Reactions to “Reviewing teaching of English” (7 August, 2011 The Borneo post)
How the national education system involving 13 years with 5 years of secondary school, is still unable to provide our students with a good grasp of the English Language, I, myself, am incapable of answering.--- Muhyddin Yassin, Deputy Prime Minister. (an idiot’s words)
We people have no one to blame but the Ministry of Education led by ambitious muddled-headed political thugs who are aggressive, arrogant, ignorant and power-lust and know ‘nuts’ about education but wield the power to meddle everything in it. In short, our education is pawned by these political thugs who always dominate the scenario. We have so many education-based professionals and why are they not in arena to make wise and meticulous decision on the subject matter called ‘education’.
Yes, it is the change of the medium of education from English to BM in 1980s and we see the drop of English standard of our education system all the time. It has deteriorated so much so that it is poor (not rich) now. Very often we can describe it to be atrociously poor. 95% of Malaysians whose English after that big shift have no standard to refer to. They are not proficient at all in terms of their grasp of English grammar, the sound system, pronunciation, stock of vocabulary and spelling.
Now let’s refer to Noam Chomsky’s definition of Competence and Performance. According to Noam Chomsky, “Competence is what native speakers possess which enables them to produce and understand sentences. Performance is the individual use of the knowledge in an act of communication, producing and understanding sentences”
(HBEL3203 TEACHING OF GRAMMAR) (a subject module from Open University, Malaysia)
Well, 13 years of English learning seems to “end up in a drain”. Why? Ask around. Do the survey to find out the truths. Here I have some questions for your questionnaires. Ask…………………………….
1. if they have a good grasp of English grammar.
It is the foundation of a language and without it, our learners cannot fulfil
the various tasks in the output in speaking and writing properly. Nobody
has the patient to listen or read the report full of grammatical
mistakes no matter how brilliant his ideas are.
2. if they have a good knowledge of the English sound system,
pronunciation and spelling.
Find out if it is true that we can only remember English words when we
know how to pronounce them.
3. if they have a rich stock of vocabulary through reading intensively and
extensively to build up.
There must be enough input through listening activities and reading texts in
English before you can expect the output in the production of the language
in speaking and writing. I am totally convinced in Input-
Output theory which has been well-researched by the linguists in language
learning.
Input = listening and reading
Output = speaking and writing
4. Ask yourselves if you have a good English programme for teaching and
learning
5. if you have a long lists of graded English books to read and complete in the
13 years of formal English learning in school.
Make learners in each grade to read at least 30 books in a year.
What happens now is “a mad rat race” for As results. Nobody cares how the As results are attained as everybody only focuses on the As. Hence everybody is impatient with the process of proper teaching and learning of English. Believe me, many and many schools as far as I know rely heavy on commercially produced workbooks which is compiled in test mode to ‘learn’ English. Go around to check and see. Hence what our students know is fragment pieces of this and that. They do not learn English in a systematic way. They have failed to have a good grasp of English grammar and a good knowledge of English sound system. This is the consequences of the short-cut for ‘As’ which our Ministry of education emphasises a lot for the awards of scholarship.
Is it clear now who should be accountable for overall poor English standard prevailing in our country?
Morninglory
24/8/2011
