Engrish

'If I caught you two making noise again, I'll threw you out of the classroom,' threatened the initially shy and timid teacher who finally had enough of the troublemaking duo in the classroom.

By then, sitting from the back of the classroom, I had heard more than enough to know that this wasn't a slip of the tongue, and I began to wonder if my teacher was even capable of constructing error-free sentences. Good Lord, I know of younger kids who speak better English.

Oh, by the way, this shy and timid teacher, was my English teacher. Wow...

Throughout my schooling years, I have amused myself during English classes by observing my teachers and their grammatical mistakes, though sometimes I grew indignant when they had to search the dictionaries for the meaning of simple words and made glaringly obvious pronunciation mistakes, such as 'fury' to 'furry'. However, I have to admit that once I went a bit overboard and got hauled up by the Assistant Supervisor for making my teacher feel, *cough cough*, "uncomfortable" in the classroom. Hem hem, moving on...

Not every English teacher in Malaysia is bad of course, but there are always cases of teachers being hauled up to the classrooms to teach the English language because of lack of "teacherpower". However, the sad thing is that some or most of these "teachers" only know enough of the English language to survive, and I'll bet that even most of that will consist of the Malaysian standardised Manglish. I pity them, especially if they get students who are actually good at the language and is more than capable of embarrassing the hell out of them in the classroom.

It's a known fact that the standard of English in Malaysia is low. If you need proof, all you gotta do is look at the Form 3 English text-books, or any other Malaysian English text-books for that matter. Anyone who has done a reasonable amount of reading would scoff at the books, and even up till now, my English exam papers consists of simple questions regarding grammar, common idioms, and stuff like that. Acing it is a piece of cake.

Exams.

New school semester:


At the first week:


At the second week:


Before the mid-term test:


During the mid-term test:


After the mid-term test:


Before the final exam:


Once know the final exam schedule:


7 days before final exam:


6 days before final exam:


5 days before final exam:


4 days before final exam:


3 days before final exam:


2 days before final exam:


1 day before final exam:


A night before final exam:


1 hour before final exam:


During the final exam:


Once walk out from the exam hall:


After the final exam, during the holiday:

Thought counting

Burma, Burma, Burma.

Not Myanmar.

Stick it to the junta.

From Wikipedia: In 1989, the military junta officially changed the English version of the country’s name from Burma to Myanmar, along with changes to the English versions of many place names in the country, such as its former capital city from Rangoon to Yangon. This decision has, however, not received legislative approval in Burma.