Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Factors contributing to academic success

What are factors which are related to academic success in high-school students?

Undoubtedly there are plenteous high-school students who have excelled in academic success in our country, occupying the headlines of the newspapers whenever the results of local public examination such as SPM is released, holding their result papers with of a sting of A1s. They would be then awarded scholarships whether by our government, the private agencies or even the foreign companies and colleges. However such glamour is not given but earned. It is even amazing when some of the students with unwavering determination have achieved their academic success despite facing poverty or disability after struggling against the stumbling stones for a long term of time. Back to the title, to some people, academic success could be defined as being able to do well in the examinations. However in my humble two cents the narrow scope should be widened to being able to analyse, synthesize and evaluate the information as well as applying them in the daily life.

The main factor contributing to their academic success is surely family support especially from the parents. To most of the parents in my country, academic success is the only aspect their children need to take care in order to secure their bright future. They have realised the significance of securing a certificate in a university is far more better than the other way such as finding a job after leaving the high-school, which had been done by some parents. Knowing that their children may be discriminated by the tight competition among the students of whole nation, they rather to send them to tuition classes repeatedly for years. They also try to cultivate the children's hidden talent via enrollment into various lessons ranging from piano lessons, dance lessons to art lessons. Normally if there comes the family problems such as divorce or relation break off, the student might find himself difficult to focus on his study. There are so many cases where students having family problems were psychologically affected and eventually surrounded by discipline problems, let alone academic excellence.

Apart from that, self-discipline and will power play a decisive role to every student who wishes to succeed academically. Self-discipline is the ability to get yourself to take action regardless of your emotional state. Therefore students with no self-discipline would often get distracted from their study. Getting engrossed in playing online games is one of the most popular examples among the high-school students in recent years. They don't know using time wisely in order to strike a balance between work and play. Under self-discipline one would regularly revise what he has learned to maintain a tenacious memory. By doing so he needs not to burn the midnight oil during the examination weeks. Procrastination is the thief of time, therefore smart students would not procrastinate their homework without necessity too. Someone that has a strong will would have a greater endurance towards the hardships faced along his school life. He would have planned his future and strive hard by persevering obstinately and indomitably. Having set in mind about the key to success, high-school academic success appears to be just a part of the undertakings.

Conducive environment remains crucial to mould a student towards academic success. There are many students who don't own a conducive studying environment had unfortunately forsaken their study. Maybe they are raised in rural area which is always lacking of teachers and books. Maybe they have to work while attending high-school to ease the financial burden of their family. It is clearly shown the importance of the factor in a Chinese ancient story where a single mother had migrated for so three times, just to get his small son a better place to study. Actually having adequate money to purchase text books, pencil box with simple stationery, a chair to sit, a table to lay your arms on it and responsible teachers, is considered conducive. A number of high-school students benefits themselves by using Internet to obtain extra information associated with what they have been learning for a better understanding. At the same time, some students don't even own a dictionary and have to rely on limited source of information.

In a nut shell, high-school students are teenagers who serve to be the pillar of our country in the next decade as well as the new workforce. Our country should not neglect anyone of the new generation. Their demands and problems should be taken care and solved after proper consideration. Besides excel academically, high-school students should also pay much attention towards the general issues happening every now and then. Most of them don't really bother about the global issues just because it has nothing to do with their study. By the way, one should not follow what has been taught in the text books blindly but applying suitable suspiciousness whenever coming across new information and being able to relate his own thoughts.

Speaking

I seldom speak English. There is no one around me that I can speak with, except myself. I have got used to the broken style while speaking since I was small, therefore I believe I will probably tend to say something foolish like "Yesterday I eat", "He do the job" or "They are my friend" while conversing with the other native speakers. Writing and speaking are definitely two different aspects. You don't have the margin of time to think what's going wrong, especially the grammatical errors, in what you're saying. One of my friends once told me : "Think in English, speak in English, you might see the difference." However learning languages often comes harder to me in comparison with the other subjects. I have spent a lot of time to jot down the definition of the new vocabulary but my memory strength is just disappointing. Maybe I do remember it but it doesn't come to my mind when I'm going to use it. I'm having a low understanding in phrasal verbs too, causing my English to be unnature and immature. My speed of improvement is not capable to begin my life in college. I have to overcome this fatal stumbling stone.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Rambling

Well, Transformer appears to be a hot topic recently, soon after the movie had been released. I'm not a fanatic fan of Transformer, however I was really amazed by the advanced animating technology by which the animation of the conversion from a vehicle to a robot and vice versa was just awesome!

While I was watching it, there were people around me coughing all the time, I felt rather uncomfortable as the H1N1 epidemic had reached my town area :( However I couldn't find any table or statistics showing the number of the infected victims and also the area of my country via google, maybe my searching skill is terrible.

By the way, I wonder if the aliens or the UFO's would land on the other countries except USA. Yet, it is always the USA military fighting the aliens :D

Nah, just rambling around here, couldn't think about a better topic to be shared with.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Does it really matter?

Race barrier could be seen everywhere in my country.

When I was in my secondary school which comprised of Chinese in majority, the Malays were badly discriminated by the others. The school had always been grouping the Malays to particular classes, perhaps it was just promoting racism as there were two totally different societies which seldom mix nor communicate. Quarrels or fights often sparked off between them due to lack of respect and tolerance. Some of them even dared to challenge each other by insulting their religions respectively.

I faced the problem when I was taking part in a poster designing competitions held under anti-drug campaign. I was the only Chinese. ( It is normal when there are no or less Chinese attending a campaign. In fact, they don't even know there is a campaign ) I could feel it, the racist and unwelcoming expression from their eyes. I was rather peeved when I came across the biased judgement which had deprived my winning seat for so many times. I did tear my certificate into small pieces in anger after that, irrational and impulsive, I know.

Religion continues to be a sensitive issue in our multiracial nation. Until today, the invisible stumbling block is still remained unsolved. The Chinese society has never been satisfied by the commitment of the government on solving the problems or meeting the demands such as funding for Chinese-language elementary schools. The Malay society feels offended, thinking that their privilege presents in different quota systems are getting eroded when the other races question and comment on it. Moreover there will be a big change according to the "One Malaysia" plan. The Indian society was provoked when some of their temple was going to be demolished and it had precipitated resentment which was then fueled by other artificial and racial coloured issues. The situation had gone worse when they started protesting in an aggressive manner via Hindraf which was then declared illegal.

The former Prime Ministers had failed to break the barrier among the races. What will be the next suitable strategy proposed? How about the outcome? No one can presume it.

But I'm sure, we can make the difference if we don't see the difference.

Note: I didn't do much research while mentioning some of the topics. I'm sorry if there are inappropriate or wrong statements. Feel free to correct it :)

Saturday, June 27, 2009

The King of Pop


This is a song released in 1991 ( when I was born ) which has deeply tugged on myriad people's heartstrings including myself. It was the first time for me to know about this song when all of the kindergarten kids had to sing it on our graduation day. I could still remember the melody and rhythm for so many years until I eventually found out its title and artist in the last year. Actually I didn't quite have a good impression towards MJ when he was surrounded by the child sexual abuse case which sounded contradictory to his charitable organisation which was designed to improve the lives of children. However his sins would gradually be effaced soon after his death in his fans' heart. It is indeed a tragedy that shocks the world. Rest in peace, MJ.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Movie

Animated movie is my favourite. I don't really know when was the time I started growing an intense loving towards it. I patronise Ice Age, Madagascar, Bolt, Monsters vs Aliens, Corpse Bride, Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda, Cars etc. Somehow movies like Star War and Terminator are just not my cup of tea.

Some of my friends feel that watching movie is a kind of monetary waste but I think it worths. Watching movie can train our listening skills and logical thinking. However some of the scenes showed were beyond my comprehension :(

Movie is an art, which needs to be appreciated by every audience. Some of the directors would like to satirize hot global issues such as pollution or teenage problems. Some of the directors have a good sense of humour and his masterpiece would fill the cinemas up with laughter. Well, since there are more and more movies being showed in vast themes so it is getting harder for them to exploit their creativity in order to inject something new into their films.

Ice Age 3 is about to be released soon :D

Matriculation

When my friends had enrolled in the matriculation course, I thought they could start adapting themselves in the new learning environment without having any extra problems. However the luck was not at their side.

Some of my friends were not allowed majoring in Biology. The authority insisted them to take Physics by depriving their right to choose what they needed for. However, the bumiputras were granted the same right. The uproars lasted for two weeks before it could be settled down. I wondered if they did consider the possible consequences by doing so. One of them had already left the unfavorable college to enrol in form six before the positive respond came upon their appeals.

Besides that, puzzlement arose when those who were awarded JPA scholarships to pursue their tertiary study in one of the local public universities, had to take matriculation. However there were lack of instructions by which college to stay whereas there were scholars who were already accepted by their matriculation college respectively. They sought for help from the seniors in forum or any other similar ways. My friend also told me that he was then accepted a list of local public universities he could apply for but the top universities such as UM or USM were not in the list. He wondered if it would be better to reject the JPA scholarships.

It was just a mess.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

The Padang Besar Trip

It was a joyful morning when my friends and I took a memorable visit to a rural area, Padang Besar in last year. It is located near Thailand and comprises of the wide sugar cane farms. It was the place where we got ourselves closer to the nature and it was also the first time we took so many snapshots.

Most of the students who were not much less than our age at that time didn't go for such an outing. They would rather prefer staying at home or wandering inside a hypermarket. It is really a must for the urban children to expose themselves towards the natural environment instead of the concrete walls and the tarred roads, listen to the chirping melodies instead of the irksome drilling sounds.

Let the photos do the talking :)

There were six of us, the sun was rising and the air was refreshing.

Darwin's theory of human evolution?

I couldn't do that.

It's Kung Fu time :D

I love this photo :)

The emperors had conquered this bare land after spilling a river of blood :D

Somehow my friend had a precise timing.

We found two abnormal hills, try to figure out what they were :p

There are ups and downs in our life.

Have fun! :D
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