After surveying the Asian environment for youths to learn and master the English language, the cosmopolitan Foong Wai Fong shares her personal experience of self-improvement in Malaysia as a graduate of Chinese primary school, Malay-English secondary school and Universiti Malaya.

Malaysiakini: You yourself were educated in the Chinese-language primary school in Malaysia and then the English-medium national secondary school and Universiti Malaya (with Bahasa and English side by side). How did you learn English and excel in it? What experiences would you like to share with other Malaysian youths who are Malay, Chinese or Tamil-educated?

Foong: I was lucky and am eternally grateful to one Mrs Ooi Gin Seng. When I switched from 100% Chinese medium to100% English medium, I had the guidance of this very dedicated teacher. She was the prefect master and she made me the prefect secretary. Every week I prepared the minutes of the prefect board meeting and she will review the minutes and note on top of the page the errors I made in my English. For two years, she helped me with a lot of basic structural weaknesses, and I scored a distinction for English in my LCE (Lower Certificate Examination) then.

I am afraid I am not the norm as many people have said to me that I am gifted and have a flair for the language, even my Western colleagues remarked to that effect. John Naisbitt used to say that he is amazed at my rich vocabulary. Honestly I did not really make a special effort. I was just interested enough to do a lot of reading, speak the language and pay attention to correcting my pronunciation. Working with multinational companies helped a lot. They help raise your standard, like sending you

to a finishing school.

I am also lucky to have worked with people at Megatrends. Traveling and social exposure, as well the frequent need to express yourself in writing and in conversation, help to really make you proficient in the language.

My advice to fellow Malaysians: make an effort, try to develop an interest in other cultures, and most importantly, language helps you with your refinement. I am going to say something politically-not-very-correct. I am afraid the mixing of Malay with English education has brought a lot of confusion to young people. They often spell English in the Malay way or vice versa.

Now, as in the 1960s and 1970s when we were younger, Malaysian youths who go to Malay, Chinese or Tamil schools still seem to be reluctant or hesitant to speak English among themselves as a form of practice, and also to read English books for leisurely pleasure or intellectual self-improvement. Why is this so?

It is understandable. I would even go so far as to say that those who drop out of Form 3 are not bad students, but their interest in learning was completely killed by their lack of understanding of the subject as they don't have the language. You see plenty of examples, everywhere.

Recently we had a seminar in Suzhou in China where a professor from Harvard and a speaker from Taiwan attended. Both were excellent speakers, but in terms of academic excellence, the Harvard Professor had a lot of depth and organisation. The audience was not as enthusiastic in their response to the Harvard professor who is Caucasian compared to the Taiwanese speaker who spoke in Mandarin. The audience could relate a lot more to their own language, and the speaker from Taiwan could joke and use examples that touched the nerves. The magic here was the language.

Also it is about culture and a different world view. I often cite the example of the Chinese movie heroes. Westerners cannot appreciate the depth of the message as they do not have the language or values in their culture. The reverse is also true. I have a Chinese friend who walked out halfway of the screening of Lord of the Rings, because he failed to understand the message. It was too much effort to try (to understand the messages) and therefore he wasn't enjoying it. Culture is in our genes. It is like the pleasure we derive from eating curry or laksa. It cannot be translated into another culture - the Dutch may eat the same bowl of curry or laksa, but the enjoyment is different.

To really become bilingual, we need to have an open mind and the interest to get into another culture, and try to enjoy or see things from another culture's point of view. We cannot use our own point of reference or basis to compare or evaluate something from a different culture. There are no common reference points.

For example, when the English drink tea, they use the spoon to stir and then put it by the side of the cup and then hold up the saucer with the left hand and the right hand takes up the cup. For many Asians, their way is to take up the cup using the left hand and drink leaving the spoon in the cup. The same thing happens when you see Asians and Westerners take soup; the Asian will bend forward and down to the spoon, whereas the Caucasian will take the spoon up to the mouth, sitting erect. I call this culture-fluency - have we really mastered the ways?

This has to do with real interest. Is there anything wrong doing it differently? The answer is that it depends on how pure you want the mastery to be. As you can see now, enjoying the same cup of tea could be in a million different ways, but if you really want to do it the British way, you have to be willing to do it. This is culture adoption.

What do you think are the problems in Malaysia's education system in providing opportunities and facilities for young Malaysians to learn and master English?

For languages, we have to start our children young, the younger the better. The best age range is from three to eight. If I can have the ears of our policy makers, I would strongly recommend that all our children, be they Malay, Chinese or Indian, be given good foundation in languages in their

pre-school (and by the way pre-School is more important than higher education) years.

It is not only about English but also Malay as well as Mandarin, for children of all races, they have the capacity to master all three. If you start them young, it will not be difficult, but if you start late, there is a lot of pain and resentment among the learners. In fact getting our pre-school kids to do three languages is our best bet for national integration - when they adopt the language, and by osmosis, they adopt some parts of the culture, the integration in their mind is achieved. The education experts will tell you that children do not make a distinction between English, Chinese or Malay.

My three-year-old niece is a good example. She can speak Malay, English, Mandarin or Cantonese. When she sees her Indonesian nanny, she will say, "Kakak, saya mahu susu." When she talks to me, she will say in English, "Aunt, I want to follow you out today, please." When she talks to her grandma, she uses Cantonese and so on.

Children learn very well as their mental capacity is forming between the ages of three and eight, and during this time, they have an amazing absorption capacity - we teach 4,000 characters of Chinese to five and six year olds in six months! I think we have not paid enough attention to this. Language training must start young, very young. For older kids, the motivation has to be very strong, and it is not always easy to sustain. Good teachers are important. I think good teachers don't teach. Their main job is to motivate students to help them find their interest in the subject.

Malaysia has a tremendous advantage of a multi-cultural society; by this I mean we have the cultures living and breathing into each other side by side, everyday. We are not using this enough. Malaysian leaders echo this more as a slogan than really leveraging on this advantage that we have.

There is opportunity for the children to reinforce what they are taught in their daily encounters. Between pre-school and primary three, I think our focus should be languages and mathematics - and my view is that it is fine to continue teaching mathematics in the mother tongue (that is if you are championing our old school set-up - English, Chinese and Tamil streams). By the way, the old school system has actually produced a lot of multi-lingual Malaysians like you and I.

Once the children master the command of all three languages, then it is up to their liking and preference to excel in any one of them. In Malaysia, we seem to have people who can speak different languages, but you and I know that majority of them don't excel in any language. That is sad, because we cannot go far in our academic pursuits as languages are tools. I rather have our people get multi-lingual preparation when they are young. Let them achieve a certain level of proficiency; and then choose which one to excel in.

Since we are on the subject, I am actually very upset by the poor command of English among our young people. In pronunciation, in vocabulary, the standard is poor. Whenever I try correcting them, they tell me that was how they were taught in school! They also don't think. When you correct them, they tell you they are just following what is in the file or this is what they heard! Our young people don't challenge and don't think hard enough.

Specifically, do you think the Chinese-language system of education in Malaysia is providing sufficient opportunity, facility and incentive for its students to learn and master English? If not, what reforms should be initiated and implemented in the Chinese-language system of

education in Malaysia?

Those graduates from the Chinese language system who excel in English belong to the minority. Students from the Chinese streams are good at scoring at examinations and they are better at written words. When it comes to conversation, the native English speaker will be shocked. This group of students has two problems: one is confidence, the other is practice. They just don't have enough practice to make their mastery perfect.

However, it is possible for Chinese language schools to have graduates who have a better command of all three languages. I attended the graduation ceremony of Tshung Tsin Chinese Independent School in Kuala Kangsar recently where its headmaster Tsen Kui On announced that 100% of their graduates achieved passes in all the three languages, namely Malay, Chinese and English for two years (2002 and 2003) and for the year 2003, those who got credits are even more impressive; 96% for BM, 98% for Chinese and 100% for English.

We ought to look at what Tsung Tsin did right. The students don't seem to have resistance. But I also suggest that we should look at these students' English oral skills. In China, university graduates now have to pass an oral English test before they can get their degree. This shows the area that needs to be worked on urgently.

Many Malaysian working adults in their mid-30s and mid-40s feel that they did not learn sufficient English when in vernacular schools or local universities in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and they now find it difficult to compete in a different era. What can they do now to catch up? Are there enough private facilities in town for these busy working adults to improve their proficiency of English?

If one is determined, one can achieve a breakthrough. There are many successful cases of adult learners who started late. I have colleagues in China who only began to learn English in their post-graduate years, and they can get a PhD in the English medium. The founder of Apple Daily in Hong Kong did not know a word of English when he was growing up, and he learnt English at a very advanced age. When we talked to him recently, he was quoting Frederick Hayek and Adam Smith. The bottom-line is, if there is a will, there is a way.

Honestly, the paid schools are good if you can get a good teacher to help with your initiation. Learning is a do- it-yourself task. You can't rely on others or schools or material. We heard about the case of the Vietnamese taxi driver learning English from the Voice of America (VOA) broadcast. If you make an effort, learning materials are everywhere.

You need to use your downtime, switching on the English news in your car in the morning, when you are home, put on CNN or other English news channels. Speak English with friends etc. Make it a point to learn a new word a day. There are so many ways if you are determined to discover and explore a different world from your own. You have to be inherently curious.

JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia. He is a former DAP member of Parliament for Kampar (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily (now Sin Chew Daily). He read political science and economics at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.