by Peggie Chan
National University of Singapore (Singapore)
Professor Shameem Rafik-Galea is currently Director of Marketing and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, an appointment she assumed in May 2010. Prior to this, she was the university’s Head of the Department of English, Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication for 4 years. Her curriculum vitae and publications read like a list of ELT specialities: ESL/EFL, bilingualism, LSP, the teaching of writing, materials design and development, needs analysis, etc. Shameem is indeed a lady found proverbially with her fingers in many pies. This article, culled from an interview with her, showcases the many hats she wears, from teacher-trainer, researcher, to administrator, and the beliefs about ELT that her career is built on.
Early career
Coming from a family of educationists in Kuala Lumpur, Shameem had a passion for all things English and from young aspired to be a teacher trainer. She first taught English, history and literature at secondary-school level and had students who could neither read nor write. This made her reflect on how people learn and how she could help them to learn. She found linguistics exciting, and saw that it could give her a broad base to develop herself, so furthering her studies in the US when TESOL was the rage, she returned with a Bachelor and Masters in linguistics.
Shameem started off as a teacher of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in the 1970s. Teaching students from different disciplines, she was first struck by how differently English was used in the disciplines. Reading materials in the disciplines, following her students to the workplace, working with them on analyzing their talk with clients, and helping them interpret and write manuals, she found herself excited by
ESP, and five years into this, wanted to do more work in ESP. Again, she embarked on a learning journey, this time to the UK to do her doctorate in Applied Linguistics, after which she returned to teach at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). Tasked also to design a thinking course, she started to discover ways in which thinking could be incorporated into ELL and ELT, something that led to a new path in her career.
Pedagogical beliefs and milestones
What emerged in the interview (refer to interview extract) is that Shameem’s passions and beliefs about ELT are the same as what she counts as milestones and successes. For one, her experience in teaching ESP tells her that there is often a mismatch between the language and genres we teach students in ESP courses and the language they end up using and the communication they end up doing on the job. Hence, she feels that the basis of any ESP course should be a needs analysis and ethnographic study of the workplace. She believes that unless we follow our students into the workplace and document the speech acts and the writing they do, the mismatch will persist. This belief has fueled much of Shameem’s research in workplace communication. The research projects she is currently spearheading bear testimony to this: Management Communication Practices and Language Use in Agricultural Based and Agricultural Related Malaysian Multinational Corporations, the Discourse of Malaysian Financial Market Analysis, the language of Tourism in Malaysian Tourism Promotional Materials, Language Use and Communication in the Malaysia Family Domain. Her latest foray is into the manufacturing sector where she is studying how language functions both upstream and downstream. For Shameem, letting students go to the workplace has yet another use: to let them see the relevance of English, given that students in Malaysia often fail to understand the role played by English until they step into the working world.
Shameem is also passionate about sharing information with practitioners, believing very strongly that knowledge does not grow if kept to itself. Take for instance, her role in initiating the Malaysian International Conference on Language, Literature and Cultures (MICOLLAC) for UPM’s Department of English in 1997. MICOLLAC is a platform that allows nonteachers of English to undertake research on how language operates, and to do linguistic and workplace communication research.
Thirdly, what Shameem counts as a success is infusing her passion about research into colleagues and others she interacts with. In her words, “no educator should go through life without doing research.” She believes that research informs us and, more importantly, impacts lives. In fact, she maintains that “there is a researcher in all of us.” Her firm belief in the value of sharing knowledge is evident as she has been invited regularly to speak at regional and international conferences and workshops on her pet topics: language and communication, management communication practices, organizational discourse and innovative thinking in research methods.
Foray into critical thinking
In 2009, UPM was the host of the 14th International Conference on Thinking (ICOT), with Shameem playing a key role. She attended her first ICOT in 1998 in Canada and was intrigued by a paper whose title included the acronym TOC. Having attended the packed session and discovering that TOC referred to the Theory of Constraints, a management philosophy that helps organizations encourage right thinking and achieve their goals, she was sold on the effect it could have on learners.
Since then, Shameem has been a fervent supporter of the conference. Bidding for it in 2005, she secured it with strong support from the Vice- Chancellor of UPM, Professor Tan Sri Datuk Dr. Nik Mustapha R. Abdullah. Certainly, the gathering of 1, 100 participants (80% of whom were from overseas) was no small feat but Shameem is gladder for another fact: that the conference brought to Malaysia proponents of thinking in many varied spheres (education, business, science), and not just experts but ordinary people with success stories about the impact of critical thinking in their lives. She hopes that through such avenues, educators in Malaysia will see that it is essential to harness thinking to benefit their learners. When Shameem shares about her passion for thinking, one gleans that she wants to go beyond just organizing a conference to promote it. She feels that because a nation prospers if the masses are exposed to critical thinking and have opportunities to think effectively, the need to share information and teach thinking in a structured way is the way to go. This is clear in her efforts since the 2009 conference: compiling the success stories into a written volume and setting up the Asia Pacific Association on Thinking, housed in UPM.
What’s up her sleeve
Shameem could be resting on her laurels, having done so much. However, those who know her well will know that it is uncharacteristic of her to do that. She has a long to-do list: gather and share the work done by scholarly practitioners of ELT in Asia, examine English that is taught in Malaysian universities in the context of the very controversial language policy governing the use of English there, and help the Asia Pacific Association on Thinking. Meanwhile, her involvement as editor and member of the editorial board of many journals continues. Let’s not forget Shameem’s work in the newly assumed position as Director of Marketing and Communication, and whatever she has passion for undertaking next.
About the Author
Peggie Chan is Senior Lecturer in the Centre for English Language Communication at the National University of Singapore. She teaches critical thinking and writing to Faculty of Engineering students, professional communication to the Faculty of Design and Environment students and a cross-faculty general education module entitled “Evaluating Academic Arguments.” Her research interests are in the teaching and assessment of thinking, critical reading and writing, and independent learning.