PT3 English


The first batch of students sat for PT3 in October 2014, and the high casualty of failures for the English paper drew heavy flak from both teachers and parents.

The nation is rife with teachers' lamentations that they had too little time to prepare their students for the exam. "We gave a lot of remedial lessons and mock exams," complained a colleague. "But they did not commensurate with the students' low receptivity of new knowledge." That said, over the years, little effort had been put in to equip the students with the required skills to effectively utilize the language. Unlike PMR, PT3 English stresses the mastery of various grammatical items, the mapping out of ideas, and the application of creative and critical thinking skills, which were lacking in the former. According to my observation, English had mostly been taught in a dull, insipid manner that dictated the students to memorize answers without making sense of what they had learned. PT3 unraveled the shortcomings that had long characterized our pre-2014 education system and it gave every teacher a wake up call on what role they should play in improving their students' proficiency.

A recent comment on my two cents' on OPSENG by a fellow blogger, Arthur Wee, enlightened me on MOE's determination in changing the scenario of English learning at Malaysian schools. Standing at the forefront of education, we teachers should change our mindsets and shape our lessons in such a way that they can encourage the workings of the mind, not learning by rote.




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