Strengthening usage of English
UNIVERSITI Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI) and the Cambridge Malaysian Education And Development Trust (CMEDT) will work to strengthen the usage of English Language in the country.
UPSI and CMEDT, an organisation aiming to advance education in Commonwealth countries, signed a Letter of Intent to launch a pilot project, Cambridge Accessible Tests (CATs), with UPSI.
Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh said the joint effort by UPSI and CMEDT marks the beginning of the journey to enhance students’ acquisition of English.
“It is also part of the ministry’s effort to redesign higher education as well as to improve quality and the standards of English among our graduates,” he said at the launching ceremony last Monday.
Idris said the deployment of CATs - an online learning platform which is calibrated with the Common European Framework of Reference - would address the “urgent need” for higher learning institutions to develop “self-directed graduates” who are proficient in English.
“CATs will enable students to learn and improve their proficiency in English at their own pace, promoting self-directed learning.
“This would make students not only recipients of knowledge, but also co-curators of knowledge,” he said.
The enrichment programme will be carried out from the September intake this year, in addition to the existing university English courses in UPSI. Studies on its effectiveness will be conducted later.
CMEDT executive chairman Tun Ahmad Sarji Abdul Hamid said the pilot project will cover four principal areas of English - speaking, reading, writing and listening.
“CATs was specially developed and formulated in a manner where it is in full synergy with the teach- ing and learning process to ease students’ mastery of English accuracy and fluency,” he said.
UPSI vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Dr Zakaria Kasa said CATs is a chance for students to “soar upwards” as it is an additional platform which helps them to “conquer” their command of the language.
“Students would have access to many hours of independent learning, which also promotes the use of technology,” he said.