I taught English for a few months at a popular Primary girl's school in PJ, following my Form 6 stint back in 2001/2002.
The school at the time was known for churning out gals with high English proficiency, or so I thought.
What I encountered was this:
1) Of the four classes I taught (standard four), there were students, not merely from the two weaker classes, that DID NOT know English. When I say did not know, I mean they could not say "Excuse me Ms Darshini, may I go to the toilet?".
I had to mark exam papers written in complete and utter gibberish...eg "Ping pong paing kolam, gety ..."
I actually thought the poor child was trying to write in telugu/tamil or some other language or dialect but calm as can be, the other senior English teachers set me straight. No, I was told, the girl merely does not know English, so she writes any word that comes to her head.
The disconcerting part, she may not know what she was writing about, but clearly in her head, she had an idea, for her "essay" had paragraphs and punctuation marks.
Another student would copy down the question as her answer in the hope she alone figured out my trick.
2) I was teaching English in BM - Fill in the blanks, class isi tempat kosong.
3) I was asked, "Excuse me Ms Darshini, what is is-land?" I had written island.
4) Only one girl in the whole standard four had read Harry Potter. One. Forget Enid Blyton.
5) UPSR essay questions consisted of a string of pictures (normally no more than four) with words underneath as a guide. Eg - picture: Boy crying near stairs. Words under picture: Boy-fell-stairs-cry. There was no "begin the story with On my holiday..., or "Tell us in 100 words what you did during the school holidays" or others essays that I remembered having to do as homework when I was in primary school.
When I tried to spice things up, by including an additional box with a question mark in it with the instructions "create your own ending", I was told I could not do so. Because the students would not know how to answer the essay. Because parents would bang the door down seeking my blood. Okay I exaggerate, parents won't ask for my blood, just an explanation as to why I decided to challenge the "syllabus" and dare their daughters to think out of the box.
Standard four???? Two years away from UPSR and they could not ask to go to the toilet? They could not string a sentence together? They needed pictures and words to help them. They could not even be asked to write just one sentence on their own? And all this from an urban primary school, then what was it like in rural schools?
Perhaps I am just one person, not even a teacher for one-full year but these are my suggestions - make English compulsory. If one does not pass English in any standard or form, they do not progress to the next level. Do the same for BM if you (the government) fear students will lose interest in the national language.
Baby steps - Start with Standard one. The longer children are allowed to go up the education ladder without mastering English, the bigger the divide would get and the harder it would be for them to catch up.
Mastering English and mastering Science in English are two different things. I know because in Form 6, I was asked to take an Australian Chemistry Quiz, in English of course, and it was not easy, despite having a good command of both Chemistry and English at the time. Ensure then that while the subjects are being taught in BM, students are also taught English terminologies to aid them in University later on.
Make them read read read! In Primary school, we were allowed to go to the school library and borrow books at any time, English and BM ones, and the student with the highest number of book reviews submitted each month would win a prize.
I understand the argument the sudden introduction of Maths and Science in English made it hard for students to cope (true) but I fail to see where this erodes the love and proficiency for our national language, if there is equal emphasis paid towards the development of both languages. Parents should instead be made to see what an advantage it would be for their child to be able to converse in more than one language fluently and how this can be used as a selling point for his/her career advancement in the future, not just here but internationally. Children can see more things, meet more people, learn more, experience more. It is not a burden if done right.
babes, for your first post - it was awesome! i mean seriously! my first post was "hello world!" hahaha.
ReplyDeleteblogging is really peasy. the trick is to just write honestly. people who like/hate you will read on. other people won't bother. but you grow to like the hate comments cos you'll learn how people think and gauge public response to whatever you write about. but the BEST part of blogging is when someone messages you and tells you how your blogging has inspired them or helped them. it's really cool :) c'mon, don't underestimate what impact you may have on the world okay?
:)
p/s: wordpress is waaaaay better than blogspot tho :)
my pastor just called the ministry at 7723 7070 to tell them how he felt about this issue. you should call too since you feel so strongly about it. they are collecting public opinions right now.
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