Speaking English Well - A Key Asset

MOE has recently advocate the need to train our students to speak good English. I fully support such initatives by the Ministry. I remembered when I was doing a part-time job before entering University, one of my customers told me that my spoken English is unbearable to listen to. Since then, I have been very conscious of how I speak.

Maybe it is because of my 10 years of working in the government sector. I am always very skeptical of the way civil servants implements policy initiated by the government.

I am very involved in my girls education. I tracked the change in education policies closely. This is because I was one of those 'genine pigs' which managed to survive new initiatives from MOE. Hence, I want to ensure that my daughter who is also a 'genine pig' from the latest changes to walk out of the education system victoriously.

The most recent Speak Good English campaign has seen some school making changes to their curriculm.

My daughter has just entered Seconday 1 this year. To help the children cope with the significant increase in subject. The school has implemented a system which only requires some of the subjects to be taught and tested throughout the year. For example, History was taught and tested during the first half of the year while Geography was taught and tested during the second half of the year. This was a relief for my daughter and I.

However, English a main subject for passing Secondary 1 was also given the same treatment. Well, from the activities which my daughter told me they were doing during the first half of the year sound like they were suppose to help them improve their spoken English or at best learning English creatively. There was no English examination during this half year. However, during term 3, they class took their first common test in Comprehension and only 11 of them passed the test. Before the test, they only have 1 comprehension excercise.

So to the parents this means that the new initiative will help your child to speak better English but sorry your child will stilll need to pass his/her written English exam inorder for he/she to be promoted to the next level. Hence, please help her to study for him/her written exam.

Whenever there is a good intended policy to be implemented. The means and the result is never aligned. School either change the means of teaching without changing the testing process or change the testing process without change the method of teaching.

In the end, only kiasu parents like myself will try to bridge the gap of such poor implementation skill so as to ensure that my children are able to get pass the education system with minimum bruises.

Though a good education does not gaurantee a good career. A good education system will help to produce good workers for the nation.

Hence, I hope that the ministry and the school can work hand in hand to ensure that policies are designed such that they can be implemented and not just trying them out with different badges of students and those who are on trial will come the genine pigs of such experiments. Parents will then have to pray hard that their children will be able to overcome such "trials".