COVID-19, Education, and Literacy in Malaysia

Part of a mini series of Focus books on COVID-19 in Malaysia, the chapters in this book address the pandemic's impacts on education and literacy. Covering a range of teaching and learning challenges impacting learners and teachers, the contributors highlight the pervasiveness of the pandemic on Malaysian society and how Malaysians have found ways to cope. They focus mainly on students' COVID-19 narratives, digital and health literacy issues, language and new vocabulary. This is an opportunity to witness how researchers from multiple disciplines can join forces during challenging times. There are a great many lessons to be learned from the successes and failures in responding to the pandemic and the measures that have been necessary to contain it. A fascinating read for scholars and educators with an interest in crisis management in non-Western contexts, especially those with a particular interest in Malaysia, or Southeast Asia more generally.

Ambigapathy Pandian (The chief editor of literacy and education book) is the Dean, Faculty of Language and Communication, University Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS). As a scholar, Professor Ambigapathy Pandian's field of research interests include, language, literacy education and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. Ambigapathy has delivered webinars related to COVID-19, such as "Research in the Arts, Humanities and Management: Normal, New Normal, Abnormal?". He is the author and editor of more than 60 books published with Scholar's Press, Cambridge Scholar Publishing, Oxford Fajar Press, Lang Publishers (New York) and Common Ground Publications (Australia), and many articles featured in prestigious international journals. Surinderpal Kaur (The editor of COVID-19 in Malaysia multidisciplinary series) is an Associate Professor and Dean at the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia. She attained her PhD from Lancaster University, UK. Her research interests include Media Discourses and Multimodality, focusing specifically upon public discourses in mainstream and social media that relate to public health, migration, terrorism issues. She has been actively involved with Universiti Malaya's social outreach initiatives to offer solutions to the mental health challenges faced by Malaysian during the COVID-19 pandemic (Caring Together/UMPrihatin), focusing specifically on the social media platforms of Telegram and Facebook. She is currently compiling a database of research and data from all over the world to help Malaysian scholars in their research on COVID-19. Huey Fen Cheong (The managing editor of COVID-19 in Malaysia multidisciplinary series) is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English Language, Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, Universiti Malaya. Her research interests are interdisciplinary from gender studies and linguistics to marketing and psychology. Her works are usually humanitarian, from gender equality (for men and women) and anti-racism (skin whitening and Black Lives Matter) to decolonisation of academia. The last one explains the initiative behind this book series in creating a platform for researchers to study the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia, which addresses the lack of COVID-19 research and publication in South East Asia. She is also the founder of the Facebook group, (Post-)COVID job market in Malaysia (https://www.facebook.com/groups/2805574166392321), which shares information about the new normal of employment and employability during this challenging time.

A) The New Normal: Online Teaching and Learning with COVID-19 Chapter 1: International students and learning experiences in higher education Chapter 2: University students' online learning in Capstone Unit Chapter 3: Online assessments for university students: A case study of a business school Chapter 4: Video log (Vlog) for enhancing speaking skills in the ESL classroom B) Corona Speak: Issues in Language and Literacy Chapter 5: Foreign language learning at the university: Students' perceptions and emotions Chapter 6: A morphological analysis of COVID-19 novel words used in Malaysia C) Flattening the Curve: Matters on Health Literacy Chapter 7: Public knowledge and perception of COVID-19 and its preventive measures Chapter 8: Knowledge, attitude, and practice on health and legal measures