English Exercise 7 [Javascript Needed]

This is quite a good site. It has been quite sometime since I last posted an exercise for you so here it is at last. This exercise is for intermediate and advanced user preferably.

Click here to access – English Exercise

Thanks for the support people. This site [my site and not the exercise] has reached 300 mark sooner than I expected. It’s a pleasure to continue this site for you guys.

David Hng

The Teachers Will Be Tested!!

By M. KRISHNAMOORTHY

KUALA LUMPUR: Science and Mathematics teachers may soon find themselves going back to school to brush up on their English.

Starting next month, the Education Ministry will be testing the thousands of teachers concerned in stages to see if they can teach the two crucial subjects competently in English.

Teacher training division director Wan Mustama Wan Abdul Hayat said the test was being conducted to establish their proficiency, to ensure that students were well taught.

”If they do not perform well, they will be required to attend courses in English,” he said in an interview.

According to him, the one-off evaluation is aimed at improving their communication skills and ensuring that they have a good command of the language in all areas, including vocabulary and pronunciation.

“We want them to attain a certain level of competency in teaching the subjects,” he added.

The test will have a written component, an assessment of listening skills and multiple-choice answers for the grammar section.

It is understood that testing will start next month in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Kelantan, Kedah and Terengganu, and will initially involve teachers from selected primary and secondary schools.

However, all teachers – estimated to number around 60,000 – will be tested eventually.

The teaching of the two subjects in English was introduced in Year One, Form One and Lower Six in 2003.

Since then, many parents have voiced concerns over the quality of teaching, including in the media.

Their children, they said, were unable to follow the lessons properly as the teachers were less than proficient in English.

The National Union of the Teaching Profession has expressed reservations over the new move.

Secretary-general Lok Yim Pheng said conducting the test for so many teachers and then holding English courses for those who were less proficient meant that the benefits would take a long time to reach students.

Instead, she said, the ministry should organise ongoing courses.

“Testing alone cannot determine if the teacher is proficient in the English language and has communication skills,” she said.

The ministry, she added, should also set up an online reference system to encourage teachers to take the initiative to check on pronunciation and other areas when in doubt.

David Hng

Malaysians Urge To Work On Their English

On The Beat
By WONG CHUN WAI

The Star Online

We need to raise the standard of the English Language among our young people and even teachers if we want to compete effectively in the global market.

IT has reached a critical point. It is bad enough that one whole generation of Malaysian youngsters cannot speak and write English proficiently; it is worse when teachers and lecturers are just as atrocious in the language.

And while our political leaders drag their feet over the problem, fearful of earning the wrath of so-called nationalists, another generation of Malaysians will suffer.

Just ask around and you will find that a number of our politicians have sent their children to international schools or overseas, even at secondary school level.

Don’t they have faith in their own education system? Or they, too, think we have lost the quality.

Something isn’t right but we are not willing to talk about it. The rot didn’t begin recently but more than 20 years ago.

We did nothing to stop it. Instead, we let it continue while we deceived ourselves with the objective of turning Malaysia into an educational centre of excellence.

So we talked about building world-class educational facilities without enough input on the contents.

Last month, Higher Education Minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed revealed that many lecturers in public universities lacked proficiency in the English language.

He said preliminary findings of a recent ministry study found that the level of command of the language among students and lecturers had to be improved to produce graduates capable of meeting the challenges of a highly competitive global environment.

Basically, Mustapa is saying what most of us already know – many of our students do not have a strong foundation in English grammar. Without knowing when to use past or present tense, how can our students be proficient in English?

We have compromised our standards so much that we now find some students who scored a distinction in the language in public examinations are in reality of average level.

Not many of our politicians and educationists are prepared to admit this but employers often come across graduates who are unable to draft a simple job application letter.

First impressions matter most to employers, especially in the private sector. If school-leavers are shoddy, they are unlikely to grab the attention of job interviewers.

Mustapa has suggested intensive refresher courses in English for lecturers. It is worth a try but those of us who studied English during the days of the LCE and MCE know that one cannot learn the language overnight.

A minimum of 11 years of studying proper usage of English – and a pass in the subject was compulsory – was how one learned to speak and write English correctly.

It was a time when a top student in LCE scored only 5A’s. Failing Bahasa Malaysia, English or Mathematics meant having to re-sit the exam.

Today, no student fails in an examination. Except for Bahasa Malaysia, there is no fear of flopping other subjects.

Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad decided to use English to teach Mathematics and Science during his final years as prime minister. He knew the level of English had gone down the drain.

The move came too late. Unless we teach English seriously, using the language for these two subjects will not help much. Maths and Science are about remembering formulas, not grammar.

It is strange to hear Universiti Malaya Vice-Chancellor Datuk Rafiah Salim reportedly saying that the lack of fluency in English among lecturers was not a major problem.

However, she acknowledged that steps to improve the standard of English among lecturers “is not to give English supremacy” but because “Malaysia is a trading nation and needs to use this global language”.

We should have gone past that juncture years ago. We should stop worrying about whether Bahasa Malaysia would lose its status as the national language because it won’t.

In fact, we have come to the point where learning English alone is no longer enough because the Chinese language and Arabic have also become useful. While many of us are still struggling over the teaching of English, others have gone ahead to pick up languages with economic value.

If our teachers and lecturers continue to have a poor grasp of English, we should perhaps hire teachers from India and South Africa.

David Hng

Support Grows As Time Passes To Make English Official

By Eric Pfeiffer
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 22, 2007

The push to make English the nation’s official language is building momentum, with a congressional bill on the horizon and seven states pushing legislation to make English the official language or to strengthen laws already in place.

“There’s been such strong support,” said Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican. “And it’s gaining momentum.”

Mr. King is expected next month to reintroduce the English Language Unity Act, which seeks to make English the nation’s official language. However, he said that timetable had been postponed until House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could complete the Democrats’ “first 100 hours” agenda. “Nancy Pelosi has us under martial law,” he said.

“The states have been wonderful on this,” said Jim Boulet Jr., executive director of English First, an organization that supports making English the official language. “The problem isn’t getting bills passed, it’s getting them enforced.” Mr. Boulet described Mr. King’s bill as “a good first step.”

In the last session of Congress, Mr. King drafted similar legislation and counted 160 co-sponsors, placing the bill in the top 2 percent of co-sponsored legislation. Although control of Congress has switched hands, the bill’s advocates say the issue has broad, bipartisan support. “We don’t necessarily expect them to jump in and say they support this unanimously,” said Rob Toonkel, spokesman for U.S. English Inc., a group that supports making English the official language.

The legislation would not bar private businesses or individuals from using multilingual material, but it does seek to prevent federal funds from being spent on such efforts.

Mr. King has long been an advocate of English-language laws. In 2002, as a state senator, Mr. King authored a successful bill making English the official language in Iowa. The bill was signed by then-Gov. Tom Vilsack, who is now a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.

Mr. King on Jan. 10 filed a lawsuit in state district court against Gov. Chet Culver and Secretary of State Michael Mauro, both Democrats, for violating Iowa’s English-language law. The lawsuit accuses Mr. Culver, who served as secretary of state before running for governor, and Mr. Mauro of illegally placing voter-registration forms and absentee-ballot request forms on Iowa’s secretary of state Web site in foreign languages.

Meanwhile, English-language laws have been introduced by state legislators in Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey and Oklahoma. Similar legislation is expected to be introduced in other states before the end of the month. Culpeper County in Virginia and Cabarrus County in North Carolina have introduced their own English-language proposals as well.

Last month, voters in Arizona passed legislation making English the state’s official language by a margin of more than 2-to-1. “The people have been well-ahead of the politicians on this one for a long time,” Mr. Boulet said.

Although immigration legislation remains stalled in the halls of Capitol Hill, some supporters of making English the official language say that ambiguity has had unforeseen benefits. “[Immigration and Naturalization Service] had a record number of people applying for citizenship last year,” Mr. Toonkel said.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Citizenship and Immigration Services said there was an 18 percent increase in requests for citizenship applications during the first half of last year compared with 2005. Similar surges have followed a tightening of illegal-alien laws passed in states such as Arizona and California. After California passed its Proposition 187 in 1996, a total of 378,014 persons were naturalized. That was more than double the previous year’s figure, when 136,727 persons were naturalized.

“This is the strongest push for official English legislation that I have seen in the last 15 years,” said U.S. English Chairman Mauro E. Mujica. “I hope the jump-start that this issue has received will pay dividends in the near future by making English the official language and knocking down the linguistic barriers that divide our society.”

David Hng