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One day workshops

I will hold one-day workshops on teaching the grammar for teachers. I will conduct the workshops on 9 December 2011 (Year 1-3 ) and 16 December 2011 (Year 4-6). The workshops will be held from 9.00 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. at the school hall of Sekolah Rendah Kebangsaan, Bukit Jelutong The fees are RM 50 per workshop (includes morning refreshments only). All cheques/payment must be made in favour Sekolah Rendah Kebangsaan, Bukit Jelutong.

2. Forum on the way to make the pass the exam with good grades Teaching and learning of English is back in the news again. The School of Education, Languages and Communications and the Centre for Professional Development and Continuing Education at Sekolah Rendah Kebangsaan, Bukit Jelutong will hold a forum to get feeback on comments made by the Deputy Prime Minister who is the Minister of Education. Among the things he mentioned was whether to have a mandatory pass for the English Language subject for primary school pupils. Of course there is still the other nagging question of whether Mathematics and Science will be continued to be taught in English. I have no desire to go into any discussion about the merits about using English as a medium of instruction for these 2 subjects. Nor do I want to fuel the fire to the rumours that are going around about that policy. However, I like to consider an option. Instead of an either or policy - teach in BM or English, why not give students, parents and teachers a choice. We now have resources in both languages. Millions of ringgit have been spent on training etc. Lets allow certain schools to teach in English and others in BM. Testing has been bilingual for a few years. In fact most teaching, I think has been bilingual despite the present policy. So teaching in either language is still viable. This is not reverting to Malay and English medium schools as all other subjects will continue to be taught in BM.

3. Rigourous English Language Teacher Training Programme Needed English language education in Malaysia is again in the focus of attention. It is a good thing that there is great concern for Malaysians to be proficient in the English language. Even as the government is considering whether mathematics and science should continue to be taught in English, the Minister of Education was reported in the local media of considering making English Literature a single paper at the primary school level. This news would have now sent alarm bells to another group of primary school teachers. There is already much concern about how the mathematics and science teachers are coping with their teaching in English! And now another surprise for primary school teachers. I strongly advocate the teaching of literature. I am glad that we have a literature component in the language paper at both the primary and secondary school levels. Teachers seem to be getting comfortable with the idea of teaching literary texts in the language classroom. However, we have not seen of any findings from research conducted by the Ministry of Education on the implementation of the literature programmes at both the primary and secondary school levels. There have been some piecemeal researches done by university academics and graduate students which seem to suggest that teachers generally feel less threatened to teach literature now. They seem to have become comfortable teaching the prescribed texts and preparing students based on the present examination format. I dread to think how they will react when the next cycle of texts is announced and should there be any changes in the examination format.

I am sceptical about the call to make literature a single subject in the primary school curriculum, as reported by a local news agency. There are so many complaints about our students being overburdened at school. Do they need yet another subject? I dont think so. The crux of our concern is the students proficiency in the English language. To help our students improve in their language ability, I think we need to look at the English language teacher and English language teaching.

What we could think of is on how to make English language teaching more effective. There is a need to look at English language teaching in both primary and secondary school levels and go to the cause of the problem. Introducing new programmes or subjects may not be the way forward. I would like to highlight some of my concerns regarding the teaching of English in Malaysia. Although it will be wrong to blame teachers as the cause of the poor standards of English, I believe they have to take the bulk of this blame. First, we need to consider the English language proficiency of the English language teachers themselves. There is no denying that we have many teachers who are competent and proficient in the English language. However, there are many other English language teachers who need to improve their standard of English. There are teachers who have neither the competence nor the confidence to teach English. Over the years to meet the need for English language teachers, we have had to lower our requirements and standards and accept people into the profession who are not equipped to teach the language. We need to work with these teachers. If we want our English language programmes to succeed, we need teacher who can speak, read and write well in English.

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