Not surprising at all

Not surprising at all     12/Sept/2013

        It is reported that our locally trained lawyers are not on par with those trained overseas when expressing/ presenting themselves in the English language in the court / not.    Our English teachers  also fall short of this requirement being competent enough to use the language properly for teaching and learning.  It does not come as a surprise to me at all.  

        They , after all are what they “had been fed”.  How had they been trained since small from kindergarten to university in the English language?    Do the survey to find out how well-versed they are in the language knowledge in the forms of grammar, phonetics  and  pronunciation.    

        The intensive part of learning the language in school had not been done properly.   Check around to see how the English is learnt in school.  Don’t be shocked when you find that at least 90% / more focus on exam-oriented workbooks  to learn English.    What can you expect from this obsession to score good results in English?

        Hence it is just natural that our pupils’/ students’ knowledge of English is fragmented.   I can bet  that most of them are blurred with the tenses, be them the Active Voice / the Passive Voice.   For pronunciation, they are not much better.   

         For extensive learning of the language,  ask around to see how many books in English texts have they read so far?  Do they read texts in English every day? 

        To speak a language at will requires a person to experience /be exposed to it in depth and width.   That means you have to read widely/ extensively to acquire enough vocabulary for use and to get familiarised / reinforced with the structures.    

     You got to have the ideas of how a language works to use it properly especially in the written form.  That means our primary and secondary schools must be given enough repetition and rehearsal of the language grammar.  For phonetics and pronunciation, our pupils/ students must also have enough drilling and exposure to learn them.     At the end of the secondary schooling, our students must have acquired the full set of of grammar knowledge and phonetics.   This preparation is for life-long learning.

        Focing on the exam-oriented workbooks to score ends up in nowhere.   The poor command of English in the locally produced lawyers is well-understood as they lack both the competence in the language knowledge and use in both spoken and written English.   As they seldom engaged in the active use of the language during their schooling since small.   Besides, I believe there were very few mental processes and language use in English, too.   

           Our lawyers and teachers are advised to take up some English lessons to brush up.  I wonder what will be emphasised in the lessons.   Am I too arbitrary to say that all they need now is to know the English grammar and phonetics as well as read widely to master the language?