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.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Why the need to go English
THIS issue of teaching Science and Mathematics in English has been discussed, debated, demonstrated against, and aired for and against in letters to the press that we seem to have worked ourselves to near-frenzy. Let us calm down and consider what is at stake.
We Malaysians had a strong foundation in the English language until the mid-1970s when the medium of instruction was switched from English to Bahasa Malaysia.
Thirty years after that change, which was made under Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the then Minister of Education, the general level of English proficiency and, arguably, the standard of education, declined alarmingly. The thought of re-introducing English-medium schools is now finding growing appeal.
In 2003, a year before he stepped down as the PM, Dr Mahathir partly reversed his action of 30 years ago by introducing PPSMI , starting with Standard One in 2003.
There has always been opposition to PPSMI from certain quarters. The reasons include that English is a colonial baggage, and that a person with an English-language education is not patriotic or nationalistic.
Our Tunku Abdul Rahman and all our other Prime Ministers and world leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Nelson Mandela were patriotic despite their having been wholly or largely English-educated.
It was also argued that Bahasa Malaysia will be marginalised. Most continental Europeans learn English in school to a high level of proficiency, yet they remain Dutch, Danes, Swedes or Germans in language and culture.
The opposition to the English language does not open us Malaysians to an increasingly globalised word. Surely an insular stance is no strategy for producing towering Malays and Malaysians!
The opposition has been directed against the English language in general, but we are talking about the use of English in the teaching of Science and Mathematics, not in the teaching of all subjects.
Without a competence in English for Science and Mathematicss, we would have to use translations.But translations are a poor alternative as they are not always good or accurate and they need people who are good at both English and Malay, on top of being knowledgeable in their field and there are few such people.
Scientists and mathematicians of note would prefer to make a name for themselves in their field rather than in doing translations. And good translations will always be late in becoming available.
Has the experiment come full cycle? Under PPSMI, students beginning with Standard One in 2003 would sit for the SPM examination in 2013. But now, midway through the programme, the policy is being re-examined.
We have not produced even one cohort of students who had studied Science and Maths wholly in English and the performance data for such cohort will be available only after the SPM examination in 2013.
Even then, we shall have only one PPSMI cohort to compare against the many previous cohorts from the fully Bahasa Malaysia stream. Comparing a single variate (performance data in this case) against a sample of variates is not a good basis for comparison. Then again, with one variate from which to draw any inference, we cannot comment on a trend whether there is a decline or improvement in performance.
The experiment has not come through one cycle. It should go through a few more cycles to provide sufficient data for a statistical analysis. Changing the PPSMI policy will produce only confused students for those caught midway.
The situation is not a move to marginalise Bahasa Malaysia but rather a strategy to provide our students with the best tool, that is English, to learn Science and Mathematics. Without this tool, our students will largely have to make do with translations, with their inherent shortcomings.
Our future generations may not be able to walk alongside the Science and Maths bigwigs on the world stage, they will merely trail behind. They will forever have to make the effort to catch up.
LIM CHIN LAM,Penang.
We Malaysians had a strong foundation in the English language until the mid-1970s when the medium of instruction was switched from English to Bahasa Malaysia.
Thirty years after that change, which was made under Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the then Minister of Education, the general level of English proficiency and, arguably, the standard of education, declined alarmingly. The thought of re-introducing English-medium schools is now finding growing appeal.
In 2003, a year before he stepped down as the PM, Dr Mahathir partly reversed his action of 30 years ago by introducing PPSMI , starting with Standard One in 2003.
There has always been opposition to PPSMI from certain quarters. The reasons include that English is a colonial baggage, and that a person with an English-language education is not patriotic or nationalistic.
Our Tunku Abdul Rahman and all our other Prime Ministers and world leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Nelson Mandela were patriotic despite their having been wholly or largely English-educated.
It was also argued that Bahasa Malaysia will be marginalised. Most continental Europeans learn English in school to a high level of proficiency, yet they remain Dutch, Danes, Swedes or Germans in language and culture.
The opposition to the English language does not open us Malaysians to an increasingly globalised word. Surely an insular stance is no strategy for producing towering Malays and Malaysians!
The opposition has been directed against the English language in general, but we are talking about the use of English in the teaching of Science and Mathematics, not in the teaching of all subjects.
Without a competence in English for Science and Mathematicss, we would have to use translations.But translations are a poor alternative as they are not always good or accurate and they need people who are good at both English and Malay, on top of being knowledgeable in their field and there are few such people.
Scientists and mathematicians of note would prefer to make a name for themselves in their field rather than in doing translations. And good translations will always be late in becoming available.
Has the experiment come full cycle? Under PPSMI, students beginning with Standard One in 2003 would sit for the SPM examination in 2013. But now, midway through the programme, the policy is being re-examined.
We have not produced even one cohort of students who had studied Science and Maths wholly in English and the performance data for such cohort will be available only after the SPM examination in 2013.
Even then, we shall have only one PPSMI cohort to compare against the many previous cohorts from the fully Bahasa Malaysia stream. Comparing a single variate (performance data in this case) against a sample of variates is not a good basis for comparison. Then again, with one variate from which to draw any inference, we cannot comment on a trend whether there is a decline or improvement in performance.
The experiment has not come through one cycle. It should go through a few more cycles to provide sufficient data for a statistical analysis. Changing the PPSMI policy will produce only confused students for those caught midway.
The situation is not a move to marginalise Bahasa Malaysia but rather a strategy to provide our students with the best tool, that is English, to learn Science and Mathematics. Without this tool, our students will largely have to make do with translations, with their inherent shortcomings.
Our future generations may not be able to walk alongside the Science and Maths bigwigs on the world stage, they will merely trail behind. They will forever have to make the effort to catch up.
LIM CHIN LAM,Penang.
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