INTRODUCTION A.

Background

The third language is the language that should be taken by all undergraduate students in UiTM other than Bahasa Melayu and English as a medium of communication. Studying third language can give many advantages for students, especially after graduate. This is because when they enter the working world, they will face a challenge which is they will work with people of different races and religions. The third language is offered in UiTM are Japanese, Mandarin, Arabic, Korean, German, Italy and others.

As we all know, that FSPU students will be involved in the construction industry which is not implicated by only one race. So by learning the third langauge, student will have some advantages to themselves.

B. Statement of the Problem

We can see that the students nowadays take for granted with a third language that they take, without caring about it. The aim of this report is to evaluate the extent of importance of third language between FSPU students. Since the course is offered, there were many criticism from various parties saying that this courses is not relevant and become a burden to student which are already packed with their own courses. Recognizing this, we consider the role and interest of third language, and how the students perception should be made to prove all the criticism is wrong. In fact, this study will attempt to prove the third language has its own role which is not less important compared to other courses which contributing to produce professional and competitive UiTM graduates.

C. Purpose of the Study

The aim of this report is to :

1. To investigate the importance of learning third language among FSPU students. 2. To investigate how many students take third language. 3. To investigate the reasons why they took third language.

D. Procedural Method

1. Subjects The study will be conducted among fifty students from the Faculty of Architecture, Planning and Surveying in UiTM, Shah Alam. In order to obtain a good

representation, the students from different programmes in FSPU will be targetted.

2. Instrumentation A questionnaire will be designed to obtain information about the importance of acquiring third language among FSPU students.

3. Data Collection Fifty sets of questionnaire will be distributed to FSPU students. The respondents will be instructed to complete the questionnaire and return them immediately. Then the answer to each question will be recorded using simple tally charts.

4. Data Analysis The responses obtained from the questionnaires will be tabulated and percentages calculated.

FINDINGS A. The language taken by FSPU students as their third language.

A total of 50 students answered the questionnaire, providing data about them on the importance of acquiring a third language among FSPU students. The pie chart shows the percentage of the students who take the third language.

THIRD LANGUAGE

8% 14% Mandarin Japanese 46% 16% Arabic German French 10%

Figure 1: The percentage of students who take third language. It was found that the FSPU students took variety of languages to learn in their third language subject. We can see most of FSPUs students choose Mandarin as their third language.

The bar chart shows the percentage of the students on their proficiency of using the third language.
90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 16 10 0 Speaking 24 14 2 Listening Very poor Writing Poor Moderate 20 8 Reading Good Grammar Very good General 24 22 32 8 12 8 6 38 10 36 36 34 34 4 2

2 8

6 10

2 6

6 6

Figure 2: Percentage of students proficiency in the language that they take. The student were given six types of items such as speaking, listening, writing, reading, grammar and general which represent their efficiency in the third language that they learned. They need to choose the level that they belong to very poor, poor, moderate, good or very good. It shown that most of the students have moderate mastery of third language of every item. We can see also very least of them have good proficiency of the language that they learned.

The bar chart shows the other sources used among students in order to improve their proficiency in third language.

SOURCES TO IMPROVE THIRD LANGUAGE

80 70 60 60 50 40 30 20 20 10 10 0 Internet surfing Books Movies Magazines Songs Elctronic Dictionary 48 Internet surfing Books Movies Magazines Songs Elctronic Dictionary 72 74

Figure 3: Percentage of sources used to improve the third language among students. Majority of the FSPU students listen to the foreign song to improve their foreign language which about 74% and also watching foreign movies which about 72%. Sources like information from internet surfing is about 60% and 48% source come from reading books. Slightly, 20% of the students used electronic dictionary and very least of them use magazines to improve their third language.

The pie chart shows the percentage of the students who speaks other language than their native language.

OTHER LANGUANGE

28%

YES NO

72%

Figure 4: The percentage of students who speaks other than their native language. It was found that 72% of the students can speak other language than their native language while 28% of them only speak their native language.

The bar chart shows the other language spoken by the students than their native language.
25 20 20

15

10

4 2 2

0 English Mandarin English Mandarin Arabic Arabic Japan Japan

Figure 5: Percentage of other language spoken by FSPUs students. The data shown that most of FSPU students speak English other than their native language for about 20%. While the others can speak Mandarin (4%), Arabic (2%) and Japanese (2%).

The pie chart shows the enjoyable of FSPU students by learning third language.

ENJOY
2 4

22

38

Very much Much Regularly Little Very little

34

Figure 6: The percentage of enjoyable by learning third language It was found that 38% of the students enjoyed very much in learning their third language subject. There also some students who showed less interest in learning third language for about 2%.

B. The reasons why FSPUs students took that language as their third language. The bar chart shows the percentage of the reasons why FSPUs students take third language as their subject.
160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 48 36 4 24 2 28 64 72 20 30 16 32 14 22 34 6 10 30 28 30 6 24 22 10 42 22 22 42 22 8 32 32 2 8 38 22 8 12 42 20 2 36 44

Srongly disagree

Disagree

Neither diagree or agree

Agree

Strongly agree

Figure 7: Percentage of reasons why FSPU students choose this language. Out of 50 FSPU students, 72% of them agreed that learning third language will make them more knowledgeable person. They also agreed that third language will help them in their future career which is 64% agreed. Minimally, 2% of the students were about to strongly disagree on the reasons of learning the third language is for understanding the literature of other culture in the original language.

C. The importance of third language among FSPU students The bar chart shows the percentage of the students on how often they speak to the following groups of people.
45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 10 9 2 15 11 1 9 10 12 8 12 13 1 21 26 15 4 21 21 23 12 26 20 21 8 4 7 6 7 7 5 5 5

Srongly disagree

Disagree

Neither diagree or agree

Agree

Strongly agree

Figure 8: Percentage of importance of third language among FSPU students. Almost all of them strongly agree that learning third language is important for everyone (8%) and can appreciate international literature, music and film, for future career, and to increase global understanding (7%). Maintain at the same level (26%), students also agreed that third language will enable them to participate in the activities of other cultural groups and learning them makes an enjoyable experience. Less of the students disagree that by learning foreign language will make them able to speak the language of the people of the countries that they visit and to make lifelong friends (1%).

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CONCLUSION It can be concluded that, all students of FSPU have taken a third language as one of the subject in UiTM which is Mandarin, Japanese, Arabic, German and French. The most popular language taken by students is Mandarin. The students took third language because of many reasons and its own importance to them. For example, third language maybe very useful for their future career as FSPU students will work and communicate with other races and if they know third language, it will give advantages to them. In order to improve their learning, they can get many information from many resources available such as internet, book, songs and others. It also can be concluded that students frequently speak other language other than their native language such as English, Mandarin, Arabic and Japanese. In also can be concluded that, most of the students love to learn third language and enjoy learning them.

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RECOMMENDATIONS Based on the findings and conclusions, it is recommended that UiTM should add some new languages so that students have variety of choices to choose to take as their third language. The lecturers also should make learning this third language easy and ensure the students can master in learning foreign language either in writing, reading, speaking and others.. Furthermore, the coordinator of FSPU may conduct a programme for the students to increase the students` awareness on the importance of acquiring a third language and how the third language can influence their studies and life and future. Parents also should encourage their children to learn as many foreign languages as they can in order to have a brighter life and future.

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REFERENCES 1. Ainol Madziah Zubairi & Isarji Haji Sarudin. (2009) Motivation to learn a foreign language in Malaysia, Vol 9(2).

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APPENDIX

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