By the way, regarding the point about being "condemned" bcoz of
poor English results, I have a few comments of my own.
At 1st, I also thought that English should not be the stumbling
block towards higher education. Many of my friends who had
excellent grades for their 'O' level opted to go poly instead of JC
cited their mediocre command of English as the reason. Many of them
did not do badly for their 'O' level English, it is the GP in JC
which frightens them.
Anyway, that was a few years ago. Now, my opinions have changed.
Through these years, I had realised that English is really
important in the current society structure. During my University
years, I needed to do up countless reports & presentations. As
my English wasn't that fantastic, hence I really had a difficult
time finding the appropriate phrases & vocabulary to express
myself. If you have fantastic content & analysis, but without a
proper command of English to express all these, your report may be
regarded as just an average piece of work. However, if you can only
come up with a a sufficiently good analysis, but you excel in the
wording & organisation of your report, good grades are of high
possibility. What I trying to put across here is not that content
is unimportant, but that a strong command of English is very
necessary to put forth whatever points you want to make.
So actually, using English to "screen" students during the 'O'
& 'A' levels is to make sure that those who manage to go up the
academic ranks have the adequate English proficiency to deal with
the future academic challenges. Nonetheless, there are exceptions
whose English is not particularly strong but are still able to
excel in whatever they do. But, I guess this only applies to those
who are considered experts in their fields of speciality, & not
to the average man-on-the-street.
My 1-cent worth...
[This message has been edited by Hajime (edited 26 May 2000).]
