Malaysian Graduates poor English : who is the culprit?

Since back in the year 2005, much have been said about the poor English among the Malaysian graduates. I was given the opportunity to train some unemployed graduates back in the 2008 and that was when I found out what could be the root cause. I love to look at the root cause of every problem as I believe it is the root cause of the problem that should be addressed, not the symptom. The symptom here is "poor English".

Here are some of my findings of what I considered to be the root cause :

1. Lack of awareness on the importance of English in school. In school, it was just another subject to pass and has got nothing to do with career. Even among the school teachers whom I have trained over the years, have absolutely no clue on how much English will be used at workplace once the students leave school. Reason? Most teachers have never stepped their foot in the private sector. For students who are high in linguistic score according to the multiple intelligence test, they will pick up the language quickly. For the rest, it's just another subject they need to get through. As to why are they learning it, there was totally no connection to their heart ( and internal motivation ) other than passing the exam.
2. Lack of awareness on the importance of English at home. If they have non English speaking parents, who are just like the school teachers who never had to use English at their workplace, chances are there will be no emphasis on English at home neither. No English books, newspaper or English TV programmes to watch. To some family, it is even not 'cool' to learn English as it has nothing to do with what their religion requires ( according to their interpretation ). The best time for anyone to pick up any language is between 1 to 6 years old and kids can pick up naturally and easily if they are given the right exposure. Just look at the kids who watch kids programme in English since they were young. They can pick up vocabulary easily even if their parents don't speak a single word.
3. Lack of practice with friends with the same mother tongue. It is much easier to use the their mother tongue which they have started using since they were young when speaking with friends from the same race. Only when they are speaking with friends who have different mother tongue than theirs, then English is used. The thing is, majority of the students in school in Malaysia today are racially segregated. You can hardly find schools with a good mix, they either majority Malay or majority Chinese. So students hardly have any chance to practice their English outside of the class. Just like any language, it requires daily usage for one to master them. And this include listening, reading, speaking and writing. No practice means no way to master the language.

Fear of being mocked by friends in school. This is by far, my most worrying findings. Majority of our students expressed fear of using English for the reason of "I'm afraid of what my friends would say and think of me?" and when I asked them, "what is that they would say if you start using English?". "They'll say nasty things like - we're are trying to show off, not patriotic and to some point they get mad at us". One boy from a boarding school in Kelantan, came up to me and shared that one boy from his school started to use English as a practice, was boycotted for year by his batch mate. Now all these to me is a form of bully that came from a sense of insecurity with friends who are not fluent with the language. Friends who are in secure and the students who wish to practice their English are lacking in having that emotional strength to with stand such mockery. These are signs of low emotional intelligence and how in the world will these students succeed in life, when they allow a simple challenge like this school stop them from progressing. And what quality of human capital will the industry have in the future?

So , who is the culprit I say ? Us. Me and you. We who have the right awareness but do not reach out to the community to create awareness on how to do it. How to raise children who will be confident in using the language so that not only they will pass their English exams in school easily, have better future but also to be someone resourceful and maybe able one day become a global problem solver because of the knowledge he/she obtained from reading in English. So let's reach out.

If you are looking for an outreach programme to reach out to rural schools on this subject, do contact us. We have reached out to more than 8,000 Malaysians so far and we aim to do more.