The Use of English as a Social Practice Among Malaysian ESL Students

This paper reports on a study which is part of a PhD project that explored the use of English as as social practice among Malay ESL (English as a Second Language) students in a private university in Malaysia. The study explored the various Discourses related to the ESL students' social practices in using English both inside and outside the language classrooms.

The study mainly uses data from interviews and observation to explore students' perceptions of using English. Adopting Gees's (1990) notion of Discourses and Norton Peirce's (1995, 2000) social theory of identity, I examine how using ESL creates different representation of identities and also how through the use of English, the Malay ESL students identify differently with other ESL users from different ethnic groups.