Pan Asia Publications, RM30.90, ISBN 978-967-466-721-4
Education, 2023

Spotlight A+1: Bahasa Melayu has the misfortune of sharing space with two other SPM Bahasa Melayu reference books in the market, because whatever it does well, the other two do it better.

Authors

Alshaa Rani bin Ab Wahab is a frequent co-author of Bahasa Melayu secondary school reference books and workbooks, so I’m surprised to see his name pop up here. Maybe he’s left out of the Pelangi roster in the latest editions and decided to play ball with Pan Asia Publications instead?

Meanwhile, Kalsom binti Azid is a Munsyi Dewan.

Design

• While not very colorful, the layout of the pages is very clean, with enough white space to make the pages feel less cluttered and overwhelming.
• Also, the layout is very neat. Good use of tables to keep everything look organized, and on most pages, the text is organized into two wide columns that are easy to read.
• Depending on one’s point of view, this can be a plus or minus: there are no QR codes to videos or audio peppered everywhere, with QR codes limited to audio related to the listening test chapters.

In other words, candidates preferring a somewhat monochromatic, uncluttered, neat, straight to the point approach to content presentation would have a lot to love about the overall appearance and design of this book.

Content

It’s very standard to its own detriment, as what can be found here can also be found in Sasbadi’s Masterclass SPM: Bahasa Melayu and Pelangi’s Focus SPM: Bahasa Melayu, and those two books often presented the same topics in a more exhaustive and useful manner.

For example, the karangan section here comprises the most rudimentary advice followed by sample essays. This approach loses soundly to the super-detailed step-by-step approach in Focus SPM: Bahasa Melayu, the latter being super useful for candidates with weaker mastery of Bahasa Melayu and needing a lot of help to master the art of writing in that language.

However, it does have a pretty sensible approach to peribahasa and simpulan bahasa, by presenting an additional list of those that are present in the Form 4 and 5 Bahasa Melayu textbooks. This is a nice way to let candidates know of the bare minimum list of proverbs and idioms that they should memorize before going in for the exam.

Also, their Nota KOMSAS section is the most detailed of the three books mentioned here. Then again, KOMSAS is arguably not that bad, as most candidates should have prepared some rehearsed answers, either by themselves or with the aid of study notes, for the questions about their favorite characters or events in their KOMSAS novels as well as the moral values they have learned from these novels. If they have issues with the comprehension part of the KOMSAS section, they will have even more issues with the rest of the paper and should prioritize improving their grammar and vocabulary first before worrying about KOMSAS!

Oopsie

There are some pretty damning editorial errors in this book.

Here’s an egregious example on page 345, which is not part of a test that requires you to spot the mistakes and correct them:

Apakah yang dilakukan oleh anjing liar yang mereka temui?

If you can’t immediately spot the grammatical error here—mereka is a kata ganti nama orang ketiga, so based on the rules laid down by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, it should be yang ditemui oleh mereka—then you really shouldn’t make this book your reference guide!

Conclusion

• Whatever this book does well, other titles from Pan Asia Publishing’s competitors do better.
• Beware of some fatal editorial errors that can confuse candidates with weaker proficiency.
• Aside from that, it’s a functional reference book with a neat design. However, being merely functional isn’t exactly a selling point when the other two reference books mentioned here exist and cost about the same as this book!