# 3rd Entry : Strive for excellence

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim…

Assalamualaikum to all my dear readers…

Today I would like to share my opinion based on the excerpt  “Dire need for English to be a must-pass subject” from the News Strait Times dated 25^th February 2013, the Education Ministry has created a proposal to make English a must-pass subject in the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM). In my point of view, I agree if English to be a must-pass subject as we know English is a vital language for everyone to be master. In this era of globalization where the world is getting smaller, it is no mean feat to gauge success. People are more interested in looking at academic achievement to judge someone's ability especially in English subject. This is because English is very crucial since it is the language that has been used by people around the world to communicate with each other.

Malaysian students must struggle to score A in English subject in order to get a good job in high level positions since English is necessary and been used in many working sectors in this country including the sectors of medical, business, tourism, law and education. For instance, we can see in a business matter, it is very important for people who work in that sector to have the ability to speak fluently in English so that it will be easy to them to upgrade their business into the international market. That is the reason why almost all of the big companies in this country will hire their worker from a person who can speak English fluently. Therefore, Malaysian students should give extra attention to English subject start from their high school to excel in English as a preparation for their future especially when they step into a job market which currently is more competitive than before.

I believe it is not impossible to every SPM candidate to pass in English subject. However, there are some aspects that the Education Ministry should make an improvement. As stated in the excerpt, the ministry has to make thorough preparations before implementing it. In my opinion one of the most important aspects that the ministry should give attention is in term of the English teachers that provided in every school in this country. Do you ever hear the quote "Don't give your students fish, but teach them how to fish". I think that quotation is absolutely true in language teaching.

The teacher is the most influential person toward student academic achievement. Thus, teachers must make an effort to create interest for their student to learn English. It is because, if the students do not have an interest in their learning, it will be harder for them to score in the subject. Undeniably, some of the students who do not have the interest in English subject is because they not seen English as important to their immediate needs other than to pass the examination. That is why teachers must be trained to improve their teaching skill to increase their students’ interest in learning English so that students will be more excited and happy in English lesson.

In addition, teachers must give their students a practice to communicate in English rather than only in writing part. This is because we can see usually teachers in Malaysia they only give their students continuous grammatical exercises. In other words, many teachers are more interested in training students how to read and write well in addition to make students master in the grammar component of the language. However I think oral communication is similarly important that the teacher must give attention. Although the drill-and-practice approach has some benefits in language teaching, it does not help the students master the language in the long run. Frequently, we find students who become good test-takers, and yet they are not able to speak and write competently when they graduate from high schools. Hence, teachers need to create a healthy balance between preparing students for the standardized examinations and for lifelong language skills. Therefore, Education Ministry must provide not only courageous, well-determined, and committed teachers but also teachers who have excellent and innovative teaching techniques.

Briefly, I think the proposal made by the Ministry of Education to make English to be a must-pass subject is acceptable and can give many advantages to Malaysian students. However the ministry should make some improvement to our education sector in order to create positive impact on student performance. I believe if the transformation is well planned before it is being implemented it will give many advantages to the whole nation. The Malaysian education system has to go the extra mile in order to improve the weakness in the system used before. Thus, Malaysians who opposed the decision should be more open-minded to accept the change for the benefits of the upcoming generation. After considering the pros and cons, I believe the decision will benefit Malaysians’ students to fulfill Malaysia’s strategy to create great students to be future leaders for the country.

# 2nd Entry : Women shouldn't be behind the wheel ???

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim...

Assalamualaikum everyone…

Now I will move to the second entry. The topic of this entry is about the stereotyping that women shouldn’t be behind the wheel. According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, the meaning of stereotype is a fixed idea or image that many people have a particular type of person or thing, but which is often not true in reality. While in the Critical Literacy module stated that Stereotyping is exaggerated generalization associated with a categorizing system. 

It is no doubt that stereotyping is not a good attitude and people already know it. However, being stereotype is such a human nature. We hate it, but still we do this to people and vice versa. Please don’t deny it because we did. Most of the times we do judge people even though we do not know them very well. This is because we often categorize people based on the experienced that we had before with people that have the similar characteristics.

Women shouldn’t be behind the wheel is one of the examples of stereotyping. There is a situation that women always been labeled as a bad driver compared to men. In my point of view the statement is really sexist. It is unfair to claim someone's ability on driving based on their gender. For instance people always assume that if there are any cars that moving at the slow speed on the road, the driver must be a woman even though they do not see the driver yet! To me the assumption is really inequitable. This is because both men and women have their own skills when driving and it cannot be judged according to gender. 

If we see the statistic on the research that have been made about women and men's behavior of driving,  it shows that the number of men driver is higher than a woman driver on the mistakes of  not wearing a seat-belt, driving while intoxicated, breaking traffic laws, and driving recklessly. Consequently, we can see that man also made mistakes when driving. Thus, we cannot simply judge that women are not a good driver and should not be behind the wheel. Here I would like to share an image that I found on confused.com which is showing a surveyed on the secret lives of drivers.

From the image of surveyed that made by Confused.com to the 2,000 people above, we could see the percentages of men and women’s risky driving behaviors. We can conclude from the surveyed that both men and women have their weaknesses on driving. Hence, it is so unfair to say that women should be prohibited from driving because not only women made mistakes when driving. Men do it so.

In a conclusion, there is no valid evidence that every woman is not a good driver. The stereotyping that women shouldn’t be behind the wheel should not be accepted. Even though sometimes stereotyping can be true but it is not always right. I am sure that no one in this world like if they are being stereotyped as something or anything before gets to know who they really are. Albeit stereotyping can have a positive view but most of the time it portrayed the negative assumptions toward something. So, the best way is we have to stop stereotypes others. Even though it is not easy but we have to try our best to avoid ourselves from doing it. Let’s look back at ourselves and stop judging other people without any valid basis.