The enactment of the Malaysian common European framework of reference ( CEFR ) : National master trainer ’ s reflection

As Malaysia sets out to realise their plan of the English Language Education Reform, the adaptation and implementation of Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) is an obvious choice; however, creating a high-calibre teaching workforce to carry it out poses a significant challenge. This critical reflection article elucidates the implementation of CEFR in Malaysian Pre-, Primary and Secondary schools from the perspective of a National Master Trainer (NMT) who attended multiple courses by Cambridge English Super Trainers (CEST) before going on to train English language teachers using the Cascade Training Model. Based on the trainer’s experience, this article discusses the progress of the training, starting from CEST as the first tier, NMT as the second tier, and District Trainer (DT) as the third tier, until it reaches the teachers who will apply their knowledge and skills in the classroom. We conclude that despite the long and careful planning in terms of teacher training for the CEFR implementation, there are various aspects that need improvements, to better guarantee success in producing an English language programme along with international standards, as the plan dictates.


INTRODUCTION
In the age of globalisation and technology, education development needs to keep up with the constant demand for improvements in its delivery and effectiveness as well as to be relevant to the current needs of employment.Innovation in English Language Education (ELE) is perpetual as different needs from students, stakeholders, and society change all the time.As the English Language is promoted for its utilitarian value for employment, technology and globalisation (Hardman & Rahman, 2014), the teaching of English language moves towards Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) for Malaysia and other Asian countries such as China, Japan, and Singapore (Ellis, 2008;He, Prater, & Steed, 2011;Richards, 2006).English Language Education in Malaysia has undergone at least three important reforms in the last 30 years (Azman, 2016).The first initiative introduced by the Ministry of Education (MoE) and Government of Malaysia (GoM) in 1982 was the Integrated English Language Syllabus for Primary School or KBSR, which employs CLT and learning the language for communication instead of grammatical knowledge.The principle of CLT is student-centred learning and contextualised language use (Nunan, 2003).However, application towards this principle faded out in the early 1990s due to less than satisfactory results in terms of teaching English using communicative ways and syllabus objectives (Normazidah Che Musa, Lie, & Hazita Azman, 2012).Teachers rejected the initiative as Copyright © 2018, IJAL, e-ISSN: 2502-6747, p-ISSN:2301-9468 there was inadequate support from the MoE in terms of teacher training and materials ( Normazidah Che Musa, Lie, & Hazita Azman, 2012).Furthermore, during the 90s, Malaysia's education system was still heavily exam-oriented, whereby students (and teachers) performance were being gauged by the examination result, leading teachers to focus more on the writing and reading skills, while neglecting speaking and listening skills that CLT promoted.The second initiative was the Standard English Language Curriculum for Primary School (KSSR).Launched in the year of 2002, it tried to revive and enhance the concept of CLT by having an on-going School Based Assessment.Still, this initiative suffered the same problem as the previous curriculum.The problem faced by this and the previous initiative had been identified to be similar with a number of countries that tried to implement CLT (Huang, 2016;Humphries & Burns, 2015;Yoon, 2004).Around this period of time, the English for Teaching Mathematics and Science (ETeMS) policy was also introduced, but had been abolished since 2009 due to much negative feedback and heavy criticisms of its implementation (Isa et al., 2011;Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2014;Ong & May, 2008;Razid, 2010;Yang & Ishak, 2012).The latest move is the English Language Education Roadmap 2015-2025 launched as part of Malaysia Education Blueprint 2013-2025.The new reform is set to "finally provide a systematic guide for the development of trained English language teachers, benchmarked syllabus items and teaching materials, internationally standardized assessments, and clearly defined language competency expectations and outcomes for all education levels" (Azman, 2016, p. 74).
In terms of English language teaching (ELT), several reforms have taken place in non-Englishspeaking countries where the English language is gaining its prominence (Rashid, Rahman, & Yunus, 2017), such as in South Africa (Bekele, 2018), Bangladesh (Erling, 2017), Vietnam (Nguyen & Burns, 2017), Indonesia (Widodo, 2016(Widodo, , 2017)), and Malaysia (Azman, 2016;Rashid, Rahman, & Yunus, 2017).Even though Azman (2016) has reviewed up to the latest reform for English language education in Malaysia which is the English Language Education Roadmap 2015-2025 (ELER), her review did not mention the implementation of CEFR in the reform.As the implementation of CEFR in Malaysian classrooms just started in January 2018, this article is among the first to review the strategies and steps taken by the MoE in the latest reform implementation from the perspective of a National Master Trainer who is regarded as the "key deliverers" (Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2015, p. 182) and involved directly in the new CEFR-aligned curriculum dissemination process.

English Language Standards and Quality Council (ELSQC)
ELSQC is an independent panel of English language experts comprising 10 members from universities, professional bodies, and individuals who are experts and practitioners in the field of ELT in Malaysia (Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2013).It was formed by MoE to produce the ELER as well as its preparation and timetabled plan to be implemented by 2025 for pre-, primary and secondary schools (Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2015).The ELER covers various aspects of English language educationcurriculum, classroom teaching and learning, assessment, and teacher training.Spearheaded by Professor Dr. Zuraidah Mat Don, ELSQC oversees the implementation and dissemination of the new CEFR-aligned curriculum, as proposed in the ELER.ELSQC has decided to use the Cascade Training Model for teacher training in the dissemination of the new CEFR-aligned curriculum, referring to the model as "the preferred method of dissemination" (Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2015, p. 171).As the training of teachers under the implementation of CEFR in Malaysia mainly uses the Cascade Training Model, it is relevant to address the definition and issues concerning it, which will be discussed in the following section.

Cascade Training Model
Among the many models for implementing training for teachers in large number, the Cascade Training Model is one of them, and in specific situations, may be considered as the best choice (Karalis, 2016).The term, 'cascade,' is generally defined as something arranged or occurring in a series or in a succession of stages so that each stage derives from or acts upon the product of the preceding.These teacher training programmes, whether being organized by the government or independent bodies, served as part of their professional development (Widodo, 2018).The Malaysian English Language Education Roadmap explains specifically how it works for the implementation of CEFR in Malaysia: A training model which involves the transmission of information from a small initial group to successively larger groups.A small group known as Master Trainers are first trained themselves, and then sent out to train their own groups.The second groups of trainees become trainers and train their own groups, and so on.Cascading is the most efficient means of training a large number of people.
(Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2015, p. 398) In the cascade procedure, each repetition of training is usually called stage (Karalis, 2016), tier or level (Hayes, 2000).It utilizes the top-down approach in delivering the training.Not only has the Cascade Training Model been used in teacher education for quite some time, but the method employed within the model is also regarded as an effective way to transfer knowledge in organizations (Jacobs, 2002;Jacobs & Russ-Eft, 2001).The model exhibits a strong expanding nature in terms of the number of final recipients, leading scholars also refer to it as a multiplier approach of training (Dichaba & Mokhele, 2012a;Ono & Ferreira, 2010).One of the benefits of employing this training model is cost efficiency (Bett, 2016;Karalis, 2016) as it Copyright © 2018, IJAL, e-ISSN: 2502-6747, p-ISSN:2301-9468 requires only a small number of first-tier trainers, whereby the trainers in the subsequent tier are existing teachers, who will not going to be paid more than the usual wage that they have already been receiving.Hayes (2000, p. 138) argues that there are five criteria that need to be present, for the Cascade Training Model to be successful which are: 1. the method of conducting the training must be experiential and reflective rather than transmissive; 2. the training must be open to reinterpretation; rigid adherence to prescribed ways of working should not be expected; 3. expertise must be diffused through the system as widely as possible, not concentrated at the top; 4. a cross-section of stakeholders must be involved in the preparation of training materials; 5. decentralisation of responsibilities within the cascade structure is desirable.
Within the Malaysian CEFR implementation context, the number of final recipients is all the English Language teachers in all schools in Malaysia, amounting to more than 60000 individuals (Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2015).In order to reach to this huge number of individuals within a limited amount of time and funding, the Ministry of Education decided to break the content into several topics of courses and also into several tiers of training.The number of first-tier trainers employed by the Ministry was five to seven Cambridge English experts, each assigned to 25 to 30 Malaysian English Language teachers, producing up to two hundred second-tier trainers called National Master Trainers.These National Master Trainers was then assigned to about 30 Malaysian English Language Teachers, producing up to 6000 third-tier trainers called District Trainer.These third-tier trainers would be the ones who train the final recipients.
The Ministry of Education Malaysia has decided to implement the CEFR-aligned curriculum starting from Year 1 and Year 2 of primary schools and Form 1 and Form 2 for secondary schools.Thus, the first cohort of the final recipients consisted of teachers who would be teaching English for Year 1, Year 2, Form 1, and Form 2. These final recipients would also be responsible for training other teachers who did not attend the course, at their respective schools in the future, this activity is also known as School-based In-Service Teacher Education (School-based INSET) (Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2015).
However, the cascade training model is not without challenges.In fact, this widely-used model for teacher training has been criticised for its failure in delivering effective training (Bett, 2016;Dichaba & Mokhele, 2012b;Robinson, 2002;Suzuki, 2008).The problems faced during the dissemination process using this model is discussed in the following sections.

Reform dissemination
In the ELER, it is made clear that 'to create a topperforming education system, it is first necessary to create a high-calibre teaching workforce…teachers already in post need the means to improve their proficiency, knowledge and skills…teachers need support' (Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2015, p. xiii).This suggests that teacher training is regarded as one of the main agendas in the latest reform, and its implementation must be carefully planned and continuously evaluated to ensure its success.The Ministry of Education has planned the courses for teachers to be holistic by breaking the reform dissemination into several major themes or topics, such as Familiarisation; (2) Learning Materials Evaluation, Adaptation, and Design; (3) Curriculum Induction; and (5) Item Writing.This segmentation is planned to allow for better focus and more efficient delivery targeted to reach all 61,000 English language teachers in Malaysia (Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2015).
The CEFR for pre-, primary and secondary schools in Malaysia is implemented by stages of different course topics.As of now, the cascade training programme is still on-going although the new CEFR-aligned curriculum has already commenced in classrooms.The major courses of CEFR implementation are illustrated in Figure 1.After the first-tier course, the NMT will conduct second-tier courses for DT in their respective states.At this tier, the number of DT assigned to each of the NMTs varies from 25 to hundreds, leading to problems in its execution, which will be discussed further in the following sections.The DT will then conduct training courses for the English language teachers, with an even bigger number of participants being assigned to each DT, creating a bigger problem which will be discussed further in the discussion section.

Familiarisation course
In the fourth quarter of 2016, NMT were sent to attend the first ever exposure to CEFR in a course called Familiarisation Course at English Language Teaching Center, Enstek, Negeri Sembilan for five days.As the name suggests, it was meant to get NMT familiarised with CEFR by introducing the CEFR's core conception of language learning as well as the six-level framework of language proficiency that CEFR uses to define learners' level of proficiency.It also highlighted the salient differences between approaches to teaching young children's second language compared to teenagers and adults relating to literacy onset, linguistic progression as well as cognitive and emotional development.At the same time, participants were also exposed to the language learning pedagogy perspectives in the CEFR and interpreting action-oriented perspectives on curriculum, teaching methodology, and assessment in terms of primary-aged towards secondary-aged learners.Participants were also encouraged to reflect on how CEFR could impact areas of education.During the first-tier course, these aims were perfectly delivered by the CEST to NMT.However, the second and third-tier were not the same case.
During the execution of the second-tier course, which also lasted for five days, the NMT had to deliver the Familiarisation Course to a group of more than 100 DT for each NMT.This posed a challenge to the NMT as during the first-tier course, there were only 25 NMT that were assigned to each CEST.One of the criteria for a cascade training approach to be successful is "the method of conducting the training must be experiential and reflective rather than transmissive" (Hayes, 2000, p. 138), but during the second-tier course, the delivery was mostly transmissive.This was unavoidable as the number of participants was too large and the setting in which the course was conducted was in a very large hall, making it impossible for the trainer to reach each one of the participants easily to get responses and make it more 'student-centred.'Furthermore, the amount of content to be covered was too much, considering the short time given for the course.This was evident as the trainer had skipped a lot of 'less-important' sections, making the participants felt the 'rushing' pace of the course.
As the content delivered at the second tier was not adequate, third-tier course suffered greatly in terms of content delivery as the trainers were not well trained.At the same time, no follow up or support was given to these trainers, leaving unanswered questions hanging.Teachers who went for the second-tier course were left to arrange and manage the courses on their own, leading to many teachers not getting much from the course, if it ever happened.This had led to a very common problem with a cascade approach which is the watering down of content as it is passed on to participants (Hayes, 2000).

Learning materials evaluation, adaptation and design
In the second stage of CEFR implementation in Malaysia, NMTs were sent to attend the Learning Materials Evaluation, Adaptation, and Design course (LMAD).This five-day course employed mostly the same NMT from the Familiarisation Course and was held at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur before going to their respective state to conduct the same training for DT who later then cascaded the training to English language teachers.This course was designed to cater for the teaching and learning aspects of the reform.With the combination of content gathered from the previous course, teachers were expected to understand the principles of materials evaluation, differentiation, adaptation, and design, while at the same time interconnecting all the principles to the four language skills which are speaking, listening, reading, and writing.This course also emphasized the principle of a communicative classroom and provided example activities that follow the principle.The first-tier course (First Tier) Cambridge English Super Trainers (CEST) (Second Tier) National Master Trainers (NMT) (Third Tier) District Trainers (DT) (Fourth Tier) English Language Teachers (ELTe) Copyright © 2018, IJAL, e-ISSN: 2502-6747, p-ISSN:2301-9468 was mostly hands-on and contextualized, making it very interesting and meaningful.Furthermore, the trainers from Cambridge English were excellent in terms of delivery effectiveness.They were very organized in their timing and well-paced, while still being flexible enough for extra question and answer sessions.
Learning from the problem during the Familiarisation Course, the second-tier course for LMAD was executed differently.Each of the NMTs were assigned to a maximum of 25 participants, in classroom-sized rooms.The State Education Department also helped the NMT by preparing the needed materials and equipment such as A4 papers, marker pens as well as LCD projectors.Overall, the second-tier course for LMAD was a success, as the time and sources provided was equivalent to the first-tier course, but it was not the same case for the third-tier course.
The third-tier course was done in a rush and unorganized way.DT had been assigned to an average of 60 teachers in a very big hall.The equipment given was not adequate, for example the LCD projector provided was too old and not functioning well, leaving those sitting at the back unable to see what was being projected.Since the participants were unable to view the projected slides properly, they lost focus, and resorted to chatting with each other instead.Another disturbing part was DT for LMAD had to compress all the five days' worth of materials and content to be delivered for only one day.Much of the information and knowledge crucial for successful execution in the classroom later were failed to be delivered due to this problem.The reason for the reduction of time given for this course was unknown, but most probably due to budget issues.To make things worse, the printed materials that were supposed to be prepared by the organizer and be distributed to all the participants were distributed later when the training already begun.
Furthermore, the third-tier for LMAD course was also being carried out together with the Curriculum Induction Course (CI) within three consecutive days, the first two days for CI and the final one day for LMAD.The original plan for the third-tier LMAD course was to give participants the understanding of how to combine LMAD within the new curriculum to ensure seamless integration of both aspects, ensuring teachers are fully equipped with the right tools and knowledge.It was a very good plan, as for a reform implementation to be successful, the training provided must meet the teachers' needs (Nyarigoti, 2013;Wanzare & Ward, 2000).But again, as already pointed before, the time given to deliver the courses was rather too short, coupled with the other problems as mentioned above, the plan crippled.

Curriculum induction
The third stage of the CEFR implementation was Curriculum Induction Course (CI).Like the first-tier course of LMAD, NMTs for CI were sent to attend a five-day course, given by CEST.This course again employed mostly the same NMT from previous courses and was held at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur.
During the course, a maximum of 25 NMTs were assigned to each CEST within a comfortable, small room.The NMT were placed in small groups of five, allowing for better interaction and good classroom management (Silverman et al., 2017).The CESTs who were sent by Cambridge English were very knowledgeable in delivering the topics within CI, which covered content and learning standards, scheme of work, lesson outlines and procedures, resources including the new textbooks and non-textbook materials, cross-curricula elements, differentiation strategies, and teachers' feedback.The CESTs made it very clear and concise of how these aspects interweaved with CEFR.
In the second-tier course, the arrangement was a little different compared to LMAD.Several NMTs were assigned to 25 DT in a five-day course.The NMTs took turn in delivering the course and work together simultaneously during group works and discussions.The multiple-instructor arrangement was a good decision as it increased the amount of interaction between each participant, and NMTs, positively helped the overall delivery of the course.
As for the third-tier, it was mentioned above that the CI was integrated with LMAD within a three days course, with two days dedicated to CI and the final day to LMAD.The DTs were having the same problem as the LMAD course as they had to compress all the five days' worth of content into a two days course.The printed materials consisted of hand-outs, and slides were also not provided on the first day, but rather on the second, which renders the first day to be quite problematic.
The flow of the course was already planned, and despite the DT being very flexible to changes, the lack of printed materials on the first day hampered their delivery.Many hands-on activities that were supposed to be done on the hand-outs were skipped due to this issue.On top of that, the number of participants was about 100 for each DT, seated with 10 in a group, sitting in a cramped hall, which was too small for the number.The large number of participants per group also led to a few being 'hitchhikers' (Asgari & Dall'Alba, 2011;Freeman & Greenacre, 2011).The CI third-tier course shared the same problem with the third-tier LMAD course.
Another important issue to note is that the curriculum documents were not yet fully ready when the course was held.Crucial documents such as Scheme of Works and Curriculum Standard were still in draft, showing that the course proceeded in haste.Confusions happened as participants asked the questions that DT were not able to answer, due to the unpolished documents.The final version of the documents was only released a few days before the new academic calendar started.This resulted in hiccups during the initial execution of the new curriculum as many teachers nationwide were not aware of the release as it was Copyright © 2018, IJAL, e-ISSN: 2502-6747, p-ISSN:2301-9468 released during school break.Furthermore, the documents were made available online only, resulting in teachers without internet connection to be left in the dark.

Issues in CEFR implementation
As the new curriculum has been streamlined with CEFR, the textbook to be used with it must also be CEFR-compatible.The English Language Education Reform Roadmap states that, The reform in curriculum and pedagogy has to be supported by the use of internationally aligned and CEFR-compatible teaching and learning materials… In view of the lack of experience of working with the CEFR on the part of Malaysian materials developers, it would be most prudent for the Ministry of Education to purchase books and materials which have either already been produced for use with a CEFR curriculum, or which can be written specifically for the Malaysian CEFR-aligned curriculum.(Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2015, p. 183) This shows how committed the Ministry is to push Malaysian English Language Education up to the international standard.To get the plan moving as soon as possible, the Ministry decided to purchase the textbook from Cambridge University Press (Super Minds) for Year 1 and Year 2 of primary schools and Macmillan Press (Pulse 2) for Form 1 and 2 of secondary schools.This decision received mixed views from scholars, parents, teachers, and associations (Sani, 2018).There are several issues in the usage of the imported textbook such as high cost, foreign elements, and credibility of local textbook writers, but this article focuses mainly on the suitability for the new curriculum as well as issues in the classroom implementation.
As mentioned in the previous section, the textbook was supposed to work in unison with the new curriculum standard and scheme of work, but teachers were having difficulties in using the textbook as it was intended.This is one of the common problems faced by Malaysian English language teachers (Rashid, Yunus & Wahab, 2018).The usual way of developing a textbook is to follow a completed curriculum.In this case, it was the other way around, whereby the textbook is ready for quite some time before the curriculum is completed.There is only one textbook for both Year 1 and Year 2, whereby Year 1 started using the textbook from Topic 0 to Topic 4, whereas Year 2 started using the textbook from Topic 5 until Topic 9.This created confusion to students and teachers, especially for Year 2, as they had to start at the middle of the textbook, leading to them missing a lot from the skipped topics.The same goes to the secondary school new textbook, whereby students in Form 2 started using the textbook at the middle.On top of that, there are also concerns about the imported textbooks to be carrying foreign context in its content (Monihuldin, 2018;Star, 2018), as President of Malaysian English Language Teaching Association (MELTA), Prof. Dr. Ganakumaran Subramaniam said, "You can't bring to the students books they can't connect with and expect them to connect with it" (Monihuldin, 2018, p. 1).Despite these problems and concerns by local experts, the minister decided to carry on with the plan of implementing the imported textbook in the curriculum.
Furthermore, the arrangement of the new textbook is not synchronized with the curriculum and scheme of work.During the course given to English language teachers, they were constantly reminded to be flexible and must be ready to adapt to the needs and situation in their classroom, including how they plan their teaching and learning but in reality, teachers are not allowed to do so.For example, the scheme of work is meant to help teachers plan their lessons, but there are too many errors in the scheme of work, even in the final version.A clear example is there are several misplaced topics, which will bring confusion to teachers, and the fact that it was released just a few days before the classroom implementation just made it worse.This document is clearly lacking proper checking and proofreading, suggesting superficial attention to its development.This led to teachers not following the scheme of work in their lesson planning and instead, based their teaching on the curriculum and textbook only.This act of adaptation by teachers is not welcomed by Education Officers or School Inspectors, as they demand teachers to strictly follow the scheme of work.
Another point worth to reflect upon is the use of Cambridge's materials and master trainers as the ultimate framework or syllabus for the whole teacher training programme during the curriculum dissemination.The training provided by CESTs had proved to be very useful as they had provided fresh ideas on how to deliver the new curriculum in the classroom through games and technology, as well as highlighting the components of CLT.However, certain parts of the training need to be aligned with the local context so that teachers could find the input provided to be more relevant to them, and more importantly to their students.Holliday (1994) explains this cultural-clash in English Language Learning by differentiating the two learning situations as BANA (Britain, Australasia and North America) and TESEP (tertiary, secondary and primary) context.Topics such as 'Halloween,' the concept of 'going to the bar after work' and other topics that highlights the 'greatness' of Britain culture were deemed as unnecessary and lacking national identity (Star, 2018).In a similar case, Kanu (2005, p. 494) shows his disapproval of having expatriate advisors in Pakistan as "'western universities transferring educational ideas and practices to the developing countries, often without taking into consideration factors such as the political climate, traditional beliefs and cultural values, the economy, and social class."This problem of intercultural knowledge occurred due to the failure of addressing the local cultural context during its training and material design.
Copyright © 2018, IJAL, e-ISSN: 2502-6747, p-ISSN:2301-9468 Moreover, the cascade training model used during the dissemination process had proved to be problematic and needs urgent attention.Based on the discussion in the previous section, it is clear that the cascade training model used to disseminate the new CEFR-aligned curriculum in Malaysia does not meet the five criteria for successful cascade training as observed by Hayes (2000).Problems such as 'lecture-style' of training, watering down of information as it passed through the layers and lack of flexibility given to teachers in implementing the curriculum is prominent and had been reported by numerous studies before (Mwangi & Mugambi, 2013;Nyarigoti, 2013;Wanzare & Ward, 2000).

CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the implementation of CEFR in Malaysia still needs to be improved.All the stakeholders need to be properly synchronised, aware of their responsibility and updated with the latest information, so that the implementation of the new promising reform in English Language Education in Malaysia will be successful.Despite the Master Trainers being regarded as one of the "key deliverers" (Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2015, p. 182), the responsibility to give on-going support must be held by the other "key deliverers" (Ministry of Education Malaysia, 2015, p. 182), which is the School Improvement Specialist Coach (SICS+) together with other Education Officers from State Education Department and District Education Office.This is because the NMT and DT are teachers, and their core business is teaching in the classroom, so they cannot afford to leave their students behind to provide support for other teachers.It is hoped that this article will shed some light for the stakeholders of English Language Education in Malaysia to consider the problems faced during the dissemination process as highlighted in this article and take necessary steps to overcome them.As the training provided was previously superficial, it is recommended for the MoE to provide more training and give support for any initiative taken by teachers to help each other in any platform, particularly online.This is another area that the MoE should look into, that is, encouraging dialogic reflection among teachers in their community of practise as suggested by Rashid (2016) and Rashid (2018).Additionally, the MoE needs to distribute the support in terms of funding, materials, and infrastructure evenly throughout the stages in the teacher training programme.It is also suggested that studies to be conducted to find out if there is any other problem at any level that could potentially stutter the initiative.As the implementation level or involving any and dissemination of the new CEFR-aligned curriculum will continue for at least another 5 years, there are still rooms for improvement in making sure that this initiative comes to realisation.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.CEFR implementation stages in MalaysiaThese four major courses were carried out in a span of three years.It started with the Familiarisation course from October to November 2016, followed by Learning Material Adaptation and Design as well as Curriculum Induction in the third quarter of 2017, while the course for Item Writing and Formative Assessment is still on-going in the first quarter of 2018.All these courses are designed and delivered by the Cambridge English in Cascade Training Model in tiers as illustrated in Figure2.The NMT consisted of selected English language teachers from all around the country and officers under Divisions from the Ministry of Education.The selection was made by the State Education Department, either by application from English teachers to be a NMT or assigned by State English Language Officer.They attended the courses by CEST in Kuala Lumpur, with each course lasted for about a week.Each CEST was