Impromptu speeches and debates can help improve English proficiency.

THE formal school time-table content is quite insufficient to attain all the set aims for language learning. The extra-mural dimension can be a valuable supplement or adjunct to classroom work.

Schools in our country have always had societies or associations that focus on public speaking, debating, mock trials, and choral speaking, to cite some random examples of extra-mural activities involving language.

Good habits of oral delivery mastered at school will be of value to young people. In their adult working years they may have to make formal presentations at meetings, seminars and all manner of negotiations. And in family life there will be occasions for speeches at birthday parties, wedding dinners and various anniversaries. Eulogies at funerals are also common.

Formal occasions require the observance of traditional rules intended to ensure order and discipline. Students will be able to note that at formal events, the casual manner used when chatting with friends cannot be adopted.

Impromptu or extemporaneous speeches are a good starting point. The advisory teacher of the English Language Society can prepare a number of simple, yet interesting topics. The chairperson, always a student-member of the society, will hand out the paper slips containing the titles of the speech. Timing is important. A speaker may be given five minutes to understand the title and to sort out in his mind the relevant points he will cover in his speech. He will be allowed to jot down the points, and to do some arranging of facts and phrases. Some curriculum guides remind us that “short-order talks” are frequently thrust upon politicians, civic officials and teachers at meetings, banquets and public gatherings, big and small. Some training in the art of speaking extempore or listening to such speeches will promote confidence and help to dispel the “terror” or fear element. Students can become surprisingly adept at extemporaneous talks once they learn the knack. And that can only grow out of practice.

When all the presentations have been made, the teacher can make comments on the speeches with the aim of helping students to improve their performance. Correct usage of phrases, exact pronunciation of words, tempo of delivery and audibility of voice must be looked into. The teacher’s attitude is of course vital. To err is human but we can all learn from our own errors and those of others.

What of the topics to be chosen for impromptu or extempore speeches? Generally, topics should be chosen that contain an element of controversy or will stimulate arguments. Local, state, national and world affairs always provide useful ideas or speeches. It does not matter at all if the degree of sophistication is not quite to the adult level. In a multi-cultural society such as we have in Malaysia, topics that may infringe on racial or religious sensitivities are taboo. Here are five ideas for impromptu speeches.

1. Road safety measures need to be improved in our community.

2. All nuclear weapons must be eliminated.

3. Students should be accorded the right to choose their own courses in secondary schools and at university.

4. The abolition of public examinations is not advisable.

5. More professionals such as doctors, nurses, professors and bank managers should be invited to give talks to upper secondary classes.

The time limit set (say five to seven minutes) has to be followed strictly. In our country, speakers, I feel, have too much to say. When the bell is rung, they try to rush through the unfinished portions of their speech. The entire value of the presentation is lost when the bell has to be rung repeatedly, and a recalcitrant speaker has to be literally forced to resume his seat. A wholesome habit to cultivate would be to end any incomplete presentation by saying, “I’m sorry, but owing to time constraints I am unable to complete my speech.”

Good public speakers cultivate the art of rapport or closeness with their audience. There must always be eye contact with the members of the audience. Any speaker who just scans his paper intently and reads out the text, word by word, will not have “sparkle”, the human touch. Humour is a good element but it should not be forced. To add a joke or two as a routine is not advisable.

Regarding nervousness and stage fright, students should be reminded that there are really very few “born speakers”. It is a very common weakness to feel nervous but over a period of time, through sheer practice and perseverance, confidence will replace fear and tension.

Sir Winston Churchill had an anecdote about stage fright. He asserted that he always found it useful to take a hard look at the audience. He would then tell himself, “What a lot of silly fools.” Taking deep breaths and standing up straight also helps a great deal.

Formal debates

Formal debates can provide a good opportunity for some students to speak and for others to learn through listening and observation. Two opposing teams of not more than three speakers each participate. The topic in the form of a proposition should always be clearly worded in the traditional, parliamentary style. An example is: That convicted criminals serving prison sentences should be given more opportunities to learn useful skills.

The main speaker for the proposition speaks first and he is followed by the main opposition speaker. Then it is back to the second speakers for either side and the third speakers conclude the presentations. Each team should meet to plan out its work so that members do not repeat the same points. It will not be too difficult to anticipate what the other side will probably say. In refuting or attacking an opponent’s view, it is of vital importance to avoid harsh or personal remarks. The old-fashioned precept is still valuable, namely, “attack the view but not the person expressing the view”. Also, all utterances should be addressed only to the chairperson. There should be no remarks nor gestures directed at the opposing side. I am sure we want to promote among young Malaysians the cultivation of decorum and good manners in all situations involving public speaking.

Within a school, opposing teams from different forms or houses can compete in debate. Inter-school debating competitions are also useful to foster healthy rivalry.

Advisory teachers should encourage the more enthusiastic students to read anthologies of famous speeches. Political speeches and court-room speeches are plentiful. Good bookshops will have suitable volumes that can be purchased for inclusion in school libraries. Through wide reading, students will steadily add to their stock of new words, phrases and idioms and become good speakers and writers.

source: http://thestar.com.my/english/story.asp?file=/2010/7/14/lifefocus/6596725&sec=lifefocus

A look at the basis for subject-and-verb agreement.

A FRIEND once told me that she had difficulty when deciding the use of the singular or plural verb in a sentence in English. (She had been taught “grammarless” Communication English in school.)

On the basis of her observations, she then resorted to making the verb agree with the noun immediately preceding it – a singular verb to follow from a singular noun, and a plural verb from a plural noun. She has been pretty successful most of the time.

Unfortunately, there are many situations where such a rule of thumb fails, notably when the subject noun (i.e. noun as subject) and the verb are not positioned next to each other.

I had been mulling this over. How does one cover such a wide topic within the constraints of the MOE page? A one-page article cannot do justice to the topic.

Nevertheless, I shall limit myself to verbs in the active voice and indicative mood. For an example, consider the verb walk, as used for the third person in the different tenses (see table).

It must be noted that in a language like Latin, the verbs are conjugated (tagged with different word-endings, or inflections) in order to grammatically reflect voice, mood, tense, number, and person. (To add to the complexity, there are additional inflections to form participles, gerunds and supines.)

On the other hand, a language like Malay does not change the form of the verb but indicates tense by context and/or the use of auxiliaries telah or sudah (for the past) and akan (for the future) – and the verb form makes no distinction between singular and plural.

English lies somewhat in between the complexity of Latin and the simplicity of Malay in that verb forms for singular and plural are largely the same – except for those tenses underlined in the table.

I can try to cover every conceivable situation to explain the ways in which the noun-verb concord works – while bearing in mind that the focus is always on the subject noun since it is the noun that governs the verb, not the other way about.

General rule – The overriding rule is that the verb must accord with the subject noun in respect of grammatical number, ie. singular verb for singular noun and plural verb for plural noun.

Use of auxiliary verbs – The table shows that the verb “to be” is used as auxiliary verbs to form the continuous tenses – is, was, and will be for the present continuous, past continuous, and future continuous, respectively.

In an analogous manner, the verb “to have” is used as auxiliaries to form the perfect tenses – has, had, and will have for the present perfect, past perfect, and future perfect, respectively.

Verbs “to be” and “to have” as lexical verbs – As shown above, the verbs “to be” and “to have” help to form the continuous and the perfect tenses. In such context, they are “helping” verbs, or auxiliary verbs (Latin: auxiliarius “assisting, helping”, from auxilium “help”). In addition, these two verbs may be used without help (e.g. the boy is sick; the man has a ticket). In such context, they are main verbs – or what I would term lexical verbs (since they carry a meaning on their own).

Note that the verb “to be” is the most irregular of verbs. For the purpose of this article, we note that the word – whether used as a lexical verb or as an auxiliary verb associated with a pronoun – follows the verb-and-subject agreement rule in a quirky sort of way. It follows the general rule for the third person singular (he/she/it is; he/she/it was) and plural (they are; they were). For the second person, it is <you are; you were> for the singular, and the same for the plural. For the first person, it is <I am; I was> for the singular, and <we are; we were> for the plural. Thus a sentence like “if you does not want …” has never been, and will never be, acceptable.

Another point of note concerns the verb “to have”. When one encounters a sentence like “she had had the ticket all the time”, rest assured that the sentence does not contain an extraneous word – the first had is an auxiliary verb, the second had is the lexical verb.

Problems with nouns singular and plural – It is important to establish that a noun is singular or plural before adding the verb in the singular or the plural.

Nouns that may pose difficulty in this respect include the following: (1) nouns singular in form but used as singular or plural as demanded by context (deer, offspring, sheep, spawn); (2) nouns plural in form but are singular in meaning and can form the plural (summons/summonses); (3) nouns plural in form but are singular in meaning yet do not have the plural form (crossroads, gallows, news, shambles); (4) nouns plural in form and in usage but have no singular form (arrears, goods, remains, tidings); and (5) foreign-derived nouns with plurals not formed with the usual suffix –s (alga/algae, bacterium/bacteria, fungus/fungi, stratum/strata, criterion/criteria; stigma/stigmata; thesis/theses; cherub/cherubim; kibbutz/kibbutzim; autobahn/autobahnen).

Concord of subject and verb even when separated – The general rule for subject-verb concord applies even when the verb is divorced from its subject by a string of words. Note the sentence: “… in the last 30 years, UWS students who qualify with a proper degree have gone on to become leaders in major companies …” Here the verb have gone (plural) is governed not by the noun degree (singular) next to it but by the distantly located subject UWS students (plural).

One of the … – Here is a recent excerpt from an advertisement: “One of the most anticipated action movie is here …” Did the copywriter intentionally use the word movie (instead of movies) so that the verb is (singular) is in agreement with the adjacent noun movie (singular)? Invariably, the expression one of the should be associated with a plural noun and, in turn, followed by a singular verb (one of the most anticipated action movies is here). The same phrase may also be associated with a collective noun and, similarly, followed by a singular verb (one of the crew is sick).

There is/there are and similar expressions – The one or the other, whether in the present tense or the past tense, is a common opener in an inverted construction (there was a book on the table; there are three books on the table). In such inverted construction, there is not the subject of the sentence – it is an introductory adverb. The true subject is the noun or nouns after the verb. Thus we write <there are a book and a pen on the table> (a book and a pen constitute a compound, therefore plural, subject) – although colloquially, and incorrectly, one hears <there is a book and a pen on the table> or <there’s a book and pen on the table>.

Nouns linked by and – Nouns joined by the conjunction and do not necessarily constitute a plural subject. Compare the following two sentences: (1) The owner and the captain of the yacht usually visit the island on Sunday (the definite article the is applied to the owner and also to the captain because they are two different people, hence the plural verb visit; and (2) The owner and captain of the yacht usually visits the island on Sunday (the definite article the is applied once because both owner and captain are one and the same person, hence the singular verb visits).

With further regard to the conjunction and, I must mention bread and butter and time and tide. These expressions are examples of one type of collocation. (Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 2004 defines collocation as “the habitual juxtaposition of a particular word with another word or words with a frequency greater than chance”). The particular collocations noted above are conventionally treated as single entities, thus: Time and tide waits for no man (where the verb is singular waits, rather than the plural wait).

Nouns linked by or – There should be no problem in subject-and-verb agreement when the subject comprises singular nouns/pronouns linked by the conjunction or – the verb that follows is singular. Likewise when the subject comprises plural nouns/pronouns, the verb that follows is plural.

However, a mix of singular and plural nouns or pronouns can be a problem. The solution is to apply the rule of proximity attraction, whereby the verb follows the preceding noun or pronoun. The following examples illustrate: (1) A TV set or two DVD players constitute the first prize (the plural verb constitute is governed by the preceding plural noun DVD players); and (2) Either he or I am mad (the verb am follows from the pronoun I, NOT the verb is following from the pronoun he).

Collective nouns – A collective noun, or group noun, is a collection or group of persons or things (couple, crew, herd, jury, tribunal). Even though singular in form, it can be singular or plural in usage. It is singular when the group is treated as a unit (the tribunal is made up of a representative each from the judiciary, the employees panel, and the employees union). It is plural when the group is treated as individuals being the component units of the group (the tribunal were of several minds over the case).

When used with the adverb together, the collective noun logically must be deemed as plural (the couple have been together for seven years – in this context couple cannot be singular and take the singular verb because a single unit cannot be together with itself!).

Closing remarks

The above covers rather limited ground, pertaining to tenses of verbs in only the active voice and the indicative mood.

There are, of course, other considerations for the passive voice, other moods (imperative and subjunctive), as well as other verb forms such as participles (present and past) and gerund. However, all that is grist for another story.

source: http://thestar.com.my/english/story.asp?file=/2010/8/13/lifefocus/6834715&sec=lifefocus

The Malaysian English Test (MUET) is a test which measures the achievement and English skills of pre-university students.

Students with STPM, Matriculation or Diploma qualifications who intend to pursue first degree courses in local institutions of higher learning must provide evidence that they have sat for MUET.

This test is offered twice a year. Students may opt to take either the mid year or end of year examination.

The registration for the mid year test begins in mid January and ends in early February, whereas the registration for the end of year test begins in early May and ends early June.

For more info, please visit: http://www.mpm.edu.my

The Malaysian English Test (MUET) is a test which measures the achievement and English skills of pre-university students.

Students with STPM, Matriculation or Diploma qualifications who intend to pursue first degree courses in local institutions of higher learning must provide evidence that they have sat for MUET.

This test is offered twice a year. Students may opt to take either the mid year or end of year examination.

The registration for the mid year test begins in mid January and ends in early February, whereas the registration for the end of year test begins in early May and ends early June.

For more info, please visit: http://www.mpm.edu.my