connections between their own cultural 

experiences to what was expressed in the text 

of the novel. Such a model was able to bring 

out the global values that the teacher was 

trying to incorporate in the learning of the 

foreign text. Students were able to link their 

experiences of the values and messages 

learned from the novel and expressed during 

presentations and novel literature review 

writing practices.  

Besides, the activities that the teacher 

designed allowed most of the students to 

agree that the values that they have learned 

can be applied in and outside of the 

classroom, or linking themselves to a certain 

global group that practices certain global 

values. As Cadorath and Harris (1998:88) 

stated, the “text itself has no meaning. It only 

provides direction for the learner to 

construct the meaning from the learner’s 

own experience." Therefore, the learning of 

the global values from the text takes its place 

when the learners were given the chance to 

imagine, interpret and construct the meaning 

and value of the text based on their own 

experience towards the text. 

 

CONCLUSION 

The findings of this study were critically 

discussed and analyzed to justify how the 

activities designed for the learning of that 

foreign novel was heavily based on language 

enhancement rather than developing the 

global citizenship values been introduced and 

explained by the teacher and students. 

Activities such as role-playing, reading 

aloud, writing literature reviews and even 

presentation should be able to convince and 

teach the students on the significance of the 

global citizenship values learned from the 

novel throughout the lessons. However, the 

activities were designed to enhance the 

students' language proficiency. Though the 

teacher stated that he tried to teach and 

cultivate global citizenship values throughout 

the lessons, the materials, activities, and 

teaching in the classroom speaks otherwise. 

Nonetheless, such actions are not entirely to 

be blamed on the teacher, as the motivation 

of the students, pressure by the Ministry, 

school administrations and parents on the 

performance of their children in the 

examination are immensely high. To add on, 

the constraints such as time, materials 

designs and students' learning styles play 

roles in determining the path of the learning. 

In sum, the use of foreign novels was able 

to activate critical thinking and the 

understanding of global citizenship values 

incorporated in the novels, however, the 

learning, acquisition, and practice of the 

global citizenship values may be hindered by 

multiple factors. The cultivation of global 

citizenship values may be one of the 

objectives of the lessons, but it is subjective 

to all the constraints such as the pressure by 

external stakeholders and the motivation of 

the teachers and students in learning the 

foreign novel. 

 

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Tan Yuet Zhou & Azlina Abdul Aziz 

Producing global Malaysian secondary students through foreign novels: Challenges 

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