The Malaysian English Language Teaching Association, more popularly known as MELTA is a voluntary, non-profit organisation, which was officially formed in 1982. Its stated constitutional aim is to promote English language teaching.
MELTA grew out of two earlier organisations – The English Language Teaching Association and The Selangor English Language Teaching Association. The organisation is run completely by Malaysians.
MELTA is deeply committed to representing all Malaysian English language educators, contributing towards their continuous professional development in line with national goals and aspirations. MELTA is run completely by Malaysian volunteers professionally involved in the teaching of English language and education in the English language. MELTA grew out of two earlier organizations – The English Language Teaching Association and The Selangor English Language Teaching Association and its combined history can be traced to the year 1958. Since then, MELTA has gone through many changes, accommodating itself to the needs of the nation’s English language stakeholders.
In 2008, MELTA made significant changes to its profile and the structure of the committee to widen its scope and reflect a national professional organisation. The MELTA committee now consists of an Executive council and a Bureau of directors. MELTA has also further enhanced collaborations with governmental organisations, NGOs, corporate organisations and international associates.
AMELTA has some 1000 members from all over Malaysia, most of whom are practising teachers of English in the Malaysian education system. Other members are involved in English language education in some way and membership therefore ranges from pre-school teachers to university academics as well as parents who have an active interest in their children’s English language development.
MELTA has been organizing conferences since 1991. For the first ten years, biennial international conferences were organised. From the year 2000, annual conferences became the norm. Since 2001, MELTA has organised ‘moving’ conferences: these are held in at least three venues, one either in Sabah or Sarawak. MELTA conferences help bring teachers together to share experiences and acquaint them with current thinking in ESL/EFL, introduce the Malaysian ELT community to ESL/EFL professionals from outside Malaysia and introduce Malaysia to those from abroad.
In fulfilment of its corporate social responsibility, MELTA organises various social responsibility projects under its ‘MELT-A-HEART’ banner. Among its various activities, it collects new or pre-loved English language books from generous publishers and individuals for distribution to less-advantaged schools in remote rural areas of the country.
MELTA also organises annual National special projects such as the MELTA Graduate Research Colloquium in April and the MELTA National Literacies Day in November. The MELTA Creative Teacher Showcase and MELTA Creative Student Teacher Showcase is organised in conjunction with the MELTA annual conference.