Abstract:

In line with the establishment of other university publishers, the Universiti Malaysia Pahang Press (UMPP) has been providing services to Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP) for more than a decade since June 2007 and is currently in its second decade of operation. UMPP was established then with the main objective of disseminating the findings of quality research conducted by UMP academic staff and students to the wider academic community in the form of journal, monograph and book as well as teaching and learning materials in the form of module and courseware. As it continues to develop and has since emerged as one of the best new technological universities, UMP has therefore attracted the international student population. Although UMP is a technological university, its curriculum emphasizes on balancing the hard skills with the soft skills. Hence, aspects of humanities and social sciences have not been overlooked. In this regard, UMPP has significantly played its role by offering support to the teaching and learning of foreign languages at the University through collaboration and teamwork with the academic staff at the Centre for Modern Languages (CML), particularly at the Department of Foreign Languages (DFL) which offers foreign language courses in Malay, Arabic, Mandarin, Japanese, German, Spanish and Turkish. This paper details the services provided by UMPP in supporting the works of academic members of staff at DFL CML. Additionally, it also highlights their innovative efforts which have led to major achievements, one at national level with the success at Malaysia’s National Book Awards Ceremony 2017, and the other at international level with one gold medal and a special award at the British Invention Show (BIS) 2017. Last but not least, the paper also highlights the challenges faced by UMPP in order to sustain with minimum financial support, the search for quality materials worthy of publication, and the strive for quality published materials with the lack of editorial, marketing and administrative staff, and the need to remain relevant with the changing needs and demands of the current and future generations of academic community in line with the advances taking place in education, information technology and media. In conclusion, the authors of the paper offer their take on what needs to be done to ensure that UMPP will be able to continue to provide the much needed services to the University and its community, and the wider network of the academia. Furthermore, a call for stronger form of win-win collaboration and teamwork between the University’s community and its publisher is also made so that the quality of published materials can be continuously improved. It is anticipated that the sharing of the development, achievements and challenges faced by UMPP in this paper will provide useful insights into university publishing and practices particularly within the context of foreign language teaching and learning materials.

Keywords:

Foreign languages, innovation, teaching and learning materials, university publisher, achievements, challenges.