Journal entry 1 (ENG1013)

Teaching and learning of Science and Mathematics subjects should remain in English. Do you agree or disagree? Discuss.

            Both Science and Mathematics subjects are to be taught and learnt by the students  in English was the idea of Tun Dr. Mahathir. He is the one who brings a lot of benefit and development to Malaysians. However quite a part of Malaysians were against his idea because they do not understand English well. Even though there are some problems appear, Tun Dr. Mahathir insist to continue his idea. So, English is used in the teaching of both subjects. It might be a problem for secondary and primary students. Because the actual language they learning was in Malay and the sudden changes might bring them up some problems during their learning session and practical session.

            Due to the imbalance percentage of Malaysia’s citizen agree to accept Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad’s idea which means there is no 100% agree with Science and Mathematics subjects are to be taught in English, a discussion was carried out to show that whether English is the most suitable language to be use for teaching in Science and Mathematics subjects. Regarding to that matter, below are some results of the discussion that had been carried out.

            Beyond the benefit that we gained from this change that Tun Dr. Mahathir had made years ago is that all of us had give our best shot in learning English and communicate with each other with the teacher in schools or even though sometimes the younger generation comes out for a small gathering, they used English as their communication source instead of using their custom language. It is a good beginning for the young generation in Malaysia to learn to speak English not only during classes or practical classes but also in their daily life to communicate with each other. English is an International language. Due to that, the citizens of Malaysia are encouraged to learn and speak in English in daily life. English can help us to communicate with each other in the whole wide world. From the aspect of communication, the language of English do helps a lots in the advanced era. For example, two years ago, Malaysia had sent an astronaut to the space. The astronaut was Dr. Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor. He was sent to be trained physically and mentally in Russia. There, they use English as the communication source. As we can see from here, English do helps a lots in communication service in the modern days.

            Other than that, learning English can helps us to understand more because of nowadays, more and more things are coming up in English. It is good that we learnt English language as to improve our knowledge. Instead of helping us to improve our knowledge, we could also get ourselves updated to the latest news in Internet, such as www.yahoo.com and www.msn.com. Both of this internet webpage do provides a lot of latest news from around the world and the news are all in English language. This is why Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad suggested the idea of teaching and learning of  Science and Mathematics subjects in English language. After the idea of changing the language used for teaching Science and Mathematics from Malay language to English language, a program was established which is called the PPSMI, “Pendidikan Pembelajaran Sains dan Mathematics dalam Bahasa Inggeris”. This program was carried out in every school in Malaysia. The objective is to encourage students and citizens of Malaysia to study and learnt to speak English and take English language as their communication source in daily life. This is because speaking in English has to be practiced always so that we could speak fluently in the future as long as we are intended to learn to speak English.

            Although English language do helps a lot in our daily life, but there is side effects of  this program carried out. The major problem is that students are stressed up because of the sudden change in the language used to teach both the Science and Mathematics subjects from Malay language to English language. It’s a big gap for the students to study in English as they have to study from beginning to understand the basic theory of both of  the subjects as English and Malay language are two different things. This might cause the students to pressure them up and they might be either gone crazy or commit suicide. But there are also some students who are determined they can manage to break this obstacle and go on their study in English language. These students are good and they have the qualification as Malaysia’s future leaders to lead the coming up younger generation to follow up their steps.

            From the discussion, it can be seen that learning English language is harmless and in fact it helps to improve the quality of a person’s life. This shows that English language benefits us more than harming. It can helps us as in communication source to communicate with each other around the world and up to date about the latest news happened from around the world. On behalf of the disadvantage, students who are stressed, this problem is actually can be solved. They can look for counselor to help them and release their stress. Besides, they also can go for extra English classes to improve their English. This is just depends on ourselves whether we want it or not. If we want it, sure there is the way to solve it.

            From the passage, I agree that teaching and learning of Science and Mathematics in English language should keep on. This is also the only way to encourage the citizens of Malaysia to learn English and master it and use it as a communication source in daily life.

Okay, guys. For you, how many marks would you give me if this passage contain 5 marks.

How many marks out of 5 marks would you guys give me..?