Prodigy

PROMUDA PRESS RELEASE  

YOUNG PROFESSIONALS OF PROMUDA'S VIEW ON THE ENGLISH MEDIUM SCHOOLS DEBATE – RETHINK THE TEACHING OF SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS IN ENGLISH

Members of the Young Professionals Chamber of Malaysia (PROMUDA) call on the Government to carefully re-think the idea of reinstating English medium schools in Malaysia or the teaching of Science and Mathematics in English, as proposed by several quarters.  

However, PROMUDA members wholeheartedly agree that urgent steps need to be taken to check the decline of English proficiency amongst students, especially from those deprived of an English-speaking environment attributable to an almost racially homogenous and monolingual environment in their schools or communities.  

This was the broad consensus derived from a random survey organized by PROMUDA through a lively debate and discussion amongst 50 young professionals from within PROMUDA’s over 1,000 members, via the Internet and group discussions held by PROMUDA’s Select Committee for Education and Youth Development.  

The free newsgroup’s 1,000 over members whom represent young professionals from a broad range of disciplines including financial, legal, technology, media and medical sectors, in addition to those in the private education sector, were able to participate in a lively debate to voice their views and concerns over the issue.  

The survey cum discussion originally started as a concerned response from PROMUDA newsgroup members on the Government’s plan, grew to a serious discussion amongst its members. Key issues were identified and concerns were documented in the process.  

KEY PROBLEMS IDENTIFIED  

• There is currently an insufficient number of teachers that have the ability and qualifications to teach the Science and Mathematics subjects in the English medium. Further training of these teachers in the medium either through short courses or further university education  is advocated.

• The teaching of Science and Mathematics in English might actually repel the interest of students who are not proficient in the English medium and create an unintentional backlash to the national agenda of creating more science and technology-based graduates.

RECOMMENDATIONS  

• PROMUDA members propose the inception of an English syllabus with contents of Science and Mathematics contained within the teaching texts and materials, as a sub-topic. For example, classroom comprehension on Geometry and Human Biology sub-topics learnt in English, could be tested with questions posed and answered in English, therefore progressively eliminating the students’ aversion to referring to educational materials in English.  

Review the teaching methodology

Raising of the marking standard

•  The marking standard for English papers within the national and university exams must also be raised, to ensure that a relatively high standard of proficiency is achieved amongst our students.

Introducing English as a medium of instruction in universities

• Members of PROMUDA also propose the changing of the medium of instruction in universities to English. This ‘top-down scenario was thought to be better because university students are made up of the ‘cream’ of students in Malaysia and will better cope with the changes in addition to the fact that the teaching ‘logistics’ will be not too strenuous to achieve.

Raising of salaries

• Raising the salaries of teachers to attract better quality graduates to teach English, delaying the age of retirement for English teachers/ tapping on the retiree workforce to become English teachers, and to create a more conducive environment where English could be used more widely, even in rural schools and communities. 

Boosting translation efforts for the equitable disbursement of knowledge

• To support and step up efforts to create a massive ‘national translation machinery’ in order that more books of knowledge in English, (as well as other ‘knowledge rich” languages such as Japanese, German, Arabic, etc.) could be translated into Bahasa Melayu.

• This is to ensure an equitable dispersal of knowledge to all Malaysians, especially, the underprivileged and those only proficient in Bahasa Melayu, despite their English proficiency barrier.  These efforts would ensure that the rest of Malaysians, not just Malaysians who are English proficient, would be able to benefit from the expansion of knowledge in the English-speaking world. 

• As an example, Finland is a model of a country which has been successful in implementing its translation machinery and where its national language has been sustained as a medium of instruction of knowledge, despite having a far smaller population compared to the population in Malaysia .  

Creating a reading and knowledge loving culture through affordable pricing

• To ensure that there is a sufficiently large market for books translated into Bahasa Melayu, PROMUDA members believe that a ‘reading and knowledge-loving culture’ must be entrenched within Malaysians. Translated books must also be affordably priced and the latest books in the market must be translated relatively quickly, to ensure that Bahasa Melayu can continue to be at the forefront of knowledge expansion.

Use of English Literature to boost English language proficiency

• The government efforts to introduce English literature as a compulsory subject in schools is commended as this will increase the love of reading together with improving their writing and conversational skills.

On the issue of 94% of all unemployed graduates being Malay graduates, PROMUDA members believe that the issue is not entirely due to the low level of English proficiency amongst Malay students, but possibly due to graduates majoring in courses with low employment demand and their employers being unwilling to train them. To avoid the recurrence of the latter problem in the future, PROMUDA members advocate that a ceiling be set on the number of students entering courses that do not have a high foreseeable employment demand.  

However there are also many PROMUDA members who disagree with this statement and are of the opinion that the government and the private sector should be more open minded to people who are applying for jobs unrelated to their degree subjects.  Graduates should be assessed based on their intellectual and leadership capability as practiced in most developed countries. This policy also helps to create diversity and creativity by allowing people of different disciplines work in any single organisation. This difference in mindset allows for flexibility is a quality that is highly valued by employers.  

Mastery of at least another ‘knowledge rich’ tongue in other than Bahasa Malaysia for instance, Mandarin, Japanese, German and others.will also add to the employment prospects of the Malaysian graduate and enable them to reach beyond their ethnic and local markets.  

Members of PROMUDA are united in the view that the ideal Malaysian graduate is a graduate who is highly proficient in both Bahasa Melayu and English (and at least another ‘knowledge rich’ language) and supports the effort of knowledge expansion in all languages known to them, for the benefit of all Malaysians.