NOVEMBER 17 ― Before I commence my rant, I must confess my privilege. I was very fortunate indeed that I was raised by my grandfather, an Anglophile if there ever was one.
He ensured that I spoke English as a first language from the start. He provided me with years of Reader’s Digest and Time magazine at home.
He bought me books by Enid Blyton and would ask me about what I had read. He would berate me for just reading comic strips and the sports section from the three English dailies available at home.
He was from a time when rhetoric was taught as part of a grammar school education and hence understood its value. So yes, I had the privilege of knowing English well and this gift of language from my grandfather is the gift that truly keeps on giving.
This ex-colonial advantage was something we all had but dropped around 40 years ago. Why? Because we believed that Bahasa Melayu should be our national medium. It was the language of the majority after all.
I personally considered this move to be very short-sighted. We can see how, since then, the level of English mastery has dropped significantly.
Every week or so, there would be some lampooning of Malaysian English, including material from government websites and official tweets. The derisive laughter from the global audience can be rather embarrassing.
The latest incident involves the SPM English Language paper. The question approximately read, “If you could live in another part of Malaysia, where would you live? Explain your reasons.” Seems quite straightforward to me.
The qualifier “of Malaysia” is not some convoluted twist like the end of a thriller. This question can easily be the topic of any casual conversation one may have with friends at the local mamak.
Yet a “concerned parent” wrote in claiming that many students were apparently tripped up by this Shakespearean bit of literature (I’m being sarcastic here). I was utterly flabbergasted by this.
How is this even possible? One thing we should be clear on though: This is not only a matter of language but also intelligence itself.
By intelligence, I am not speaking pejoratively. Intelligence in this context is about the ability to process information. One’s intelligence is not merely something one is born with. It is a trainable skill and includes comprehension.
This is indeed the problem with our situation ― we are approaching this problem as a problem of English when in fact it is a holistic one.
We need to think about how we learn language as children. We do not treat our children as if they were foreigners in an ESL class! Imagine making them learn the finer points of grammar before allowing them to express themselves in English! No, it does not work like that at all.
Rather, we show them the world. We point to things, connect them to words. We do not say to them,”This is a car. It was made by Ford. It has a number of cylinders” and so on. We simply start with “car.”
As the child’s experience grows, his language skill also grows till he is able to express himself first in simple terms, then slowly evolving into a grammatically sound sentence. It is a very organic experience.
If you agree with the above hypothesis, then you already see how learning language cannot be divorced from learning about the world. Hence we need to stop worrying so much about the finer points of grammar and semantics and start taking language education as it's meant to be ― learning about the world.
Make it fun and exciting as it would be to a child and our problem would soon be solved.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
