English lessons with the newspaper

The New Straits Times’ outreach programme teaches English the fun way

Tchattering of happy voices clamouring for attention could be heard from inside a classroom. A group of more than 30 Year Five students were taking part in a newspaper-in-education (NIE) workshop at SK Sungai Serai, Kuang in a rural area of Selangor.

The programme is part of the New Straits Times’ (NST) corporate social responsibility programme. SK Sungai Serai was adopted by the NST under its Outreach Programme that included one UPSR workshop (which was conducted in August) and one NIE creative workshop.

NST has propagated the NIE method to teach English in Malaysian classrooms since 1985, making use of every part of the newspaper to teach various language skills. The activities carried out at SK Sungai Serai by the NST’s Education team focused on creating an interest in the students to learn English.

In line with the aim of the workshop, the students learnt spelling, vocabulary building, reading and writing - all in fun and interactive ways.

Participant Laysia Latif said: “I had a lot of fun here compared to my usual school lessons. I usually find spelling hard and give up easily but this is a fresh and new way to introduce English words and spelling.” Her views were echoed by her friend, Nurhasliza Darma, who said that she learnt many new words and their meanings using the newspaper during the workshop.

Laysia was referring to an activity where the students learnt new English words and their spelling from the NST. The students, who were put into groups, take turns to go up to the white board where pages of the NST were put up. They were asked to pick a word from the newspaper there, memorise its spelling, come back to their group and write it down on a piece of mah-jong paper. The group that compiled the most number of words within 10 minutes was declared the winner. It was a rather pleasant surprise to discover that two groups had actually managed to compile more than 30 words!

A reinforcement activity, where each group took turns to quiz their friends in the other groups on the spelling of the words in their list, followed. And so that was how words like “supermoon”, “release”, “legally”, “executed”, “talented”, and “successful”, became etched in their minds. It should be noted though, that it took several tries for some of the words to be correctly spelt, but when the students finally got the spellings right in the end, an immense sense of accomplishment filled the air and could be felt by all including the facilitators and assistants from the NST.

A phrase many of the students picked up from the day’s NST Life & Times’ BOTS supplement was “Italian food”. This prompted a short but interesting round of discussion on Italian food where students named a few common Italian dishes such as pizza and spaghetti. One girl also offered “tacos” and “nachos”, probably picked up while watching food and cooking channels on television.

In collaboration with YTL Foundation, the NST had helped in the makeover of a classroom into a FrogAsia classroom at SK Sungai Serai in April. The room was painted with bright colours and the curved table-tops made fun and thought-provoking with illustrations, drawings and words of wisdom designed by NST’s staff.

According to SK Sungai Serai headmaster Ayub Mat Rashid, so bright and cheerful is the room that students are always requesting to use it for their lessons. He said that the Frog Classroom’s inviting environment is also motivating the students to study. The fact that the room is cooled by a few air-conditioning units might have also been a big pulling factor.

Ayub also said that the activities carried out by NST in its Outreach Programme are helpful in enhancing the students’ command and performance in English.

“I am confident that their results would improve through such workshops and I look forward to more of such programmes,” he added.

The school has a total of 426 students, 88 of which are Orang Asli from the nearby Bukit Lagong settlement. Many of their parents either work with the government, or are rubber tappers or farmers. The students obviously have very little input from their surroundings in English and as such have poor background knowledge on English culture as well.