blog-thots

On the teaching of English

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 00:59:50 +0100

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

to come in handy - to be useful

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 00:34:51 +0100

I'll put these bottles in the cupboard - they might come in handy some day.

WHAT IS AN IDIOM?

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 00:23:09 +0100

What is an idiom? An idiom is a phrase where the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words.

Learning English idioms should be a part of any decent english course. It's almost impossible to guess the meaning of an idiom, you have to learn it by heart like english grammar or english vocabulary.

STATUS UPDATE

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 02:02:06 +0100

It has been quite sometime since I last logged in.

The reason... Have been conducting classes at City College of Business Management, a college in Pudu (near Tung Shin Hospital, for 3 sometimes 4 days a week. Then, got a contract to conduct classes for adults in USJ, and a brief stint for Form 5 students in Taman Sri Gombak.

Right now, I am in the midst of conducting classes for half a dozen Saudi nationals at the premises of Malaysia University Science and Technology (MUST) in Kelana Jaya...

WHY BILINGUALS ARE SMARTER...

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:19:32 +0100

SPEAKING two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century. Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development.

They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other. But this interference, researchers are finding out, isn’t so much a handicap as a blessing in disguise. It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles.

Bilinguals, for instance, seem to be more adept than monolinguals at solving certain kinds of mental puzzles. In a 2004 study by the psychologists Ellen Bialystok and Michelle Martin-Rhee, bilingual and monolingual preschoolers were asked to sort blue circles and red squares presented on a computer screen into two digital bins — one marked with a blue square and the other marked with a red circle.

In the first task, the children had to sort the shapes by color, placing blue circles in the bin marked with the blue square and red squares in the bin marked with the red circle. Both groups did this with comparable ease. Next, the children were asked to sort by shape, which was more challenging because it required placing the images in a bin marked with a conflicting color. The bilinguals were quicker at performing this task.

The collective evidence from a number of such studies suggests that the bilingual experience improves the brain’s so-called executive function — a command system that directs the attention processes that we use for planning, solving problems and performing various other mentally demanding tasks. These processes include ignoring distractions to stay focused, switching attention willfully from one thing to another and holding information in mind — like remembering a sequence of directions while driving.

Why does the tussle between two simultaneously active language systems improve these aspects of cognition? Until recently, researchers thought the bilingual advantage stemmed primarily from an ability for inhibition that was honed by the exercise of suppressing one language system: this suppression, it was thought, would help train the bilingual mind to ignore distractions in other contexts. But that explanation increasingly appears to be inadequate, since studies have shown that bilinguals perform better than monolinguals even at tasks that do not require inhibition, like threading a line through an ascending series of numbers scattered randomly on a page.

To read more, click here.

TEACHING YOUR TONGUE TO SPEAK ENGLISH

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:38:14 +0100

Speech is controlled in your mind by feedback from your hearing and mouth position as much as it is from your memory. If you want to speak fluent English, it is just as important to retrain your tongue as it is to train your memory.

To be effective, however, you must retrain your mind, tongue, and hearing at the same time because they must work together when you speak English.

ENGLISH IS A CRAZY LANGUAGE...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:52:06 +0100

English is the most widely spoken language in the history of our planet, used in some way by at least one out of every seven human beings around the globe. Half of the world's books are written in English, and the majority of international telephone calls are made in English. Sixty percent of the world's radio programmes are beamed in English, and more than seventy percent of international mail is written and addressed in English. Eighty percent of all computer texts, including all web sites, are stored in English.

English has acquired the largest vocabulary of all the world's languages, perhaps as many as two million words, and has generated one of the noblest bodies of literature in the annals of the human race. Nonetheless, it is now time to face the fact that English is a crazy language -- the most loopy and wiggy of all tongues.

In what other language do people drive in a parkway and park in a driveway?
In what other language do people play at a recital and recite at a play?
Why does night fall but never break and day break but never fall?
Why is it that when we transport something by car, it's called a shipment, but when we transport something by ship, it's called cargo?
Why does a man get a hernia and a woman a hysterectomy?
Why do we pack suits in a garment bag and garments in a suitcase?
Why do privates eat in the general mess and generals eat in the private mess?
Why do we call it newsprint when it contains no printing but when we put print on it, we call it a newspaper?
Why are people who ride motorcycles called bikers and people who ride bikes called cyclists?
Why -- in our crazy language -- can your nose run and your feet smell?

Language is like the air we breathe. It's invisible, inescapable, indispensable, and we take it for granted. But, when we take the time to step back and listen to the sounds that escape from the holes in people's faces and to explore the paradoxes and vagaries of English, we find that hot dogs can be cold, darkrooms can be lit, homework can be done in school, nightmares can take place in broad daylight while morning sickness and daydreaming can take place at night, tomboys are girls and midwives can be men, hours -- especially happy hours and rush hours -- often last longer than sixty minutes, quicksand works very slowly, boxing rings are square, silverware and glasses can be made of plastic and tablecloths of paper, most telephones are dialed by being punched (or pushed?), and most bathrooms don't have any baths in them. In fact, a dog can go to the bathroom under a tree -- no bath, no room; it's still going to the bathroom. And doesn't it seem a little bizarre that we go to the bathroom in order to go to the bathroom?

THE BEST DEAL IN TOWN...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:24:38 +0100

We've done our research around the Klang Valley...

And no where in the city of Kuala Lumpur/Petaling Jaya can you get this deal (for Tourism or Business Diploma) - this much value and this price! Contact us for more details...

THE THREE ADVANTAGES OF KNOWING ENGLISH

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:28:16 +0100

There are many advantages to being a fluent English speaker. First, you can meet and converse with people from different countries. English has become a common language in the world. Even if you meet a South American or a European person, you might communicate with each other in English.

Second, do you know that about 85% of the information on the Internet is in English? That's right. A person who cannot use English is very limited in the computer age. That fact alone might be enough to motivate you! Third, many common jobs depend on some level of English ability. Computer programmers, business people, and even some musicians have one thing in common: they need English at work.

HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR ENGLISH

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:03:25 +0100

Learning English is a journey. Don’t be in too much of a hurry. You’re on a long journey and there’ll be delays and frustrations along the way. It happens to all of us.

Before you can improve your English, you need to have at least some basic understanding of what you are doing.

For a start-up learner, don’t make it too hard by doing everything by yourself. Join some English classes. Self Improvement is one of the ways to improve your English

For learners who have got some fundamentals, try to improve the 4 most important skills: listening, reading, writing and speaking.

However. don’t focus on only one or two! Try to spread the time and share it logically among the 4 skills.