VIDEO l 3.19 min

If teachers themselves cannot converse in English, neither can we expect the students to be fluent, said respondents to a popular poll run by KiniTV.

The poll asked people in the Seri Petaling area in Kuala Lumpur this morning for their response to Education Minister Muhyiddin Yassin who was puzzled over the low standard of spoken English among students.
 
'Goreng pisang' (fried bananas) seller Azizah (right) lamented that only the rich can send their children to private schools for them to improve their English.
 
“If you go to normal primary schools, students there cannot speak English. Even teachers nowadays cannot speak English!”
 
She said that this is because teachers themselves communicate in Malay, which led to the young not being able to converse in English.
 
“Correct the teachers first, only then can they teach students to converse in English,” she said.
 
Muhyiddin had said that Malaysian students, despite spending a better part of their education learning English as a subject, are unable to converse in the language after they graduate.
 
 “I am puzzled why our children after completing pre-school, primary school, secondary school and all the way to tertiary education still cannot converse in English,” the Deputy Prime Minister had said.

‘Make it stricter’
 
Meanwhile, another person polled had also agreed with Muhyiddin’s statement.
 
“They should make our education system more stringent,” said Sakun, lamenting the flip-flop decision on teaching of Mathematics and Science in Malay to English, and back to Malay.
 
“They need to make it stricter first, then they can impose the same thing in the education system. Like the national schools, they are not even speaking in English,” she added.
 
“You need to have that culture and to the parents at home, please start speaking in English so that your children will have a good future soon.”