Ah…English

I want to share my experience with all MT readers on an incident that occurred quite a few years ago when I was the CEO of a dot com corporation here in Malaysia.

This dot com corporation was a partnership between a Malaysian, a Hong Kong chap and an Australian. During the heydays before the dot com bubble burst, the company was always on the search for more programmers and DTP operators. We were one of the local pioneers and we were also webmasters of a couple of international award winning websites.

One fine day and I was rather bored playing online games at my desk (what did you expect a CEO to do anyway? Work???) I informed my HR Manager that I would be sitting in as an observer during the interviews (for two positions of senior programmers) that was to be conducted later during the day. During those days, pay was good and so we had like twenty plus applications for those two openings. What I meant by the pay being good was something between RM60K+ and RM84K+ a year for an experienced senior programmer (great programmers get four bonuses a year).

We had graduates from local and foreign universities and a couple self-educated computer whizzes as well in this round of interviews, some short some tall but mostly bespectacled (ha! ha!).

What I garnered during these interviews is that the command of the English language, a language used in programming, is far below the standards acceptable (to myself). I sat through candidates that obtained an A in their SPM examinations, which can hardly speak English (but had to revert to either BM or Mandarin to express themselves), and candidates that can speak passable English but unable to utilize the entire vocabulary to convey what they want me (and the HR Manager) to understand. And then there are those that had spent 3 to 4 years in a foreign university (as opposed to those with 3+1 degrees) whom one would expect their spoken English language be far better but came out worse (distinctly a Hokkien accent).

I am not choosy here but I would prefer my staff to be capable of communicating effectively with me…in English. I will never condone the hiring of someone who cannot do so not because I am racist but because the programming language is done in English and I cannot accept the fact that anyone is capable of such high level programming without a good command of spoken English.

Now I read in the papers that the schoolteachers are finding it extremely difficult to teach Science and Mathematics in English owing to the fact that their command of the English language is well…hopeless. What is exactly happening to our education system? Has it degraded to such a substandard level that it is beyond redemption? Learning English is no more harder for a child than it is learning French or BM. In fact it is far simpler because communicating in English is prevalent here in Malaysia (as opposed to French). BM is a must and I agree entirely to that because this here is Malaysia and the national language is BM – nothing wrong with that.

Henceforth, has the standard of English being taught in our schools deteriorated to such an extent that those obtaining an A in their examinations are merely a façade? This is a serious problem that the government must immediately address and conduct corrective actions to prevent it from further degeneration. How else can Malaysia hope to integrate with other nations and become something other than a Third World Nation?

Coming back to the storyline, I decided to subcontract the jobs to two Indian nationals working from India (communicating online). Cheaper, less hassle and more effective. I tell them what I want and they deliver within the week.

– Hakim Joe