Just musing as I read a big bold headline in our local newspaper that read
More Angry If No Power
Talk about a headline. It sure grabbed my attention but for the wrong reasons. Make me read it twice too. There’s this old show called Mind Your Language that was a comedy about an English teacher trying to teach his class of international students English. Boy, it was a circus show the way the students just drove poor Mr. Brown (the teacher) batty over their antics. Perhaps, the writer was one of his students? Kidding.
Funny as the headline was, it also brought home the state of the standard of our English. Please understand I’m not harping about my own high standards of English because mine sure needs work as well. But it’s sad that even with our English in such a state our government feels the need to standardize the teaching of all subjects to our national language. Is that really necessary? Or is it a knee jerk reaction to the fear that the national language will be lost?
There have been arguments that worrying about standardizing is a non-issue because students do fine adjusting to using virtually all english textbooks in local universities. Perhaps that is true, but then isn’t there the prevailing issue of locals being able to communicate well with foreign investors in the workplace? If we can start off students to think and communicate in English at an earlier stage then why not?
Perhaps the issue here isn’t which subjects are in what language. Maybe the issue has more to do with exposure than anything else. But where then can we get the right kind of exposure? I remember there was a time when my mom would encourage me to read the newspaper to improve my english. No longer perhaps. Or possibly only selected newspapers.
I’m well aware that I don’t provide any answers but instead more questions. I started off saying this was just one of my musings. Call this an extended version if you like, all I know is that it’s probably wise not to use the newspaper as an English teaching tool for young ones. 
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3ac27452-34f7-4734-b1fd-e3a24ee828f1)
Related posts:
- A Rethink on Exams Last week(or was it the week before), Malaysia’s education board...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
any copy of it online? i just cant believe a headline like that would appear on our english papers…
Just found it online.
http://www.dailyexpress.com.my/news.cfm?NewsID=68...
I've corrected the headline I put from "Angrier" to "Angry". Apologies because I did it from memory. If you read the first few lines, what they did was cut and paste from the original article. The original sentence was "the rakyat will be even more angry if they don't have power supply". Used it conversational context, it's still passable even though it's debatable whether it should be "more angry" or "angrier". Using a section of it as a headline however….
Anyways, read the article. You'll either laugh or cry at the things that go on in parliament. I wonder how long it took to come up with the phrase "People later, project first". Hehe.