English not the issue, students’ competence counts

I REFER to the article in The Star on June 12 titled “Let’s just stick to English” by P.
Gunasegaram. I agree with the writer on two aspects: that the authorities should not use the compulsory English idea to “barter away Science and Mathematics in English” and that “language must be used if competence is to be gained.” I have not seen any other writers in this topic mention these two ideas.

With regards to making a pass in the English paper compulsory for the SPM certificate, and this is far from a new idea, I was thinking in terms of the effects. Who will suffer most if this policy is implemented?

Most students, whatever the race, who get a string of A’s, invariably will get an A for English, or at least a good credit. You hardly come across someone who gets 9 A’s and an F in English. This I belive is true and can be verified. Also, the SPM English paper nowadays is like the Standard Six English paper of yesteryear.

Students who fail English will most probably fail or get only below average results in the other subjects.

Take the rural students. Generally, the performance of rural students is poorer than the urban students, or so it is said. Even without statistics, I am inclined to believe this.
Nevertheless, even among those from the rural areas, there is, I believe, a strong correlation between those who do well in other subjects and those who do well in English.

My point is English is not a stand-alone subject, in terms of performance by students. If you can do well in other subjects, you can do well in English. If you don’t do well in English, you don’t do well in other subjects too. I don’t have the statistics but I believe this is true.

So who will suffer if English is made compulsory? It is the weak students who do not do well in the SPM even if English is not compulsory. Will making English compulsory make any difference? The failures will still fail, and the good ones will still pass.

Will making English compulsory motivate the weak students to do well overall? Pipe-dreams, I would say.

So why make English compulsory? If they do make English compulsory, they are going to spend huge amounts of money for all sorts of gizmos and programmes. I should have asked “Who will stand to gain if English is made compulsory?”, instead of “Who will suffer?”

EX-TEACHER,Kuala Lumpur.