Abstract

The English language has been officially accorded as the second language status in Malaysia referring to article 152 guided by the language in Malaysian education policy. In retrospect to that, English has been made a mandatory subject for all Malaysian public schools from primary up to the secondary. However, the performance of students in the language is deemed below satisfactory despite them having formal education for 11 years. It has taken the Ministry of Education blood, sweat and tears to introduce several interventions to help increase students’ performance, nevertheless there seems to be issues to bridge the gap between challenges and students’ performance in the English language. The purpose of this study is to explore teacher’s perception, The challenges faced and the measures to improve the English language performance. Semi structured interviews were conducted through the lens of four experienced English language teachers of whom two of them are retired and in-service teachers respectively. It is hypothesized that the findings of the study will help contribute to the body of knowledge pertaining current challenges faced by English language teachers and measures to improve the performance of students in the English language through their lens of expertise.