Make full use of a dictionary

There have been much efforts and moves to strengthen and enhance the standard of English language among the students in our country. To improve the teaching standards and usage of the language among students, the Education ministry had introduce the Uphold Bahasa Malaysia & To Strengthen the English Language policy (MBMMBI) in 2011 at the primary school level. Additionally, more time had been allocated for the teaching of the English Language in both primary and secondary school curriculum (KSSR and KBSM). Teachers were required to go through various programs including the Aptis test, Professional Upskilling of English Language Teachers (Pro-ELT) programme and Intensive Course in English Language Teaching (ICELT) to improve their command of the language.

Our efforts paid off as Malaysia had moved up two ranks from last year to make number 12 out of 72 countries in the world in terms of English proficiency, according to a survey by the EF English Proficiency Index (EF EPI). The 2016 report states that Malaysia has a high proficiency EF EPI Score of 60.70 which ranks the nation number 2 out of 19 countries in Asia. This is commendable.

In our focus to enhance the proficiency of English language, however, there seems to be a lack of guidance in the use of dictionary especially among our students. You will not be surprised to note that most of our students lack of understanding on the full usage of the dictionary. Most of them only use the dictionary to check the meanings of the words but ignoring the importance of other guides or directives at the end of the words. For example, they don’t have the knowledge of an Intransitive Verb which is abbreviated as IV and a Transitive Verb which is abbreviated as TV and this carries important guides for users of the dictionary. The distinguishableness of these is directive on the correctness of the basic grammar. Additionally, the apostrophes above the words guide us the voicing of the stress on the syllables. The said apostrophes indicate to us that there is also a clear difference in the stress to be voiced on a same word between a noun and a verb. However, the apostrophes as a indication for the placement of stress in the words are also not noticed by the students.

The ranking in the English proficiency of our country can be further improved if our children are gifted a good dictionary and taught the proper and full use of it. Other than looking for the meaning of a word, it would be helpful to them if our children know other usefulness of features in the their searching.