A self-fooling action - Abolishment of PPSMI

‘I’m now announcing that we’re going to abolish our dearly revolting PPSMI,”.

PPSMI stands for Pembelajaran dan Pengajaran Sains dan Matematik dalam Bahasa Inggeris, literally translates as Learning and Teaching Science and Mathematics in or using English. It’d been introduced since 2003 and was a proposal of our dearest ex-prime minister, i.e. Dr. M. Students who had done their UPSR in 2002 or started their primary education would have been the first to acquire their scientific and mathematical knowledge in secondary language.

English is indeed a secondary language in Malaysia and it’s really enjoying its privilege of the middle class. We don’t talk about other languages, which are either of upper class or lower class in the society as they are unrelated over this topic.

Reestablishment of PPSMM has, again, downgraded the status of this language.

It’s alleged that the implementation of PPSMI over this half decade had degraded its students, particularly in Science and Mathematics, which are currently learned and taught in English. And some politically correct social members are reckoning that this measure itself has been a failure of Malaysian schooling system since 2003 as it’s not hitting the spot, i.e. to polish up the ability of young citizens in mastery of this language.

It’s just a matter of time and I would regard them as teething troubles which would predictably happen in the early stage of this introduction.

I’m saying this in my experience. I’m the first secondary batch receiving this special treat. Candidly, I think the benefits brought by this scheme outweigh the disadvantages. At the very least, it has allowed its students to have more references from other resources. For instance, the textbooks used in other English-speaking countries can be treated as reference books for Malaysian students. Add to that the English scientific terms from those books would be easily comprehended without the need for translation; we can actually have all the latest facts and figures at our fingertips.

Not to trigger off a feeling of racial inequality, the legislation of learning those subjects in Bahasa Malaysia would be just an unreasonable and unjust option for non-bumiputras.

Let’s take a look on what happened before 2003. In our six-year primary schooling, we’re firming up our foundation in the basics of languages, sciences and arts using our own mother tongues. Apart from endeavoring to get a grasp on the arithmetic and sciences, we would have to master own tongue as well as other lingoes.

Soon after this, we learned everything in our national language, which’s still considered a somewhat unfamiliar language for non-bumi like us, even after six years of learning. It’s when we’re undergoing a significant shift in our means of acquisition of new and more advanced knowledge. It’s also when many among us had dropped out as they’re not linguistically strong enough to be selected for.

As for those who’d luckily been selected for, the selection did come at a price – we did sacrifice our time, money and strength to make firm our grip of this language so that we could excel in other subjects through this language.

Nevertheless, the percentage of sacrifice makers is less than thirty percents. Most among us were using the national language throughout their 11 years of compulsory education. It’s therefore explicable that even more had dropped out after the establishment of PPSMI.

Meanwhile, this scheme had caused not much affliction on the thirty percents as they still have to accommodate to the transformation and this transformation does not differ much from the one happened formerly.

From a student’s standpoint, I would prefer to suffer now than to suffer in the future for a longer time, perhaps the whole life ahead of me.

I don’t fancy our Ministry of Education to exterminate the scheme as well as to carry on with the scheme for primary education.

It’s after all making the young pupils more stressful as they need to master all three languages fully together before they can do well in others. I suppose letting the native language to predominate among the small children would be a better way of building the all-important foundation.

We should keep on with the scheme for secondary education as the children should have learned how to adapt as they are moving from childhood to adolescent stage of growth. Otherwise, they won’t be competitive enough to take on the oncoming challenges.

The decision of the ministry on increasing the number of English teachers as well as the length of time or period for English classes in primary, secondary and tertiary educational institutions is indeed commendable. This is rather a practical action of achieving greater English level among Malaysian students.

We should always take peeks and emulate the successes of other countries in their education system. Positive attitudes towards our education are also of crucial importance. Stop behaving as if you deserve better. You should muse on what adaptations you should have to every single problem that hits you.

There are still 2.5 years for the ministry to change their mind.
Don’t be an escapist or the fox that described the grapes as sour just because it couldn’t reach them.

Reducing Weight 무게 감소

Reducing weight is pretty easy if you're to decrease your weight from 635 kg (the mass of Dr. Robert Schwartz, the heaviest man in the record) to 419 kg. And, the time required to lose such a big bulk is often short.

What do you think about losing weight from 70 kg to 60 kg? Can you do it with ease to an extent that you can lose 2 kg per day? It's definitely a no-no. To get lighter on the weighing balance is infinitely harder.

Improving a language that you've learned is like reducing weight from 70 kg to 60 kg. Starting to lose terribly great mass is a simile of getting started with a new language.

I am arching for better English but I've no idea how to make it fast. Perhaps I am too worrying about my Physics, Chemistry and Biology. In spite of being in contact with this language all the time, no obvious improvement has been recorded.

I start to have a feeling of anxiety over my ability in this language these days. I guess I should begin to work on it before it's too late. I hope blogging is one of them.

Full Moon 보름달

Full moon
Explicitly illuminating
All his accountabilities,
And his old stories;

Full moon
Jogging his memory
As if it’s a raconteur;

A boy used to be diminutive,
Encountering difficulties,
Developing his skull-penetrating skills,
Wishing for encouragements,
Not counting his passionate advocates.

Never forgetting his recurrent contemplation,
Of ways and schemes;
To give the poor inexperienced thing –
Himself a chance to learn
Exactly how he could glide through his.

Full moon,
Telling off the little boy
With plenty of moxie,
About in what manner he should and shouldn’t,
As though it’s the one bringing forth to him;

A boy used to make no efforts to obey,
A boy used to love glumness,
A boy used to moaning and groaning,
For being unfairly treated;

A boy used to be forgetful,
A boy used to petty jealousy and squabbles,
A boy used to have rubber-like temperament,
So any stress-exerting endeavor would just fall flat;

Full moon
Signifying the significance of unity
Proving that a sorrowful look wasn’t a good one,
And life ain’t full of somber occasions,
A crescent and a new one wouldn’t stay any longer.

Full moon
Putting forward a number of suggestions,
As well as appeasing the angry boy by showing its fineries.
Doping the disposition with steel,
Not because to make his a callous one;
Just to make him tough and strong.

Full moon
Reminiscing his days,
Ringing a bell loudly about,
His enormous clangers,
Teaching like a reverend;
About God’s words

I was having peaceful mind on that morning, being rejoiced at the sight of the lovely full moon.
As the saying goes, early bird catches the worm, I was somehow proving it was true when early man like me would have the occasion for this fantastic scenery of dawn.
And, I wrote this poem though it ain't any poem worthy of reading. :)

Translation or Transition?

Globalization is having a quickening pace and is predicted that it will continue to have a growing impact on business organization and practice. (One of Thomas Lauren Friedman's stances or opinions about globalization). It is thus a process by which the people of the world are unified into a single society and function together, which is with some sort of great difficulty, for example a difference between the cultures and languages amongst the citizens of various countries, which are trying to be in contact with one another.

Due to recent advances in information communication technology (ICT), there are quite a number of big corporations earning revenue from advertising related to Internet Search, Web-based emails and social networking: for instances, Yahoo and Google have conducted researches by requesting their engineers to be engaged in the innovation process by spending about 20 % of their time working on a chosen project and thus producing many not-for-profit tools such as Google Talk or Yahoo Messenger and Gmail or Yahoo Mail.

The corporations also develop their own translation tools through Google Language Tools and Yahoo Babel Fish to alleviate the problem related to difficulty when talking to a foreigner who does not know one's language, so a person would be easy to understand a single word, a phrase or a sentence, and even an article without even knowing a language which the piece of writing is in. However, the so-called translators really suck. In lieu of translation, they carry out transition, making a mess of the actual or real meaning of a particular piece of writing. The translators sometimes make the meaning or of a simple word or sentence, or even a message to be misconstrued by the readers, consequently resulting in a succession of problems.

Well, we should proclaim something with proofs, i.e. the translation results as follows: P/s: The translation results are sometimes hilariously funny.

Google translation (from English to Simplified Chinese)
E.g. To begin with, I used a common insulting remark:

"Shut up! You Moron!" Pretty scary result: 闭嘴！你木伦！

After that, I had performed a reverse by translating the two given Chinese characters: 木伦 to see the term's meaning in English, and to my amazement, a translation result appeared, which made me faint: Wood-Lun

How about using something scientific?

"Data that is presented in a table can be understood easily."
Not-quite meaningful result: 数据是在一个表是可以理解的容易。

Again, I translated the result given into English and surprisingly, I realized that the translator had changed the actual meaning of the original sentence: Data in a form that can easily understandable What differentiates between table and form?

I decided to have other alternatives in translation of the similar sentences from English into Simplified Chinese and the following shows the results I had:

Yahoo Babel Fish Translation:

闭嘴! 您蠢人! Not bad :)

在桌里被提出的数据可以容易地被了解 Well, scientific data you've collected from an experiment, according to Yahoo Babel Fish, is related to your drawers. :D

Huajian Translation:

闭嘴！ 你白痴! Prefect!

在表格里被提出的数据可以容易被理解 Not bad though can't still distinguish between form and table

Kodensha Translation:

沉默！ 你愚笨! = = "

在桌子中被表示的数据容易能理解 A round or rectangular one provides you with accurate and precise data?

Systran Translation:

闭嘴! 您蠢人! = Yahoo Babel Fish

在桌里被提出的数据可以容易地被了解 = Yahoo Babel Fish

Click2Translate Translation:

闭嘴！你低能者! Fantastic

数据那在一张表中被赠送能够容易地被理解 = Complimentary?

Look at the power of the translators, do you dare to use them for translation when talking to a new friend who does not know your m0ther language? :)Well, to read more about such funny translation story, please move on to another post by one of my bloggy friends: Surely You are Joking, Google Translation.