FAKULTI PENDIDIKAN DAN BAHASA

OUMH1303
ENGLISH FOR ORAL COMMUNICATION
JANUARY 2015 SEMESTER
__________________________________________________________________________________

NAMA

LIEW YUK FEI

NO MATRIK

830310125486001

NO KAD PENGENALAN :

830310125486

NO. TELEFON

0168304878

NAMA TUTOR

JAGJIT KAUR @ JAGAJIT

EMAIL

yi_fei0310@hotmail.com

PUSAT PEMBELAJARAN :

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SABAH LEARNING CENTRE

CONTENTS
Page
Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) Speech
References

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37
8

Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) Speech

Good morning to our respectable Headmaster, beloved teachers and fellow parents to
another joyful meeting of our Parent-Teacher Association (PTA). The year 2014 has recently
ended and the year 2015 comes with lots of hopes and potentials regarding our children and
school achievements in academic, sport and other matters that influence the reputation of our
school in the near future. The coming of year 2015 also means that we only have just another
5 years to go before we enter the year 2020. Everyone knows the Vision 2020 envisioned by
our former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Bin Mohamad, in which our beloved country,
Malaysia will be acknowledged by the whole world as a developed, modern and respected
country. However, judging on the state of development and the progress our community had
achieved so far, do you think we can achieve Vision 2020 in time? Do you think our country
had produced lots of doctors, lawyers, businessmen, professionals and executives? Does our
country can compete globally with other countries and create a sustainable future for its
citizens? Well, Ill let those questions for you to think for yourself.
My fellow parents and teachers, maybe lots of us think that the responsible to make
Vision 2020 a reality, lies upon our ministers, government and politicians. This may be true,
but dont forget that we as parents and teachers are equally responsible to make Vision 2020 a
reality by improving the academic achievements of our children and equip them with the
necessary skills and knowledge for them to become a successful student which later will
become a successful individual and responsible citizen. By improving the academic
achievements and focusing on the need to empower our children with essential skills and
knowledge, we can help our country by creating a generation of successful professionals. My
speech today is focus on matters relating to our children academic performance, which are
the problems regarding the concern about the poor academic performance of our children and
also some suggestions to solve this problem.
In our previous meeting, many parents expressed their concern regarding the
academic performance of their children, especially in Mathematics, Science and the English
Language. For some reason, many students seem hard to score good grades in these subjects
and also some of them dont show any improvements in their grades. This is a worrying
situation because these three subjects can be regarded as the most important subjects because
they are compulsory requirements for students to further their studies in most universities,
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colleges and other higher learning institutions. Mathematics is the basic for Accountancy,
Physics, Statistics and other subjects involving numbers. Science is the basic for Biology,
Chemistry, Physic and other subjects involving research. English Language is more important
because it is the language of the world. Thus as a parent myself, the poor performance in
Mathematics, Science and English of my children will surely worries me a lot.
It is hard to pin point the exact cause of this problem because there are many
factors that contribute towards the performance of our children such as the quality of the
teacher, policies in a school, the environment at home or maybe due to the attitude of the
children themselves. Apart from that, we all know that there are major changes occurs
recently in our education system after the introduction of Kurikulum Standard Sekolah
Rendah (KSSR) in 2011. Perhaps our children cant cope with KSSR or maybe teachers are
overburdened by the extensive offline and online filling system of KSSR. There is no
conclusive evidence that significantly caused the downfall of our children grades and we as
parents and teachers should not play blaming games and focus on how to improve our
childrens grades and help solved this problem.
My fellow parents and teachers, the first important thing to do is strengthen the bond
and cooperation level between teachers and parents regarding the continuous monitoring of
children performance. Just by refereeing to report cards and examination scores of the
students do not provide the full information of the students performance. Thus parents
should always refer to the teachers and vice versa. According to a journal by Westergard
(2013), cooperation between parents and teachers is a pivotal element in ensuring the success
of the students and the overall achievements of the school. Teachers and parents should
regularly discuss and engage in two-way communication regarding students performance,
curriculum, extra curriculum and other school related activities. By doing this teachers will
fully understand the capacity and learning ability of the students and parents will always
being informed and aware of their childrens' progress. This mutual bond will ensure that
parents and teachers are at the same level of commitment, positive attitude and positive mindset towards improving students academic performance.
My fellow parents and teachers, another element that we should improve is the way
we channel knowledge towards our children which is to improve learning facilities, learning
experience and teaching techniques. Children nowadays are very clever and fast learners.
They learn through their everyday surroundings, television, the Internet and from friends.
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Sometimes before they went to the class, they already research about the subject on the
Internet. A teacher who is not well prepared will be bombarded with lots of questions from
students who are already read about that particular subject. Thus if our method of teaching
and knowledge delivery is not up to date, they may lose focus, become not interested and will
lead to falling grades. Our school facilities should be upgraded and improved such as our
library and multimedia section. It should be equipped with the latest books, multimedia tools
and gadgets which can improve learning experience, improve students' interest and will
eventually contribute towards students' success. We also have to make sure that each student
has all the basic academic needs such as stationaries, dictionaries, calculators and others.
These essentials are the basic needs to master Mathematics, Science and the English
Language. Apart from that, teachers' teaching method also should be up to date and suitable
with the current students' needs. Teaching environment in the class should be interactive, lots
of discussion, lots of students involvement and help students generate Higher Order
Thinking Skills (HOTS). Teachers also should use different types of teaching tools and
gadgets to improve knowledge delivery such as computers, outdoor learning, audio, videos
and many more.
My fellow parents and teachers, I'm sure that when I mentioned about improving
facilities, materials and learning tools, most of you will think about where to get the extra
funding to execute such projects. Well, actually it is not hard to get extra funding as long as
we all can cooperate and work together. The common way to get extra funding is from our
'Yang Berhormat' (YB) or politicians. However, they will not give funds just like that. We
must organize some functions or events such as 'Gotong Royong or Majlis Penghargaan,
so that they can come during the opening ceremony and give some speech. At this time, I as
the president of the Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) together with our Headmaster will
persuade our YB donate to our PTA fund so that such events can be held in the future. We
also can create a special program to collect specific funds such as Donate for Our Library
or Donate For Our School, to collect extra funds from individuals, businesses and other
third parties in our district. Apart from that, I also suggest a regular monthly contribution
from the members of the PTA. The amount of the contribution would not be an extra burden
to parents as there will be a special committee who will determine the suitable contribution
amount. Talking about donation, parents also can donate unused items to the school such as
clothes, appliances or furniture to the school. The school will then organize a special day
where the donated item will be sold to the public and the amount of money we collected will
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go straight to our PTA fund. After this speech, any parents who have wonderful ideas on how
to increase our PTA fund can come forward and give suggestions. Whatever your suggestions
may be, we must remember that the most important thing is that we all work together and
everyone plays their role successfully.
My fellow parents, apart from teachers, we as parents should also play our role to
make sure that our children have the same positive learning environment at home, as they
have at school. The first thing to do is to monitor the progress of our children from time to
time. This will ensure that we can detect any academic problems that they are currently
facing and solved the problem before it is too late. Parents should always communicate with
their children to find out if they are having some issues at school or maybe some of their
learning material is insufficient. If necessary, parents should send their children to
Mathematics, Science and English Language tuitions. Some children cant learn well during
normal classes due to certain reasons such hard to concentrate. However in tuitions whereby
the number of children per class is small, our children can focus more and learn better. At
home, children should also be given sufficient time, materials and space to study and do their
homework at home. According to Child Development Institute (2012), helping our children
with their homework is beneficial and improves their learning ability. Parents can help guide
their children, help elaborate with examples, and help to check a math problem or check the
spelling of an essay.
Parents also are encourage to engage beneficial activities with their children such as
playing chess, scrabble, word games and many more. Although these activities are not
directly related to Mathematics, Science and the English Language, it helps improve their
problem solving skills, analytical ability, making comparisons, connecting information and
many more. These skills help them to understand and master Mathematics, Science and the
English Language. Other fun activities that parents should engage with their children are
regular trips to the zoo, wildlife centres, the beach and other outdoor activities. According to
Hasnul Faizal et al (2013), outdoor activities such as field trips, camping, jungle tracking or
water-based activities can be considered as learning activities outside the class which helps to
improve students ability to react, think and feel towards their surroundings. Outdoor learning
also helps students to apply the lessons and theories they learned in class into their everyday
life. These will further increase their understanding of the particular subject and aware of its
importance.

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Before ending my speech, I just want to emphasize that the problem of the falling
grades in Mathematics, Science and the English Language among our children is not only
concerns parents, teachers and our school, but also have the potential to affect our country to
achieve Vision 2020. Finding the root cause of this problem can be a major task because it
involves many factors. However, the best way is to improve the cooperation and relationship
between parents, teachers, school and the students themselves. All of these parties needed
each other and each of them has to play their role efficiently so that problems such as falling
grades among students can be solved easily. As mentioned before, parents and teachers must
work side by side to ensure that we can create a healthy and positive learning experience
either at school or at home. Basic education needs such as stationaries, facilities, educational
material, books, computers and others must be sufficiently provided to our children so that
their have all the necessary things for them to become successful. Apart from that, teachers'
teaching technique must also up to date and utilizes modern approaches such as ICT, Higher
Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) and many more.
Finding extra funds to execute these projects is not a big problem as long as parents,
teachers and students can cooperate to organize charitable events, mini carnival, school
functions and many more. Usually when it comes to matters regarding school, people will not
hesitate to contribute money or effort towards improving students academic achievements.
Lastly, parents play a crucial role in creating a positive learning environment at home so that
students can master Mathematics, Science and the English Language. They should encourage
speaking English at home and engage beneficial activities which promote healthy
development of analytical, creative and critical thinking. In short, the problem regarding the
falling grades among students in Mathematics, Science and the English Language can be
solved if we all can work together as one dynamic team.
(2086 words)

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References
Child Development Institute. (2012). Tips For Helping Kids and Teens With Homework and
Study

Habits.

Accessed

on

Febuary

2015

at

http://childdevelopmentinfo.com/learning/tips-for-helping-kids-and-teens-with-homeworkand-study-habits/

Hasnul Faizal., Norazhan, C, L., Shaifol, B, S., dan Norkhalid, S. (2013). HBPE 3203
Pendidikan Luar. Open University Malaysia. Edisi Kedua
Westergard, E. (2013). Teacher Competencies and Parental Cooperation. International
Journal

about

Parents

in

Education.

Downloaded

on

Febuary

http://www.ernape.net/ejournal/index.php/IJPE/article/viewFile/270/194

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