2 posts tagged “language”

When a teacher expects a good first day in school, things went the other way around. Parents have bombarded them with a lot of things, particularly the 'extra payments'. And TV3, expected to be the middleman of the issue, tries to solve the problem by asking around and coming up with their own consensus. As if they were the teachers. The simple answer to all the questions asked by the newscaster: Go to all the schools, observe, and ask around. You won't get the answers in that short period of time. Even emails don't really show the real situation.

What's happening with the education system in Malaysia is a product of on-going 'constructivism'. It keeps changing and changing that people, particularly teachers and students are suffering from it. And people, particularly parents wants it to be 'reconstructed' again. And they want it to happen so quickly they don't care whether their children are getting the best education or not.

A recap of what Ungku Aziz said just now: The problem with the system is that it keeps changing, and language plays an important role in delivering the content of education. I totally agree with his opinion. The 'nahu', or 'knowledge' of language is important in an effective education. And it needs to start from the age of 2-3. Even if we learn educational psychology, the first thing that a child learns in his early age is language, starting with the word 'mama', and the vocab expands.

And the interviewee moves on with the status of education system. But Ungku Aziz continues with the importance of language in education system. When English and Bahasa Melayu keeps rotating in the teaching of science and Maths, things get messed up and people do not have any idea what they are learning. I ask you one thing: Do you learn science for the sake of knowing the terms or how it actually works? Teachers who have been teaching science in malay has understood the subject by heart. But when the language is changed, their teaching style deteriorates.So you need to understand the language by heart before you can deliver its content.

And the interviewee moves on with the status of education system. But this time Pak Ungku simply said, "I don't have any idea about what's happening with our education system. I don't do research on it". So, simply said, you can't understand a problem unless you do a thorough research on it. And you can't get the conclusion in a short period of time. Just how many people doing research on our education system?  We only have policy makers.

So, what we should do is that we should make a thorough research on this matter. Don't always point fingers at teachers. There are those who make mistakes, but only minority of them. We still have dedicated teachers as majority. And please be consistent with the use of language. People always said that the Japanese and Chinese in China do not have to learn english but can still strive economically. Let me tell you something, you are wrong. They DO learn English, but they are proud of their own language. To them, English is important in global market as well as in science, but they can still put their own language as their priority because of their pride, and its importance in their own country. They can also deliver instruction well in their tongue. And they can learn science using both language. And why can't we?

Just finished my exam today. A lot of things had happened, but I was glad that the exam was over. I could finally get back to my part-time designing while thinking about my future. And tomorrow they were going to have a pre departure briefing.

What intrigued me was today's paper. As I went through the questions, I felt as if I was lucky enough to have studied before the exam. I may have answered wrongly in a few structural questions, but I was glad that the essay question, which carried 3/5 of the marks, was clear-cut.  I just have to pray that my grammar does not mess it up.

But as I was about to leave the room as I finished my paper, people started talking. I thought today's paper was supposed to be easy for them. I guess I was wrong.

They were talking about the last question, which was the essay question.

I couldn't understand why they said it was hard. But I heard the noises was louder than yesterday -which was supposed to be a tougher one. Then I recalled the question:

Internet is not just an asset, but also a liability in English language lesson. Discuss.

It was supposed to be a straight-forward question, but I couldn't understand why they couldn't answer the question. As I joined the conversation, I found out that the problem was simple: They could not understand the term. This problem has always occured to me whenever I attempted a question, but I never knew it would happen to my cohort mates -a majority of them. I just couldn't understand why.

They had been trying to spot the questions that would come out for today but some of them did not really came out as expected. It was a tradition for us to do that to make our life simpler. But it seemed to get tougher by the day.

But that did not really become the reason why they couldn't attempt the question. They had expected this type of questions. I did a little bit of a research, and came out with my own conclusion which most would disagree with me.

Most of them gave the excuses that the term "asset" and "liabilty" were only used by accountants and people who are involved in business. At one point I agreed with them. However, the term "asset" has always been peceived as an "advantage". They should have figured out that discussion essay requires both positive and negative aspect of a topic. So they would have interpreted the two terms as contrasting. But it happened the other way round. Some even came out with the idea that the term "liable" was the root word for "reliable". I didn't know whether it was true. It was rather confusing. Well, maybe that's what English is all about.

Then I recalled the day when we had a lecture on the advantages and the disadvantages of using the internet. The lecture was chaotic as the students were arguing that the lecturers had been giving false preach all this semester. And I took part in the arguements too. That was when we did not pay attention to what had been lectured in front as our thoughts were concentrated at rebelling the lecturers. The lecturer who was teaching at that time would have mentioned the word "asset" and "liability". We may have missed that important part.

After the exam we meet one of the lecturers who taught that subject.

She simply replied, "You should have asked the invigilators about the terms in the first place."

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Liablity is "one that acts as a disadvantage"