OpsEnglish

Can you hone your speaking skills without reading or writing? I rely on extensive reading to give me the required skills to speak in English, but the Ministry of Education said that it was not the right way to learn how to speak. To them, speaking should come naturally from the students. In other words, the teachers should provide their students a good environment to generate the language. "Prompt the students to speak without having them read or write anything in the first five months of the year," said a master teacher. "When the period is over, expose them to speaking and writing in English." However, can every Malaysian teacher give their students a good stimulus for speaking? The ministry does not provide any listening tapes to schools and they might not even be in the pipeline. Plus, not all the teachers speak letter perfect English. A lot of them even failed in the recently held proficiency test. Why is the Ministry so confident that it will be a success? Why doesn't the Ministry follow Singapore's lead, which produces many competent speakers of English?

Comments

suituapui said…
I would agree with the MOE! You do not learn to speak better through reading but it will help you to increase your vocabulary...which you will forget if you do not use regularly. Everyone must listen and speak to be able to speak well/better.

Many score A's in the exams...but they cannot utter a word or they speak so badly that they cannot secure a scholarship despite their string of distinctions.

One main reason why Singaporeans speak better is that everything around them is English. Such exposure is crucial and they speak the language everywhere, not like Sibu - Mandarin only (The dialects are slowly dying out).Their standard also dropped in the 80's with the government's politically-motivated Speak Mandarin campaign, so much so that they had to revise the syllabus - from PETS to PEP.
January 3, 2015 at 1:45 PM
sintaicharles said…
Thanks for giving me food for thought.
January 3, 2015 at 4:07 PM
Umi Kalthum Ngah said…
Hello,

Thank you for dropping by...it was nice of you...

I love reading too..

Writing? My humble opinion....just like any other skills...we need to use and learn to use tools...in order to improve...

:-)

January 3, 2015 at 4:52 PM
William said…
Growing up in a town in Sibu, we have little exposure to English. It is not a daily spoken or reading language. With just an hour a day in English class and even with one hundred percent utilization, it provides very little confident in the usage of the language. It make worst by confusing Malay pronunciation. Malaysians English is hardly understood by native English speakers even they score perfectly in Malaysia. For example
IKEA is pronounce like ikan. It shall be 'i' 'kea' like how you pronounce idea.
January 24, 2015 at 3:11 PM
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