‘Don’t blame trainees, review lecturers’ teaching methods’

This is to ensure that IPGM produced well-trained and qualified teachers before they are sent out to the schools, opined the National Parent-Teacher Associations Collaborative Council.

KUALA LUMPUR: The government should review the English Language teaching and learning methods at the Malaysia Teacher Training Institutes (IPGM) in view of teachers’ prevailing poor proficiency generally to teach the subject.

National Parent-Teacher Associations Collaborative Council president, Assoc Prof Mohamad Ali Hasan said the teaching methods of lecturers at the IPGM needed to be monitored to ensure they were teaching the subject according to the syllabus set.

“This is to ensure that the IPGM could produce really well-trained and qualified teachers before they are sent out to the schools.

“We cannot blame the trainee teachers alone, but the government should instead review the teaching methods of the lecturers at the IPGM,” he said when contacted yesterday.

On Wednesday, Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, who is also Education Minister, said IPGM trainee teachers needed to reach the English Language proficiency level set by the ministry before they were sent to teach the subject in schools.

Second Education Minister Idris Jusoh had also reportedly said that a study showed about 70 per cent of English Language teachers in this country were categorised as incapable or not qualified to teach the subject.

Mohamad Ali said for teachers to master English, they should not only read, write and communicate but also think in that language.

Dr Wan Marzuki Wan Jaafar, a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Educational Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia, said although the remedial measures outlined by the deputy prime minister were apt, the teaching and learning methods at the IPGM should be reviewed to overcome weaknesses if the trainees still failed to meet the standard required.

“The trainee teachers should not fail to achieve the standard as those chosen to enter the IPGM have excelled academically,” he said.
President of the National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP), Hashim Adnan said trainee teachers who had other options like Bahasa Melayu, Geography or History, should pass the English subject if they were tested at the IPGM.

He said this was to prepare them to teach the subject if asked to in the event they are sent to rural or remote schools which faced a shortage of English Language teachers.

-Bernama