The NUDE CROOKED TIMES Returns

DESI today generously -- after raising another 2million -- puts out a SECOND EDITION of The Nude Crooked Times due to Popular demand. "Popular" is an understatement because the Comments channel to the Inaugural Edition of the said daily was "disabled" due to the overwhelming response coming from my EsteemedReaders and I had to truncate to just five, oh, S'X, as an added-on because of its sexy nature.

The Frontpage reads:

Gov't sacks education minister S-G & D-G,
promises reform to correct depressing state of affairs

Seremban, Tuesday: Just a month into taking over the reins of government,
the Cabinet at its fourth meeting yesterday sacked the Secretary-General and Director-General of the Education Ministry for the many failures to check the decline in eduacation standards, especially that of the English standard.

The newly-appointed Education Minister of the Alternative Aces Action FRont noted the dismal failure of the many adhoc measures to overhaul the school system as well as the consistently falling standards of the local universities, chiefly in producing the bulk of graduates who could not write a 100-word letter in simple English.

This situation has prevailed in the past decade and is a growing disaster in an internationalised market-place where communication skills in the English language has emerged as the chief determinant of landing the executive level or corporate job.

The Minister pointed to the consistent appearance of Malaysians as among the foreign students graduating from universities abroad who couldnot communicate in prim and proper English, what more using exquisite English.

The Education Minister pulled out an old copy of a Malaysain daily dated 30 January 2007 to cite two examples of
(1) the ad hoc measures taken by the former Government contributing to the present state of affairs;
(2) Malaysian students today replacing Korean and Thai students having chalked up the honours of graduates with poor English language skills at Australian universities.

The Nude Crooked Times would refrain from paraphrasing the reports referred to by the Honourable Education Minsiter -- who is humble to the extreme as to not wanting his picture to be frontpaged.

Not that he did not wish to compete with the beloved Prime Minister, but that it's the contents of the topic that should be highlighted, and bolded thus, not the personality, he said.

The old culture of "fostering sycophancy" shall be replaced by one of "in pursuit of excellence" in all fields of Malaysian endeavour, the Minister stressed.


Example 1:

Frontpage

English on the double:ELiTE plan to boostEnglish proficiency
30 Jan 2007 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Year One pupils to get 18 English lessons a week, instead of the present eight, under a pilot project with emphasis on getting pupils to understandand be more comfortable with the English language Mathematics and Scienceclasses will be effectively turned into English lessons.

The objective: To help illiterate Year One pupils as they are the ones who struggle with their studies in subsequent years. Last year, 163,835 Year One pupils had trouble reading and writing.

KUALA LUMPUR: A plan to double the periods for English lessons will be tried out in schools in a bid to boost the pupils’ proficiency in the language. A pilot project to give Year One students 18 English lessons a week instead of the present eight would begin soon in 50 schools, said Education Ministry director-general Datuk Dr Ahamad Sipon.

The year-long project, called "ELiTE or Early Literacy Through English programme", will see the Mathematics and Science lessons, of which there are seven and three periods a week respectively, effectively turned into English lessons.

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Stopping from boring the Press further, the Minister pledged that from now on, the new Governemnwil no longer "experiment" with any pilot or non-piloted schemes in education.

He promised a review of the school and university systems by Eminent Malaysians for six months with a blue-print to be implemented two years from now to ensure a long-term road map in education for Young and Young@Heart Malaysians.

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DESI: Okay, now it's timely to reprise the relevant news item headlines, from Jan 23, 2007 titled: Introducing a new nu'espaper:
(See, Desi is a great believer in Re-Cycling to keep healthy and wise, or OtherWise:)

Declining English language standard:
Students' proficiency higher than teachers'
-- Researcher and findings dismissed

The Nude Crooked Times ran an exclusive report examining the causes of the falling standards of English in local schools and universities, quoting many parents as hearing from their school-going kids that their teachers were speaking "funy" English in class, adding "s" to nouns and verbs when they should not carry any "asses", and vice-versa.

It is "embarassing" to say the least for situations arising when some pupils stood up to "correct" the teacher's grammar. Of course, the pupils did not have any inclination to "embarass" the teachers, but such scenarios have become a common feedback to the Parents-Teachers' Associations.

Also, the parents urged the Education Ministry to be stringent in recruiting teacher- trainees as English specialisit teachers in requiring them to undergo competency and proficiency English tests conducted by internationally accredited and recognised bodies.




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EXAMPLE 2:

(You can refer to The Star World news for similar copy, but what follows is the Original I copied after Yahoo-Searched)

World (as of 5:01 PM)

Study: Asians graduate in Australia despite bad English

SYDNEY (AFP) - More than one-third of foreign students graduating from Australian universities, mainly Asians, have such poor English skills they should never have been admitted, research released Monday showed.

A study by demographer Bob Birrell found that more than 50 percent of South Korean and Thai students did not have sufficient English to work professionally in Australia, along with more than 43 percent of Chinese graduates.
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Some 17 percent of students from Singapore and India, where English is more widely spoken, also failed to reach the required level, Birrell found.
Overall, 34 percent of the graduating foreign students offered permanent residence visas in 2006 did not have competent English.

Birrell, of Melbourne's Monash University, said almost all the 12,000 graduates tested for the survey were from Asia because these students are the most likely to apply for permanent residency on completing their studies.

However, he said that he believed the study to be representative of all foreign students, partly because Asia was a major source of fee-paying overseas students for Australian universities.
"It does raise questions about university standards," Birrell told AFP.

Education Minister Julie Bishop described the survey as "an extraordinary attack by professor Birrell on our universities."

"International students must meet international benchmarks in language in order to get a place in a university in Australia," she said.

The study found all graduates tested had enough command of the language to cope in most situations.

"But people who have reached this standard are still not capable of conducting a sophisticated discourse at the professional level," it said.

Tertiary institutions are reliant on international students because they provide 15 percent of funding, leading to suggestions that academic standards are sacrificed in favour of financial rewards.

In his report, Birrell said there was a "mountain of anecdotal material" that many overseas students struggle to meet their course requirements and that universities cope by lowering the English demands of courses.

"There is widespread recognition of the English problem," he said.
But universities were hesitant to make students take extra language courses because this would make them more expensive and therefore less attractive than rival institutions, he said.
Professor Gerard Sutton, the president of the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee, said most foreign students would be proficient in reading, writing and listening to English.

"What I think has been highlighted is a deficiency in spoken language," he told AFP, adding that a deficiency in this area would not prevent them from completing a university course.

Of the students surveyed, those from South Korea fared the worst with 55.5 percent not meeting the required English standard.

They were followed by Thailand (50.9), Nepal (47.9), Taiwan (47.4), China (43.2), Hong Kong (42.9), Bangladesh (42.0), Japan (36.8), Vietnam (32.9), Indonesia (32.0), Sri Lanka (25.1), Pakistan (24.8), Malaysia (23.5), Singapore (17.8) and India (17.3).
Education is Australia's fourth largest export, with foreign students paying some two billion dollars (1.5 billion US) to attend universities annually.


DESI: To be continued~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~from 11.55AM~~

The new Education Minister noted with "deep regret" that Malaysia's ranking in 2007 has now risen to number two after Indonesia in the latest findings by Australian academics on the "performance by foreign students in English language proficiency" with the number 1 ranking as "faring the lowest" in English proficiency.

He drew the attention to the fact that China and Thailand have improved by leaps and bounds since the Jan 30, 2007 news report and now are almost on par with Singapore, which retains its supremo position as being the"most proficient" in English mastery among the foreign graduates in Australia.

"We have lost it in terms of competitiveness in the key areas of education and globalised village, as international commerce is closely tied to the Englsih language mastery, now the dominant medium used by all the important players in the mainly high-tech and Internet-cum-knowledge economy." he added.

_________________ IMPORTANT NOTICE ______________________

GEIC: Please note the Cover-date of the latest edition of The Nude Crooked Times is Jan 30, 2017.

___________This is a Privileged Look at the Possible Things to Come IF ONLY MALAYSIANS DO THEIR PART RIGHT____________ Desiderata2000