Pelangi Publishing, RM33.95, ISBN 978-629-498-082-2
Education, 2025

Pelangi Publishing is at it again. Once again, its Focus SPM refence book on a particular subject — in this case Karangan or Composition, more specifically Kertas 1 of the SPM Bahasa Melayu paper — is the most expensive in the market, but offers little more or even less than its cheaper counterparts in the market.

Authors

The authors are pretty familiar names if one had had some Bahasa Melayu books from Pelangi Publishing from previous years, as they pop up in those books pretty frequently.

Azizul Rahman was a Tokoh Guru Kebangsaan back in 2016, while Azahar Bahari co-wrote a Form Two Bahasa Melayu textbook back in 2017.

Design

The design is pretty standard for the Focus SPM line.

There is very nice use of colors, making the pages look cheery and bright.

Since this is Karangan book, however, expect walls of text.

The Writing on the Wall

Candidates won’t need this book to score that A+.

You see, the model compositions are… polite.

Occasionally, there would be one or two Arabic-sounding words here, maybe a pepatah or simpulan or cogan kata now and then, but these compositions tend to be restrained, readable, and utterly average.

Now, some people will say this will be good enough for score one an A or B, but will that be enough? Will a candidate with high proficiency be willing to risk not getting that A+ by being “merely” okay? If they want to up the florid phrases and throw in as many peribahasa and other ungkapan indah as possible, then this book is not for them.

This book will be helpful to those with average proficiency that want to up their game a bit by being exposed to some turn of phrases, et cetera, that they may not be familiar with.

However, this book only offers some token generic advice and some occasional topic-specific ungkapan indah examples that, on the whole, have limited use.

The generic advice isn’t the most helpful to candidates with weak proficiency and have problems starting a karangan in the first place. I’d direct them to Focus SPM: Bahasa Melayu for that if they couldn’t afford a tuition teacher.

Oh, and remember when I said there was no peribahasa listing in that book? It’s here. Yes, Pelangi Publishing’s gameplan all along is to get #TeamPelangi SPM candidates to buy both that book and this one, but I personally feel that Focus SPM: Bahasa Melayu is a better investment to learn how to write, while there are other Karangan books that offer model essays filled with all the ungkapan indah one needs if they want to up their game from potential B material to A or A+.

The Essays

The model essays here can be a source of unintentional humor due to the choice of topics.

One common accusation lobbied at Bahasa Melayu is how it infantilizes teenagers, making them write compositions based on topics that had been obsolete in the last 20 years, and this really shows in questions that still require candidates to write physical letters, the surat rasmi and surat tidak rasmi ones.

Maybe one can argue that it is good for candidates to still learn how to format their rasmi and tidak rasmi letters as a form of appreciation of legacy and culture, but still, why not frame those questions as roleplay?

For example, tell the candidate to imagine that it’s 1957, you just witnessed Tunku Abdul Rahman proclaiming Malaya’s independence, so you are asked to write a letter to your parents in the kampung to share your feelings and express why you believe that you have witnessed an important milestone in the nation’s history. Simple and it makes the whole “write a surat tidak rasmi” requirement still feel logical.

Here, the authors still act like it’s 1990, and hilariously, some of the topics make little sense. My favorite is one where the candidate is asked to write a letter to a brother that is experiencing money problems while working abroad, giving him advice on how to manage his money properly.

Just imagine:

• You are writing a physical letter to someone that is working in a different country. In 2025. How amusing.
• You, a student that has never worked full time before, are writing to advise someone on how to manage their money.
• The suggested points include making a five-year plan for one’s finances and assessing their assets and liability — all of which have little use if one is an immigrant renting an apartment with five other people to save up on rent and barely scraping by, or if the brother has a gambling or some other habits that will need deeper intervention than a nagging letter from a know-it-all that has no idea what the brother is really going through.

Another amusing one is a model essay justifying the attendance of tuition classes as a waste of time, because schoolteachers are good enough. While some teachers are definitely dedicated, this is a hilariously out of touch essay. It is made worse when the authors then bring up that you don’t need tuition because you can also sign up for online classes… which by definition are also tuition classes.

These authors come off, through their model compositions in this book, as ancient boomers that have barely any understanding of what is happening in the real world today.

Conclusion

• Useful only for candidates that want to learn a few more kosa kata indah to up their game, but they are realistic enough to know that they can’t jump from a B or C-level candidate in SPM Bahasa Melayu to an A or A+ one overnight. Even then, there are better books out there with model compositions that try to do more than settling for being just passable.
• Weaker candidates that need more help are better off getting a tutor or Focus SPM: Bahasa Melayu, on top of reading Bahasa Melayu stuff a lot and practicing on speaking and writing in that language.
• Very proficient candidates will most likely find this book a waste of time and money, as it won’t be sharing with them examples of florid and Arabic phrases and words to help them get the most score out of Kertas 1 and hence the SPM Bahasa Melayu paper.