JOHOR BARU: The Education Ministry is planning to introduce weekly “National Language” and “English Language” days for all school streams in the country.
Education Minister Dr Maszlee Malik said on “National Language Day”, Bahasa Malaysia will be used the whole day in all national schools, including Chinese and Tamil schools, as well as private schools.
Following that, another day which will be decided later, would be allocated for the whole day usage of English.
“Thursday will be made the day to use BM while Monday or Tuesday for English, with the objective being to strengthen both languages amongst students and at the same time, we will also try to learn a third and fourth languages.
“Malaysia is a multiracial country where we need to master both our national language and English, but at the same time it is good to also learn other languages as our third and fourth languages,” he said in a speech at a reunion of former students of SK Temenggong Abdul Rahman 2 (STAR 2).
Maszlee said the mastery of languages should begin with national schools while the mastery of the third and fourth languages would be dependent on the management of the respective schools.
He said schools may pick Arabic, Mandarin or Tamil as the third and fourth languages.
“It depends on the suitability of the language to be taught. The ministry will discuss with the relevant parties to implement this in the shortest possible time.
“On top of that, graduates, especially those with Bachelor and Master’s degrees, should be posted at national schools to help the students in building character and language skills at an early stage.
“Currently, many of them prefer to teach at the secondary school level when we actually need them to strengthen the students at the primary level,” he said.