Why boarding school?
Hello,
I am about to share with you the main reason I applied for boarding school.
For the PT3 assessment in 2014, apart from the written exams, students would need to sit for the listening and oral tests. Since we were the first batch to sit for the exam, we did not know much about it, not until a few months before the actual exam. The samples for listening and oral tests sold in many bookstores were not as hard as I think it would be. Easy topics. But I struggled, for real. I struggled to speak in a complete sentence using the Malay language, struggled to express even my feelings or thoughts.
No matter how hard I tried, my thoughts broke into pieces before I even said it out loud. The struggle was real. I could not reach the fluency I expected myself to.
I came from a national school, so speaking the National language fluently should never be my problem, right? No. I failed myself. After studying for three years at SMK Taman Tasik, I barely spoke a word or two in the Malay language. I only mingled with the Chinese friends and avoided speaking the language even in class, which eventually landed me in a mess during the oral test afterward.
Well, in the end, as expected, I did poorly for my Malay language listening test and got a "B" for that. And this had become my pushing force for me to improve my spoken languages. For nights I had been thinking about the solutions, on what could I do to improve drastically. And I came up with few things:
1. Only speak BM in class and mix with the Malay friends
2. Move to a different school with less Chinese
3. Stay in a boarding school
The first two sounded very practical and doable for me at that time. But habits are hard to change, especially when you have been living with it for the past 9 years (I came from Chinese Primary School as well). Moving to a different school sounded strategic to me as it would enable me to start mingling around with the Malays, but not for my parents. Transportation was a problem. At last, moving to a boarding school would be the only choice that I had, if I wanted to see changes.
Eventually, I went to apply for a place in boarding school when I barely knew what it was when I was 15, without my parents knowing. Hah! I applied through the MOE Asrama Penuh Tingkatan 4 government website right after the results were released in December.
And I was accepted by SMS Sains Seri Puteri!
Alright, stay tuned for more.
I am about to share with you the main reason I applied for boarding school.
For the PT3 assessment in 2014, apart from the written exams, students would need to sit for the listening and oral tests. Since we were the first batch to sit for the exam, we did not know much about it, not until a few months before the actual exam. The samples for listening and oral tests sold in many bookstores were not as hard as I think it would be. Easy topics. But I struggled, for real. I struggled to speak in a complete sentence using the Malay language, struggled to express even my feelings or thoughts.
No matter how hard I tried, my thoughts broke into pieces before I even said it out loud. The struggle was real. I could not reach the fluency I expected myself to.
I came from a national school, so speaking the National language fluently should never be my problem, right? No. I failed myself. After studying for three years at SMK Taman Tasik, I barely spoke a word or two in the Malay language. I only mingled with the Chinese friends and avoided speaking the language even in class, which eventually landed me in a mess during the oral test afterward.
Well, in the end, as expected, I did poorly for my Malay language listening test and got a "B" for that. And this had become my pushing force for me to improve my spoken languages. For nights I had been thinking about the solutions, on what could I do to improve drastically. And I came up with few things:
1. Only speak BM in class and mix with the Malay friends
2. Move to a different school with less Chinese
3. Stay in a boarding school
The first two sounded very practical and doable for me at that time. But habits are hard to change, especially when you have been living with it for the past 9 years (I came from Chinese Primary School as well). Moving to a different school sounded strategic to me as it would enable me to start mingling around with the Malays, but not for my parents. Transportation was a problem. At last, moving to a boarding school would be the only choice that I had, if I wanted to see changes.
Eventually, I went to apply for a place in boarding school when I barely knew what it was when I was 15, without my parents knowing. Hah! I applied through the MOE Asrama Penuh Tingkatan 4 government website right after the results were released in December.
And I was accepted by SMS Sains Seri Puteri!
Alright, stay tuned for more.
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