Berambeh” Organising Committee led by Assistant Minister of Urban Planning, Land Administration and Environment Datu Len Talif Salleh (sixth left).
KUCHING: The State Government is serious in its efforts to improve the standard and proficiency of English in the State. Minister of Education, Science and Technological Research, Dato’ Sri Michael Manyin Jawong believed that given three more years, the proficiency of English among Sarawakians will improve significantly.
“Give us three more years, I think Sarawak will change, ” he said at the closing of First Sarawak English Language Education Symposium held for two-and-half days at Pullman Hotel Kuching here yesterday.
Manyin stressed that students must be encouraged to communicate in English everyday in order to improve their proficiency in the language and they should not be ridiculed. He also stressed that teachers themselves must read and must also be seen to be motivated to communicate in the language .
Manyin disclosed that a circular had been sent out to all the Yang Berhormat s (YBs),to all the 82 elected representatives including the Chief Minister to ask them to adopt one or more schools in their areas where the students and teachers speak no other language except English the moment they are in their school compounds.
Later , when speaking to the media, Manyin said a committee will be formed to look at the recommendations from this symposium.
“ “We will sit down and work on the recommendations and the strategies forwarded,” he said, adding that one of the recommendations was that teachers read and speak the language and how do we implement all these,” he said.
Permanent Secretary to the Ministry Datu Sudarsono Osman said after given the exposure from the Symposium the participants would have been given new insight, practices , experience and so on. “Immediately, when they go back they could see how they could do things differently from what they had learned and apply it in the classroom and made an immediate difference,” he said.
Manyin said “Train the trainers” will also be one of the things to be considered. “That is why after this , we are going to have seminars for all the 1,264 primary headmasters . There will be one to be held this year and there will be two more seminars next year. They will be held in all the three zones – Northern Zone, Central Zone and Southern Zone, he said.
“The whole purpose is to make Sarawakians aware that the Chief Minister’s Office is very serious about our proficiency in English,” he said. There are about two billion people speaking English in the world and all the countries actually are trying their best now to make their citizens to be fluent in English because it is the language of commerce, math and science, engineering, diplomacy, finance and publications. “All are in English, so we don’t want to be left behind.
So I hope that after this symposium, nobody will try to ridicule anybody who tries to speak English in schools or anywhere,” he said. “Don’t pick up the mistake we just encourage people to speak English. We are using English as a first language and it is our second language of communication. So don’t bother. The purpose is to encourage Sarawakians, big and small to try to speak English,” he said.
