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Declining English proficiency standards among our students has been a major concern for years and apparently we are now keen on bringing in English teachers from India to address the issue. At first I thought I had stumbled onto a satire piece, but a quick check confirmed that I was reading a valid news report from a reliable news portal.

Importing English teachers from India will not solve this problem, because it is yet another short-sighted quick-fix that superficially attempts to cure deep-rooted problems in our English education system.

Misguided teaching approach

The teaching approach is the biggest problem with our English education system. At the heart of it, our education system attempts to teach English to our students the same way it teaches all the other subjects: by drilling bits and pieces of it into their heads in an exam-oriented environment.

Hence our English classrooms continue to be defined by teacher-centric methods, especially the chalk-and-talk variety1 whereby students sit quietly and give their undivided attention without interrupting the teacher speaking in front. Drilling students by going through past-year examination questions, work sheets and exercise books remain the preferred method of teaching2.

We focus on tangible skills that we can measure in examinations. By drowning our students in grammar rules and specific language mechanics that the students are to master in classroom-specific situations, we hope that mechanically going through exercise after exercise ad infinitum will confer on our students the perfect mastery of English.

However, language learning doesn’t work that way. Our approach continues to neglect the sociocultural aspects of language learning3 and does not sufficiently expose our students to actual communicative uses of what they have learned, the ins and outs and exceptions that govern English as a tremendously tricky language.

The system presents English as a subject that can be mastered by mindless repetition of exercises like Mathematics, whereas it is actually the opposite. No one learns a language by endlessly answering grammar questions; people learn a new language by speaking it, using it, reading it, singing it, listening to it — regularly using it in real situations in which language is used.

Instead of proficient English speakers, this system produced a new breed of students and graduates who can pass examinations but have no actual competency in productively using English when they need to outside of examinations2, thereby creating illusions of proficiency derived from paper qualifications. The teaching system doesn’t work, and the ones with good or at least passable English are usually those whose families encourage the use of English, even if the English in use isn’t perfect, i.e. they learn English outside of school.

A question of mentality

In addition to the problem of how we teach English, the general attitude of most Malaysians towards English remains negative. English is viewed as a necessary evil — just another subject in school that their kids must study and get good grades in, not a second language to master as a valuable skill.

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/opinion/article/on-the-teaching-of-english