read..read..read

i often heard media says that Malaysians are lazy to read or Malaysians rarely read books as compared to other nations in the world..i always thought that how wrong they were..Malaysians do read - they read blogs, newspaper, comics and so on...as for me, reading is fun! how could they portray Malaysians as lazy!!!

nonetheless, when i started my teaching career last year, i found one distressing fact:

---> my students could not even write an engaging essay, an interesting story or even the correct facts..and please bear in mind, these are intelligent students (they study in selected residential schools in the country)

how sad is the situation?

those who are in my class know better when i always:

--- nag at them - for their grammar

--- scold them - when they couldn't finish the essay right on time..or even if they did, their essays were haywired; disorganised, boring, lame, unengaging and so on.(you name it - all those bad adjectives)

at one time, i blamed myself for being a lousy teacher. i was too busy with extra cocurricular activities. so,i couldn't teach them properly. i negelected them.i wasn't good at delivering my lesson. i didn't know how to integrate fun in my lesson, that was why my students performed badly.and the list of the excuses was so long. i was depressed.

thinking myself as a failure was unbearable - thus, i retorted.

i did a research and analysis. (more like observation and asking questions) why there are students who could really write well (you bet, their essays are flawless in term of grammar errors plus the language flare are so proficient. they beat me at times. but most importantly, their ideas are so engaging, so creative)

i found out the de facto - it is because they are avid readers.they read A LOT. and for those who don't really perform well - they DON'T read even a single book/novel in a year

what they really care is their science subjects - physics, chemistry, biology, add maths.

yup...most of them scored 9A's/10A's in SPM yet their English was B.this is the reason why English subject percentage dropped. we dubbed it as the great downfall.

what did i do?

• i collected books on my own.
• set up my own library. the advantage of my library is the borrowing period is longer and there is no fine if they return late.

------ > now, the culture of the school hasn't changed much in a year but constant nagging and reminders that i put on my students (poor them..sigh), shows little change in their attitude. at least, they started borrowing books from me to start cultivating the reading habit among themselves. English is still a nightmare.

however, some of them are discouraged to read merely words in the books. they get boring easily.

now, i am trying to manoeuvre my goals into slightly different direction.

i encourage them to read graphic novels.it's funny, it's less serious.

i am still experimenting though..

we'll see the result next year (SPM 2009)

now, i agree with the fact that says Malaysians (not all) are lazy to read