A local teacher recently expressed their struggles trying to communicate with their students in a rural secondary school.
The teacher, based in Johor, claimed that these students previously studied in Chinese vernacular primary schools (SJK(C)), alleging that Form four and five students barely speak the Malay language.
“I’ve heard that during their primary school years in SJK(C), BM was taught in Mandarin, which might explain the struggle,” user @fifthreid said in a Reddit post.
The educator conveyed their disappointment upon finding out, estimating that 80% of these students face this struggle.
The information seemed to have shocked the teacher, who graduated from a university in Selangor.
“Coming here, I wasn’t prepared for how different the situation would be,” the Reddit user said.
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The teacher alleged that some of the students “cannot understand or form simple sentences”.
“In many cases, we need a translator—usually a Malay prefect who can speak Mandarin—just to communicate with them when issues arise.
“It’s incredibly frustrating for teachers, especially those teaching subjects like history, Bahasa Melayu, moral studies, and even mathematics, as these students can’t fully grasp certain terms.
“It makes teaching and learning so much harder than it should be,” the teacher claimed in the post.
Many understood the educator’s frustration and boiled down the issue to a lack of exposure to the national language outside of school, emphasising the importance of learning the Malay language as a Malaysian, regardless of one’s background.
Commenters also pointed out that this language barrier posing a challenge for the educator is a nuanced topic in the Malaysian education system, drawing the historical ties attached to these vernacular schools.
