Friday, 19 June 2015

Poorly constructed English test paper goes viral - The Rakyat Post



The poor standard of English in the country has been brought into question again, following pictures of several poorly constructed English language test questions being circulated on social media.

The posting on Monday made by Facebook user Nadia Fauzi revealed several multiple-choice questions in a test that was constructed with grammatical errors.

“What time is the concert starts ?”  was among the questions asked in the test.
Nadia, who is the mother of one of the students, who sat for the exam, lamented the poor standard of English set in the school which she described as a “high-performing school” and one of the top schools in the Federal Territory.

It was also learnt that the school that her child attended was Sekolah Kebangsaan Bukit Damansara.

In her posting, Nadia also slammed the school teacher who decided to punish her child for correcting the mistakes.

“This is how bad our English standard is in schools. And when my son corrected her, the teacher called him stupid and said that she’s right and he’s wrong. Wow.
“I won’t say anything to her about this because I know (for a fact) that she will penalise him even more.

“She had the cheek to deduct one mark from him for bad handwriting, but she doesn’t think that her paper is all screwed up? This is so embarrassing ! ” read the post which has gathered 26 likes and 326 shares as of 3pm today.

Facebook user Azlina Megat describes the English language paper as “horrifying”.

While another Facebook user Ng Eu Gin shared his thoughts with Nadia by saying that situations such this one puts an undue burden on parents to correct the child’s understanding of power and authority, since questioning the teacher reflects one’s rudeness.

Angry netizens, however, slammed the teacher and the school for due lack of professionalism and poor education standards.

Some were also seen to be agreeing that Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin should take serious action on the standard of English being taught in the country’s schools.

On June 10,  Muhyiddin who is also deputy Prime Minister, announced in Parliament that students needed to be prepared for the English paper in SPM as it would be compulsory to pass the subject next year.

It was reported that Muhyiddin also said that the government remained committed to emphasising the increase in proficiency of the English language in schools, despite having no plans to change the medium of instruction in national schools from Bahasa Malaysia to English.

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