Education Ministry making a costly blunder

This is my earlier letter which was published
by the Star on Friday March 26, 2010
Education Ministry making a costly blunder


The letters “Stress on grammar, not phonics” (The Star, March 24) and “Grammar matters more than phonetics” (The Star, March 25) really caught my attention. I wish to add a couple of points in support of their views.

I totally agree with both writers that the Education Ministry has obviously got its priority wrong again. Bringing in foreign teachers to teach Malaysians to “pronounce English words as spoken by native speakers” is an expensive mistake that will take us nowhere as far as improving our standard of English is concerned.

First of all, as mentioned by both the writers, it is the grammar that is the problem. While most Malaysians can pronounce the English words well enough to be understood, it is the grammar that leaves much to be desired.

The priority is thus to really focus on grammar, and the way it is taught needs to be revised for it to be effective.

Secondly, I have been wondering all these years why we never make use of the phonetics symbols, available in every good dictionary, to help us with the pronunciation.

Every English teacher must learn phonetics, and they can in turn teach students to learn the correct pronunciation themselves.

Sadly, I have never heard of phonetics symbols being taught in Malaysian schools. If the above cannot be done for some reason, there is even a better solution nowadays.

In this technological age, digital dictionaries always come with the recorded sound for each word, both in American and British pronunciations. Just click on the words and you can hear how they are pronounced immediately, any time you want! How expensive can a digital dictionary be?

Much has been said about the sad state of our education system, yet again we are seeing another costly blunder being developed by those responsible to salvage it. I will ask the same question that many have asked: What has happened to this country?

A. HASHIM,
Sungai Petani.