First and foremost, before I embark on an embarrassing attempt to do an entry regarding the topic of the day, allow me to apologize for all grammatical errors that I might make in this post. I am after all, a Malaysian girl who went to a Malaysian national school that does not teach grammar during English classes. Or did it? I can’t remember. It has been 6 years since high school and 11 years since primary school. But feel free to correct my english! As long as I’m alive, I’m still learning. 🙂
In my opinion, I felt like I was actually learning something during my primary school english classes. I remember trying to rebuild sentences which were jumbled up. Sentences such as “Is an Vendor He Ice-Cream” were included in exercises and I remember this one in particular because I did not know what was vendor when I was 8 years old and ended up getting 98% for that my mid-term paper. ARGH!! (ya bragging. hahaha.)
I did learn when and how to use plural, past, present and future tense, adjectives, nouns and all those other terms used in english grammar classes. After awhile, a sentence just doesn’t “sound” right when there’s a grammatical error in it. I relied on this ‘sound’ thing throughout my entire lifetime of english usage. Be it in examination papers, homework or even blog posts.
Actually, my multi-subject tuition teacher Pn. Kogi deserves credit for my english fundamentals. She would buy Singaporean english grammar text books and make us do the exercises in it. Those were some tough cookies but because of her, the few of us had a better grasp of the language.
In high school however, english classes did not get any deeper and my friends and I have always put it on the same level as our PJK ( a super duper lame paper.. something to do with Health and Sports ) paper. English class was only an outlet for us to show off our essay writing skills. To wow the teacher with our awesome imagination. “..and then Angie woke up from her dream.” was how most of our mind blowing essays ended. If English was our final paper, we’d be out catching a movie the night before. Getting anything less than an A for English earned you ridicule from the kids at my school.
I missed the Teaching of English in Maths and Science by a couple of years but that did not hinder my transition in applying english for my A-level subjects. The first few months were a little confusing but with a good dictionary, I had no problem.
Six months into A-levels and I had totally forgotten how to use BM at SPM level. Like what was diameter in BM?! Periphery?! At least I still remember Luas is Area. All is not lost.
I am obviously all for passing english as a prerequisite to obtaining your SPM cert. And for the sake of the rural kids, take things slow. We don’t have to pass a bill overnight. We have Standard 1 kids coming in every year and if a proper English syllabus which includes both grammar and communication can be drafted out for the next intake, the children can be groomed from the get go.
If I can learn BM from scratch (I didn’t know what was Lengkapkan in my standard 1 maths book but I sure as hell knew what 2+3 would equal to.), I’m pretty sure the rural children will be able to adapt to English as well. ESPECIALLY if Maths and Science will continue to be thought in English. I really despise backward mentality.
I read an article where some big wig in the (i’m assuming) linguistic field was proposing plenty of radical views regarding the teaching of maths and science in english. He mentioned things like studying at your own pace and then going on to higher levels when you’re finally comfortable, scraping the SPM cert and reverting back to the teaching of the subjects in BM! Just because some teachers are indequate.
If I’m not mistaken, high school teachers are required to have a degree before they can teach. Furthermore, these are maths and science teachers we are talking about. Did they not learn it in English? Where were their Bachelor of Science degrees from?
I can just imagine a teacher in the front of the class going, “Ahh..so class, you see ah, velo-.. itu apa..velocity ..ah ya.. is ah…wait ah.. *takes out malay to english science dictionary*.”
if a teacher can’t even have a good grasp of the english language, this says a lot about the standard of teaching in Malaysia.
@Dr. M, your prophecy already happened.
There was a very good reason why plenty of us relied on tuition classes and skipped the time waster which we called school near exam time. Some school teachers can’t teach for nuts. There’s also a very good reason why my tuition teacher made almost RM50k a month by running a tuition center. Don’t know if it was taxed though. :X I know nothing! Lalala.
And the textbooks that we were using back in school? INADEQUATE! They should just use the Fokus Pelangi series as our official textbooks.
As I have learned from wikipedia years ago, I am part of a small portion of chinese people in this country who speaks English at home. Okay lah fine, it’s manglish. Still english though. Some shell I was living in when I went to national service and university reeling in shock at the amount of people who prefer to speak in chinese. It should have been some indication to me that out of 13 classes in high school, 9 classes were for students who came from chinese schools.
Apparently the reason that I come from an English speaking family is because my parents, like a lot of people from their generation, went to english medium schools. So did my paternal grand parents. Maternal grandparents went to english schools AND had chinese tuition. My great grandparents didn’t go to school though.
In this country, there are people who come from families who speak in their mother tongue and get sent to schools which are conducted in their mother tongue such as indian and chinese national schools. There are also people who speak English at home and get sent to vernacular schools. Something I am planning for my future children because not knowing mandarin really sucks big time!!
Based on statistical studies (my friends wtf), those who speak English at home and go to chinese schools.. mostly.. get shitty results for their mother tongue language paper and ace the other subjects. Then there are those who are both excellent in english AND their mother tongue.. well, those are your typical JPA scholars who have no trouble learning maths, science, aeronautical science, actuarial science in english or malay or swahili. Don’t care about them lah.
For those of us who go to Malay schools, be it chinese or indian or lain-lain, your english is usually not that good if you don’t speak it at home. Every language needs practice to improve. Your mother tongue might be good communications wise but you won’t be able to read or write in that language because you didn’t learn it.
As I hardly have Indian friends who went to indian national schools, I can only speak about those who went to chinese national schools. I have been told that in chinese national schools, these students are very good in english theory wise but when it comes to speaking, so-so. This can also be applied to non-malay students studying at national schools.
In this sense, students with backgrounds like mine are very lucky and will benefit either way with english being included as a prerequisite to obtaining the ALL IMPORTANT SPM Cert or whatever they decide to do with english when it comes to teaching maths and science. Our thoughts are already in English to begin with.
To improve overall standard of English, we first need to standardize all schools. Why must language be used to separate schools? Can’t language exist as compulsory subjects?
I have to say the dreaded phrase……………
Look at Singapore. 😛
oh and p/s: No use lah learning maths and science in Malay. Totally forgot everything already. 🙂
hi there. totally agree with you!! Me too forgot most of my malays after secondary school!
oooh er i fall under that tiny category. we speak english at home but both my brother and i got sent to chinese schools and got bullied like donkeys for 6 years (5 for me) because our mandarin was the shits. we learnt manglish from our parents but my brother and i speak in a frighteningly proper way, i blame nickelodeon -_____-
Quote, “Then there are those who are both excellent in english AND their mother tongue.. well, those are your typical JPA scholars who have no trouble learning maths, science, aeronautical science, actuarial science in english or malay or swahili. Don’t care about them lah.”
LOL. So true!!!
Actually I am not sure which category do I fall in to. We used to speak english before I went for any formal education, then switched to english-mandarin-hokkien when I was introduced to them, and became a rojak not being able to speak ANY language properly (i.e., takes some effort not to add a foreign word in a sentence most of the time)
Sigh.
Hmm, my parents are not sent to English medium school, but I was sent to national schools 😀 I terbalik. I speak Chinese at home, and English outside with friends.
And with all the people we get to meet daily, now I think I’m speaking a lot of rojak language.
But, I guess, being versatile in more languages is still the best 😀
hmm i dunno where i fit into this. my mum spoke chinese to me and my dad english when we were at home. (its useful too, they always know who im talking to :P)
my english was quite good for a kid when they sent me to a chinese primary sch.. and they were all prepared to take me out if i cudnt adapt. but guess what, kids learnt fast! haha..
in the end, i even did my high sch at those chinese vernacular schs.. my english is still better than my chinese but hey, i think my chinese isnt too bad either, well speaking wise anyway. i kinda struggle when it comes to writing last time blek 😛
anyway, i think learning more languages is cool. 🙂 angmohs are alwix impressed when u suddenly come out with another language with some patient 😛
I am the complete stranger at previous post again..
hahahha..
I learn my English by *trying* to blog in English and read English blog, books.
I totally understand how difficult for a Malaysian to learn correct powerful and bombastic English.. T.T
That’s why I like your blog very much, lots of words and less picture.. =D
Coz I can copy paste whole post, read slow slow during my office hour
u know.. Trying to minimize internet usage during working hour.. T.T
i am the complete stranger at previous post..
hahahah..
I learn my English by *trying* to blog in English and read English blog, books.
I totally understand how difficult for a Malaysian to learn correct powerful and bombastic English.. T.T
That’s why I like your blog very much, lots of word.. =D
Coz I can copy paste whole post, read slow slow during my office hour
u know.. Trying to minimize internet usage during working hour.. T.T
I love this post of yours and I agree with you totally!
My parents converse with each other in Chinese but they speak to me in English. They were from Chinese schools but I was sent to a national school since primary. Haha. I learn Chinese from them and TV dramas! 😀 But still ain’t that fluent. :/ I am still very comfortable conversing in English.
Jolene! Good for you on posting on something that is just so relevant today 🙂
I was in government school for my first six years of school life and teaching consisted of shoving our English textbooks at us (which had very little substance) and making us copy out the exercises in it.
HOW did that constitute a lesson? I could have done that at home!
Then I left the government side and leapt over to the private side & even our lousy school had the sense NOT to use the PMR english textbook but instead made us use the Singaporean one 🙂 It was also then that I realised that, like you, I was part of a minority statistic! Almost every single chinese person in my new school had gone to a vernacular chinese school & I was the only person in my class who couldn’t speak Chinese (including the indians..wtf). They regarded me as the one with ‘good english’ and by ‘good’ i mean great compared to their standards. They were great people but they had broken English with absurd grammar.
Then.. PMR results came out and these people, who I assure you, write out essays worse than they speak (eg. with sentences like ‘I had loving my mother’.. I kid you not!!) .. ALL came out with an A in PMR English. Every single one of them. Even the ones who managed to get Bs, Cs and Ds in every other subject scored As in English. I was mortified – and I kept on wondering just how low the standard really was. An A will always be an A to a university even if one A is like 40% higher than the other, which I found so unfair!
THEN I entered the international side and BAM. My level of English, high as it was regarded in Malaysian school, was just about adequate (in other words, not really good laaah) and I realised that our standard of ‘English’ (if you can call it that) really is not going to help anybody. I know so many people who were one of the ‘top’ English scorers in their schools who suffered big time when it came to college.
So maybe I’m not qualified to debate on this matter because I’ve only done PMR and I’m not going to be doing SPM (wish I was though, since colleges here regard an A in SPM English equal to an A in O level english which is so UNFAIR) – but I am all for making a pass in English a prerequisite for SPM! I mean, why not? They can do it for BM so why not for English?
& coming back to the subject of grammar not being taught in schools, I think it’s spot on. I sure as heck wasn’t taught grammar and I don’t owe anything to any one of my English teachers. Everything I can do with the English Language today is due to my passion for reading and other things that have nothing to do with school. LET’S LOBBY FOR BETTER TEACHERS FOR OUR KIDS!! 🙂
Sorry this was so long! Very sensitive topic for me, hahah.
wah.. you know, i don’t know how i managed to write all those wonderful flowery karangan last time… amazing.. i was that fasih in BM???
totally agree with you, and fall into yr same ‘category’, but even more sadder on the mother tongue.
im chindian, speak english at home, tamil/mandrin FAIL. cant speak to save my life. but trying to learn, though the progress macam kura-kura.
but i also have seen as you said, we are the ones who ace (promotes self) the subs… i think english IS the way to go…
AND SOMETHING VERY IMPORTANT. pls read carefully. i quote:
“Like what was diameter in BM?!”
sengaja ke? coz tats already in BM, english is diametRe unless of coz im wrong 😛
relying on english not sounding right as a grammatical error : check. I thought I was the only one.
english exams to show off essay writing skills: check. I ALWAYS look forward to getting back my english paper. xD
mortifying if you don’t get A in english: check.
“…and then woke up” : check. CLASSIC ending for an A essay. xD
getting culture shock by not knowing chinese: check. T_T but it was good in a way cause then my english was “good”. wtf.
good entry. 😀
Congrats, Jolene, you are indeed making waves with your blog. Very thought provoking & informative. Pls keep it as I have bookmarked this blog for future reference.
Correction. Last line should read ‘Pls keep it up….’. BTW, may I request all your readers to email the Ed. ministry regarding a PASS in English paper in order to get qualify for the SPM cert. I have already done so & it is recorded into their database to be used as a guage of public acceptance. The email address is kpkpm@moe.gov.my
I come from a wholly Cantonese-speaking family, and went to a Malay school. I had the best tuition teacher ever though. She was the one who introduced me to the wonderful world of Enid Blyton! She too, used Singaporean English books for her lessons and taught me the difference between present, past, future, present continuous, past continuous and future tense, what a verb is, what a noun is, comparisons, antonyms, synonyms, and of course, Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain (rainbow colours!). Without her, never in my wildest imaginations that I would have a degree which requires so.much.reading.and.writing.
My primary school English teachers, although nowhere near my tuition teacher, have definitely play important roles as well. I remember the ‘arrange the words to make a sentence’ exercise too Jolene! There are always three pictures accompanying the words too, right!?
Then I went up to secondary school and the horror began! Some of the teachers, like the ones who taught the best classes were quite good but a few of them, couldn’t speak proper English themselves and they were teaching the lower classes! How can the students ever improve?
I didn’t do EST but I wish I did! When I did my A levels, i instantly forgot all the Malay words used in the Science subjects and Mathematics. Say hello, to words like sodium and differentiation and integration weee!
My stand is that while Bahasa Malaysia should still be taught in schools, a pass in English should definitely be a pre-requisite to pass SPM too. When I was doing my degree in Manchester, I came across quite many Malaysians who, while there is no doubt that they are bright and brilliant students, cannot form a simple English sentence. I couldn’t help but to blame the education system because no one should have to rely on their tuition teachers entirely and plus, not everyone is lucky enough to afford paying tuition fees. School teachers should be able to produce students who can speak and write decent English.