Poor English: Bangau oh bangau

Of late, for the umpteenth time, the nation was on fire once again due to Malaysians with a poor command of English. Major highlight: these kids are entering universities. There they find that the academic books are in English but the medium of teaching is in Bahasa Malaysia.

Some parties claimed that Universities have to give importance to English if they want to produce employable graduates. Very quality graduates. Universities, you say?! Hmm..

Here's the thing.

I was speechless at first too, when I first came to my current workplace teaching final year students English for Occupational Purposes; finding out that more than half of each class, they couldn’t communicate properly in English. How? It was crystal clear when we did Mock Interview session; a session where the students get to be either the interviewer or interviewee, taking turns of course. The questions were given beforehand, all they need to do was answer the questions. Yet, they couldn’t say what they want to say. They were at lost in answering the simplest of questions. As simple as that.

There and then it came to me; after 9 years in schools learning English, what have they learned??

It is no surprise also that just like the cartoon strip above, asking the students to sing some English songs, the words coming out of their mouth so smoothly you tend to believe that their level of English is, if not poor, not bad at all.

I would really appreciate it if my students try their best to communicate in English wherever they are. But of course the fear of being called a snob or simply 'poyo' or, or 'mengada nak cakap omputeh' always holds them back.

I can't really say that the level of English among teachers in schools are poor and therefore it is one of the factors that contributes to downfall of English language quality. However I can't deny that I have some experience with teachers in schools (even English teachers) who can't really speak properly in English.

"Tepuk dada, tanya selera".


*Cartoon strips are borrowed from Portal Pendidikan Utusan