On July, 23, Malaysiakini reported on the objection from the "Pertubuhan Melayu" to make English as the "bahasa pengantar" for IPTA. From the reasons that Dr Arshad has provided, I was wondering if "Pertubuhan Melayu" is trying to pin-point the problems or trying to keep their "thick-skin".
Some statements, or most of the statements, inside that report makes me feel that they have run out of idea...
Dr Arshad menegaskan bahawa perubahan penggunaan bahasa pengantar, daripada bahasa Melayu ke bahasa Inggeris di IPTA, bukanlah cara terbaik.
Sebaliknya, beliau yang juga bekas Pengarah Institut Teknologi Mara yang kini dikenali sebagai Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), berkata pengajaran bahasa Inggeris di sekolah hendaklah diperbaiki.
Dr Arshad said that the teaching of English should be fixed on at the school. While I do not disagree with this statement, but I really don't get what Dr Arshad is trying to hint out. Unless I misunderstood languages, but I personally feel that languages, while needed to be learn from the beginning, also need the be practiced.
Therefore, how should we practice?
One could be through the use of the teaching medium, like the textbooks. Another could be the conversation practice. I would also say that most of the languages that we learned, the most effective way to improve your languages is through speaking, or conversation.
Since the beginning of our birth, we learned the language that our parents spoke via conversation. I supposed that parents do not use textbooks to teach us the languages. My point here is, does Dr Arshad really realises the reason of that problem? I would put a guess that he does realises the problem, but finding excuses out of nowhere to stop their mother language from danger.
The next statement of his, I guess he unintentionally fired back to himself without realizing it...
"Bahasa Inggeris merupakan mata pelajaran wajib di sekolah tetapi masih ramai yang lemah walaupun telah diajar selama sebelas tahun. Masalah inilah yang perlu diberi perhatian," katanya.
Why I said that he fired himself with that statement? Now he said that English is a compulsory subject in school but still a lot of the students are weak at mastering it. Fine, isn't it? Now let's turn the world around and imagine that everything including the text books are in English, instead of
Bahasa Melayu and
Bahasa Melayu becomes a compulsory subject where its textbooks would still be written in
Bahasa Melayu. Got what I mean?
Now the result of this twist would be that the students will become weak in Bahasa Melayu. The point here is, if English is being used as the teaching medium in universities, then
Bahasa Melayu's standard would drop just like our current English standard are dropping.
Simply said, if English is to be used as the communication medium, then Bahasa Melayu speakers will become weaker and weaker in the future, which I don't think that "Pertubuhan Melayu" wants to see.
Dr Arshad added more,
Menurutnya lagi, negara maju seperti Jepun, China dan Jerman tidak mengenepikan bahasa ibunda mereka dengan menggunakan bahasa asing dalam sistem pendidikan.
From my observation all this while, I see that most of the time, these people would use such an explanation as their valid point of argument, when they actually are running out of ideas. They always use other examples, or events to make comparison and then take them as their strong point.
To me, it seems that Dr Arshad does not take into consideration of the word "globalization". I am sorry to say that, if you want to compete in this world, you need to be able to communicate well with others. Unfortunately, most of the people in this world uses our international language to communicate effectively with others, which also happens to be English.
Yes, we can do translation if we are weak in English, but I guess we are not in the 60's globalization, but a new millennium globalization.
Everything communicates at cable speed-level, that is to say, time is an important property in our wired-world. Wouldn't it be good if we can avoid wasting time with translation?
Sebaliknya kata Dr Arshad, mereka mempelajari bahasa asing iaitu sebagai bahasa tambahan atau bahasa kedua.
Beliau juga berpendapat kegagalan siswazah mendapatkan kerja bukan kerana lemah berbahasa Inggeris tetapi pasaran pekerjaan sentiasa terhad dan tidak mampu menyerap ratusan ribu graduan setiap tahun.
Menurutnya lagi, siswazah berkelulusan bahasa Inggeris dari universiti luar negara termasuk Amerika Syarikat, Britain dan Australia juga menganggur.
"Pelajar-pelajar mampu menjadi cemerlang dalam apa juga bidang ilmu jika ia diajar dalam bahasa yang mereka fahami iaitu bahasa Melayu berbanding bahasa Inggeris." katanya.
When Dr Arshad says that "pekerjaan sentiasa terhad dan tidak mampu menyerap ratusan ribu graduan setiap tahun" (jobs are also limited and [the job market] is unable to absorb these hundreds thousands graduates every year). If I take his statement as a fact, that makes me to think of another question, although it does not relate to this topic of discussion, however the question is "then, I wonder why the government keep on pushing more and more students into the universities? Is the government trying to produce more and more
starving graduates?"
The last statement makes me thought of a funny situation, where a brilliant Malaysian student is trying to exchange ideas with other students in countries like US, one of the English students say this, "This is our result of
anti-matter...", the Malaysian students think to him/herself, "
Anti-matter dalam Bahasa Melayu ialah...". What I am trying to say is that when the terms are different, it is sometimes hard for a person to get that term right, or understand the conversation correctly and fast. I personally find it hard to read a physics essay in English since I learned my physics terms in
Bahasa Melayu.
My conclusion is that, while it is our job to keep our own culture in place, but we must not, at the same time, ignore the "market"'s requests. When the "market" wants better English, give them better English. The priority should go to the "market"'s request. I believe that Dr Arshad is also hoping to improve the English standard, but I think using English as the teaching and communication medium is a good start.
But again the problem now is that, most of our lecturers would not be competitive, because they are not used to carry out their teaching using English.
Maybe I have
far-sighted my imagination... back to square one.
--"If you're still unable to shape the world, then adapt to it!"--
