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Pushing the envelope

In Michael Rosen‘s recent book,  he talks about how he was taught to address envelopes when he was a schoolboy in the 50s and 60s. He describes in great deal the care that had to be taken with the placement of commas, the alignment of the text, and the fact that it was obligatory to end a man’s (not …

CEFR on Malaysian shores

The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) is widely used in Europe to describe language proficiency. CELE tutor, Salomy Krishna, recently attended a symposium to discuss whether it should be implemented in Malaysia. Below are her thoughts. In its ongoing efforts to transform language education in Malaysia, the Ministry of Education has over the years implemented many changes, some controversial …

Critical Thinking: State of the Union (Malaysia)

One of the CELE tutors, Wong Yao Hing,  examines the teaching of critical thinking, and its place in education. Inculcating the ability of students to think critically has always been a weak link in the system of education that is practised in Malaysia.  In the recently released Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013-2025, the Ministry of Education …

A Vicious Cycle (Part Two)

Yan Lai Peen continues her discussion of the Human Capital that a sound knowledge of English can provide In the last blog post, I wrote about the necessity of knowing when to use standard grammar as an educator and asserted that an educational institution is where students acquire linguistic capital, especially if it is a …

A Vicious Cycle

One of the CELE staff teaching , Yan Lai Peen reflects on the teaching of English in Malaysia, and the human capital it can provide…….. In the previous blog entry, the writer considers the gaps in the recent EF English Proficiency Index, in which Malaysia ranks 11th in the world.  However, merely two months ago, …

Why international measures of English may not be so clear

Recently, English First, a global language teaching chain released the results of a survey of global English Language proficiency. In first place came Sweden, then Norway, and a slew of other European nations. Malaysia came top in Asia and 11th globally, beating Singapore into 12th place, and India came quite some way back. So, at …

A new self study resource

  The British Council has a resource at http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/writing-purpose/introduction to help academic writers Based on extensive analysis of large collections of Academic Writing from British Universities,  it helps students at all levels meet the expectations of academic writing.

Reading Between the Headlines and Getting the Plot

Whenever I ask my students what they understand by the term ‘read’, they often equate it to vocabulary comprehension – in other words, if I understand most of the words in the text, I can read well. However, this is a flawed assumption since reading also entails, among other things, the ability to discern the …

What is “Proper” English? Part Two

In the previous post, I asked the question “What is proper English”?  The English spoken around the world differs in many ways- Americans write “color” and pronounce the final “r”- the English write “Colour” and the “r” is silent. There are also plenty of examples of similar differences between Malaysian English and British English- grammatical …

What is “Proper” English?

It would seem obvious to say that in an International University such as Nottingham, students and staff should use correct or proper forms of English- and even students and staff who do not have English as their first language should strive towards speaking “better English”. The term “proper English” is often used as a badge …