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Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Language ‘ultras’ holding back reforms on English

FMT:

Language ‘ultras’ holding back reforms on English, says group


The Page group says the lack of English language skills among teachers is at a crisis level 

PETALING JAYA: An education group says the downward spiral of English-language skills among teachers is now at a crisis level. It urged the government to stop pandering to politicians and Malay-language ultra-nationalists.

“If we continue pandering to them, the problem will not end,” said Tunku Munawirah Putra, secretary of the Parent Action Group for Education.

She said the government needs to acknowledge that teachers lack English proficiency.

While the Malay language was crucial to unify different backgrounds and as a common identity, proficiency in Malay should not come at the expense of weakening English.



Tunku Munawirah Putra

Munawirah was responding to remarks by the Malaysian Employers Federation’s executive director Shamsuddin Bardan, that the poor command of English among many Bumiputera graduates was the main reason they found it hard to get jobs in the private sector, which accounts for more than 90% of jobs in the country.

Munawirah said officials in Putrajaya should look at the efforts by Thailand to improve English-language skills by hiring 10,000 English native teachers. “That is how serious Thailand is,” she said, adding that Malaysia needs to have plans and a road map to overcome this problem.

She called for the establishment of English-medium schools in every state to produce English language teachers, adding that Malay-medium schools will not produce adequate English teachers. “It is not going to happen,” she said.

She hoped the government will expand on the Dual Language Programme to increase contact time for English in schools.


Lack of political will to make reforms, says ex-principal



V Chakaravarthy

V Chakaravarthy, an outspoken retired secondary school principal, says that poor English standards in schools have persisted for years.

“They’re not interested in proper structure, like verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs, they’re more interested in how people talk. The problem is, some of the Bumiputera students think in Bahasa and do a direct translation in English, and that doesn’t work,” he told FMT.

He says that school children should not take on any blame. Instead, it is the system around them that has pushed English to the margins, much to the students’ detriment.

He says the lack of reform in English-language teaching is political as “(politicians) want to play to the gallery so that when elections come they can say ‘we believe in Bahasa’.

“Of course we all believe in Bahasa, and want it as our national language, but we are against the deterioration of English teaching in schools,” he added.

Changes should be made immediately to ensure future graduates are more proficient, and he called for English literature to be made a more prominent part of English-language classes.

Sarawak pushes on despite lack of federal finding


Annuar Rapaee


Sarawak’s assistant minister for education, Annuar Rapaee, said his state insisted on carrying on with the teaching of science and mathematics in English, a programme known as PPSMI.

“What MEF is saying is not new, we know this is a longstanding problem especially in the private sector,” he said. “If we fail to respond to the needs and demands of the industry, we are not giving them the incentive to come here.”

He said Sarawak not only recognised English as an official language, “we are also spending a lot of resources on PPSMI, because we know our children will be the biggest beneficiaries”.

Annuar said Sarawak had spent nearly RM10 million to develop the modules, print textbooks and workbooks, and to train teachers and provide them with supporting materials. Putrajaya does not provide any allocation for Sarawak’s PPSMI programme.

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kt notes:

UNESCO recommends primary school children to best learn in their mother tongue (vernacular language), and mind, English is NOT an easy subject to learn as a foreign language, learning a new language is best done with a subject that requires decent verbal interactions and considerable use of vocabulary on a regular basis, like reading, history, civics, moral studies, geography, literature etc but hardly maths and science.

How to learn and command a new language when you just learn limited use of its vocabulary like, add/minus this from/to that, resolve equations 1 and 2, what is value of 'x', prove that 'y' is 2, etc? On top of that, all such instructions will be uttered by the respective teachers instead of the students participating interactively.

Thus, if our young students can learn English through those subjects which I've proposed above, then they will have commanded enough good English to also assist them in their learning of Maths and Science.

Please read an earlier (2019) post:

Best if Mahathir stays out of school children's English learning.


9 comments:

  1. You only need to begin using Malay and English from age six in schools all the way to university for the average students to be proficient in those two principal languages.
    One hour per day for vernacular languages for descendents of immigrants will be sufficient to learn about the original cultures. This should also be made available to the students originating from Punjab, Kerala, Tibet, East Turkistan, etc.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. dun kid us la, eng already gone with the wind in the 80s. not many want to attend school that cultivate ular.

      Delete
  2. dun act like mongolian, just follow what a malay govt instruct.

    ReplyDelete
  3. CCP became ultra-superpower using Putonghua.

    Malaysia needs no superpower ambition , but definitely needs to build a strong national identity around its National Language.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Wakakakakaka…

      What a foul gaseous leaking out from that fart filled well!

      "CCP became ultra-superpower using Putonghua"

      Wow!!!

      A major contribution but definitely NOT the only one.

      "strong national identity around its National Language"

      Mfer, look at world history first lah.

      How many monolingual nations have had a strong national identity built around a common language?

      How about yr uncle Sam rebelled out from auntie Pommie?

      How about those ex Yugoslavia Balkan states?

      Small sight from small mind, enhanced by the indoctrination of old moneyed dogma.

      Delete
    2. Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian are similar but different languages - a key part of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
      Don't ever suggest to a Croatian that he speaks a form of Serbian- he will regard it as a serious insult.

      Examples of strong national identities built around a language -German, French, Japanese , Thai ( except for Southern Thailand), Burmese.

      Delete
    3. Old moneyed mfer, have u been out from that fart filled well to Balkan?

      "Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian are similar but different languages - a key part of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia."

      A closer linguistic comparison is yr auntie pommie setup.

      Balkan/UK localised 'dialects' vis-a-vis nationalused Slavic/English.

      Croatian/Serbian languages have more similarity than England/Welsh/Scottish!

      The breaking up of Yugoslavia has more to do with history, with religions play the most ugly hand. Only Tito's secularism & strong arm administration kept Yugoslavia united.

      All those examples u gave have more or less regional differences in linguistic intonations - same like the states under Yugoslavia.

      Strong nationalism requires more than common language.

      Again look at yr auntie pommie's UK, now on the verge of breaking up!

      What UK identity ONLY when common interests r shared. Otherwise sensurround teowchiu music!

      Delete
    4. Typical CCP ignoramus living under the Great CCP tempurung.
      The Welsh and Scots are a distinctly different race , ethnic and language group who were much earlier inhabitants of the British Isles. They fought the Anglo-Saxons for centuries.

      The Angels tribe came from what is now Denmark, and Saxony is still a state in modern Germany. That is where the Anglo-Saxon language has its roots from.

      Delete
    5. Maybe the CCP tempurung covers a wider range of everything, including sopo knowledge that mfer like u can never read!

      Wakakakakakaka…

      Yr point - strong national identity.

      Before the f*ckups done by the various past pommie govts (pommie = UK, a confederation of what does an old moneyed mfer can't understand), Scottish nationalism was a burp, released by the minute diehard supporters Charles II. The Welsh have never aggressively voiced anything about nationalism.

      The united kingdom, then, was having, indeed, a single national identity of UK, speaking English, under a constitutional British crown accupied by the foreign house of Hanover.

      What about NOW?

      Scotland is claiming for independence. Northern Ireland wants EU status, England wants Brexit & hides under uncle Sam's apron.

      Or yr history readings r either selective &/or defective?

      Just like that 犬养mfer trying to talk Keynesian economic theory w/o knowing broader sopo-econ interlinks.

      Perhaps, u guys r just headline grabbers - name calling just to colour yr farts!

      Delete