==> Pls visit new site at http://malaysia-today.net/ <==

When I first enrolled myself in the English stream (after four years in Sekolah Melayu), my teacher was a Singh and none of the teachers ever spoke in other languages to us except English. So, we were forced to communicate in English. After six month, I was able to communicate in English, for example;

Ibabonma: Teacher, yesterday our classmate drownded in a mining pool.
Teacher:What is drownded?
Ibabonma: Tenggelam…dead already, teacher.

Imagine our then communication skill just after six month of becoming a mat salleh! Why can’t they do it now?

report abuse

disagree 0

agree 10

There are some Malays who would not even eat food wrapped in an English newspaper. Do you expect them to learn English...More http://*********.********.com

report abuse

disagree 3

agree 6

Just because a "wise" old man threw a spanner into the education system before he abdicated, the whole country turned upside down with contortionists teaching English for the past 7 years. The whole nation is still very abuzz with this contortionist act.

Mind you, like what Ibabonma experienced, kids have no problem picking up languages. It is the adults' over-concern that brings the national education system to a halt. My kids went through this ordeal, they have no problem with 3 languages, not mentioning Maths and Science in English.

Just improve the standard of the English teachers and teach proper English, the rest of the issues will take care of themselves.

Stop the buzzes before cow comes home. Otherwise, we can classify ourselves as a monolingual nation and forget about science, in a generation to come. I have the safety vests ready for my kids to jump ship anytime.

report abuse

disagree 1

agree 8

Your advice is good BUT it comes a bit too late, lor.
After 22 years under that "Apa Nama?", the whole education
system already gone to the BN Septic, la.
Everything in BolehLand already "Tenggelam" mah.
How to save a Dead Duck now???
For your good health;
you better keep QUIET otherwise you pun kena SACK.

report abuse

disagree 1

agree 5

A M E N ! ! ! !

Finally, someone with sense.

report abuse

disagree 0

agree 4

In my opinion everyone are agree with the plan to improve English, most people do not agree with the implementation. No proper planning, not enough competence teacher...the rest is history..

report abuse

disagree 0

agree 6

SETUJU 100% but must include all educationists and all teachers. Must at pass
ENGLISH at SPM level before their next promotion!

Why about Ministers? Kalau mereka masih cakap Bahasa Melayu sahaja, what is the incentives for the Malay ultras to learn ENGLISH or agree to any policy change? After all, our current dilemma comes UMNO leaders wanting to "nationalize" others. Sarawak and Sabah has a very good foundation in English language before Malaysia until they were told to learn only Bahasa Malaysia (now called Bahasa Melayu) and given teachers who know only "broken or rotten" English.

We need better English to do well in the present globalized village especially for the Western market. We have our Mandarin speaking Chinese for the China market, our Tamil speaking Indian for the Tamil Indian market( wonder the pupils are taught Hindi in Indian schools) and our Muslim brothers for the Arab and Muslim markets. What a great advantage for Malaysia now if we have not thrown away our English.

report abuse

disagree 0

agree 3

I find this is very sad that we arguing about the usage of English here.

The idea of using English in Maths and Sciences improves the overall Malaysian's command of English IS A GOOD idea.

However, it is the poor implementation that creating problems and doubts.

Any decision made will not suit everyone, however, we should think the reason why we need to do this and the benefit we will get.

As a Chinese, I am more than happy that Malays dun learns English or become good at it. This is because I am sending my kids to tuition and make sure they master English language as this will give my kids an advantages in the future.

Looking at the reality in our country, all jobs ad requires good command of English. All high position jobs require ppls with good comman of English.

Because of Chinese like me, Mahathir cannot stand that Malays will be lacking behind.

However, I started to see a bigger future for Malaysia. Even all Chinese are good in English and get better jobs, we are lack of snergy to make Malaysia a modern economy country which will leads to a higher standard of living. We need all races to do that.

So for the first time, I agreed with Mahathir on this policy. However, we need to think of a better implementation to show result.

My suggestions are below:

1) Start to import or hire English teachers from UK/USA or Australia thru Malaysia as my second home program to train more local teachers to become English language teachers and to curb shortage of English teacher.

2) Making English a compulsory subject to pass for SPM. Same as BM. So now we need to pass both BM and English to get a SPM cert.

3) Introducing A level english for FORM 6.

4) Subjects mixed:

Bahasa Malaysia
English
Maths - in English
Add Maths - in English
Science - in English
Biology - in English
Chemistry - in English
Physics - English
History - Bahasa Malaysia
Geography - Bahasa Malaysia
Morale - Bahasa Malaysia
Islamic study - Arabic
Kemahiran Hidup - Bahasa Malaysia
Accounting - English
Literature - Bahasa Malaysia
PE - Bahasa Malaysia
Chinese language - Mandarin
Tamil language - Tamil

Then take any 10 subjects.

report abuse

disagree 3

agree 2

Just increase the level of English. Have more English periods instead of like now only 1 hour a week. What do you learn when only one hour a week? If let the children watch one hour of English movie (without subtitle) a week, they would probably learn more. Heck, they will probably start speaking like mat salleh.

report abuse

disagree 0

agree 2

She said it would take only a few months to train students who failed their UPSR English paper to a level where they could be promoted to secondary school.

If it only takes a few months to train students in English to an acceptable level, why wait until they failed then only train? What have the English teacher been doing for the 6 years, from Primary 1 to Primary 6? Why waste another year?

Do a preliminary accessment in Primary 5 and for those who failed, force them and their teacher to attend extra classes.

report abuse

disagree 0

agree 2

English is important but "metrikulasi" is even more important.We have to abolish STPM and all students go to 'metrikulasi" and all of them go to Universities.Make everyone a graduate.malaysia becomes really Malaysia boleh. Why worry about whether you know how to speak English or not when most of our ministers do not speak proprer English.

It is duit-lah more important,not English-lah my friends.

report abuse

disagree 0

agree 2

In my 2 cts worth of opinion, what we need is to have more classes of English starting at the primary school level, if we want to improve the level of English. What is the use of teaching Science and Mathematics in English if the level of English is poor, though it might help to a certain extent ? The key is to increase the numbers of teachers who are really qualified to teach English and then we can consider to start having more classes in English for all schools be it in the urban or rural areas. Let no school be diadvantaged!

report abuse

disagree 0

agree 0