I REFER to your editorial “Better teachers needed” (NST, Sept 30).
I fully agree and support the editorial’s view that the Education Ministry’s latest in a long line of measures to stem the decline in English proficiency at the Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah level “is well-intentioned, but, sadly, misguided. Pupils do not need more assessments. They need better teachers, plain and simple”.
Many students will fail the examination. How can they write 100 to 300 words of comprehension in English when many can’t even write a simple sentence or paragraph? Not only that, many can’t even understand the questions given, as some questions are too high-sounding and really meant for an undergraduate.
Can’t the ministry officials understand that the present generation having to go through national schools with Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction are handicapped in English? Try as they may, many are unable to master the English language. This is true for many students in rural as well as urban areas.
Even schools with state of the art facilities such as those in Putrajaya, where the student population is almost 100 per cent Malay, can’t even master the English language. Why? Simply because the English environment is glaringly missing compared with private international schools.
Even with better teachers who can teach English, I still have my doubts that they can improve English proficiency. Many good English teachers can testify that no matter how much they try, the students simply find English a tough subject to master.
English proficiency among primary school students was not a problem when national schools were using the Cambridge syllabus in the 1960s. Teachers had no problem teaching English, as they were the product of the English school system. Students at the primary level had no problem writing English comprehension.
Given the present situation, where national schools use Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction, education officials should not give more stress to the students. As your editorial said, “Having more exams will never be helpful. Pupils deserve better than to be punished for the weaknesses in the teaching system.”
What is needed is an environment where pupils enjoy English lessons without having to sit exams. The stress should be on communicative English with less emphasis on grammar. How it is to be done will be left to the ingenuity of the English teachers.
For as long as students have to go through a minimum of 11 years of schooling in Bahasa Malaysia, we just cannot avoid or overcome the issue of “employers routinely complain(ing) that prospective hires lack the much-needed English language skills”.
Former education minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin was reported to have said that he could not understand why after 11 years of schooling, students are still weak in English. Perhaps the children of diplomats who attend international schools can answer that question.
n Hassan Talib,Gombak, Selangor