Hi, everyone. I was previously an English lecturer and an instructional designer. I'm now self-employed as a Business English trainer and business communication coach.

I'm planning to start a learning community specially for working adults and business people; hence, the poll questions to gain deeper insights about the challenges Malaysians are facing when using English in their daily lives.

I appreciate your thoughts, observation and insights regarding this topic. Your input will enable me to design and produce better courses/classes for local students.

Thanks!

Can't understand why you are doing this .. It is not that good English speakers bring in the most sales

Locally, yes, most working adults, sales people and business people don't need good English since it's acceptable to use a variety of languages and dialects at work/in business.

However, if you're bringing your career, business and sales to regional or international level, you definitely want to speak good English to impress your international audience and get your message across clearly.

u are still in the local malaysian mentality bro

internationally, with your broken englrash it gives people a bad impression, you are not a professional,

It's just unnatural for us to speak with native. In malaysia, we tend to juggle between languages. And, each languages has their own sets of rules, which inadvertently we tend to have them assimilated to create our own so called "English". Most importantly, we have made expressing in English shorter adopting words from other languages. In another words, we kinna trimmed our sentences.

I would say I struggle mostly with constructing a proper sentence to express myself (limited vocab, tenses, etc)

Wish I had a proper teacher when I was young.

Thanks for sharing your input. Yeah, most Malaysians speak rojak English.

As a matter of fact, most English teachers aren't that well-trained in Malaysia in terms of pedagogy. There's also a shortage of professional English teachers in government schools. Malaysian students' English language proficiency has dropped a lot over the years.

Not surprised. My English teachers were really bad during my sch days. Or maybe it was just me, being bad at languages. They were never my forte. Until today, I would still struggle to express myself at times. Nevertheless, I believe I have improved over the years being exposed in an environment where everyone speaks mainly English.

I wish I had a teacher at times, to guide or correct me at times. It's hard to identify our own mistakes at times, unless someone highlights it.

When I was in Form 5, I once had a guru ganti for English subject. She spoke horrible English, and students often laughed behind her back. Then, we accidentally found out she had scored a C in her SPM English.

In your adulthood, did you manage to take some English classes with good English teachers? There are many English academies offering adult classes, but I've never taken those classes as a student (since I am an English lecturer/teacher myself). I'm just wondering how the experience is like, as an adult student.

No, I have never attended nor searched for one. I would say it was self-learned. My English wasn't too bad to begin with as I spent majority of my time speaking in English during my childhood to teenage life. However, it was definitely bad spoken and written English. It was more a heuristic approach, where I learned by speaking to others. No one corrected me, to be frank, so thought I was right. I didn't know the rules until I was about mid 20s (i didnt know what noun, verb, adj, etc were prior to this), where I started brushing up my writing skills to draft manuscripts.

What I usually struggle with nowadays is to use the right tense. Perhaps you may help? For instance, someone called and said he would be here next week. I am not sure what tense should I use when relaying the message. He said he would/will? be here next week.

We don't speak English as a primary language. We don't live in a society or country where English is the dominant language. We can write and speak English well if we learn properly but it lacks a soul - because we do not often express ourselves in English, or maybe it's more accurate to say we do not usually prefer to express ourselves in English.

That is the single most challenging issue faced by all Malaysians. Some may be able to express themselves articulately in English, but they can't throw sarcasm without being judged as patronising to someone who isn't good in English. We just don't live in a country where English dominates.

I don't think it inhibits the commerce or the tech. It just means we use English strictly as a business language. That's good enough. It's functional. But it lacks a soul. Not that it's a big deal, but soul is an inherent part of any languages.

Well said. Still the lackadaisical of speaking or brushing up English, nevertheless, is a major concern to us. English supposedly is our second language, but it is being blast to oblivion. We Malaysians in fact, have advantage of language where we could at least speak 2 (more for nons) languages, albeit not perfect.

I see... so, basically, you learned English through interactions. That's interesting for me. Our experiences are rather different.

Although I had started learning English formally at an early age, I didn't start speaking English in daily conversations until I was 13 years old/ Form 1. I was kinda 'forced' to speak English as my classmate sitting next to me was from an international school. I remember feeling awkward in the first few months of using a 'foreign' language in my daily conversations. I was good in reading, writing and listening, but not speaking... as I spoke Mandarin and dialect at home and studied at SJK (C ), so I didn't have the chance to speak English often.

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Regarding grammar tenses, what you're asking is Indirect Speech, also known as Reported Speech. Reported speech is when we tell someone what another person said.

Direct speech: Daniel said, "I work in a bank."
Reported speech: Daniel said that he worked in a bank.

In reported speech, we often use a tense which is 'further back' in the past (e.g. worked) than the tense originally used (e.g. work). This is called 'backshift'.

When we backshift,
present simple → past simple,
present continuous → past continuous, and
present perfect → past perfect.

We also may need to change other words that were used, for example pronouns.

Direct speech: "We lived in China for five years."
Reported speech: She told me they had lived in China for five years.

You may google Reported Speech to learn more and do some exercises, if needed. Hope this helps.

You've got a good point there.

We live in a multilingual country, and English is not the mother tongue of most Malaysians. It is often an acquired language for functional use. In our homes, institutions and workplaces, there is a lack of emphasis and appreciation towards English literature, proverbs and idiomatic expressions. They are not often used in daily conversations or writing.

Another factor is that there is still some lingering sentiments of seeing English as a 'bahasa penjajah' (colonial language). The use of English is often being politicised in West Malaysia when it is not an issue in East Malaysia. All these do affect how people perceive English.

Hehe thanks. I have read about backshifting, but I was wondering if we should backshift when describing a future event? He said he will come today or he said he would come today.

Also need to backshift for future events.

The grammatically correct answers to your question are:

He said he would come that day. (referring from the past)
or
He said he would come on Tuesday. (if today is Tuesday)

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When changing direct speech to reported speech, we need to change how we refer to time and place.

For example,
now → then, at that time
today → that day, on Sunday, yesterday
tonight → that night, last night, on Sunday night
tomorrow → the next day/ the following day, on Sunday, today
yesterday → the day before/ the previous day, on Sunday
last night → the night before/ the previous night, on Sunday night
this week → that week, last week
last month → the month before/ the previous month, in May
next year → the following year, in 2025
etc

Can Google "Time and Place in Reported Speech" for the full list.

p.s. English can be complicated. haha

Thanks! Appreciate your effort on this!

Sorry, what if I'm trying to relay a message saying that the person is not coming today because he's sick.

He said he was sick, hence he would not be coming today.

He was sick sounds a little weird in everyday speech, no? In fact, that person is still sick when I'm conveying his message to others?

Let's use this example:
John said, "I am sick, so I'm not coming to work today."

There are 2 ways you can convey John's words:

1) Use reported speech: John said he was sick, so he wasn't coming to work on Tuesday (13 August 2024).
- Reported speech is best used for emails, letters and other documents.

2) Use present tenses: John has told me that he is sick, so he isn't coming to work today.
- This is the easiest to use for daily conversations.

has told: present perfect tense- to show a past action that is related to the present
is sick: present simple tense- to state a fact that still holds true
isn't coming: present continuous tense (in negative form)- to show that an action isn't taking place today

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BTW, using 'hence' to join two sentences is not correct. 'Hence' is a transition word, not a conjunction.
It's incorrect to use a transition word to join two sentences with a comma. This grammatical error is known as a 'comma splice'.

Sentence 1: He said he was sick.
Sentence 2: He was not coming to work.

How to join them correctly:
- He said he was sick, so he wasn't coming to work. (Note: so is a conjunction.)
- He said he was sick. Hence, he wasn't coming to work.
- He said he was sick; hence, he wasn't coming to work.

This is something I taught in advanced grammar and writing class at the tertiary level. Most people (including English teachers) won't be able to tell or explain the differences, but for English lecturers and editors, this is what we study and need to know.

I used to teach something highly specific in journalism, such as...

10 AM
10 A.M.
10 a.m.
10 am

Which is correct? LOL

Yes, there are rules for something simple like this. haha

Wow! Appreciate your effort on this. Points well taken. I have always wanted someone to guide me on this. Haha.

For me, the AMs are all the same. If I had to choose, I would pick the second one.

This post has been edited by malz89: Aug 14 2024, 12:57 AM

haha my pleasure to help

The correct answer is a.m.
The second best answer is AM
The other two (am or A.M.) aren't correct. Just FYI.

Lol .. noted! Thanks.