Did you read about the study conducted by Monash University which concluded that one third of Asian students graduating from Australian Universities have such poor English skills they should have never been admitted in the first place? It was reported in an English language tabloid yesterday.
I was only 18 years old when I went to Australia for my degree in 1981. Prior to this, I was educated in the Malay medium - where everything, except English, was taught in Malay. (English was of course taught in Kelantanese! ) We were the first batch of kids in the nation to go through a full 11 years of education in Malay in totality, unlike the previous batch lucky enough to have a choice to either go to English or Malay medium school.
Studying for the matriculation in Perth at Leederville Technical College, one had to take English Literature as a subject. Yeah, it was all about Shakespeare and literature review. We had to read and discuss classic Australian novel like The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and My Brother Jack or simply classics like The Outsider by Albert Camus and act on Macbeth with its old English lingo.
I would be the first to admit, no matter how embarrassing it can be, that I had difficulty trying to read and understand those novels, and let alone be able to intelligently discuss and bisect them in class. I remember vividly how one day, the English teacher, Mr Sean, would call upon me to discuss on the indifferent attitude of Meursault in The Outsider. As the clock ticks - minutes seems like hours, the class went into silence as I kept quiet with my head bowed down in shame, not able to say anything intelligent. I couldn’t even tell him, ‘Sorry Mr Sean, but I couldn't understand the storyline at all.” That was the last time he ever asked me of anything. I just hope that Abu and Ime (Rahiman) would not remember that incident.
Well, I survived the matriculation to be able to study engineering at Monash, but I have to admit, barely. It would be too embarrassing to publish what I got for my final - for sure it was less than my age. For sure they didn’t admit me on the basis of my ‘excellence’ in English Literature.
Worst was to come. I simply could not understand a single lecture that I attended. Don’t get me wrong. I was the kind of student who would attend every lecture religiously and not the kaki ponteng type. It was one thing to try to understand the technical aspect of the lecture, it was totally another to decipher the accent of the lecturers. So my studies deteriorated rapidly, so much so I was even called to the Dean’s office and was warned that I would be kicked out if I didn’t improve in the next test. I guess I was on the Dean's Lists, eh?
First term exam didn’t help either. A check at the results board revealed my exact position in the ranking of the first year students (which include our very own best student, Rashid Mohd Nor) in the faculty – second, from the bottom, that is!
What do I do? I was heading nowhere. The subjects were on a totally different level that what we had at SPM and Matriculation level. The only decent thing to do now was to see the Malaysian Consul in Melbourne and seek her permission to pursue my studies in Malaysia where language should not be a problem for me. Next was a phone call to my sister asking her to get University Malaya’s admission forms.
By chance, I met a senior who was in his second year in electrical engineering and explained to him of my intention. Being the nice guy that he is, he took it upon himself to give me extra classes in physics, chemistry, and the engineering subjects and patiently handhold me. With the basic understanding on the subject at hand, going to the lecture hall was no longer a chore. In fact, I was beginning to enjoy momentum transfer and vibration analysis and their G’die-mate accent and no-worries attitude.
Thanks to him (one Dzaharuddin Mansor, now Dr/Prof) and his extra classes, I survived my first year engineering at Monash, which has quite a notorious drop out rate. I'm glad that I was not part of that statistic. My first year results were nothing to shout about but it was more than adequate for me to continue to second year.
I guess that was all that I need. My English was still as bad as ever, but enough to get me around talking and discussing with the lecturers and fellow students. Once I got the hang of it, I guess I breezed through the subsequent years graduating with honours in the minimum time allotted. Furthermore, in engineering, it’s more about the mathematics – the differential equations and the laplace transform. You don’t need to be a Shakespeare to understand them, may be just rocket scientist!
Another factor that helped me improved my language skills was the fact that I was practically the only Malay student in my chemical engineering class. I had no choice but to mix around with my Australian counterparts. My best friends then was an Australian (Neil Horvath) and a Singaporean (Chuan Aik), and they definitely could not speak Malay.
I don’t disagree with the finding by the don. However, you can't blame the universities. I believe it is the responsibility of the feeding school (high school) in Malaysia to ensure that students are proficient in the English language. I think it will take more than just teaching ‘English’ to our children. I think what we are doing now in teaching our science and math in English in junior high school is a step in the right direction for our children. We need to get our children to use the language in every aspect of their life and thinking, nonchalantly. Let’s not worry about the political implications and decide on what is best for the future of our children.
My elder sister, who was fortunate enough to be born a year earlier and hence went through English medium, spent her early childhood reading Enid Blyton (Famous Five, Mallory Towers etc) and of course she graduated to Mills & Boon later on in life while this writer lived on the Malay translation of ‘Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigator’. Jupiter, Pete and Bob became Jalil, Ah Meng and Gopal in Tiga Penyiasat! (Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy Misteri Mumia Berbisik.) I didn’t read Enid Blyton until much later.
Today I find The Outsider by Albert Camus fascinating and makes me ponder about life's absurdity as the young Mersault had experienced in the dusty streets and courthouse of Algiers and I am sure Cikgu Nik felt the same way about the book (I loaned her the book a couple of years ago). My Brother Jack was as engrossing as ever as I kept on visualizing life in interwar Melbourne compared to when I was there in the easy 80s.
While I worry about our children's language skill, which is deteriorating fast, I am aware too that I am not perfect myself. I hope that Cikgu Nik Faridah and Ms Joyce would not cringe if they were to read this – may be no spelling error with the advent of the word processor, but perhaps, God forbids, full of grammatical errors. They may disown me as a former student. Perhaps my predicament with the language may not be representative of all of my classmates who went through the same five years of education in that school in Kota Bharu. Definitely not for one Soraya Merican. She was perhaps exposed to some kind of radiations in the physic lab those days to be so good with the English language.
I wonder though that if one third of Asian graduates of Australian universities have such poor skills in English, what about our undergraduates in the local universities, right now? I would cringe thinking about it - unless of course if they were lucky enough to exposed to same radiation!
soraya
I agree, the standard of english among our young ones are appalling. I went through a number of hair raising ( hair pulling too!!)experience during my banking days. Btw, the only harrowing experience i had in our science lab (as far as i can recall) is when the gas tube to the bunson burner exploded & singed my eyebrows & the hair off my arms...! What a fright!
Wednesday January 31, 2007 - 03:11pm (SGT) Remove Comment
Rahma…
Aha, that explains it then!I guess that must have been at the old lab at the top of the academic building, no?The gas have been left running without igniting, or something like that.
Sunday February 4, 2007 - 03:15pm (SGT) Remove Comment
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