Learning through inductive environment

There have been much efforts by our Authorities to check the decline of the English language among Malaysians. However, efforts of the enhancement of proficiency of English language is mainly focused and confined to schools through MBMMBI , not much attention is being paid on its inductive environment for the promotion of correct usage of English in the public. The interests of learning English will surely be enhanced with good inductive environment with minimum confusion arising of wrong usage of English both in public and at home.

Wrong translation, confused signage and erred grammar are common and this unhealthy scenario has been discouraging study of English among our youth. Just for an example, in a shopping mall a notice of “ we are closed” is put up during the lunch break but a notice of “ We are close “ is also put up by another shop within a short distance.

Surely many new learners may be confused if not given an explanation for its difference. The other wrong and common signage is “ Economic Rice ” being displayed by hawkers selling cheap food that would save the buyers money. The correct words should be “ economical meal “ or “ economical food “. Clearly, this is literally Chinese version of translation which is not the actual English meaning. At home, it is common to hear in conversation among the family members “ you know what? “, “ you please come lah” , “ you want it or not ? “ Children are again confused with what they have learnt in schools when they recall their learning on question with “ Wh ”s and the omission of sentence without any ending tone. Our conversation in English has been influenced and polluted with our dialects and mother tongue. Of course, there are endless erred grammar and contradicting meanings of the translations in our surroundings and incidentally these would not be inductive to our youth on their path of achieving good command of the English language.

I have been giving free English lessons in a charity organization and also giving books for all my students who come from all walks of life. The problems faced by them are almost identical. One of the problems is to memorize a long list of grammatical tenses and changes of verbs. The act of memorizing has been killing their interests of the learning English. The solution to this is the learning of phrasal words instead of a single verb which the learner may find it difficult to use. The classification of grammatical tenses and verbs for our English learners especially may be taxing too. Foreign children can speak English well without knowing all tenses and they won’t say to you : “ I go there yesterday “ but our children studying in Primary schools are struggling and being burdened with lists of grammars and words. Eventually, they would lose interests to learn English. Do you think foreign children are given long list of tenses to learn ? Surely not, they learn phrasal words since they are born and know it is only right to say : “ I went there yesterday.” They learn it and practise it right with a good inductive learning environment.

The other aspect of decline in the standard of the English language among our Society is the lack of confidence on the speakers. Due to time limitation, reading in group is a common practice and students are hardly given times to read aloud individually in class. Just ask your children or other, how many times they are given chance to read alone and aloud. Without or lack of practice of reading, majority of the youth feel uneasy to speak.