IELTS

In case you don't know what IELTS stands for, it is actually the abbreviation of International English Testing Language Testing System.

First of all I would like to critic my previous IELTS lecturer once again.

Disclaimer: If you have been following my blog for a certain period you could notice how intensely I have been criticising many aspects of my current college, but that doesn't mean I was showing my sheer hatred towards KTT. In fact, I'm concerning the issues that annoyed me, and having an urge to share it with my nearest people. I could have ignored all the flawed, the preposterous one happening around me. But after all I felt it might be better to voice my dissatisfaction and disappointment in order to let myself out.

I had never seen such an irresponsible lecturer in the sense that she had cancelled 90% of her classes since I enrolled in A-Level program 6 months ago. Just imagine I was supposed to attend 2 lectures per week, but I ended up by having less than 5 lectures during the six months. If this doesn't sound shocking, listen to this one: she had fled away all in a sudden with some money that students paid to purchase IELTS reference books! Seriously it can be considered a crime. Consequently, a new IELTS lecturer is taking her place now, bringing both great news and bad news, where there is a resurgence of IELTS teachings but we have to pay for another IELTS reference book of a different version.

Back to the title, all of the scholars in preparation to travel aboard to India, Polland, Czech Republic etc. for tertiary study in medicine or dentistry have to pass certain cut-off points depending on the university we apply. IELTS includes four main tests - reading, listening, speaking and writing, with the achievement of each represented in band form ranging from band 1 to band 9.

I had a listening test in this afternoon and I find it challenging to recognise and read the British accent. I take IELTS more important than any other subjects I'm taking now.

The lecturer

Having the top scorers among the international Cambridge A-Level candidates in the world, I thought one of the best colleges in my country, yet maybe also the smallest in size, Kolej Teknologi Timur to have experienced and excellence lecturers but I soon doubted about their credibility to give lecture to the students who will soon pursue advance study in different critical fields at oversea.

Yes, according to the seniors this doesn't appear to be the fundamental problem, and you might find me grumbling against trifles, because the students here could have been depending on themselves to pass the AS and A2 examinations with flying colours. It doesn't matter to have "good" or "bad" lecturers. However in my point of view this has contributed to an intensely unhealthy learning style. Students and lectures should be interactive to enhance understanding. What's the point of repeating the texts in the text book word by word to us? Let alone the sleep-inducing tone, grammatical errors and the way she was speaking English, especially when pronouncing the terminologies. Try to listen to the pronunciation of "mas" in BM and at the same time understand that she was actually trying to say "mass". I'm not going to pinpoint which lecturer I'm complaining about, and I don't mean to degrade the lecturers here, but it is saddening to know that the better lecturers are in charge of bringing the students undergoing 1 year programme up.

I will be going to my first Biology lecture later. I hope it won't end up disappointing myself again. I promise myself not to disappoint my college too :)

My favourite teacher

Every average student would have been taught by at least forty different teachers before entering university. We might have different views towards different teachers respectively, whether it was hatred because he had caned us, or loving because she did take good care of us. If we are to point out our favourite teacher, there won't be any absolute answer since everyone has his own perspective towards the teacher's characteristics that favor them. Well, I pay my tribute to my tuition teacher, Mr. Peter Lim.

Mr. Peter had been teaching me since I was in form two. He is indeed the most hardworking tuition teacher I've ever seen. Unlike other teachers who photostat the grammar exercises from some reference books, Mr. Peter used his own hands to type all the exercises, not by using computer but the classic typing machine. He would intersperse several small pictures within the notes given to make it looked interesting. Another great example is that he would examine every word and the sentence of essays written by his students carefully. He would spend his time telling us our mistakes one by one when he was giving back our essay books. My school teacher was totally different - she marked our essays by underlining the sentences without correcting it, leaving puzzlement among us.

I was pleased by Mr. Peter's unique teaching style, his class would never get bored because he always raised his volume to maximum accompanied by various facial expressions while teaching. Sometime he would share his anecdotes to delight the class. Being a retired school teacher, he was experienced in educating his students as well as handling disciplinary cases. At the same time, he was a indulged reader showing concern towards the general global issues besides having different hobbies such as mountain climbing, jungle trekking, fishing, cooking etc. He had developed certain philosophies about life and always reminded us to be noble, moderate and accept anything that had happened in order to stay happy.

He never raised the monthly tuition fee, it was cheap, only RM25 per month in comparison to the average monthly fee needed to pay for other similar tuition lessons which were normally in the range of RM30 to RM50. He told us having teaching as his satisfying job, it doesn't matter to think over how much he could earn :)

I cherish the moment he was still teaching me. I should have made full use of the time to absorb his teachings and attain proficiency in English to meet his expectation. By the time we left him to take SPM, he had decided to stop teaching temporarily for a year to rest after teaching diligently for decades.