Born as kampong boy,
it’s kind of weird and awkward to hustle just one day in the foreign
language. The whole my family speak the
national Kedah language and we proud of it. Not like many migrate, who tend to
speak standard bahasa, I proud to speak my northern dialect.
My pilgrimage to KL
urged me to explore lifestyle, career exposure and gaining knowledge. I see
that the ability to speak English is added value and at that time believe we
may looked “cool” by using that language. Proficiency in English is vital in
today’s world and apparently it being use widely in corporate sector. To put
myself at par with KL urbanites, I need to catch up very fast. Though my
secondary school was an English medium, but the culture of English conversation
usage was not mandatory to everyone.
Listening to music and
subscribing Kerrang magazine with little help of my scholarship are two things
help my English. I put the western music as a benchmark and therefore I spent a
lot in rock n roll cassette at my secondary level. At one point, a misunderstanding
happen when my father wanted to remove my faked Soundgarden tattoo as he think
that was the real tattoo. Indeed there some songs I don’t understand at all but
I keep effort to find it words by word through dictionary.
English nowadays is very important and arriving
Heathrow without English may put you into hell. It will help at every corner of
the world. According to Stephen Doss the following are other data relating to the use of English in
different situations:
·
380 million speak
English as a second language;
·
one billion speak English
as a foreign language;
·
There are an estimated
1.7 billion users of the language. English dominates the Internet, the print
media, business, aviation, conferences, other international events, etc;
·
Approximately one
billion are learning English worldwide;
·
Over the Internet, about
80 per cent of home pages and 60 per cent of e-mail are in English;
·
English is the medium of
higher education in many countries, eg India, the Netherlands, Oman, South
Africa, Sweden and Turkey;
·
85 per cent of the
world’s knowledge is in English; and
·
98 per cent of
scientific papers are written in English.
In his book The Future
of English (2000), Graddol said: “Worldwide, there are 1,400 million people
living in countries where English has official status. One out of five of the
world’s population speaks English to some level of competence. English is the
main language of books, newspapers, airports and air-traffic control,
international businesses and academic conferences, science, technology, diplomacy,
sport, international competitions, pop music and advertising.
Whatever your options are, to develop ourselves
lay our own hand and I had my own way. I was so choosy in selecting girlfriends
last time. No matter how pretty the girl is, if they can’t speak English,
definitely they will be kicked out. I
only went out with good English girl and today I marry with someone who is able
to converse in English well and had our daughters followed us, we seek for time
to prove it.
Last night I watch a new program on Astro called
Oh My English. It’s about the notorious students
who are well known for misbehaving and being the worst at their academic
results, especially in English. By using unconventional methods of learning,
Henry Middleton aims to improve their
English. The program is a noble idea (I guess it’s from Marina Mahathir, when I
look the producer is Red Com) and I think it helps the English standard for
toddler in relaxing mood. Though there are some errors on grammar but it more
to educate the audience. Oh My English presents a 360 degree learning
experience dedicated to help young teens to improve their conversational
English in a fun way and I do encourage my two angles to watch that.
Though my English is not
as good as KL yuppies but I tried to make grammatical errors a minimum level. Up
to now I still feel, far behind from those urbanites who born naturally in English
pool but being a rubber estate boy, it’s better late than never. My root doesn’t
stop me to explore a language which totally out of my world. At least I don’t
look as an alien in this country. On why many local universities student failed
to speak English, it’s their choice to put what colour from their pallet .The perceptions
on being liberalism by using foreign language on daily basis just kill them to
explore the other side of the world. Apparently, for those who choose to
alienate English it means they disown the vast of knowledge. In this country English is not a foreign
language.
