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The teacher read, pausing at those parts which he wanted his colleagues to take particular not of: " "My happiest day it is on that 12 July 1976 I will tell you of that happiest day. My father want me to help him in his cakes stall to sell cakes and earn money. He say I must leave school and stay home and help him. My younger brothers and sisters they are too young to work so they can go to school. My mother is too sick and weak as she just born a baby'. Can anything be more atrocious than this? And she's going to sit for her General Certificate of Education in three months' time! And listen to this: 'I was very sad because I don't like to sell cakes I like to learn in school. But I am scare my father he will beat me if I disobeyed him so I cannot say anything to him. He ask me to tell my principal of my school that I am not going to learn anymore. I was scare my principal will ask me questions. Lucky my mother came home from the hospital where she born the baby and say to my father that I should learn in school and become nurse later. So I can earn more money. Sell cakes not earn so much money. She begged my father and at last my father agree. I think he agree becausehe was in good mood. If in bad mood like drunk he will beat my mother up and make trouble in the house.So my mother told me I was no need to stop learning in school. And that was the happiest day in my life which I shall never forget'." The teacher said slowly and mediatively, "I wonder why most of them write like that? Day in, day out we teach grammer and usage. For my part, I've taught them the use of the Tenses till I'm blue in the face, but they still come up with all kinds of Tense mistakes! I've drummed into them that when narrating a story or incident, they have to use the Past Tense, but I still get hideous mistakes such as the one you heard just now." A week later, the teacher, while correcting composition exercises in the staffroom, again he dropped his head into his hands in despair. It was different colleague sitting beside him this time, but the distress in his voice was equally acute as he said, showing her a page from an exercise book: "What do you think of this as a specimen of Secondary Four Composition? I give up! I resign!" "Ah, they are all like that," sighed his colleague in sympathy. "You should see the grammer mistakes I get from my Pre-University students, mind you, Pre-University." The teacher held the offending page in front of his colleague, and with his forefinger traced the lines that had given him the most pain. "Now look at this: I would like is become a nurse and successful career so I have a lot of money and luxuries,' - by the way, I had got them to writeon My Ambition' - 'so I can buy a house for my mother and brothers and sisters' - this is the only snetence in the whole composition that is correct grammatically. Listen to this one, can you make anything of it? 'and my favourite ambition I must strive very hard and make hard afford for if I have no ambition to help my mother and brothers and sisters they is sure to suffer for my father he don't care at all everytime come back from selling cakes only he must drink and spend all money on drinks and sometimes he beats my mother,' it's that Tan Geok Peng from Secondary Four C, you know that timid, mousy-looking girl who looks ready to faint in fright the moment you call her to answer a question. You know, I'm getting very worried about the standard of English in my class. I guess I shall have to get Tan Geok Peng and the likes of her in for extra Saturday coaching, otherwise they'll never make it in the exams. Three months away, I tell them. Just three months tin which to polish up your grammer and vocabulary and punctutaion, and write the first decent composition in your life!" The extra coaching did not save the poor teacher from the despair he was continually experiencing. "Ah!" he said, shaking his head sadly, "what shall I do? Read this muck! Let me see - yes, it's from this girl, Tan Geok Peng again - that girl will be the death of me, I tell you. I keep explaining things and going over and over the same things with her, but she insists on giving me such nonsense. Listen to this! She was supposed to write a story with the title 'The Stranger" and all she did was write a great deal of trash about her father - 'He canned me everytime, even when I did not do wrong things still he canned me' - she means 'caned' of course - 'and he beat my mother and even if she sick, he wallop her'. This composition is not only grossly ungrammatical but out of point. I had no alternative but to give her and F9 straightaway. God, I wish I could help her!" When the news reached the school, the teacher wad very upset and said, "Poor girl. What? She actually jumped down from the eleventh floor? Such a shy, timid girl. If only she had told me of her problems. But she was always too shy and timid to speak up." -Little Ironies ~Stories of Singapore. Catherine Lim This story makes me want to murder the damn teacher. 21:51  |
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