MORNING ASSEMBLY
This morning the assembly was conducted in English. Puan Kamariah Sulaiman was the teacher on duty and she could easily deliver her speech using the English language. Puan Rozita was the teacher who did the public speaking in English and she successfully gave tips on safety while using the ATM or Automated Teller Machine. Unfortunately, the student from 5T4 who came up to deliver the results of the survey conducted on student study habits did so using Bahasa Melayu. His excuse was that the findings of the survey were important and that the students would understand better if he used Bahasa Melayu. My question is: "When will our students ever learn to improve their English Language proficiency?" Even Cikgu Wan, the senior assistant for student affairs, who had to talk about Bullying in School tried his level best by using a mixture of English and Bahasa Melayu given that he was required to talk to the students about the subject from a text in Bahasa Melayu that was supplied by the Ministry of Education. And the issue of bullying is indeed a very important matter. Hopefully, in future there will be more concerted efforts to use the English language.
Many will say that I am making a lot of fuss about trying to learn English since I won't have much trouble as English is my first language. I started to speak in English first before my mother tongue, Cantonese. But do you know that I had to struggle everyday to learn Mandarin when I first came to Sitiawan. I had no problem when I was in Ipoh as everyone spoke Cantonese. I had learnt to read and write using Cantonese. To learn to speak Mandarin I made myself watch Taiwanese dramas without English or Malay subtitles. I also make it a point to speak to the locals here using Mandarin. My spoken Mandarin is really atrocious (until today) as it is heavily tinged with either English or Cantonese accents. It was weird to a point that once a little girl asked her mom why the auntie spoke such funny Mandarin. However, I steeled myself and continue to "entertain" the people here with my cute style of speaking Mandarin. If I can try to overcome the "malu" or embarassment, why can't everyone else?