Does Cohort 5 MacQ speak English?

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This is a response to an issue raised by our coordinator, Pamela, several times during our meets, as well as to a few comments made by my friends about our, IPBA Cohort 5 MacQ goingbouts. This post is made entirely on my own surface observation and thus, may not exactly reflect what's going with Cohort 5 MacQ. Hence, i'll try not over-generalize things and do pardon if i unintentionally (or intentionally) did so in any part of this post.

if all of us here do not suffer short term memory loss as i do, i bet you'd still remember when Pamela mentioned several time on the fact that we need to mix around with the locals more. Her least concern was us learning a foreign culture, but her biggest one is if we ever get to speak and practice English at all. Additionally, having few academic discussion with the non-Malaysian friends i made here, they did ask me if the notion of "being sent overseas so we can get to absorb foreign culture and practice English" ever seems to be working with us, considering there is 25 of us sent and to them, 25 is too high a number of a non-English speaking group to go around. As much as i would like to refute this, i would have to agree with their point. a number of 25 maybe small in a group of thousands English-speakers around us. But our tendency to form a small deviating group with a Malay language medium is still high considering their is 25 of us. They recommended a better figure of 5. As nonsensical as this may be, it does make sense.

I figure we do take Pamela's concern lightly. And i'm not basing this on concious value, i do get a remark of disagreement when Pamela said the fact that we moved out in chunks, staying together with groups of Malaysian only, is gonna make our chance to practice English drop. I have to say i agree with Pamela's concern. Do we speak English while we're with other Malaysian when its way more comfortable to speak in Malay? And i'm not just focusing in speaking as well, what about reading, writing and listening - the all four skills of proclaimed English profficiency? It may seem a simple evidence but i would like to share this experience. My housemates comprises of four Malaysian (including me) and two non-Malaysians. One time recently, i wanted to leave a message on the fridge. The point to be made was "please clean up your respective stuffs so i can clean the kitchen and wont end up throwing your things accidentally on purpose" but can you guess how long it took for me to complete such message considering the fact that i want to sound non-offensive, polite, yet strict at the same time? And most importantly, i need to make sure my English is the very least understandable by my two non-Malaysian housemates.

It took me ages! But that was when something struck me, on the fridge was also a cooking schedule made by one of my Malaysian housemate and as it only concern us four Malaysian occupants, it was written in Malay and how easy it was made! When i think about it, i think i too can finish my message easy if i'm writing it down in Malay rather than English and targetting only the four Malaysian housemates i am fond of. And that is also the point when i realized, i wasnt just writing a message up - i am assessing how i am using my English. And why do that occur? coz i have non-Malaysian housemates and i have to level my English practice to fit in their context. Will this occur if all my housemates are Malaysian - or at least, all of them are people i am fond of? Maybe yes and maybe not. Chances are higher on "maybe not"

In classrooms (lecture halls and tutorial classes), we still tend to cluster up together. Well, you can defend this basis with the argument; "there isnt much oppotunity to be talking with the Non-Malaysian student next to you during this period anyway so it wont make much difference if i am sitting with non-Malaysian or not" Yes, this is true. But, i do believe that that is just one of the two reasons of such habit and it isnt the main one either. The main one, i dare to admit coz i do feel it really really frequently, is the fear that, what if to say the lecturer suddenly end up asking you to discuss with your partner and that partner is a Non-Malaysian. That is actually our primary concern now doesnt it? And to base this on an evidence, take our EDUC260 class. From my observation, the first few classes of EDUC260, we chose to scatter out around the lecture hall. Why? Coz we are excited of the idea on sitting with an Australian to your left and right. But the fact that William De Jean will ask you to partner up everytime, i manage to observe that we decided to go back to sitting with other Malaysians. Why? Coz it's more comfortable to discuss with people you are fond of when you can speak Malay, not English. Even if you do use English, you wouldnt care as much about making sure what you said is clear, there is no speaking-culture standardizing issues, and its less nerve-wrecking. So it's back to the point of "do we even speak English at all then?"

I guess i might as well stop here. but just ask yourself; how much are you actually practicing English today, and how much exactly are you assessing your English while you are using it - or you are simply blurting out things in English with no concern with all the between the lines value of English usage? How many times in a day when you found out that you cant make your point clear in English that you revert your language use back to Malay without feeling any regret at all or have a quick two secs in that moment to think "why cant i deliver my point in my current English?" I'm not going against speaking in Malay here neither about speaking in Manglish but i guess considering 1/4 million spent for us to just practice English in an English speaking environment, its a shame if we couldnt care less about it all eh?

p/s: when i use the notion of "Non-Malaysian" here, i'm emphasizing that i dont mean only Australian or people with English speaking background. I refer to those from other countries who are struggling on their English as well.