Decrease in the number of students taking Spm chinese paper

[elaine86]

hello guys ..let's discuss bout this..i noticed tat in the past few years the number of chinese students who take chinese paper in SPM is decreasing tremendously...i mean students who are from chinese primary school..some of them give up taking chinese after UPSR..
in my school, during my bach the whole chinese student in my class took chinese..but let's see what happen to my junioryear..more than 80% of them drop chinese paper...i was shocked .When asked,their reason is, it is difficult n almost impossible to get an A1 for chinese paper,,,i myself din't get an A1 either ..but i have no regrets for taking tat paper..Nowadays everyone puts so much effort in getting more n more As..until they even give up learning something tat is so important -their mother tongue!why are they becoming so coward? juz becoz it is difficult that they choose to give up.or is it becoz of the pressure to get all As in order to secure JPA sholarship or other scholarships?what steps can be taken so that the younger generation will love and appreciate their mother tongue?

[digimushu]

I say it starts at home. To be able to love a language, you must use it on a regular basis to not even notice your usage of it in your life. e.g. I despised BM because it is something i learn but i most probably wont use it unless i go to wet markets(no, i won't use it when talking with colleagues about technical stuff). OTOH, mastery of some foreign language will give someone a certain edge in interviews if the companies are looking for translators. Humans have this natural fear of the unknown, hence if you suck at a language, you are less inclined to pick it up.

AFAIK, English is still the primary medium for science and technology subjects and I think it should be like that(disagree? try listening to Chinese prof. who thinks in chinese and teaches in English*cringe*).

Although Chinese may be your mother tongue, it does not mean that it may be the best language for your profession. There is no use in presenting your work if nobody understands you.

just my thoughts...Questions? Comments?

[ElansarGelmir]

well, some parents do not encourage their children to learn it because first, they want to emphasize on math and English on their children, and secondly, learning chinese requires lots of memorizing, so it's kinda hard, and that means it's kinda hard to score an A in PMR or SPM or UPSR... most of my friends from Chung Ling got 7As 1 C in PMR my year. The C? yeah, Chinese... it's not that their Chinese is lousy.

[chenchow]

Frankly, number of students taking Chinese in the whole country has been on the increase.

I found that in 1999, 37988 students took Chinese in SPM. I don't have the exact statistic for 2003, but I think it is about 50,000 candidates. Anyone with the actual statistics?

And it is not that difficult to get As. Nearly 300 candidates from my school get A for Chinese in SPM. For PMR, it is nearly 90% As for Chinese.

[lzyee]

hello,
hey chen chow ,i think u might be right years ago ,but now i don't think there are more than 10 manage to get A1 for chinese in SPM in for ur school last year.
by the way, in my school ...only 4 students got A1 for chinese in SPM and that's a big number of student liao in my state,i think.
However, as a chinese ,i would say chinese should take chinese paper though i only got A2 in the paper...

[gatecrasher]

chen chow, your school is jit sin worr... not every school can produce results like that.
besides, hasn't anyone heard rumors of a biased grading system in malaysian public exams? warning: sensitive issue coming up
biased against non-bumiputeras, that is. if the rumor is true, it explains why it's easier to score in subjects like bahasa melayu, math, science etc. and i may be wrong but in secondary school, i got the impression that it wasn't too hard to do well at pend. islam, whereas those taking moral were baffled no end.
if i hadn't suspected that the system was rigged against me, i might *just might* have taken a chance with the spm mandarin paper. though of course, i considered the fact that chinese is certainly not my strength (!) and that i might neglect other subjects to prepare for the mandarin paper.
any comments?

[Steppe]

Please do not be 'fooled' by the fact that if one gets straight As, one will get JPA. There are so many of us 10 A1s students who did not get the JPA despite appeals.

If one is good in Chinese, try Taiwan. Fees are a lot cheaper. Medicine and dentistry degrees are recoginsed. This can be an option.

[yekban81]

IMO, we should proud that chinese (mandarin) subject maintains her standard after long years. Not like other subject, of which the "significant" increment of A scorer or percentage of passing throughout the years may cast doubt in us regarding to the standard of the examination. I might be wrong, but I felt the standard of SPM 1998(the year I took SPM) was low based on the result among my batch.
Just felt that something was wrong with the marking system.

[yekban81]

Please do not be 'fooled' by the fact that if one gets straight As, one will get JPA. There are so many of us 10 A1s students who did not get the JPA despite appeals.

If one is good in Chinese, try Taiwan. Fees are a lot cheaper. Medicine and dentistry degrees are recoginsed. This can be an option.

Are you sure about this statement? I thought the government doesn't recognise any degree/diploma/cert from Taiwan due to politics reason.

[Steppe]

For medicine, you need to do 2 years of housemanship in Malaysia instead of 1 year for other medical students. However, medicine and dentistry are being recognised in Malaysia. You have to pass a Board exams in Taiwan and then do 2 years of housemanship here. You can check it out on the URL which Chen Chow gives somewhere in Recom.

However, medical and dentistry students seem not keen to come back to Malaysia nowadays because upon one year housemanship in Taiwan, a doctor can earn about RM 20,000 + in Taiwan.

[chiunlin]

IMO, we should proud that chinese (mandarin) subject maintains her standard after long years. Not like other subject, of which the "significant" increment of A scorer or percentage of passing throughout the years may cast doubt in us regarding to the standard of the examination. I might be wrong, but I felt the standard of SPM 1998(the year I took SPM) was low based on the result among my batch.
Just felt that something was wrong with the marking system.
I heard from my teacher last time that they maintain a certain cut off point to get A1s. He said it was something around 160 over a total of 200. Anyway, the SPM Chinese paper has changed format and I think the new format is easier.

[dolt]

ppl are viewing china as a rising power in the east..so i guess a lot of ppl are getting interested, so to speak, in learning chinese..but in malaysia, students are discouraged from taking chinese as a subject in exams as getting a 'flawless' 'perfect' cert is of utmost importance..however, we are chinese and by learning our mother tounge we garner knowledge about our very own culture and history and will appreciate our roots better..our common mindset is that, wow, western countries are so superb that so we speak eng, we call ourselves 'enlightened' and 'liberated' but in fact, we lost our identity..we must we proud of who we are and not following others cues blindly, claiming its so 'cool' and 'superb'..its pretty hard to get an A1 for chinese in spm, since the cut-off point is so high...and by doing so, the government can reduce the number of non-bumis who are able to obtain straight A1s..even moral is pretty hard..the marking scheme can deduct a lot of marks from ur paper..and in comparison., pend islam is aherm, like, a piece of cake for them.. before spm 2003, my frens downloaded the whole pend islam paper from the net, and pls take note that they had done that days ago before the exams..and news was percolating among them..so what 2 do..this is not a fair competition...

i luv chinese, i think it's the most beautiful language that i have ever spoken..

neway, bear in mind that no matter where we are, we are still chinese..we leave behind stories, legends and footprints..but we never leave our identity behind because without that, we are just empty shells without any soul..

chinese is a great race..the chinese saying goes' whenever there is water, there is chinese' and that makes me proud being a chinese..we just..aherm..rule!

learn chinese, i'm urging all of u, ur life'd be so complete...

[phantom]

first and foremost,does anyone need to take chinese/mandarin in spm to prove that he or she loves mandarin and is somehow a true chinese per se?is doing so qualify you to be called, brave?

yeas,i realized that ,it is somewhat reasonable to get 1A for pendidikan islam amid the cut off point being around 80%.but trust me,even some of the brainiest bumi students attained 10 a1's and 1a2 or even the gal who went to harvard,she received 8 a1's and 1a2.a2 being pendidikan islam.saying pendidikan islam as easy is somewhat unfair.

if u didnt get 1a or even A1 for morale education,that becoz u didn't know to answer the paper well.not becoz the paper was set to be hard alone.eg:apart from memorizing the god-knows how many sikap,u have to know to dance well with the marking scheme.the prob u see like a morale examiner kept saying,students loved scribing down answers like in BM paper and ergo got zero instead.

during my year plenty of students attained A1 for morale education. almost e'body i know attained A1 for morale.if these ppl could excel,then why couldn't u?saying morale is too hard is equal of saying,i dont study as smart as those scoring 1A.

put this bumi and non-bumi thing aside.becoz ehem,it might leave to a self-proclaiming superiority complex dude and those swaggering their skin tones regardless how truth and untruth their identities are.

about chinese.my question is,why almost 90% of students taking mandarin are chinese?why almost 100% students taking tamil are tamil?why 100% students taking arabic are muslims?

did u see a pattern of self-segregation?

in usa,even the caucasian ppl take bahasa indonesia.this ppl learned indonesian language to know the language,to know the indonesian culture and to appreciate it.so do some caucasian taking arabic and japanese.these ppl never learned these languages becoz they are arab or indonesian .in this sense,language seem a nobel path to dive into different ppl cultures.

but in our country,we still linked race and language.and certain ppl dont find the justification of learning certain languages becoz they dont find any reason or whatsoever to learn other ppl culture in malaysia.

yeas,plenty of us receive A1 for BM and A1 for english and english 1119 cambridge,but how many can truly speak outstanding malay or excellent english and understand these ppl cultures without being enthnocentric?

i speak more languages that most average malaysian do.but i only took 3 language subjects on pmr and spm.

trust me,taking any language on spm level or pmr level is not being brave.it is not a prove that one embraces his/her own identity fervently.it is just something on slip to look at.at the end of day,you have to live.

and when you have to live and mingle,knowing chinese becoz u learned it will do all the favor and regardless whether you take it in spm or not,it shouldn't matter.

[digimushu]

Good point,

You do not need to be Chinese to take mandarin as a subject. I had a few malays friends who were taking mandarin with me on the weekend classes and they are all pretty good at speaking mandarin. Heck, I even know a malay girl who could write in chinese better(two words: whole sentences) than I can.

Language should never be a barrier between Malaysians. However, I have to say that I still prefer Engineering in english as all the esteemed technical journals I write to is in english. The use of other languages in technological fields will only hamper the growth of the field since it makes it so hard for everyone to share knowledge.

[screw3d]

I have to admit that I'm one of those guys who took Mandarin for PMR but skipped it for SPM becase it is so hard to get an A1 and I wouldn't want to "spoil" my results :) :oops:

But it is not a decision that I regret. I think it is actually easier to get A1 in BM than Mandarin (personal opinion, of course, as of year 2000)..

Mandarin is indeed a beautiful language but I find myself getting more and more distant from it because of lack of use here in the states :(

[zAiTsEv]

well, some parents do not encourage their children to learn it because first, they want to emphasize on math and English on their children, and secondly, learning chinese requires lots of memorizing, so it's kinda hard, and that means it's kinda hard to score an A in PMR or SPM or UPSR... most of my friends from Chung Ling got 7As 1 C in PMR my year. The C? yeah, Chinese... it's not that their Chinese is lousy.

if you study to remember, you won't understand; if you study to understand, you will remember. :)

the ability to speak in chinese fluently does not guarantee someone to do equally well in his or her writing. the pmr chinese paper not only requires candidates to write well, but it also needs them to understand the essence of classical chinese language, sayings, and the grammatical structures.

[chenchow]

hello,
hey chen chow ,i think u might be right years ago ,but now i don't think there are more than 10 manage to get A1 for chinese in SPM in for ur school last year.
by the way, in my school ...only 4 students got A1 for chinese in SPM and that's a big number of student liao in my state,i think.
However, as a chinese ,i would say chinese should take chinese paper though i only got A2 in the paper...

Lyzee, my statistic was from my school SPM 2003. 52.7% of students get As in SPM Chinese Language. That translates to nearly 300 students getting As in SPM Chinese Language, of which almost half get A1s. Percentage of students getting As for Chinese is even higher than a number of science subjects, history, english

Don't get me wrong. I don't get A1 in SPM Chinese. I got A2, but there were more than 100 from my batch getting A1 in SPM Chinese and another 100+ getting A2 in SPM Chinese. That was during 1999.

Main reasons may find that it is hard to get A1 in SPM Chinese, because those students in Independence schools and SMJK are spending majority of time in that language, compared to those students who are learning 2-5 hours a week on the language.

[tree007]

Main reasons may find that it is hard to get A1 in SPM Chinese, because those students in Independence schools and SMJK are spending majority of time in that language, compared to those students who are learning 2-5 hours a week on the language.


yeap.... that's pretty much wat my chinese language told me.... furthermore.. those ppl in SMK who take chinese for SPM r those who at least got the confidence, which means, they r at least err.. quite good in chinese.. so means the bell curve n the cut off points r super competitive... so u noe wat my teacher proposed to ease CHinese language SPM? convince n drag as many ppl as possible to take chinese language, no matter how good they are.. so the vut off points to the bell curve would be more.. errr.. normal.. hehe..

[zAiTsEv]

tree007, u're in pittsburgh now. change location lah.

[DecentMerson]

hmmm.... i think the situation is not that bad...

i took SPM chinese paper (2002), and got an A2....
in year 2002, only got 1 student from Subang Jaya got A1 for Chinese...hahaha

i got a bad history with Chinese Paper all the time, even with UPSR and PMR(got a B).... but i know that i'm capable of getting an A, anytime... :P i'm just unlucky, or i'm not performing well during the exam....

my year, there were 20+ of us who took up Chinese for SPM, while for year 2003, there were 60+ of them...
and overall, i dun have the exact number, the total number of student taking SPM chinese paper is indeed, increasing...

and as a matter of fact, it is not a hard rule for u to get straight A1 to get JPA scholarship since last year.... so, it's not a reason for u not to take Chinese, becoz afraid that it will scarred ur spm result...

if u really like Chinese, just take it. Everybody has a vital role to keep his or her native tongue alive.... hahaha...

Mati Bahasa, Matilah Bangsa....

[zAiTsEv]

hmmm.... i think the situation is not that bad...

i took SPM chinese paper (2002), and got an A2....
in year 2002, only got 1 student from Subang Jaya got A1 for Chinese...hahaha

i got a bad history with Chinese Paper all the time, even with UPSR and PMR(got a B).... but i know that i'm capable of getting an A, anytime... :P i'm just unlucky, or i'm not performing well during the exam....

my year, there were 20+ of us who took up Chinese for SPM, while for year 2003, there were 60+ of them...
and overall, i dun have the exact number, the total number of student taking SPM chinese paper is indeed, increasing...

and as a matter of fact, it is not a hard rule for u to get straight A1 to get JPA scholarship since last year.... so, it's not a reason for u not to take Chinese, becoz afraid that it will scarred ur spm result...

if u really like Chinese, just take it. Everybody has a vital role to keep his or her native tongue alive.... hahaha...

Mati Bahasa, Matilah Bangsa....

macam ni baru betul ma!

[misled_youth]

Under my secondary school regulations, I was forced to sit for Chinese paper in SPM.

I flunked.

Now that I'm in Uni and have working experience, I deeply regret having ignored my parents advice to learn Chinese.

I know it's still not too late. Any advice on how to improve my Chinese comprehension and writing skills?

Words are hard to look up. And there is no "thesaurus' for Chinese.
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[jiinjoo]

I took Mandarin for SPM because everyone else did (and sort of like misled_youth's school regulation thing...). And my mum made me too...

I found that in 1999, 37988 students took Chinese in SPM. I don't have the exact statistic for 2003, but I think it is about 50,000 candidates. Anyone with the actual statistics?
50000 ONLY? omg... no wonder the educators are screaming. I thought my mum was joking. This is very disheartening to her (as a Mandarin teacher) and me... :(

It's hard to get an A - true, agree. And it better stay that way. Grade inflation is cruel to the subject matter. I'd rather lobby for JPA to take in scholars based on grade points (like only 6 pointers)rather than asking for blanket A's in everything they take. This makes the subject a liability to the student.

And for my year (97) in my school it was also a handful. I got a 4 myself, some of my poet friends, debate friends, all got super natural powers in languages one also got 3s and 5s. It was disheartening but we weren't bothered coz grades didn't mean much then - even the straight A1's stayed in UM.


The biased grading issue is unfounded. It has been raised over and over again, but the trend is clear. The education ministry doesn't decide what the cut off points are like right away. They look at the distribution after the grading and then decide where to split the cake. The only clear bias so far is that election years produces more A's than other years.

This means that if the general math standard in the country is low, the better schools are going to feel like SPM Math is a joke. And it is. Period :P



Taiwan? Not so fast - Chinese in school are usually grounded in literature and the humanities but not sciences/engineering. Unless you attend an independent high school that makes you memorize the periodic table in 3 languages, you're hardly ready for a tertiary education in engineering and sciences that's totally in Chinese. Not that it hasn't been done, but I'm saying it's not always an advantage.

Chinese is critical in the future of Malaysia. Which country in this world have the ability to play the cards with the Middle East, India, China and the European powers? Whose citizens are grounded in so many languages and customs? Singaporean? You wait. We have business connections with the new major powers of the world and if we play our cards right, we can benefit from this balance. To not learn Mandarin is like throwing our future away. The responsibility falls on the Chinese community - you can't expect other races to learn Chinese if you don't learn it yourself. This is where I see my argument differs from those of phantom. Setting Arabic aside, since most people don't really know Arabic anyway (they just learn to read, I can teach an American to read Malay in 2 minutes), most of the frequently taught and examined languages in Malaysia is based on race. Of course we would like to have more mixing like more Malays learning Chinese, Chinese learning Tamil and things like that, but because of the way we envision the country, we have to cherish diversity instead of doing the US melting pot. But bare in mind it has nothing to do with identity. Lots of Chinese in Malaysia who don't speak Chinese knows a lot more about being a Chinese in Malaysia or anywhere then some who do. And I see a lot of them in school here.


Why don't we channel our energy on this discussion to "How to encourage more students to take Chinese", or for that matter any other non-compulsory languages? I think it is pretty clear why we Need to do so, but how? How to enjoy the learning process and excel in it at the same time?

(I'm betting you there're another batch of 50000 students who would be reading ReCom for your answer)

misled_youth, thesaurus in Chinese is called "Tong2 Yi4 Ci2"... if you can type chinese in to your computer, why don't you try searching for it a bit?

[misled_youth]

Tong Yi Chi is synonyms woh... same as thesaurus?

I'm a lazy bugger. My English thesaurus is on my Tungsten E. quick links. Haha...

You know... I found it so hard, to learn chinese.

Even in Chinese school, I think in English (which some argue, your subliminal language, is your mother tongue).

Therefore, structuring sentences need translations.

Summore, Chinese words damn hard to look up. :( sad...
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[rjie]

I don't know how exactly the number of students taking Chinese is increasing or decreasing. But what I get to know from my juniors and friends is that most of them would not take Chinese in SPM, if given a chance to do so.
Personally, I feel that it's my obligation to take Chinese in exam, learn it and appreciate it. As a Chinese, I feel that it's my obligation to do so. Yet, try not to regard other languages. Chinese is my mother tongue, which I think I must really master it. Yet, I won't neglect Bahasa as it's the national language. Neither will I neglect English as it's a universal language.
Yes, it's hard to master a language (especially Chinese as there areso many different characters), but as you put in much effort, you will get you have sown, right?

[chenchow]

In fact, looking at the number 50,000 students taking Mandarin at SPM level is a pretty high number, because there are still a number of thousands students from independence schools. Say 200 in each independence schools and multiply by 60 schools, that's 12,000 more, which say half took SPM. Hence, there are 6000 more students taking Chinese at higher than SPM level.

For each batch, we have like 450,000 students in SPM, of which about 25% or even slightly less are Chinese, hence that's about 110,000. So, we could see that half of the Chinese population are taking Chinese at this level, if we assume that only Chinese took Chinese at SPM level.

Although this could not be an accurate calculation, it could be a good estimate.

[someone]

many ppl in my school did not take chinese in pmr and spm. sometimes it's not because they don't like chinese. the fact is we don't have a proper chinese class and a proper teacher. my school is too 'english'. we are not given the chance to learn. when i was in form 4 i took chinese tuition. the teacher at 1st refused to teach because there were too few students (only 3 of us). we begged her and she finally agreed to teach. i think the lack of opportunity is one the factors that discourage the students from taking chinese. anyway i am glad that i took and got an A1.. :D

[tree007]

haha... my skool also same thing... got students but no teacher.. hte teacher the PIBG go cari wan.... n like all other secondary skools in Subang JAya, my skool also very english....bananas outnumber those who can speak chinese... so basically... it's english all the way... but that's not, in anyway, a detterant to learn chinese.. i mean.. i have a fren from SK who's chinese is superb.. ok.. maybe his pronunciations r off a bit.. but his written chinese is super chun.. 'cos he reads a lot of chinese stuffs.. especially wu xia xiao shuos... haha.. (correct spelling rite)? n how.. he's takin Chinese for STPM.. hehe.. very bold guy i must say... a very good source of inspiration for those who not form chinese skool but love the chinese language... :)

[gal_flower]

Self-confession: I'm also one of the ones who gave up taking Chinese/Mandarin.

I went to a Chinese primary school and my studies kinda suck because I don't understand Chinese. The only subjects that I do well are BM, English and Mathematics. Scrapped through UPSR with Bs for my Chinese and I was thanking my lucky stars for that.

My cousin and my sis both took Chinese till PMR only, so naturally, I had to take it for PMR too. AT LEAST till PMR. It was not that torturous but I do know that my standard is hardly there. Scrapped though PMR with a B too. (That was the amazing part, because some of my friends who are so so much better than me in Chinese got Bs or Cs). Thanked my lucky stars again.

SPM? I have had enough. AND it's not about because I was afraid that I won't get an A1. That seriously NEVER crossed my mind because I NEVER expected myself to get straight A1s and to get JPA scholarship. It was more of because I knew I would suffer that 2 years trying to learn something that I have no interest in. To me, I think it's ok that I've only learn enough to write nothing fancy and to speak nothing fancy. People don't even know that I can understand Chinese sometimes.

But I do have to agree that SPM Chinese is costing a lot of people's future and hopes. My school only has a handful of A1s for Chinese. Those from my year can be counted with one hand. Even those who are good in Chinese didn't get A1.

Just my humble opinion...