Spm Examination Brings More Harm Than Good

As the government, I fully agree that the SPM examination does more harm than good. The low standard of one of the most important subject in the world, English which is without a doubt the actual universal language is insulting and ridiculous. The standard of the questoins asked in the examinations are fixed easily by the ministry so that students from rural areas who are struggling with the language can atleast pass the subject. Approximately 375 million people speak English as their first language and 470 million to over a billion speak English as their second language. It’s also the official language in over 70 countries and also the 3rd most spoken language. Therefore, the significance of a person’s english speaking and writing skills is not only important for communication, but also for further studying purposes. In the year 2005, it was found that 36.41% of Malaysian students furthered their studies in Australia, 26.86% went to the United Kingdom and 15.02% went to the United States. All three of those countries have english as their official language as well as having the highest percentage of English speakers in the world with a percentage of 92%, 96% and 98% respectively. The low level of english will not prepare the students for the higher english level used abroad. These students will be struggling to compete for a place in a good college compared to students who has a higher level of english. Therefore, english which is a definite requirement to help foreign students to succeed is very important.

In contrast, the standards of Bahasa Melayu is very high. “The rural candidates’ performance in Bahasa Melayu is better than that of urban candidates.” Datuk Abdul Ghafar Mahmud, the ‘Ketua Pengarah Pelajaran’ said of the 2011 SPM results. Our country is made up of 3 main races: malays, chinese and indians. Chinese and indians students were raised in different cultural backgrounds from the malays, using their own language. The malay students have a higher