Developing English proficiency in children is a journey that begins early on and continues through their growing years. While teachers and tutors may play a role and the quality of instruction that a child receives is key, the development of English proficiency is something that begins very much at home through the strategies and actions of parents.
I’d like to caveat that a bit – all of you know that no matter how good of an environment you provide for a child, the child still needs to work hard and study in order to do well.
That said, while it’s true that success in any endeavor (including learning English well!) is always the fruit of individual endeavor and rests on a student’s willpower and talent, I’ve seen the transformative power of strategic guidance combined with supportive parenting in catalyzing and sustaining interest in English, which in turn leads to significantly better outcomes… Yet, I’ve also seen parents struggle because they thought that enrolling their children in a specific school alone would suffice for helping their child learn English well.
With that in mind, here are some strategies to help foster a love for English in your child and guide them towards mastery at home, so that they will have the best chance of developing the strong mastery of the language that you wish for them to have as they move forward in this world.
Here’s a strategy guide that I hope will help – read on!
1. Develop a Love for English from an Early Age
The foundation of every learning journey is interest. Of course, children differ in their interests and talent for language, but it’s key to have them develop the desire to learn.
Do start cultivating an appreciation for English early on if you value it, by not only cultivating an environment where your child has access to many books, but also a space where reading is both enjoyable and desirable – not only a means of learning and getting good exam results, but also as a way of life within your family.
This could mean reading picture books together, watching educational shows in English, or introducing games that incorporate English words and phrases. Make it interactive, engaging, and fun. This early exposure creates a foundation that will aid your child’s future learning efforts greatly.
2. Set a culture that facilitates success.
Parents are the leaders of families – no question about that. They set the tone for the entire family unit, and in turn develop the culture for the family.
Is there a conducive learning environment? Do your kids have the resources and guidance to succeed? Do they have the initiative to succeed?
By creating a culture that values success, facilitates it, and helps to cultivate it by creating the necessary conditions for that success, on the shoulders of your child’s interest and confidence, you will set yourself up for a future where your child does not simply pursue success by your own direction, but out of their own force of will.
3. Ensure Consistency in Practice
Consistent practice is key to mastering any language. Therefore, one way to maximize the probability that your child will excel in English is to make English learning part of your child’s daily routine.
Provide access to interesting and unique resources, and provide entertainment options that correspond to English language media. Facilitate the process of development forward by creating opportunities to associate onward development with enjoyment in various ways.
Encourage them to write a diary, read a chapter from a book, or engage in English conversations at home.
Keeping English learning consistent helps your child see it as a part of their life, rather than a chore; even if the progress only takes place in minute amounts every day, daily progress will yield infinitely greater results at the end of the day than bursts of energy directed towards exam preparation, allowing development of a child’s English language skills in a stress free and enjoyable way.
If your child is preparing for an examination like the IGCSE First Language English, familiarize them with the examination pattern and question styles early on.
Regular practice tests will help them understand the format, reduce exam-related anxiety, and improve their performance. The more you understand what is coming up ahead and what assessments will take place at each stage of your child’s life, the better you will be prepared to ensure that they will do well and to take the actions to ensure that they can do so while minimizing the chance that they will become overly stressed out while preparing for examinations on account of becoming overwhelmed and therefore unable to commit the necessary mental focus towards learning.
Learning occurs cumulatively and slowly – true knowledge is analogous in form to a tree and not to a photocopied sheet of paper; in the same way that a tree cannot absorb the water of an entire river, so too can a child not absorb all the knowledge, skills, and understanding that you wish for them to acquire in the course of frenzied weeks of studying.
Therefore, plan for consistency – it will yield deep benefits down the line.
4. Develop English language mastery and good learning habits yourself.
It may seem a little strange that I would ask you to develop English language mastery yourself as a parent, but it’s tremendously important if you’d like your child to learn English well.
As a parent, one is naturally the person that a child communicates with the very most relative to any other person, and especially at an early age, you may be the single most influential person in terms of the way that your children see and understand the world; therefore, if you are able to demonstrate that mastery yourself, it will magnify your child’s efforts to learn English as they will have a good role model at home to guide them and to converse with them.
Naturally, you may not be able to spend all your time with your children as you may have work commitments, but rest assured – the extent to which you personally can master the language will correlate with the extent to which your children will be good at the language, as they will model your behaviors, your thoughts, and your own personal inclination for learning.
While this is not strictly necessary, I encourage you to dedicate yourself personally towards a journey of personal self-improvement, which will benefit you greatly along the course of the journey and in turn minimize the friction that your children will face when they are trying to learn English.
5. Adapt Your Teaching Methods
Children have diverse learning styles, and what works for one may not work for another.
If you are teaching your child personally, use a combination of teaching techniques – visual aids, educational games, role-playing, etc.
If your child is struggling with a concept, be patient and approach it from different perspectives until they understand while doing your best to make sure that they are enjoying themselves in the learning process and will have the motivation to continue forward in the learning journey!
If you choose to engage a tutor or enroll your child in a school…
6. Create a supportive environment.
Children have different levels of abilities, and it’s crucial both to recognize that and also to facilitate the process of trying to speak and learn English, which means creating an environment where children dare to try rather than shy away from opportunities to improve themselves because they fear being judged.
Having quality resources is tremendously important, but over and above that is creating situations whereby your child is willing to try, to fail, and to try again and to throw themselves forward to be judged by the world, and in so doing develop the confidence to use English no matter where they are.
By creating a supportive environment for your child, you will create the circumstances that are necessary for your child to make mistakes (and therefore to learn from mistakes!) and to proceed on a pathway of upward improvement that is constant and unwavering, rather than fear discouragement and judgment on the basis of negative experiences, thereby maximizing the probability that your child will continue to push forward and progressively improve.
That said, English language mastery is a small part of the picture overall. This is why it is good to…
7. Connect Learning with Real-World Applications
Children tend to engage more when they see practical applications of what they are learning, and see a deeper underlying purpose to it.
If you want your child to get an A in English and you see a specific reason for it (perhaps it will help them to get jobs that they otherwise might not have secured? Scholarships? University admissions? Allow them to see the world in different and important ways?), do contextualize it and visualize the benefits for them in ways that their hearts can accept so that they will choose to excel in the language of their own volition and not because you have forced them to.
There are many ways in which you can accomplish the process of catalyzing interest through the usage of real-world applications and discussions, and it doesn’t always have to be a heavy discussion or something deeply linked to the future.
Some suggestions: Watch an English movie and discuss its plot, characters, or watch a news broadcast and discuss the day’s events, checking if your child understood what happened. By doing so, you’re showing your child the relevance of English in everyday life and will gain many opportunities to use the language with your children, thereby enhancing the likelihood that they will cultivate strong English language skills early on.
8. Provide activities that will help catalyze your child’s interest in English.
Debate and various other competitions and activities provide a wonderful outlet for children to learn how to speak and use English on a vastly more proficient level through extracurricular involvements that can improve their profiles while at the same time improving their exposure to people who speak English as a first language and thereby increasing the number of opportunities for them to interact with others in the language.
Assiduously seek out these activities and help to expose your child to them – not all of them will stick, but some may; when they do, do encourage your child to continue pursuing these things as a means of developing a strong interest and also as a means of developing commitment and discipline; this effort will no doubt yield great and compounding effects in the future.
9. Provide Constructive Feedback
Providing feedback is an important part of the learning process. When reviewing your child’s work, remember to maintain a balance between appreciating their efforts and pointing out areas for improvement, avoiding criticism that is harsh or damaging, while at the same time maintaining a clear view of your child’s capabilities (which in turn also requires a mastery of English so that you can evaluate this well).
Constructive feedback will not only guide their learning but also help build their confidence, and will help sustain their motivation for the long learning journey to come and the many fruits that will arrive with it.
10. Keep Evolving Your Approach
Children grow and evolve, and so should your teaching methods. Whether it’s incorporating more digital content, using more advanced literature, engaging a new teacher, or involving them in activities that may help to develop their proficiency in different areas, be prepared to adjust your teaching approach according to your child’s changing needs and interests through the stages of their life.
Conclusion
Guiding your child to mastery in English requires patience, consistency, and adaptability. By creating a supportive learning environment, providing consistent practice, and making learning engaging, you can help your child develop not only an excellent command over English but also a lifelong love for the language. Remember, the ultimate goal isn’t just to help them achieve good grades but to nurture them into confident, curious learners and effective communicators.
One of the questions that parents most commonly ask is whether their child should take IGCSE First Language English (0500) or if they should take English as a Second Language (0510).
The question seems simple, but its implications are deep; that’s why in this post, I’ve decided to write a little bit about the pros and cons of First Language English (FLE) versus English as a Second Language (ESL).
I’ll provide that list of pros and cons for both curricula below. Meanwhile, as you read the comments that I will provide, please also consult the updated (2024-2026) Cambridge syllabi for First Language English (FLE)…
Let’s first talk about the pros and cons of First Language English (FLE).
Pros of First Language English 0500:
1. Higher complexity and greater prospect of development.
First Language English requires students to learn how to read with the purpose of creating inferences and also with the purpose of synthesising information on a much higher level than what is required for English as a Second Language.
The tasks that a student needs to successfully accomplish are significantly more complicated and require skills that are the consequence of higher order linguistic development, which are not something that the English as a Second Language curriculum meaningfully develops or requires of candidates who are taking on this curriculum.
First Language English requires longer summaries (~120 words), requires students to read longer texts, requires students to consider language as a metaphenomenon (and to comment on writer’s effect with respect to word choice), and to write descriptive and narrative pieces that require more advanced writing skills (the word count you must write in First Language English is much longer, and there is a dedicated writing paper) and therefore imagination, reasoning, and various other skills that require students to develop themselves extensively throughout the entire period in which the curriculum is to be administered in order for them to do well.
As a result of these more advanced requirements, in the event that the student is taught well, they will learn much more than a student who merely takes on English as a Second Language.
2. More advanced classmates.
In the event that your child takes on FLE, they are going to meet classmates that have the intention of taking the hardest possible curriculum, and will have a network of peers who are more capable of speaking the English language on average.
As iron sharpens iron, so too can having more advanced classmates help a student learn how to master the English language to a larger degree; these classmates will help your child to become a much better speaker than they may have become if they had simply taken on ESL instead.
3. Greater expectations of self.
In the event that your child takes First Language English, they will likely have higher expectations of themselves and the sense that they need to aspire for more and to develop themselves more along the course of their journey.
I have seen numerous students come and go, and it is the students who expect more of themselves who end up going much further distance in the long run; I think that First Language English is valuable for providing that sense of expectation to a greater degree than what a student would experience if they had taken on English as a Second Language instead.
Cons of First Language English 0500:
1. Requirement for more advanced instruction in order to excel.
Because First Language English is more complex, it requires students to have a stronger background, to work harder, or to have an excellent teacher if neither of these things apply if they want to excel in the exam.
A reliance upon teacher certification or experience alone is not advisable, for the simple reason that no specific first language English certification exists, and the majority of teachers that you will encounter on the market either only have CELTA or Teaching of English as a Second Language (TESL) as certifications, neither of which serve as perfect teaching qualifications for this curriculum.
Moreover, from having interviewed dozens of English teachers, some with CELTA or TESL qualifications and even some with Head of Departmentships at prominent international schools and dozens of years of experience, I have discovered that not all of them are capable of demonstrating the skills that they claim that they are trying to develop in their students, which raises a question in my mind as to whether work experience at an international school is meaningful as a way of differentiating educators by their teaching ability or not.
2. Requirement for more base preparation and motivation.
First Language English success requires students to have more base preparation and motivation to learn in order to succeed and to do well within the course.
How well a student can do in FLE often depends on how much prior preparation and interest they have had in the English language, past schooling experiences, or from the culture of the families that they came from, and this often results in students who have enjoyed reading and speaking in English throughout their lives having an advantage in this curriculum.
This is natural, since this is after all a First Language curriculum and is meant to challenge even students who primarily speak English at home.
On the other hand, if a student hasn’t had exposure to advanced English language material or communication in their lives before, whether because they weren’t exposed to it in school or there wasn’t a culture of speaking or writing in English either within their peer groups or their families, they face an uphill battle to acquire these skills in a relatively short time frame and to do well.
This is a primary concern for students whose schools do not offer them the choice to take English as a Second Language at all and force them to take First Language English instead, but potentially something that you can avoid if your school offers you a choice and you (parent) genuinely think that your child cannot cope, or you (student) are too intimidated by this curriculum…
Which you shouldn’t be, in my opinion.
Still, those are the cons of First Language English…
Now let’s talk about English as a second language.
Pros of English as a Second Language 0510:
1. More likely that instructors will be qualified and capable because the exam is easy.
Although a good teacher is desirable in every situation, the requirement to find an instructor that is skilled and capable is not as pressing for IGCSE ESL students as much as it is for FLE students.
Many teachers across the world (not just Malaysia) have Teaching of English as a Second Language (TESL) qualifications, and because the 0510 curriculum is relatively simple in content, it’s not difficult to find instructors who are capable of delivering the standard of instruction that you will need; such an instructor merely needs to deliver the basics of English language mastery and simply has to encourage their students to develop attention to detail; the skills required to deliver the curriculum are not extensive.
Therefore, if you aren’t able to seek out a teacher who is good or you aren’t willing to gamble in order to seek out an educator with skills to catalyze your child’s linguistic development, ESL may be a better choice.
2. Easier curriculum
The ESL curriculum is simpler as a whole compared to EFL. It does not require students to make advanced inferences, comment on language, or to write extensively, and is more suited to students who have not had exposure to English.
Doing well in English as a Second Language requires students to be good at information retrieval, summary-writing, basic reading comprehension, and listening skills (not present in First Language English) only – it does not require much beyond that.
The skills that are required to obtain marks on the questions on ESL are much less advanced than the skills required to obtain marks on FLE, which requires students to develop advanced skills of inference and also to master other linguistic skills such as displacement and imagination, description and narration, analysis and evaluation… And many more! These skills are not measured much, if at all, on English as a Second Language.
Don’t take my word for it though – have a look at the papers yourself, and you will understand what I mean.
If your child’s English language capabilities are very, very bad and they neither have a tutor or teacher that can instruct them well and nor is their interest aligned with taking the actions to develop these English language capabilities, English as a Second Language may be preferable to First Language English if you aren’t confident that your child can develop these skills and you also aren’t confident of your own ability to provide a skilled instructor for your child.
That is because the absolute ease of the English as a Second Language paper is higher – it is easier to obtain higher marks on the exam because the requirements are simpler to meet.
But this doesn’t mean that it is easier to get a high grade, which leads me to my first con for ESL.
Unfortunately, it’s a rather big one, and likely not one that you might have expected if you haven’t looked into the numbers…
Cons of English as a Second Language 0510:
1. Higher competitiveness.
The absolute ease of getting a higher absolute score on English Second Language is likely easier than the ease of getting a higher absolute score on First Language English, holding all other factors equal.
As a result, you may be able to obtain a higher score on this curriculum than you would otherwise have obtained on First Language English with lower effort…
However, grades are assigned on the basis of grade boundaries that are in turn determined by percentiles each year, which may make it so that if your priority is simply the letter grade and you want it no matter the cost, you should consult mark boundaries and actual exam papers in order to make a more informed decision because if grade thresholds are more punishing, English as a Second Language may paradoxically be more competitive than First Language English because it will be easier to drop grade boundaries if you miss out on easy points, which may means that you may both develop subpar abilities and also get a lower grade.
Unfortunately, the grade thresholds are indeed more punishing.
I say this on the basis of an analysis that I conducted of the grade boundaries for the October-November 2022 IGCSE First Language English 0500 and IGCSE English as a Second Language 0510 papers by considering the average number of marks required for each grade according to the grading thresholds, prorating that grade relative to the maximum mark, and multiplying the result by 100%.
I present you the grading thresholds for each exam (ESL and FLE) alongside the marks required to achieve A* in these curricula respectively.
Average absolute marks required for A* = 74.5/100.
You’ll find the assumptions that I used for my analysis and also a description of the methodology that I used to perform these calculations in the embedded Google sheet below.
To continue, I note further that the 91.7 mark requirement for an A* subsists within a population of students that is often assumed to be less proficient in English than their First Language English counterparts, which may suggest that the papers are easy… Or that the people taking these papers are actually rather skilled at English, but are bad at statistics, simply doing so because they have been drawn by the prospect of getting higher grades but have not thought deeply about the implications of their choice.
Also, note further that although this trend is something that I investigated with just the October and November 2022 papers, it is a trend that holds across the years.
As you can see, it takes a much higher proportion of the total marks that are available in order for a student to receive an A* in English as a Second Language as opposed to an A* in First Language English.
What does this mean for you?
This means that if you want to get an A* for English as a Second Language, while you don’t necessarily need advanced linguistic ability, you do need more attention to detail with respect to making sure that you secure every single mark correctly… Because since your English language capabilities aren’t being tested on a high level and many people are capable of obtaining a higher average level of marks even if they aren’t necessarily well prepared; even worse, what could be happening is that you are competing with people who are extremely good at English who decided to take the exam only because it gave them what they perceived to be a higher chance of securing an A* regardless of whether that was true or not, thereby raising the average mark required for the procurement of an A*.
Is the English as a Second Language paper therefore “less competitive” compared to the First Language English paper?
I don’t think so.
In fact, it is significantly more competitive and there is much less room for mistakes if you want a high grade.
Anyway, let’s now talk about the some of the other (more obvious) cons of taking English as a Second Language.
2. Highly likely that you will learn less.
Because ESL is less complex and less is expected of candidates, your child will likely learn less during the course of their education because they lack the motivation to improve embodied in the First Language Curriculum.
Of course, if you don’t have the English language capabilities to do well in First Language English in the first place, you might fare well in English as a Second Language and gain a lot from this curriculum.
However, I do not think that you will gain as much as you will from taking on the challenge that is First Language English.
3. Lower chance of attaining university-ready skills.
The skills of inference and analysis that are developed in First Language English are vital to success in any university-level curriculum that requires students to excel in analysis and comprehension of higher level texts, which includes not just complicated texts about the humanities and sociology, but also lab reports and papers about STEM, economics, and many other fields that may not initially seem to require a mastery of the English language but most assuredly do.
By choosing the English as a Second Language curriculum in lieu of the First Language English curriculum, you may not learn these vital skills at an earlier stage and will be punished for not learning them (if they were not learned) at a later stage because you will need those skills anyway, and you will have been prepared poorly to demonstrate them.
4. Lower chance of obtaining skills necessary to excel in English proficiency tests.
Taking English as a Second Language even if you have the ability to do well in First Language English may be detrimental to you as it may stunt or negatively influence the development of your linguistic skills, and hence prevent you from performing valuable preparation that you could have done for international tests of proficiency that you will in any case need to take for migration purposes or for University entry purposes.
First Language English helps students to develop the skills that they need in order to excel in English proficiency exams such as IELTS or TOEFL. Although it is true that in some cases some universities will allow students to fulfil their entry requirements using English as a second language, what matters most at the end of the day is that students are able to demonstrate their capabilities as and when required.
Students who have a high base level of capability will be able to do so with no problem, while students who did not develop those capabilities will suffer and have to do extra catch up work.
First Language English represents a splendid opportunity to gain experience in reading and learning from texts that have the capacity to positively influence a student and to improve their mastery of language in the same duration of time that English as a Second Language students will prepare for their exams.
To rebut this claim, it’s possible to say that because ESL is simpler, less time can be dedicated to FLE and in turn that more time can be dedicated to other subjects in the event that a student takes ESL, thereby allowing the student to obtain better overall grades with lesser effort.
At the same time, this claim is somewhat shaky, because with good planning, the student might have been able to obtain a good grade in FLE within a small time frame – but the student would never have known what was possible if they and their family had ex ante chosen FLE because of this consideration.
Now, even supposing that this charitable interpretation of things were to reach the outcome sought by a parent and child seeking high grades overall with minimal effort, it’s entirely possible that the decision to take ESL over FLE might light to a scenario of…
5. Lesser appeal to universities.
While it may or may not be true that students who take EFL may be able to get higher grades compared to their FLE counterparts, an A* in first language English is more impressive compared to an A* in ESL because of the level of attainment required to get an A* in these subjects; in a situation where in all other aspects, it is clear that a student is capable of demonstrating the level of communication that is expected of someone with a strong mastery of English, if such a student were to take English as a second language, it can easily be seen as an attempt to gain the system and their applications can be taken less seriously.
Of course, that is just my perspective and you need not pay heed to it if you think you know what you are doing, but I would observe that in a highly competitive situation where the stakes are high and I need to make a decision on the best possible candidate, if two people came up to me with no significant differences in personality or anything else other than their English grades, I would choose the student who had obtained the A* in First Language English (FLE), not in English as a Second Language (ESL), because it’s clear which student challenged themselves more throughout the course of their IGCSE exams.
Conclusion:
Overall, my opinion is that if you can get a good teacher for English first language or if you have the skills, confidence, or desire to learn English well, you should take this instead of taking English as a second language, because it is likely to lead to greater long term advantage, and the competitive advantage that a student is likely to have if they take English as a Second Language but have good English proficiency is likely to be minimal even if they receive an A* for the exam.
Still, some parents might be fearful of taking First Language English because they think their children cannot cope and that they are unable to do well. I think that this is understandable and that you should make the choice that you feel is right… But I would also say that perhaps you should have more confidence in your children and their ability to learn.
In my eyes, certain things such as the requirement for a good background and also quality instruction can be overcome if a student has the willpower to improve and also good teaching quality; this resource that you are reading is an example of an external resource which you may reference as part of the journey towards giving your child a better chance at excellence in this curriculum, and you may also sign up for classes with us to allow us to address your needs more comprehensively.
For that reason, I think that you should have your child take the curriculum that will offer them the longest term prospect of development and improvement, and for that reason I would recommend that if you can enroll your child in a school with a good English teacher or enlist a skilled English tutor, that you should go for First Language English because it will offer the most learning opportunities and a better education; you should only go for English as a Second Language if your child is bad at English and does not have any interest in it, though I think that it will ultimately be to their disadvantage.
While it’s true that there is some variance with respect to which qualification is more accepted by what university and there isn’t always heterogeneity when it comes to this, as a matter of course, I think that the specific to-the-letter requirements of universities shouldn’t be your primary consideration. Different universities have different requirements for the curricula and specific exams that you can take, which may allow you to skip certain proficiency tests… But you may also take the IELTS or TOEFL to supplement a qualification that does not meet the requirements of the institution that you would like to be a part of.
While this site may cater to people who take the English as a Second Language curriculum as well, I’d like to encourage you – whatever the curriculum you choose to take, don’t just give up before you’ve even tried, and don’t try to take the easier path – it won’t favor you in the long run.
Therefore, if you are on the verge of choosing English as a Second Language because you think you are picking an easier path… Do what you think is right for you.
But know that I believe that you and your family can do far more than you think you can do and that I recommend that you pick First Language English instead for the many long term benefits that I feel that this curriculum, if pursued in earnest, can confer upon you.
There are often many situations when I have to correct my students’ English. Perhaps they forgot to use the correct tense – perhaps they forgot to make sure that the subject and verb agree.
This is normal – we are human, and we are flawed.
It is not all that common that I find occasion to correct the English of someone who has written an article about the factors behind what they perceive as a drop in nationwide English proficiency or, for that matter, someone of Mariam Mokhtar’s infamy, though.
Consider this recent piece titled “Poor teachers, politicians to blame for bad English” that she did about English proficiency in Malaysia, the country where I live (and also the country that I’ve seen to most regularly participate in extensive debates about this issue), in which she blames politicians and educators alone for >>what she sees<< as low English proficiency in Malaysia.
While I respect the fact that she has good intentions, there is a famous quote that summarizes the entire situation.
…Yup.
I wanted to like this piece because it does advance a cause that I do care about: English proficiency.
However, I was unable to, because while perhaps Mokhtar’s intentions are good, the execution, reasoning, and delivery of this piece were disappointing from start to finish. All in all, I think it is a horrible piece, and I think that firstly she should retract it, and secondly I see it and the fact that it’s been shared over 500 times as evidence that as Malaysians and as human beings at large, we need to start demanding higher standard critics of our society or at the least refrain from sharing works that ultimately do not further the cause of developing productive or intelligent discourse in our world.
What is the piece about?
The piece is a piece about what Mokhtar sees as the decline of English proficiency amongst Malaysians.
A poster advertising various events to be hosted by the College of Architectural Studies (KAB) at Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) invited a barrage of criticism and much ridicule for its poor use of the English language.
One poster read, “Are you have a stress?”, while another referred to “doddle art” instead of “doodle art”.
The poster was roundly mocked by Twitter users.
One wrote: “No, I am not having stress, (I) am stressed looking at the poster.” Another said: “It’s a university… did anyone check the details, spelling, context, grammar, etc before promoting?”
In truth, no amount of proofreading or spellchecking will be of any use. A person whose English is poor and bad at spelling could look at the poster a hundred times and find nothing wrong with it.
It would be futile to blame our students for their poor command of English. Instead, we should blame the politicians, the system, the nationalists, and the teachers.
One could also blame our business leaders. Many noticed the steady deterioration of the English language and have been especially reluctant to employ our Malay graduates simply because they are the ones found most wanting.
Did these business leaders warn our politicians about the decline? Or did they keep quiet because they did not want to rock the boat?
This decline in English proficiency did not happen overnight. It has been going steadily downhill for several decades.
Our nationalists are eager to protect the national language and will mock those who speak English by questioning their patriotism. They are prepared to sacrifice the students’ command of the language without thinking about their future.
The students themselves ought to know that for their English to improve, they must speak the language regularly. After all, practice makes perfect.
Our teachers are bogged down by the system which in turn is determined by the politicians and their never ending flip-flops over how English is to be taught in schools.
Switching from English to Malay then back to English does not provide continuity. It has also affected the teaching fraternity significantly.
Politicians do things with the end-purpose of getting more votes. Being seen to protect the national language means that education policies are also crafted along racial lines.
Malays are brainwashed from primary school to believe that only the national language is important. As a result, few want to learn English. The consequence of this is felt when as young adults, students are unable to secure employment in the private sector.
Promoting Bahasa Malaysia is a vote winner among the Malay electorate. To prolong their political careers, politicians have sacrificed our children’s futures.
What is more remarkable is that other members of academia throughout Malaysia have been largely quiet about our students’ low proficiency in English. Why is this?
Are the lecturers petrified of speaking out for fear of being sacked or seeing their careers stall?
The teachers’ union also appears to be in denial.
Just think of the confusion among the students. On one hand, their lecturers tell them that they should become more fluent in English.
On the other hand, politicians tell them that Bahasa Malaysia will supersede English in communication. Who is right?
So who do you think one should blame for the error-strewn UiTM poster? Surely not the student who drew it up, since he is the product of poor policy by politicians who lack a long-term vision.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.
In the piece, Mokhtar highlights the role that the education system has upon students, highlighting conclusions about how flip-flopping in the education system, racial considerations, and a terrified populace of hemming and hawing academics whose priorities of self-preservation infinitely outweigh their desire to facilitate change. These damning factors, Mokhtar argues, have led to a confused generation of students who are unable to utilise their strengths because of the external environment around them.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I think it’s important to have these conversations, as they are the conversations that drive change forward in our society; how else would people take our politicians to task and get them to form more enlightened education systems that can facilitate the development of a generation that can compete in the market that is increasingly internationalised and has no regard for national borders?
At the same time though, there is a right way of having these conversations and also a wrong way – in my opinion though, Mariam Mokhtar? Your piece is one of many poorly-reasoned examples of criticisms of English proficiency of our generation. I think it actively harms our society and our national discourse, and its publication has failed to benefit the Nation in any meaningful way.
The problem?
Let’s go through the way that Mokhtar builds her argument. Before that though, let’s look at what she was looking at before she created her piece and also what she essentially based her entire argument on.
No sir, I am not “have a stress” – I am Victor.
I’m not gonna lie – it’s kind of funny. Still, the way that Mokhtar builds her argument? Tremendously problematic.
Moving forward from these incredible examples of masterful rhetoric, Mokhtar’s barrage proceeds as such:
Because these students students wrote extremely poor English and “In truth, no amount of proofreading or spellchecking will be of any use, a person whose English is poor and bad at spelling could look at the poster a hundred times and find nothing wrong with it.”. Therefore, by this woman’s logic, it is futile to blame students – we should blame politicians who want votes, teachers, nationalists, and the education system.
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Whoa there lady – HOLD IT.
While I can see how the existence of the posters could lead to an evaluation that the individual(s) who produced this and the people who QC’d it aren’t very good at English… But Ms. Mokhtar’s reasoning seems to me to be very thin, and exceptionally low in quality.
First of all… Why did she assume that no amount of proofreading and spellchecking would be of any use, when it was Twitter users who noticed that there were mistakes in the posters? Did she just conveniently forget that?
Second of all… The students who produced the posters are individuals. They are not an entire institution, and they are not our entire country. Why and how did Mokhtar go from this set of examples towards generalizing all of Malaysia and blaming politicians as a whole?
You see, the entire way that Mokhtar has framed her argument is that because the poster exists, we should indict the education system for producing students with such low English proficiency.
Her words are horrible, damning, a white-knight move to fight for justice and to rail nobly against the crooked politicians and a self-preserving education system…
If you don’t know how to evaluate what you are reading and your critical thinking skills are weak.
Now what Mokhtar has said sounds very beautiful and plausible – if you read it only with a cursory eye to attention and minimal regard for detail.
Read it again and you will realise that her argument demonstrates flaws in statistical reasoning.
Mokhtar’s core argument is based only on a single example, and that example says nothing about the collective or average English proficiency of our generation and that it demonstrates numerous flaws that cannot be cleanly or easily addressed.
Mokhtar cites the problem of the poster in the University, but says nothing about the thousands of people who pointed out the floor in the poster and had the conscience and insight to highlighted for the few of the public – in fact, she probably found the poster because there was a sufficient critical mass of people who are aware of the glaring mistake that was present in the poster to the extent that they had the capacity to call it out.
What, are the students who created the poster somehow more Malaysian than the hundreds of other people who retweeted the post and called it out?
It’s interesting how Ms. Mokhtar somehow failed to notice this point, but simply utilizes the image to justify the particular breed of popular vitriol that is so common in the Malaysian civil discourse today about a nation that lacks English proficiency, serving as fuel for poorly informed Malaysians with poor capacity for critical thinking to go on social media and share the article, highlighting the downfall of English proficiency of an entire generation without even questioning their own.
It is patently and grossly unfair, unreasonable, and frustrating to watch someone who is supposed to be an allegedly intelligent social critic use a single example like this in order to make a broad generalization about the Malaysian public at large, and even more unfair to use it as a justification for the idea that hardworking teachers are failing to serve the students that need help or that they and politicians are solely to blame for Malaysian students’ average English proficiency.
Read it again, and you will see that this piece is grammatically flawed in ways that cast doubt on Ms. Mokhtar’s capabilities and credibility as a commentator upon the current state of the English language in Malaysia.
To illustrate this, I would simply like to draw attention to an error that is most clearly displayed at the top of the article.
“The decline in English proficiency did not happen overnight, it has been steadily going downhill for several decades.”
Let’s interpret these beautiful words in the way that they have been written, using formal English language analysis.
To do this, let’s consider the role of the word “it”.
The word “it” is the example of what we call a pronoun – a word that may be used to replace an instance of a noun or noun phrase that has previously been used (what we call an ‘antecedent’) in the communication between a a reader and a writer.
It is crucial that a reader or listener be able to correctly identify what a pronoun is referring to, because that is crucial to words understanding any and all sentences that contain the word.
Let me give you an example.
Suppose I were to say the following:
“It is black, blue, and purple with some hints of white, and covered in granola.”
Would you know what I was referring to?
No, you would not.
You would probably ask:“What is black, blue, and purple?“, or a similar question, for the simple reason that you have no idea what I’m actually referring to.
On the other hand, if I had showed you this picture before saying the sentence…
“Here is a delicious blueberry and blackberry parfait. It is black, blue, and purple with some hints of white, and it is covered in granola.”
…The meaning of ‘it’ would immediately be obvious to you – ‘it’ refers to “a delicious blueberry and blackberry parfait”.
Why did the meaning of ‘it’ suddenly become clear? That’s because sufficient information was provided to us by the context in the case with the image, and sufficient information was provided about the antecedent for us in the case where the sentence “Here is a delicious blueberry and blackberry parfait” was provided.
Let’s take a look at what Mariam Mokhtar said once again in light of what we’ve discussed.
“The decline in English proficiency did not happen overnight, it has been steadily going downhill for several decades.”
– Mariam Mokhtar
Let’s ignore the comma splice and look at the more crucial antecedent reference that Mokhtar made when she declared “it has been steadily going downhill” in her sentence. Here, in order to understand what she has said, we need to identify what “it” refers to – in this case, “it” clearly refers to “the decline in English proficiency”.
The sentence continues with “has been steadily going downhill”, which indicates that the decline has been going down, and moreover that the double negative here implies that what Mariam Mokhtar has said is either:
English proficiency in Malaysia has been declining and continues to decline, but at a slower rate.
English proficiency in Malaysia has been improving.
In both cases, it looks like what’s happening is that uh, English proficiency is… Getting better?
I don’t think that’s what Mokhtar intended to say, and neither do I think that we should interpret her point as such… But if she intends to criticize the English language capabilities of the population, should she not demonstrate these capabilities herself?
Here’s a look at some calculus notation, in case you’d like to geek out and think about this (I also teach advanced statistics and econometrics):
Essentially, dP/dt is a negative constant indicates that English proficiency in Malaysia declining over time; the second derivative of that expression, according to Mokhtar’s words, seems to be positive. Therefore, there are two possible interpretations: a) English proficiency decline in Malaysia is slowing down. b) English proficiency in Malaysia is improving.
In order to illustrate why this is objectionable, I’d like to quote a proverbial expression that goes as follows: “Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t cast stones.”
This proverbial expression highlights the idea that people should not criticize others for faults or issues that they themselves possess.
In this case, it would be hypocritical for someone to criticize others for poor English language usage while not maintaining a high standard of English themselves.
Ms. Mokhtar’s argument demonstrates a poor mastery of the English language and therefore it is ironic that she has presumed to be the one to hold the torch that will illuminate the course forward of our generation; seeing as she is subject to the flaws that characterize the very thing that she was criticizing, I cannot help but think of her article as an instance of the blind leading the blind all the way into oblivion.
Read it again, and you will see that her argument demonstrates a narrow and poorly reasoned perspective that is ultimately detrimental to society.
Let’s recall how Mokhtar ended her banger of a piece.
“So who do you think one should blame for the error-strewn UiTM poster? Surely not the student who drew it up, since he is the product of poor policy by politicians who lack a long-term vision.”
If you feel that you’re terrible at the English language yet you agree with Mokhtar…
You’re saying you believe it’s not your own fault for not putting in enough effort – it’s the government’s for not supplying enough teachers to you, or teachers of a sufficiently high quality.
You’re saying it’s not your fault for not reading effectively or taking the time to look deeply into developing your critical reading skills – it’s the teachers’ faults for providing you with books, and the politicians’ faults for not ensuring that everyone gets a private tutor on the caliber of the finest instructors in the world.
You’re saying effectively that it doesn’t matter what happens at home or what you do – none of it is applicable to you because it doesn’t matter anyway and it’s not your fault for failing to strategize.
Now, let’s move out of that foolish fairy paradise for a moment and head into the realm of reality.
I think you know that there is no way that we as a society should absolve individuals from responsibility and thereby lead them on a slippery slope that will allow them to blame external things rather than take responsibility for their own development.
I think you know that while we should push our education ministry to level up and provide better textbooks, teachers, and environments, it is foolish and meaningless to spend time making senseless generalizations that unjustifiably demean our educators and mock the efforts of our best and brightest, rather than taking meaningful actions to improve our individual mastery of the language so that in every single scenario within our sphere of concern, we are able to make a positive and meaningful difference through logical thinking and intelligent rhetoric.
I think you absolutely know that willpower and interest deeply affect how well a person learns English and that as a society, we should not promote the idea that people are owed improvement when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Let me be clear that I think an education system is incredibly important and I’m not trying to diminish Mokhtar’s main points about how entrenched interests have made English a hard subject to advocate for…
Yet at the same time, let me say that while it is true that the education system has a great responsibility in cultivating the students of a generation, it is not solely responsible for the outcomes that each student will receive throughout the course of our lives.
You and I know, dear readers, learning how to speak the English language well is not easy. The reason that you are here is most likely that you want to improve your mastery of the English language – on the other hand, some of you come from far away to read these posts because you see value in this initiative and are interested to support it; few of you would probably imagine that you could avoid individual responsibility when you are talking about how you got to your current level of mastery and proficiency.
You and I know, dear readers, that English proficiency is something that is developed throughout the course of many years as a result of a person’s individual investment of time and energy into the development of this skill through their own time and interests, perhaps also through repeated and conscious interactions with their own family or friends over the course of time in the English language.
To say that it is solely politicians and the education system that are to blame for poor English proficiency is to completely absolve individuals from their crucial role in developing the capacity to speak the English language on their own, to say to the student who does not study that it is not his fault that he cannot speak the language, to mock the efforts of anyone who has ever had a burning wish to become more skilled at the vital skills of rhetoric and argumentation that are so important in modern society today.
It is completely at odds with how any single one of us who have learned the English language have managed to become good at it, it is passing the buck, and it is casually glossing over the true story of how a person can get good at the English language: Hard and intense work, ideally buoyed by a good environment, and undertaken amid a culture that facilitates respect for and a belief that progress is possible in the development of our English language proficiency as a whole.
By contrast, Ms. Mokhtar is saying that work is irrelevant when your teachers and politicians are bad, the environment is all that matters, and she is perpetuating a situation where people feel that it is right to mock and castigate those of us out there who are making a genuine effort to improve the situation from her little ivory tower off in Australia where she wrote this low-effort and lower-quality column that seems only halfway proofread and ultimately barely even registers as coherent.
She is planting the seeds for a culture whereby people just mock Malaysians and our capacity to articulate ourselves in English on bedsoil of shoddy evidence, flawed reasoning, and poorly-written English.
How ironic, considering that the apparent purpose of her piece is to promote English proficiency in Malaysia.
*Breathe*
Dear readers,
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
In this strange situation, we have a person with sub-par English proficiency criticizing people for what she references as their sub-par English proficiency, encouraging these people to increase their English proficiency by saying that it’s not their fault and that they should blame society for problems that they could and very much should take the effort to resolve through their own efforts.
Moreover, this person is tremendously influential, and people simply share what she has written without even questioning it, without even thinking about their own English proficiency, without even exercising any critical thinking about the content of the article.
Am I the only one who sees a problem with this?
Surely not, right???
Criticisms are ultimately like homing pigeons that come back towards us, for the simple reason that they will simply fail to hit their mark.
At the very least, I would hope that someone who is as influential as Ms. Mokhtar would demonstrate a minimum level of self-awareness and a level of insight that reflects her influence.
But that’s not the case – hence this piece.
I’ve pointed out the problems with Ms. Mokhtar’s arguments because I think that what she’s said demonstrates the average level of criticism that Malaysian civil society almost always displays when we as a society talk about the issue of the English language and go around in circles to discuss how well we’re doing or we’re not.
I’ve pointed out the problems with Ms. Mokhtar’s arguments because I’m tired of the way that many of us in Malaysia play a blame game that involves us passing on the buck to different people and stakeholders everywhere, because we either aren’t willing to admit that somehow or another there is a role for the individual, or we demonstrate poor reasoning on a societal level that is furthered by poorly reasoned opinion pieces like this that we share without reading, reacting to shoddy opinion pieces like this by instinctually calling out institutions, schools, politicians, and many more, exercising poor discretion and a lack of effective judgement, reasoning on the basis of limited examples or our own subjective thought processes by confirming what we had already believed rather than attempting to gain new insights by actually looking at the improvements that have been made or the advances that have taken place in our education system to make things better.
I’ve pointed out the problems with Ms. Mokhtar’s arguments because as a country, we need better thinkers than her to actually point out the problems that we need to solve before taking action to solve them, and refrain from listening too extensively to someone who doesn’t even live in Malaysia and demonstrates too low a standard of critical thinking to deserve the right to influence our thoughts and opinions to suit her ends.
Let me not be understood as saying that we should stop criticizing Malaysia as a whole. No. Not at all. What I am saying is that we need better critics of our Malaysian sociopolitical discourse, and we need thinkers who can call these critics out when they fail at what they are trying to do, not blindly accept and parrot their thoughts.
Some of the thoughts and points that Mokhtar has raised are valid. Certainly politicians and educators play a vital role in determining the future of our young ones, and ensuring that both the correct education system and the correct teachers are in place to teach our students is incredibly important.
But has Ms. Mokhtar actually attempted to perform an investigation with data about how bad the problem of a lack of English proficiency truly is, rather than simply making sweeping and irresponsible statements based on her subjective experiences?
The answer to that question, based on what I can see in this piece, is an irrevocable and irrefutable NO.
I appreciate that she has tried to serve as a critic for Malaysia, and I appreciate that she has her own agenda for how she wants to do it, but this was a horrible and poorly reasoned article that deserves not acclaim but instead an expression of horror from civil society.
English proficiency is a much more complex matter than what Mariam Mokhtar has described, and while it’s possible that the factors that she has described persist, it’s vital to not just blindly accept the claims that she (or any other thinker) has made merely because they sound plausible, but rather to consider the way that it has been reasoned out and the way that it has been argued.
Conclusion:
To close, I’d first say that there is insufficient justification for Mariam Mokhtar’s claims that politicians are the main reason that average English proficiency in Malaysia is going downhill, that weshould not take her seriously, and that we should move beyond the blame game and into a phase of developing intelligent strategies to improve English proficiency for students both nationwide and worldwide.
Let’s merely say for the sake of argument that what she has said regarding a decline of English proficiency on a nationwide level is true; that would be a charitable interpretation that doesn’t hold true, but supposing that it is… Even in a universe where it is true that our nationwide English proficiency is decreasing on average, it is irresponsible and wrong to claim that politicians and educators alone are responsible for such a nationwide decrease in English proficiency. Politicians and educators are not solely to blame for any decline of English proficiency that we can witness.
However, let’s not sidestep the issue of English proficiency and how it is affected by government, the education system, and nationalism.
It is true that an education system is tremendously important for providing the resources, support, information, and guidance that students need to excel in the English language, and it is also true that good educators are required to create the circumstances for students to flourish.
We may think of this education system like an ocean, and students as boats; if the ocean is smooth, the boats can move forth with no problems whatsoever, moving forward on a course that allows them to traverse forward effectively.
Of course there can be good oceans, and there can be bad oceans as well – A good boat may traverse a bad ocean and travel a far distance, yes, though that is no indication that a good education system (operationalized as a smooth ocean with a good coast guard, navigational facilities, safety features, and established routes that facilitate forward movement) is in any way undesirable.
Yet, it is crucial to remember that while be good boats may buoyed by things such as talent, discipline, hard work, and a will to persist… yet at the same time there can be bad boats that lack the qualities already mentioned and therefore cannot traverse the distance that it requires.
I believe, as an educator, that the English proficiency blame game is unproductive and undesirable, for we cannot divorce any question of improvement in English language capabilities from a question of what we as individuals are doing in order to improve those capabilities on our parts, to develop, and to take responsibility for our own learning.
I took Mariam Mokhtar’s words as antithetical to that belief and unshakeable conviction, and this piece reflects my response to it.
If you read this to the end, I’m impressed!
Thank you for reading, and I look forward to seeing you in my next pieces ahead!
