JOHOR BARU: Grand BlueWave Hotel will be involved in its fourth collaboration this year with the New Straits Times (NST), Johor English Language Teaching Association (Jelta) and District Education Office for the NST-Newspaper in Education workshop for 80 Form Six students on Oct 14.
The one-day NST-NIE workshop will help enhance their critical thinking, writing, comprehension and public speaking skills while introducing the students to the different sections of the NST and its two education pull outs - School Times and Higher Ed.
Activities such as role-playing presentations, quizzes and games will not only sharpen their command of English but also prepare them for their Malaysian University English Test (MUET).
Grand BlueWave Hotel general manager Long Cheow Siong said the establishment was fully committed to fulfilling its corporate social responsibility to contribute to the development of education.
"The hotel and its holding company, Tasek Maju want to do our part in the collaboration with the NST, Jelta and Johor Baru Education Office to boost the students' command of English by using the newspaper.
"This is our fourth NST-NIE workshop conducted this year and we hope it will enable the students to use the newspaper as a learning tool to improve their mastery of English," he said after the handing over of sponsorhips for the NST-NIE workshop at the Johor NST bureau here.
Long will conduct a talk at the workshop to relate his experiences as an employer, who has had to deal with many fresh graduates struggling to express their thoughts during job interviews.
"During interviews, many graduates cannot communicate properly. As an employer, I want to hear them speak and express themselves, but that is never the case.
"These university graduates are lacking in their written language skills as well. I can see many shortforms used in text messaging that they use in their application letters. Such things are a turn-off for potential employers," Long said.
Grand BlueWave Hotel advertising/promotion and administration assistant manager, Sutha Menon echoed these sentiments and said that many diploma and degree-holders who came for job interviews lacked good communication skills.
Jelta president Vincent D'Silva said to arrest the decline in the proficiency of English, much of the speaking, reading and writing skills needed to be taught to students at a young age.
He said by the time they reached the upper-secondary level, students should be competent in the language.
He said this was needed as MUET would test Form Six students on their listening, writing, comprehension and speaking skills.
"The writing component requires students to write a case study and they need a strong grasp of the language and exposure to current affairs to excel.
"NST is the best source for students to obtain examples of case studies as seen in the variety of issues in the news, business, sports, lifestyle, education and opinion pages," said D'Silva.
Meanwhile, assistant district education officer for English (secondary), Al Mujani Abdul Rahman said NST's digital and print products benefited Form Six students as they kept readers abreast with current issues worldwide.
"In this day and age, students need to acquire knowledge and be aware of issues affecting them and the world
"The NST-NIE workshop is a platform that helps expose students to a variety of knowledge and information that a newspaper has, and this makes them into better citizens," said Al Mujani.