ENGLISH, HOW IMPORTANT IT IS

English is an international language, the key to success and an important tool to gain knowledge. I've been telling this to my kids since 30 years ago when I started teaching. Teaching English is an uphill task but the results of successful teaching do us proud.

I am recalling those days when I started teaching somewhere in the 80s. The old syllabus stressed on grammar and the Standard 5 English paper tested on grammar and comprehension. I recalled 91% pass for the English Paper in the Standard 5 Assessment Exam,if I am not mistaken that was in 1985. The third highest in the LMS district. It was Mr Anthony, the H.M. who called me to his office to tell me that. Those days we didn't care about headcount and documentation. That particular batch of kids are all doing fine today.

I remember Norazilah Mat Noor, TESOL graduate teaching in Perlis, Md Shahezam, Faizul Asri, Azahari, Sri Devi Kothandaram, Mahfuz, Suzilawati, Dr Taufik Hidayat and Syaiful Izham to name a few. They told me the reason they did well is because of their strong foundation in English. I remembered Azilah writing to me when she was still studying in a university in England. The other batches of pupils who studied in SK Selama were just as good. It was the 1986 ( Standard 6 ) batch that was close to me as I had followed the class for three years. So please join our Alumni my dears. We want our successful ex pupils to return to our school to motivate the young brothers and sisters to study hard and improve their English.

We all can't deny that being proficient in English surely benefits us more. I remember an ex-pupil who returned to school to search for his lost leaving certificate. This Indian guy told me he was working in a golf club when he met a Chinese towkay from Sabah who offered him a good job just because he could speak English. So he happily stopped picking golf balls and followed him to Sabah. He admitted he was quite naughty in school and the only subject he loved was English. Good for him at least he gets the reward.

Nowadays, it's so difficult to get the pupils to speak in English because they are reluctant among themselves. Even teachers speak in Malay or their own mother tongue. Honestly, the proficiency level has dropped and it is worrying us. Of course, English teachers are being blamed for not using innovative and creative methods of teaching so that pupils won't go to sleep in class.

I remember how I learnt English in SRK Convent Light Street,Georgetown, Penang. It was memorising long list of synonyms or vocabulary list, up to 100 per day. It was torturing and there was a test the next day. Those who scored below 70% had to put on a 'dunce' hat meant to make us look like fools. Of course, sometimes I had to put that on.

Those days, we all went through little punishments like sucking 'pacifiers' to make us shut up if we talked too much. I just named two types of punishment that made us realised our mistakes, our laziness and really made us embarassed and changed our attitudes. Yes another, whenever, I failed in my tests, my test book would be clipped to the back of my pinafore.

Nowadays, we even get naughty secondary schoolboys using 'vulgar' words on their English teachers. How can their teachers teach them and tell them how important English is and that they have to pass it in SPM? The students simply tune off and that is the actual heartaches the English teacher is facing however qualified she is.

Actually, what I am trying to say is time has changed. The pupils in primary school won't like to memorise long list of words and contruct sentences or even do corrections. We don't punish them too as we can't touch them or they will complain to their parents. I support the teaching of grammar the traditional way through drillings and I do mix my old method with the new one.

Teaching pupils to answer the UPSR questions takes a lot of our time. At the end of the year, the same old question is, "How many pupils in your school scored 5As ?" "How many scored As for English?" It is only the figures that matters most. Some pupils do excellently because their memory power is better but others do not. We have to think of the whole lot of them. We want them all to be able to speak, read and write well in English too. More importantly, to speak well.

Learning that the government is revamping the whole system do cheer us up. English teachers will have more time to teach the way English should be taught. That is by adding more fun learning elements such as singing, dramas, role plays, choral reading, language games etc. When it comes to forcing pupils to memorise grammar rules we can do so by fun drilling through grammar games etc. Spelling is getting worse nowadays as pupils are engaged in sending sms in distorted spelling and that caused them to spell wrongly in their written work.

Agreeing to make a pass in English compulsory is good as it will wake everyone who has been sleeping all this while thinking English is unimportant. However, what worries me and others too is that the failure rate will increase knowing that the proficiency of our secondary students is not strong. Not to mention rural students, even students in town schools are not doing well in English. Many of those English teachers who went through their education in Bahasa Malaysia and got SPM certificates instead of MCE, and those graduated from universities too are not proficient in English themselves. Well of course, there are exceptionally good ones too.

So are we ready to make English a compulsory pass? Are our English teachers really proficient enough to deliver? First, are our pupils ready for the change and open up their hearts and mind to put in extra effort to improve in English? I better leave it to the top authorities to put on their thinking caps and make the right decisions.

We as teachers are forced to attend special courses whenever some changes in the system are made. Then, the pupils will be like "guinea pigs" as we have to try the methodology on them, and record whatever findings. Until today, we are still arguing on whether to teach Science and Mathematics in English or not. No decision is made yet. And now this is talking about teaching and learning English itself.

Whatever, it is I support the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English to be carried on. The standard of English among teachers and pupils has to be improved drastically. Parents play an important role as well in bringing success. There has been too much negative talk about being less 'patriotic' and English which has bad influence to the mother tongue. If the young ones hear this and live in homes with parents of this sort of negative attitudes, then we will not dream of achieving our target, that is to see the improvement in the standard of English.

Let us not repeat the same old mistake by treating English as unimportant and changed all the subjects to be taught in Bahasa Malaysia and we are facing the results now. The product, of many Malaysians who are inproficient in English. Are we allowing this situation to continue getting worse? Well, I am only a simple English teacher doing my duty the best I can.