Bayview Beach Resort, Batu Ferringhi Beach, Penang, Malaysia

27-30 September 1999

Reading in a multiethnic society: Reader's responses to multicultural literature

Dr Mahzan Arshad

Lecturer Department of Language Education, Faculty of Education, University fo Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Abstract

Multicultural literature can be defined as writing that reflects the customs, beliefs, and experience of people of different nationalities and races. The need for reading materials that reflect readers who come from different cultural and linguistic bacground is important in a country with multiethnic population, especially to be used in the teaching of English as a second language. This study investigates how readers respond to literary texts that are about their own culture and literary texts that are about the culture of others. Four reading selections from authors of different cultural background were used to elicit responses from participants. Participants were drawn from student teachers enrolled in a TESL program at a university in Malaysia. Results from the study revealed that there is significant relationship between the score of the readers who come from divers cultural background and different texts that they have read. There is also significant difference between the mean scores and readers' cultural background in responding to multicultural literary texts. The study suggets that literary texts that reflect readers' cultural background enhanced reading comprehension.

PAPER: 45 MIN