JOHOR BARU: Malaysia’s tourism industry will suffer if English proficiency among tour guides is not improved.
Malaysian Tourist Guides Council president Jimmy Leong said that people from traditionally non-English speaking countries were moving ahead of Malaysia.
In fact, guides from China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan are speaking better and grammatically-correct English compared with us, he said in an interview.
"From a tourism perspective, English should be made a compulsory pass subject in the SPM," he said.
He added that the Education Ministry should revise its syllabus and teach grammar.
He also said that native English speakers could be engaged to complement the local teachers in teaching the subject, as Malaysia may not have enough teachers qualified to teach the subject.
"This is because there has been a lapse of two to three generations since our children were taught completely in English in schools," Leong explained.
"When we source for potential guides we realise that the standard of English among the candidates has dropped tremendously over the years," he said.
He added that the industry players were now forced to accept those with a lower level of proficiency.
"This is also a huge setback for the services sector in Malaysia as we may not have people who are proficient in English to handle projects involving multinational companies."
Leong said that besides tourist guides, people working in hotels and theme parks should also be able to speak good English.
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