My English Language

English is my second language. That would make me a billingual. In Malaysia billinguals are common because we learn both Malay and English in our school. In fact a lot of Non-malays could speak 3 languages fluently. I could have been a trillingual or more if I took Arabic and French more seriously when I was in high school. Now I had to be content with my billingual status. At least it is better that many people over here who can only speak English.

When I was small, I grew up speaking Malay. My dad is a Malay-Javanese and he grew up speaking Javanese until middle school. My mom is a Sarawakian and speaks Sarawakian dialect. When they eventually met in University Malaya and got married afterwards, they decided to compromise each other language and groomed their children to speak Malay. Thus I grew up speaking standard Malay although we're still using few Javanese words that doesn't have direct translation in Malay.

I was not good in English. I enrolled into Fatima Kindergarten in Kota Bharu in 1992. They teach everything in English. I have no problem with them, but I never be able to speak English. I think the main problem is just shyness. I was never even tried to speak English to my friends or the teachers. If one of them tried to speak English to me, I would avoid answering them. I felt much more comfortable to speak Malay (in Kelantanese dialect at that time).

I never have any major problem in English for few years after that. I remember one time when I was in 2nd standard where my teacher got so angry with me because I never did my homeworks. She said, "How are you going to get good marks in exam if you didn't do your homeworks?" At the end of the year, I got 100% in English and she didn't even looked at me when she gave me the paper. Obviously she wasn't happy for that, but who could blame her? It was my fault! :p

When I started middle school, I realised that English subject was becoming much tougher. I started getting Bs in exams and it all peaked when I nosedived to Cs at one stage. My family was deeply concerned. I was really helpless, until one of my friend, Gani, lend me a small grammar book. The concept was if you get lost, you have to get back to the basics. That helped me a lot in avoiding simple grammatical errors in the essays and increased my examination marks.

Another problem I faced was vocabulary insufficiency. This not only affected my writing skill, it also severely crippled my reading skill. Imagine I needed to browse a dictionary back and forth hundreds time just to read an article in The Star. Luckily at that time I started listening to English songs and watched wrestling programme on television. Those things helped me enhance my vocabulary and also improved my listening and understanding skills.

The only problem left was communication. When I finally finished SPM, I realised one major problem in Malay youths at that time. Almost everybody can read, write and listen in English. But very few of them could actually involve in English conversation. That includes me. To get a scholarship we had to go for interviews in English. My first one was Petronas interview, and gosh I wish that Chinese girl was not in my group. Then I barely make it in MARA interview, thus earning me a medical scholarship. Then I had two interviews with the university representative who were westerner themselves. Guess what, I didn't make it. Luckily Queens University Belfast does not requires interview and thus offering me a medical course. Alhamdulillah... Now I'm here :)

Right now, everybody around me speaks English. Even the Malay community who reside here also speak excellent English. But I still remember how Malay youths in Malaysia struggled with their English. I went to ATMA interview in 2004. When the General asked an applicant, "What are you doing right now?" The poor applicant answered, "I choose Atma because..." These problems still persist, bugging the Malay community. When I went to an Amway seminar, one of the Malay diamond told me that English proficiency was always the problem everytime he wanted to hire a Malay graduate.

So what should we do? Maybe PPSMI (Teaching and Learning of Science and Maths in English) are the government's answer for that. Thus, I could not understand why some people are picketing to reverse the policy right now. Are they really defending Malay Language? Have they forgot what prompted the government to implement this policy in 2003 in the first place? They claimed that a lot of primary school students having difficulties with that policy. Do you wants to see these students facing difficulties at the moment or when they finally graduated and desperately looking for job later in their life? You decide.