Good and successful English learner: one crucial attribute

I REFER to the reports “Poor English stops medical grads” (The Star, Nov 9) and “Our English needs life support” (The Star, Nov 11, click here:Malaysian English needs life support: Poor English among doctors, stops medical grads).

In the second report, Prof Datuk Dr Raymond Azman Ali, chairman of the medical deans council of public universities, was quoted as saying, “How do you expect them (medical undergraduates) to comprehend medical theses and help patients if they cannot understand them in the first place?”

Let’s face it. Malaysia’s English is in a state of decay. Something urgent must be done to address the sharp fall in the standard of English. But we have been clamouring for something to be done for the umpteenth time.

The Government has implemented a bewildering array of initiatives to rectify our English problems but all to no avail.

What’s wrong with the teaching of English?

So far, what has been reported by the news media about the initiatives to improve English among Malaysian students have mainly focused on teachers, teaching methods, and the learning environment (to a certain degree). But they have missed out one crucial attribute: the good English learner! In her seminal paper “What the Good Language Learner Can Teach Us”, published in March 1975, Joan Rubin stressed the importance of drawing from the success of accomplished language learners.

She said, “I would like to suggest that if we knew more about what the ‘successful learners’ did, we might be able to teach these strategies to poorer learners to enhance their success record.”

The paper stated that those weaker students might become aware that stronger students always have the right answer but the weaker students always fail to discover why, always fail to discover what little “tricks” stronger students have employed to find the right answer.

The little “tricks” distilled from the research on “Good Language Learner” are:

1) The good language learner is a willing and accurate guesser. He is able to infer the meaning of a text or a speech based on its context (for example, the topic, setting, or attitudes of a speaker or a writer).

2) The good language learner has a strong motivation to communicate, or to learn from a communication, no matter where he is. He is determined to do anything to make himself understood.

For example, he might use body gestures to communicate if he couldn’t pronounce a word properly. He might also deploy a circumlocution, the practice of using more words to express something, by asking, “What is the object you use to click an icon on the screen of a computer?” when he is groping for the word “mouse”.

3) The good language learner is not afraid of making mistakes when learning, writing, or speaking a second language.

4) The good language learner constantly finds patterns in the language. For example, a good English learner is aware of the various tenses appearing in a text or a speech. He understands whether a sentence signifies the past, the present, or the future.

5) The good language learner seeks every opportunity available to practise the language. For instance, a good English learner might mingle with English native speakers, travel to English-speaking countries, listen to English news, watch English movies, and speak English as much as possible everywhere.

6) The good language learner always benchmarks himself against the best or native speakers. He never ceases improving and always learns from his own mistakes.

7) The good language learner always pays attention to meaning. He pays attention to the context of the speech, the interrelationship of the participants, the rules of speaking, and the mood of the speech. He constantly finds ways to make the things he wants to remember more meaningful.

If we want to arrest the decline in English among our learners in Malaysia, it is absolutely essential that our poor English learners learn from the little “tricks” of the good language learners espoused by Rubin.

Mastering English is inevitable. As Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said recently, “Like it or not, English is a prerequisite in today’s world, and without English, Malaysians can only be ‘jaguh kampung’ and lack the ability to penetrate the international market/>.”

MR LIM Alor Setar The Star

Focus on the English learners instead of teachers

In October, there was a survey by Pemandu (Performance Management and Delivery Unit)on ‘the importance of increasing English proficiency’. And 90 percent of the 190,000 respondents of this survey say that students in Malaysia should be given a choice to take more subjects in English.

“Malaysia has lost its competitiveness due to our standards in English going down,” AirAsia founder Tony Fernandez lamented on Twitter in the month of October.

On Nov 2, 2015, the words of Nor Azian Abd Manan, the principal of SK Bukit Beruntung: “When we think about our country, the future of our country, the future of our students... I feel very sad to see that many of our students, when they have finished school, they can’t even speak in English” were splashed on the headline of a major English daily across Malaysia.

A few days ago, Edmund Lee reported that there were glaring grammatical errors and poor sentence structures in the essays of the winners in an English essay writing competition organised by a Kuching group recently.

Lately, it was reported that 1000 medical graduates have failed in their endeavors to become doctors due to their poor grasp on English. And on Nov 11, 2015, five shocking big words, ‘Our English needs life support’ were splashed on the headline of a major English daily.

Professor Dr Raymond Azman Ali, the chairperson of medical deans council of public universities, was quoted further in the report as saying, “How do you expect them(medical undergraduates) to comprehend medical theses and help patients if they cannot understand them in the first place?”

The news are chilling!

All these happenings have converged to conclude that Malaysia’s English is in a state of decay. Something urgent must be done to address the decline of the standard of English in the country.

But, we have been clamouring to arrest the deterioration of English in the country for many years.
The Malaysian government has implemented a bewildering array of initiatives to rectify our English problems, but all to no avail.

Every day, we keep hearing from one shocking news to another about the sorry state of our English.

What’s wrong with the teaching of English?

During the budget 2016 speech , our Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak said, “Given the importance of the English language to face current global competition, another two initiatives, namely the Dual Language Programme and Highly Immersive Programme will be implemented as an option at a cost RM38.5 million. In this respect, 300 schools have been identified as a pilot project.”

Could the above plans really solve the problems? I doubt it.

From Oct 19 to 21, there was an English teaching event, the International Conference on English Language teaching (ICELt) 2015, which was organised by the Faculty of Educational Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia and Majlis Amanah Rakyat (Mara).

The chief aim of the conference was on English language teaching, its theme - ‘Creative Teachers, Efficient Learners’.

During the conference, the text of Rural and Regional Development Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob’s speech, was read out by the ministry’s deputy secretary-general Rahim Abu Bakar. The minister said in his speech, “It’s not just about getting teachers to be more proficient in the language. It is about being better and being creative teachers.”
It’s a laudable objective.

In the Malaysia Education Blueprint, there is also an initiative to make SPM English a must-pass subject, although its implementation has been delayed by the ministry recently, citing inadequate teaching resources and undesirable English standard among students as main concerns.

One crucial attribute

So far, what have been reported by the news media about the initiatives to improve English among Malaysian students have focused on teachers, teaching methods, and learning environment(to a certain degree). However, they have missed about one crucial attribute: the successful English learner!

In her seminal paper, ‘What the ‘Good Language Learner’ Can Teach Us’, published in March 1975, Joan Rubin stressed the importance of drawing from the success of accomplished language learners, “ We all know of students who learn a second language in spite of the teacher, the textbook, or the classroom situation. How do these individuals achieve their success?

She stressed in the paper, “I would like to suggest that if we knew more about what the ‘successful learners’ did, we might be able to teach these strategies to poorer learners to enhance their success record.”

The paper stated that those weaker students might become aware that stronger students always have the right answer but the weaker students always fail to discover why, always fail to discover what little “tricks” stronger students have employed to find the right answer.

The little ‘tricks’ distilled from research on ‘Good Language Learner’ are:

1. The good language learner is a willing and accurate guesser. He is able to infer the meaning of a text or a speech based on its context ( For example, the topic, setting, or attitudes of a speaker or a writer).

2. The good language learner has a strong motivation to communicate, or to learn from a communication, no matter where he is. He is determined to do anything to make himself understood.

For example, he might use body gestures to communicate if he couldn’t pronounce a word properly. He might also deploy a circumlocution, the practice of using more words to express something, by asking, “What is the object you use to click an icon on the screen of a computer?” when he is groping for the word, “mouse”.

To promote the use of English among Malaysian students, language researcher Robert L Cooper has this to say, “If we want to enable the student to use English, then we must put him in situations which demand the use of English.”

3. The good language learner is not afraid of making mistakes when learning, writing, or speaking a second language.

4. The good language learner constantly finds patterns in the language. He constantly analyzes, categorises, and synthesises the myriad forms of sentences in the language.

For example, a good English learner is aware of the various tenses appearing in a text or a speech. He understands whether a sentence signifies the past, the present, or the future. He knows how to use the correct order of adjectives in a sentence: “a big red bus” instead of “a red big bus”; “a good boy” instead of “a boy good”.

5. The good language learner seeks every opportunity available to practice the language. For instance, a good English learner might mingle with English native speakers, travel to English speaking countries, listen to English news, watch English movies, and speak English as much as possible everywhere.

Joan Rubin further summed this up in the paper that the good language learner takes and creates opportunities to practice what he has learned while the poorer learner passively does what is assigned him.

6. The good language learner always benchmarks himself against the best or native speakers. He never ceases improving and always learns from his own mistakes.

7. The good language learner always pays attention to meaning. He pays attention to the context of the speech, the interrelationship of the participants, the rules of speaking, and the mood of the speech. The good language learner constantly finds ways to make the things he wants to remember more meaningful. As the famed language researcher John B Carroll says, “The more meaningful the material to be learned, the greater the facility in learning and retention.”

If we want to arrest the decline of English among our learners in Malaysia, it is absolutely essential that our poor English learners could learn from the little ‘tricks’ of the good language learners as espoused by Joan Rubin in the paper.

So, where to begin? I strongly believe that motivation is the crux of the matter.

To this, I would like to quote Gabi Schmiegel, a native German speaker, “I went into my first language class and made a promise to myself that I would speak this language without an accent. I went on to become not only fluent in English, but also Latin, French, and have just passed intermediate Arabic. My fluency and ease with English enabled me to study abroad”.

Mastering English is inevitable. As our Prime Minister Najib said recently, “Like it or not, English is a prerequisite in today’s world, and without English, Malaysians can only be ‘jaguh kampung’ and lack the ability to penetrate the international market.”

By Chong Beng Lim Malaysiakini

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Malaysian English needs life support: Poor English among doctors, stops medical grads

The Star says: Young doctors in the country are struggling with their poor command of English. They face problems communicating with patie..

Assalamualaikum: Islamisation of Malaysia

Malaysian English needs life support: Poor English among doctors, stops medical grads

 The Star says: Young doctors in the country are struggling with their poor command of English. They face problems communicating with patients and their peers. Even so called top students who make it to medical schools are falling short in their language skills. They news comes after The Star reported on Monday that weak English was the main reason some 1,000 medical graduates had ended their ambition to become doctors.

Poor English proficiency has also affected young doctors, reports The Star. – Wiki Commons pic, November 11, 2015.

Poor English proficiency has not only affected medical graduates, but undergraduates and new doctors as well, reports The Star.

Quoting the medical deans council of public universities chairman Prof Datuk Dr Raymond Azman Ali, the English daily reported that this would affect the quality of service of doctors since they have to communicate with both patients and their peers as well.

“It is not just a problem among medical undergraduates. We can detect similar problems with young doctors.

“With all due respect, it is apparent in hospitals when they do their presentations and converse with their peers and seniors. “English is a common language for medicine. Most of the time, we have to publish journals and present in English. It would be bad for us if we cannot communicate our work properly,” Dr Raymond said.

He said more than 90% of journals were published in English, and citing his own experiences when he was studying medicine in Australia's Monash University, where all cases were presented in English.

“How do you expect them to comprehend medical theses and help patients if they cannot understand them in the first place?” he was quoted as saying.

The Star said Dr Raymond pointed out many medical students have excellent results on paper, but have problems expressing their views during interviews.

“When we conduct our interviews in public universities, most of their results look good on paper. But if we ask them to explain something, they will ask us whether they can answer in Malay. When we ask again in English, they will get stuck,” he said.

The Star reported on Monday that some 1,000 medical graduates have stopped becoming doctors, with their poor command of English being a main factor.

Other factors include lack of interest in basic medical training, poor communication skills with patients and frustration over working conditions.

The English daily also quoted National Heart Institute (IJN) consultant cardiologist Dr Shaiful Azmi Yahya as expressing concern over the high drop out rate due to lack of English proficiency, noting that doctors needed good command of the language to further excel in their work.

However, he conceded that poor English skills were not confined to Malaysia, saying that other non-English speaking nationalities also face the same problem.

“There are many doctors who have ideas they want to share with the audience but when they present, their English is so bad that the audience cannot understand them.

“I went to a conference and there were Koreans and Japanese doctors who took part. When we tried to respond to their presentations, they could not understand what we had asked,” he was quoted as saying.

Dr Saiful graduated from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in 1994, and said medicine was taught in English.

“Most of our lecturers then were Malaysians, although we did have the exception of one Myanmar and one English professor.

“We used international textbooks and journals. We did have some translated books and I remember a physiology book that was in Malay.

“During study group sessions, we used Malay and English but during examinations, we would still have to answer in English,” he told The Star.

Deputy Education Minister P. Kamalanathan said ongoing efforts were being taken to further improve the usage of the English language.

“I will be organising a dialogue with all stakeholders, non-governmental organisations and relevant organisations such as the Performance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) who have been working closely with us,” he had said.

The Malaysian Insider had reported in June last year that employers were becoming increasingly dismayed by Malaysia's "generation Y" job seekers, due to their poor command of the English language and communication skills.

A survey by the Malaysian Employers Federation a few years ago found that 60% of them identified low English proficiency as the main problem with young recruits.

A similar survey conducted in September 2013 by online recruitment agency JobStreet.com found that 55% of participating senior managers and companies said poor command of the English language was the main reason for unemployment among undergraduates.

School leavers might have SPM (Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia) English grades of A and B, but could not even hold a conversation in English, MEF executive director Datuk Shamsudin Bardan told The Malaysian Insider. – November 10, 2015.

Sources: The Malaysian Insiders

Poor English among doctors - Experts: Medical graduates can’t work well without good grasp of language

PETALING JAYA: The declining state of English proficiency is rearing its head in the medical fraternity.

Medical deans council of public universities chairman Prof Datuk Dr Raymond Azman Ali expressed concern over the poor command of the language among medical undergraduates and new doctors.

“It is not just a problem among medical undergraduates. We can detect similar problems with young doctors.

“With all due respect, it is apparent in hospitals when they do their presentations and converse with their peers and seniors,” he said.

He said this would affect their services since doctors had to communicate with patients and their counterparts efficiently.

“English is a common language for medicine. Most of the time, we have to publish journals and present in English. It would be bad for us if we cannot communicate our work properly,” he added.

Dr Raymond said over 90% of the journals were published in English.

“How do you expect them to comprehend medical theses and help patients if they cannot understand them in the first place?” he asked.

Sharing his own experience when he studied medicine in Monash University, Australia, he said all his cases were presented in English.

“This definitely helped me to understand complex theories and present my papers in my final year.”

Dr Raymond said many medical students showed excellent credentials on paper but when interviewed, they had trouble expressing themselves.

“When we conduct our interviews in public universities, most of their results look good on paper. But if we ask them to explain something, they will ask us whether they can answer in Malay. When we ask again in English, they will get stuck,” he said.

On Monday, The Star reported that weak English was the main reason some 1,000 medical graduates had failed to become full-fledged doctors despite having completed a two-year housemanship in public hospitals.

National Heart Institute (IJN) consultant cardiologist Dr Shaiful Azmi Yahya expressed alarm over the high number who dropped out due to poor English.

He said medical doctors needed a good command of the language to excel in their field and it was not merely to understand medical references and textbooks.

“Doctors do travel and attend conferences in the course of their work,” he said. However, he noted that language problems were not exclusive to Malaysians as other non-English, native-speaking nationalities also faced the same hurdle.

“There are many doctors who have ideas they want to share with the audience but when they present, their English is so bad that the audience cannot understand them.

“I went to a conference and there were Koreans and Japanese doctors who took part. When we tried to respond to their presentations, they could not understand what we had asked,” he said.

The Daily Mail in Britain highlighted the case of Italian doctor Dr Alessandro Teppa, 45, who was banned from practising in Britain due to his bad English.

The report said that despite working as a urologist in Britain since 2012, Dr Teppa’s command of English was so poor that he posed “significant risks to patients”.

Dr Shaiful, who graduated from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in 1994, said he benefited from the system in UKM, where medicine was taught in English.

“Most of our lecturers then were Malaysians, although we did have the exception of one Myanmar and one English professor.

“We used international textbooks and journals. We did have some translated books and I remember a physiology book that was in Malay.

“During study group sessions, we used both Malay and English but during examinations, we would still have to answer in English,” he said.

Deputy Education Minister P. Kama­lanathan said ongoing efforts were being taken to further improve the English language.

“I will be organising a dialogue with all stakeholders, non-governmental organisations and relevant organisations such as the Perfor­mance Management and Delivery Unit (Pemandu) who have been working closely with us,” he told reporters.

BY RAHIMY RAHIM, NURBAITI HAMDAN, JOASH EE DE SILVA, andVINCENT LIAN The Star

Poor English stops medical grads - 1,000 students drop out due to poor command of the language

Medical graduates finding it hard to cope in their professional field and their inability to communicate in English is one of the reasons. - posed by models

MALACCA: Poor command of English has put paid to the ambition for some 1,000 medical graduates to become doctors despite having completed a two-year housemanship in public hospitals.

Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) Malacca chapter president Prof Dr M. Nachiappan said these trainee doctors could not cope with the pressure of continuing to be a full-fledged doctor.

“Despite having completed their housemanship last year, they are no longer keen to be doctors.

“The main reason was poor grasp of English. This is not good for the medical fraternity and does not augur well for the nation if stakeholders do not execute some plans to improve the standard of English,” he said.

Dr Nachiappan said other contributing factors were lack of interest in basic medical training, poor relationship skills with patients and frustration due to working condition. He said without proficiency in English, medical students would find it difficult to keep pace with their peers from other nations.

“There must be an urgency to improve the grasp of the language at the primary level. Otherwise, the quality of doctors will go downhill,” he said.

“There must be an urgency to improve the grasp of the language at the primary level. Otherwise, the quality of doctors will go downhill,” he said.

Dr Nachiappan, who is also the deputy dean of Melaka Manipal Medical College, said medical schools were also facing difficulties in churning quality medical graduates due to lack of exposure in English.

He said this was evident with the poor results obtained by medical students when pursuing their stu­dies in universities and medical colleges.

“The quality of our students are compromised due to their inabilities to communicate in English,” he said, adding that most reference books on medicine and lectures were delivered in English.

Earlier, he met a group of 11 Parents-Teachers Association chairmen who were unhappy that the Education Ministry had omitted their schools from the privilege of implementing the dual language programme (DLP).

They have been lobbying for teaching and learning of Science and Mathematics in English (PPSMI) policy since 2009.

The group’s spokesman Mak Chee Kin said they had been fighting hard to be part of the DLP for six years.

“It is unfair to us as some secondary schools which have objected to PPSMI are included.

“We hope our plight will be considered by the ministry. As parents, we felt English is crucial for the future of our children,” he said, adding that all three criteria – adequate English teachers, sufficient resources and consent from parents – were met.

The schools were SM St Francis, SM St David, SM Catholic, SM Notterdam, SM Yok Bin, SM Gajah Berang, Chinese High School, SM Pulau Sebang, SM Infant Jesus Convent, SM Canossa Convent and Methodist Girl School.

BY R.S.N. MURALI The Star

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