A must-read for all of us who believe in proper English and proper communication !
Imagine the dismay on that person's face when she calls me and asks me if I did King Lear in today's two-hour class, and I say,
"Hell, no, we didn't do King Lear today..."
We only had two hours ; how could we do a full act of King Lear ? Instead, we ended up doing exercises to improve our language. And man, we really needed them.
I was no better than the rest of my classmates, I had several wrongs here and there.
When asked why we had so many wrong answers for prepositions, many of us said that it was all because of the way we speak, and also because of what we were taught in school.
Truly, schools in Malaysia have lost the real focus of teaching English. What we see in the textbooks does not employ the use of other media, and it focuses on communication rather than grammar. But to communicate well, our grammar and vocabulary have to be exceptional ! I do note that some teachers go out of the way and feel the need to teach their students proper English and go beyond the textbooks. These teachers are few and far between. Most school teachers, if not all, follow the textbook entirely without adding anything into the lessons, as though whatever the textbook says is the gospel truth.
If that's the gospel truth, then I guess the reality that we're faltering through the interviews is nothing but falsehood.
I feel sad when I look at the English examination paper and see that the questions asked in Paper 1 (i.e. comprehension) are so simple. Take the example of what I got in my PMR (or my Form 3 examination) - "What is spelling bee ? A. A bee that spells...." With questions as effortless to answer as these, I'm not surprised that many people are actually getting an A for the paper when they don't deserve it. And they ultimately get an F in the interview.
No. I'm serious. Most of the "graduates" fail during interviews because of their bad grammar, very bad vocabulary, horrible subject-verb agreement (think stuff such as "I is", "they goes", "she do") and whatnot ?
I found absurd sentences like these while in class (and yes, I'm including the mistakes I made, just to give you an idea) :
"He lives over me."
(LOL !)
"He lives at me."
(Even worse !)
"What is the time on your watch ?"
(It should be "by" not "on")
"I told him in his face that he was a liar."
(Should've been "to" not "in")
"The policeman ran over the thief."
(Well, if the policeman were using a car that'd be acceptable. Not.)
And we were told in class, that if our pronunciation of "receipt" and "debt" are wrong to this very day, then we should go hang ourselves. With this kind of language, how do we even do King Lear ?
Yes, the standard of English needs to be raised over here, especially if we want to keep up with the rest of the world, and it seriously needs to be raised. Such mistakes, however tiny they seem, cannot be left alone. We're not doing this at the expense of Bahasa Malaysia, our national language - we're doing this in order to communicate competently. Not as we are now.
Having said all this, I hope it didn't induce even the slightest bit of vomit in your mouths (but if you make an attempt to speak the Queen's English, like I do, yes, it would).
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