The decline in the proficiency of English in Malaysia has reached an alarming level. Analyze the cause and effect. In your answer, you should include suggestion to deal with this problem. English has become an international language ever since the early 20th century. This clearly shows that English has become a very important role in the world especially to our country, Malaysia. What is English? English is a West Germanic language and it is widely used all around the world. English is also the 3rd most common native language in the world after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish.
What are the functions of English? English is widely used in business, employment, education and media but not that much in Malaysia. This is mainly because teenagers nowadays in Malaysia speaks in a very unique that only exist in Malaysia. We call it ‘rojak language’. ‘Rojak language’ is a mixture of English, Mandarin Chinese, Hokkien and of course our Malaysia’s mother tongue, Malay.
What has caused the decline in the proficiency of English in Malaysia that has reached an alarming level?
First of all, the learning environment is one of the major effects that cause the decline of proficiency of English in Malaysia. At home, most parents does not practice English at home when they are nurturing their children instead of using ‘rojak language’ when communicating with their children. Besides that, teacher as the English ambassador in school, they do not speak proper English during English lesson.
In addition to that, some of the teachers even speak Hokkien or Mandarin Chinese during English lesson. Besides that, peers are also one of the factors that cause the decline of proficiency of English in Malaysia. That is because, most of the teenagers dare not communicate with their friends using English unless they speaks fluent English because they are afraid that their peers would either laugh or even isolate them when they could not speak fluent English. In conclusion to this, they would only speak English when they are forced to do so.
Next, government is also one of the causes of this issue. Nowadays, in school, all students are exam oriented. They study only to get good result in exam but not for their own knowledge. In return they only study English because it is a subject that they must study in school.
Writing English essays has become a part of their obligation to teacher. In Malaysia, only a few subjects are taught in English such as Mathematics, Science, Additional Mathematics and the three sciences subject that is Biology, Chemistry and Physics. But all that is going to change, as the government wants all this subjects to be taught in Malay language once again. This obviously show that our government care about Malay language more than any other languages.
With the decline in the proficiency of English in Malaysia, it would have a big effect to our country, Malaysia in many ways. One of the major effects is that the development of our country will be affected because the young teenagers of today as the future leaders of tomorrow in our country do not speak proper and fluent would make people of our country to lose their faith in them.
Besides that, the economy of our country will also be affected. This is because the foreign will also lose their faith in our country, Malaysia just because we could not speak proper English. Let’s put it this way, would you travel to a foreign country where you do not speak their language and they do not speak your language as well. Then you expect to communicate with them in English but yet they also cannot speak proper English then you will have a very hard time communicating with them.
Other than all that, it would also affect the future of the students as they leave schools and move into the working society. When the students cannot read, speak, listen and communicate in English with others will not do well in their future English examination. Then after their high school graduation, most of them will not able to proceed to further study in college or even matriculation because all the subjects that they are going to study majority are in English. With that, it will cause them their job opportunities in the future and lose out to all those that excel in English. Nowadays, the minimum requirement of employment in most of the company is to know how to read, listen and speak English.
To overcome this problem, our government has to increase the hours of the English lesson so that students have more time to study English language. As for the teachers, they should be trained to speak fluent English and emphasize to speak English when English lesson is being carried out. They should not use other language than English to educate their students.
Teacher can also have more public speaking during English lesson. This can give students more chances to practice their English and to ensure that they can speak fluent English by the time they graduate from high school. Other than all this, government should also make English as a compulsory subject to score in all exams as well as matriculation.
Enough of talking about the roles of governments and teachers in improving the standards of English in Malaysia. As a parents, they also play a very important role in improving the standard of English. They should speak or instill English to their children at home since they are small. They should also motivate their children to take part in all those campaign or talk that are about English.
During the weekends, parents can bring their children out to book store to buy books that will help to improve their English. But that does not mean only buy workbook but do not ever forget that even novels or story books will do a big part in enhancing the vocabulary of the children. Parents should also train their children not to be too exam oriented but always enjoy their time learning because knowledge is important but the process of growing up happily is even more important.
In conclusion, English is a very important language that our Malaysian should improve on immediately. This is to ensure that the image of our country is protected. If Malaysian continues to neglect this issue, the foreigners will never put faith into our country anymore and conclude that Malaysia’s education standard is far below expectation. There will be no improvement to our Malaysia’s education until the suggestion above is being considered.
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