Shaun Cringeworthy

"Come and get it! It's a running buffet! All you can eat!"

A quickie English lesson:

Cringeworthy:

An informal adjective defined as causing feelings of acute embarrassment or distaste

Example of usage of the phrase from good ol Mr Google:

"The play's cast was excellent, but the dialogue was unforgivably cringeworthy.."

And, a totally unrelated News In Brief, PTPTN has apparently lifted its freeze on loans for the new students of Selangor’s Unisel.

Star quoted Higher Education Minister Mohamed Khaled Nordin as follows:

"It was always PTPTN's intention to test whether the state was serious about providing free education.”

"Now that the university has acknowledged the importance of the PTPTN, it is clear that they are unable to reach the goal of free education."

Note again: News in brief is totally unrelated to the above quickie English lesson.

Like Shaun of the Dead (above) and Shaun the Sheep (below).

 

Both are drop dead funny, though.

And never a cringeworthy moment to boot.

"Baaa..."

GrooGaffe aka Painful Reads

Those wishing for a painful read should look no further than this gem.

It sort of match – if not surpass – that of the Universiti Tun Hussein Onn’s which appeared way back in August 2008.

Could it be that both were written by the same people/team?

The ever affable Citizen Nades took pains (no pun intended, if you so believe) with red markings the many mistakes, but closer reading seems to show that he has held back.

Perhaps he was worried that nobody would be able to read a wholly red-lined advertorial.

It is however poetic justice, really, to parents who have voiced, and voiced and continue voicing their hopes (nay, prayers) that the government review its U-turn on the English for Math and Science policy.

Apt (s)mug shot to adorn the same page as the advertorial, methinks.

Writers share their fair amount of goofups in spelling and/or grammatical errors, hence the reason why there is another layer of editing usually being done, especially for write-ups that appear in print.

Self editing is perhaps only for appropriate for blogs.

The KDSM advertorial is therefore a curious gaffe. Was it not edited before printing?

I’ve done my fair share of advertorials during my journalism days as these give quite decent extra cash and - while we are accorded fairly greater levels of flexibility in producing the articles - the same editorial standards still applies.

Like I said: A very curious gaffe.

You don’t suppose it’s intentional, do you?

Pythagorean Understandings

My sincerest apologies to education Supremo MY.

His decision to go back to the mother tongues in teaching Maths and Science was probably the right one after all.

MY must have realized to continue would mean sending our children down the road of oblivion for both Maths and Science as well as that of mastering the English language.

MY must have read the many, many questions (and possibly notes to students) from teachers teaching the two subjects which prompted him to make a quick U-Turn of the six year old policy.

Questions like these:

“Diagram 8 shows the Pravina’s twelfth birthday. Her brother borns 3 years 6 months after Pravina borned. What is the age of her brother at 7th January 2014.

Diagram 10 shows the mass of a packet of flour. The flour is fill in three containers. First container fill in with 3.98 kg of flour. The rest of the flour in second and third container. Which of the flowing mass is for second and third container?”

How can you continue with the policy when all it does is wreck the language even more?

How can you continue when it seems that you would need to teach both teachers again for them to teach the students?

Who in heaven’s name would be teaching who then?

Citizen Nades’ reasoning was that the questions were framed in Bahasa Melayu then translated.

His words seem to echo statesman Dr M’s contentions in his blog posting: “Malays just cannot learn and speak English”.

“We should stop teaching English so that the language would not drag down the Malays in their exams. We should see better results,” he said.

A wee bit racist I would say to these, but their comments are with merits.

You just cannot answer questions you don’t understand.

(Then again, you don’t need to be THAT very well versed in English to answer the above questions and students who are good in Maths and so so in Bahasa Inggeris could answer the above quite easily.

Six years of Bahasa Inggeris should give you a rough gist, shouldn't it?(Though the second is somewhat frighteningly thick in its composition. What the hell are you really saying?)

Maths shouldn’t be about Bahasa Inggeris Grammar.

So what if the question translators get some of them mixed up?)

Let all the” budak-budak Melayu, Cina, India dan lain lain” learn things their own respective tongue.

After all we haven’t even gotten pass identifying ourselves as Malays, Chinese, Indian, Dan Lain Lain despite our 50 or so years living under one single flag.

And if these students want to improve on the Bahasa Inggeris, there are tuition classes in abundance.

(I so don’t get teachers who spend their off work hours teaching children without charging them. I mean: What gives? You can be making much moollah here.

Why can’t they be like those who allegedly teach the minimal in school so that they can charge for teaching the rest elsewhen.)

The parents of these students should be more nationalistic (nay, patriotic) and fork out good money that would help the country’s economy.

It is a cutthroat world out there and last I heard we are no Socialists.

So anyone looking to gain competitive edge in the marketplace by mastering Bahasa Inggeris had better be slogging hard for it.

If you can’t, tough.

If the rich folks can send their children overseas to do this, why can’t you sacrifice your whole month’s meal for your children’s education?

Don’t you be expecting your government to give it to you, hear.

They have bigger things to do.

Raving Loony

The Star put it as a reversal.

That’s putting the decision to do away with “the teaching of Math and Science in English” policy very mildly.

To state the decision is not political is a load of bullshit.

The subjects will now be taught in multiple languages aka mother tongues.

Why not teach them only in Bahasa Malaysia for uniformity’s sake?

At least you can say that it’s would be for the country’s unity.

The students’ future.. Right, Tan Sri… right.

Imagine then that until the reversal takes place fully, the subjects would be taught in at least four languages.

From the Star: “Beginning 2012, students in Year One and Year Four in primary schools, and Form One and Form Four in secondary schools, will learn Math and Science in Bahasa Malaysia.

The change will not affect those in Form Six and Matriculation.

The two subjects will be taught in two languages until 2014 for other students.”

I hope they will not go stark raving mad.

Presumably some move could now be done to “gradually” undo the mistake of teaching our next generations in English and close the urban and rural gap.

The question must be then: closer to which point?

With evidence pointing to the most atrocious of proficiencies in the English language, could Muhyiddin “Reversal” Yassin truly say that an additional 90 minutes a week will help alleviate this deficiency?

Here’s another bummer of a justification from the Tan Sri:

“Only 19.2% of secondary teachers and 9.96% of primary teachers were sufficiently proficient in English.”

And why, pray tell, is this an important consideration?

Are 100% of teachers supposed to teach subjects in English that the small percentage be deemed crucial?

Whose fault is it that these teachers are not proficient? The students?

Maybe I am just overly emotional on this “reversal” (love this word.)

Perhaps, but I just read the UITM sports centre letter, and still remember the University Tun Hussein Onn advert debacle, so pardon my rants.

You can only take so much of “Powderful England” jokes.

Bollocks reversal.

Ten for a moment..

Terminal Tunnel Vision Patients

Jeffrey Archer’s A Quiver Full of Arrows has this short story entitled “Chunnel Vision” which tells of a man transfixed with HIS own fixations that he failed to see anything else.

If my recollections are correct, the tale has it that he had gone on and on about a possible book he would be writing to an author friend at a hotel whilst his (soon-to-be former) girlfriend indulges in some extravagant dining exercise.

At HIS expense, of course.

Hence the title, a cheeky attribute to the medical condition in the loss of peripheral vision. You can read the story here .

My mind drifted back to (Sir) Archer’s story upon reading this particular comment from NUTP secretary-general Lok Yim Pheng:

“When you are taught a subject in a certain language for six years, you should improve in the language. There should definitely be progress; otherwise it means the teachers are not doing their jobs. We need to analyse the different groups of children's achievements. For example, how many students got Es in the subjects?”

This comment was made in the heels of a reported 4.4 per cent increase of A scorers in English and a 4.8 percent increase in overall competency (A,B and C), a 46.6 per cent of pupils (or 238,153 in figures) choosing to answer Mathematics in English and 31.1 per cent (159,234) for Science.

These figures are astounding especially compared to last year: 0.2 and 0.3 per cent respectively.

NUTP had sometime back voiced its opposition to continuing the teaching of Mathematics and Science in English in one of the mainstream newspaper, so the reaction was perhaps understandable.

Shouldn’t however the fact that more children are finding English to be something neither foreign nor incomprehensible rejoiced?

I find the NUTP’s wanting to still finding flaws in the face of such positives bewildering.

In any education system, there will be failures. Most of the time, it's the result of multiple diverse causes and not necessarily the education systems or the language used in its delivery.

Unless all those who tackled Maths and Science in English had actually scored badly, what would be a cogent reason for backtracking a policy that helped increased significantly our students’ confidence in the language?

Education Minister Hishammuddin Hussein was spot on when he was cited as saying:
“…it answered the emotional outbursts following the implementation of the policy, as if it will jeopardise the future of our children.”

There was nonetheless still a proviso:

"This does not mean that the policy was right. It also does not mean that we will not make changes.”

Can’t blame the Minister as he is, after all, a politician, and a good one always gives face.

I just hope the Minister and the Cabinet members would put in their minds the faces of these children with their newfound confidence before deciding on the issue.

(Perhaps I am the one afflicted by this ailment? After all there were some reductions in the number of A's in both subjects...)

Paradox of Choice

More choices far better than none

Things are coming to a full circle to some in India from reading International Herald Tribune’s “the paradox of 'choice' in a globalised culture” .

One sentence in the two-paged article reads: “They tell of brigades of young men shattering the windows of shops and restaurants whose signs declare their names only in English, not in the regional language Marathi.”

It is disconcerting to note some similarities in the examples quoted in the article with what is happening in our country where job opportunities and mastery (or the very least, being conversant in) the English language are invariably intertwined.

How many of out local graduates loose out when it comes to the real world due to poor command of the globally accepted business and commercial language?

With India being a well known location for outsourcing, being conversant in a language once deemed colonialists is well nigh important and a way out of poverty for many.

The article it very much open-ended and does not draw any particular conclusion, but the author seems to suggest that choice in the cut throat global scenario is not really a choice, but a necessity borne out of a need to survive.

It also spoke of early and late adopters: the former having formed a barrier to the entrant of the latter in a circle of elitist.

Back to here.

Our country had such a strong foundation to build from, where our global commercial capabilities were concerned.

Imagine it: we could have been a nation on multi-linguists. We should have had a nation of hard working populace who could speak English, Malay, Chinese, Tamil, Arabic, Dutch, Japanese and others; given our diverse lineage of races and cultures.

We could have exported our expertise to any corner of the world.

Detractor might say that the United States had a bigger melting pot and yet they did not adopt such a move. To that I say, who cares about others.

It was unfortunate that we did not embark on such a liberalized education systems those days that would have given birth to such a gifted populace much, much earlier.

A sporadic few who are multi-lingual are testament to what could have been.

Instead, more than 50 years after being allowed to decide on our own future, we are still bickering whether or not we should be using English in the teaching of Math and Science when in fact it should be a given choice in order to improve our standing in the global world.

The so-called paradox of choice becomes irrelevant when one is stuck with but a single option, isn’t it?

Bahasa Inggeris

It's the “sounds correct, sounds wrong” method .

Finally someone comes up with a name for the way that I believe many of us learned and mastered (sort of, at least) our English.

Just like any other languages, mastery comes from usage. Practice, after all, makes perfect.

I was fortunate to have been born in a family of school teachers and back in the early 1970’s, it seems that the majority (maybe, all) of the text books were in English and there is no other way to understand all the gooblegegook printed inside than to learn the language.

Developing an early love for books came quite easy for me as my grandparents (who raised me) allowed me a free rein on the many available stocks courtesy of my two aunties and one uncle who were school teachers.

There were certainly a whole lot of wonderful things within the many books, and my favorites are those on geography and history, for the simple reason that they have pictures to accompany the text.

I did not start my lessons in English by learning grammar. That comes later when I attended formal primary and secondary school, but even without it, I managed fine.

Today, our education is yet again at another crossroad: should or should we not continue teaching Math and Science in English.

To borrow a quote from a native English speaker Frank Bruno: “there are pros and cons for, and there are pros and cons against”. This is a no-brainer really, just as it is a no-brainer that if we revert back to status quo, what’s left is only Bahasa Inggeris to learn English.

Learning a subject is never an easy thing: I took of Japanese some time ago but with little in opportunities to practice the language, I’m stuck at Arigato Gozaimashu and Sayonara: just the basics and nothing more.

It would be a brave thing to allow our next generation stuck with a single avenue to use the global language in school.

The argument of rural against urban schools does not hold much water as I have seen the so-called qualities of the urban English and they are just as bad. They do get away with chatter box English though, picking up from here and there, especially the idiot box; something which does not pass muster when it comes to the actual usage in business and work.

Even as the crescendo of arguments for and against becomes louder, along comes a study by UPSI (At least it wasn’t by Universiti Tun Hussein Onn!) which found “the majority of students still find it hard to follow Mathematics and Science lessons in English”.

Probably true, as I found it difficult to learn the two subjects even in Bahasa Melayu (or is it Bahasa Malaysia?).

The truth is that these two subjects are among the toughest notwithstanding any language they are being taught in.

If not the two subjects, which ones then? Geography and history, perhaps? The text heavy based learning required from both subjects would make it an even more unlikely route to adopt.

In the end, Bahasa Inggeris would be “it”.

Back to square one.