Friday, March 18, 2011

Got nothing better to do, so I decided to go blogging.

Okay, now I'm addicted to blogging. Facebook is going to be a has-been soon. Haha. Anyway, speaking about Facebook... Hurm... I'm sure all of us are damn addicted to this thing. It's the trend in the world that we are living today, and it's writing new chapters in the history of human communication.


The rapid growth of Facebook has surely made Zuckenberg(is that his name?) richer every second, as the world is stuck in front of the monitor wasting their precious time for Facebook. Well, can't blame Facebook for being sooooo addictive. The world surely loves to socialise, and people seem to not be able to log out from FB though we are sure there won't be any new notifications.(haha.got this one from Ardy Safian)

BUT, ironically, the world that we knew as the world that loves to socialise and 'friend'ing people from all over the world don't seem to know people that surrounds them. The proof is, we hardly knew about our neighbours. We don't talk to them and even casting a smile to our neighbours could be such a hard job to do.
And, what do we do when we bump into strangers on the streets? Apart from a simple 'sorry', we don't even take the time to look at them or maybe, just smile. It's different on Facebook. We poke our friends all the time and we claim to be friends with strangers we haven't heard of. Haha. What an irony.


I'm not trying to say that we should stop Facebook'ing' but maybe we should take the time to know the people nearer to us even more closer than before. Haha. I mean it. MORE CLOSER. I used 'more' with a comparative form of 'close' to convey my meanings that we should be friends with the people surrounding us first before acknowledging a complete stranger.

Anyways, these are just my opinions, though. Haha ;)

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Haha. Why HAHA?

Haha. Okay. Why did I suddenly renamed my blog? Cause I feel the previous name was uncool and it sounds nerdy. Hahahaha. It makes me look like someone that doesn't have any better ideas for naming his own blog. Well, now the blog has a new name, so let me tell you how did I got the idea to name it HAHA ;)

I need a new name that is original,not too long, and easy to remember. And... the name must signify the owner as well. In other words, the name must be connected to me somehow. After thinking for a while, I suddenly realised a habit of mine while texting or typing a message; that is typing 'haha' for no reason. Then, it struck me. Haha is a good name too. And because I laugh a lot, so why not?

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Education Issues...again.

I went browsing the Internet the other day to search for notes for my assignments on The Curse novel,and I ended up in one blog, and one post caught my attention. The issue was on our English education in Malaysia.
One guy (or girl?) wrote about the new collection of poems that had been introduced to the syllabus last year,complaining about the lack of language,vocabulary and literary input the new syllabus is offering to the students.


 Well,he complained about the new book,for form 4 and form 5,and he said that the new syllabus has more drawings instead of text,and the components are not educative enough.

Hurm...I don't know whether to agree or not,but let us look on the bright side first. The new syllabus apparently had become easier,and there is not a lot of thing that can be learned from the drama as well.The drama that had been chosen has a lot of pointless dialogues,and he complained that the previous syllabus required SPM students to read a novel instead of the supposed-to-be-funny drama.

One thing you must remember,the syllabus we are using right now is the result from the discussions of a panel of teachers and students that had been selected throughout Malaysia.So,what we are learning right now have become easier,thanks to them.This guy obviously had issues with simpler things to learn,and he demanded the government to put more emphasis on the subject.

But,before they decide on a syllabus,they must have been doing some kind of survey,weren't they? And maybe,the results of the survey showed that the level of ability to speak English among students in Malaysia have dropped to a saddening rate.So,if people can't speak English,don't force them to speak! There are lots of schools in Malaysia located in rural areas which have students struggling to pass their BM exams, let alone English.We are a developing country,and we have to increase the number of passing candidates to rise the number of graduates.We need a lot of university graduates to produce manpower to develop the nation.If we make the syllabus too high-leveled,students will end up failing the subject even when they are not supposed to.What is the use of learning boring literature when you will never use the knowledge for the rest of your life after SPM? Do we really need to speak English like Shakespeare did? The answer is no.The level of English required in this country is not that high,and we hope to produce citizens with the ability to engage in daily and simple formal conversations and write simple essays in English but not to produce flamboyant writers.

Instead of blaming the policy makers,we should improve our students by emphasizing on the teaching of English in primary and secondary schools.We should sharpen their grammar,and their confidence to speak and write in English.What I had observed is, some primary schools don't really teach their students English.English period is substituted with other subjects. Don't blame the literature component when it becomes easier.What we should do is reinforcing the basics,not to increase the thickness of the textbooks.