LEARNING THE QUEEN'S ENGLISH
I was in Form One "D", the last of the form one classes in Penang Free School. The classroom was at the end of the left wing of the school building, just before the sheltered bicycle park beneath the old lecture theatre. I was amongst the most backward -- or, as modern psychologists would prefer to call it, the least intelligent or the slowest developed -- of Free School's form one students. But all my classmates and I were neither worried nor embarrassed for being in the least intelligent class, because our teachers continuously assured us that even the last boy of Penang Free School would be smarter than the best students of any other school. We were, after all, in the best school east of Suez.
I cannot remember the actual name of my first form master in Penang Free School, but I remember all our classmates, and many schoolmates, called him "Ah Peh Boon Seong." It was our affectionate way of calling him "Uncle Boon Seong". Boon Seong, which in Chinese means "scholarly and good-natured", must be his name; and it suited him very well, for he was actually scholarly and good-natured, although he often pretended to be fierce.
Ah Peh Boon Seong taught us English. Most form teachers taught English in Penang Free School. And he taught us the very first time he entered our class on the very first day of school. As far as I could remember, almost all teachers in Penang Free School started formal teaching on the very first day of school. There were no such things as dilly-dallying for three weeks, because the time-table was not ready, or because there were not enough "right" teachers, whereby pupils could have a field day running around in classrooms, chit-chatting amongst themselves, or, at best, privately doing their own work -- situations which, unfortunately, are not uncommon in some schools today. In Free School, at the most we pupils had a gala time without proper lessons for only two days. I still remember clearly an occasion when Mr Hughes announced in the school assembly that we must get all our books ready, for "by Wednesday, lessons will go full swing." I am not sure whether this Free School tradition was the result of Mr Hughes' fierceness, persuasiveness or efficiency.
So Ah Peh Boon Seong eyed the class optimistically from his seat on a slightly raised platform in front of the class. "I'm your form master," he said, "and I'm going to teach you English."
If today school inspectors -- some of whom I really doubt can teach well -- were to observe how Ah Peh Boon Seong typically taught a class, many would fail him for his teaching methodology. Ah Peh Boon Seong almost never left his seat while teaching, particularly never used any teaching aids besides the blackboard, chalk, his mouth and some threats. But it would be a great mistake, and a great injustice to this kindly, scholarly, good-natured uncle, to say his teaching was not effective. In fact I owe much of my grammatical English to him. How did he do it?
Right at the beginning Ah Peh Boon Seong classified grammatical mistakes into two broad categories: major and minor errors. Major errors were careless grammatical mistakes, especially those concerning tenses, number and punctuation -- mistakes made not because we did not know, but because of outright negligence. All other mistakes were considered minor.
"The first time you make a minor error, do your correction three times. The first time you make a major error, do your correction ten times," Ah Peh Boon Seong instructed.
"Each time you repeat the same type of mistake -- mind you, not necessary the same mistake, but the same type -- double the number of times in your correction. That means, if you repeat the same type of minor mistake, do your correction six times; for major mistakes, twenty times. Do you understand?" Ah Peh Boon Seong's instructions were always very clear. To be doubly sure, he wrote the necessary information on the blackboard.
"You go on multiplying by two each time you make the same type of mistake. Now, that chubby boy over there," he pointed to a chubby boy sitting at the back of the classroom, "how many times must you do your correction, if you make the same type of major mistakes the third time?"
"Thirty times, sir."
"Thirty times my foot! You better buck up your arithmetic. Forty times, Mr Chubby, forty times." Ah Peh Boon Seong held up four fingers to emphasize his point.
Then he looked at us menacingly. "But, if you make the same major mistake again, you don't have to do your correction eighty times! You don't have to do any correction at all, because I'm going to kick you out of school." He said the last sentence loudly and slowly, stressing every word. "If, after three times, you still make the same careless grammatical mistake, I'll kick you out of Penang Free School!" Ah Peh Boon Seong, still sitting on his chair, lifted up his foot and shook it vigorously in the air.
At our young age, we did not know whether he had any right to kick any pupil out of school, but his threat worked. As far as I know, no one has ever been kicked out of Penang Free School for making a careless grammatical mistake.
More importantly, careless grammatical errors started to disappear from our English exercises.Years later, when I became an English language teacher myself, I used the same trick on my students -- minus the kicking threat and the foot-shaking antics. It worked too; more and more of my students began to make less and less careless mistakes.
After he had tackled our major mistakes, Ah Peh Boon Seong moved on to our minor ones.
"Wong Kiew Kit!" he roared at me one day, "Come here."
I was not in the least frightened, despite his threatening look, because I could see that behind his intimidating front, he was trying to hide a smile.
"What is this?" he roared again, as he shoved my composition book towards me. "Read these sentences."
"I asked Munny where was Penang Free School. I asked him whether he knew where was Green Lane."
"This is Coolie's English. In Penang Free School, we use the Queen's English. Do you want to be a coolie?"
"No, sir."
"You may not want to be the queen, but still, as long as you are in Penang Free School, you have to use the Queen's English."
"What's the Queen's English, sir?"
"Aha, that's what I'm teaching you." He could no longer hide his smile. "Now read these sentences in the Queen's English." He made some correction with his red pen.
"I asked Munny where Penang Free School was. I asked him whether he knew where Green Lane was."
"That's Queen's English. Do your correction three times."
Ah Peh Boon Seong also made us copy all hard words into our vocabulary book, and copy their meanings from a dictionary which we had to carry with us every day.
"Read your hard words and their meanings every night before you go to sleep. Go to sleep with them. And go over them again early next morning." That was sound advice indeed.
But the best thing Ah Peh Boon Seong did for me, as far as learning English is concerned, was to make me read.
"You must read, read and read," he often reminded our class. "When I go home after school, I read. When I wait for my wife to serve dinner, I read. Before I go to bed, I read."
"Do you do other things, sir?"
"Yes, of course! I read a lot, yet I still can have time for other things because I use for my reading, the time other people would idle away. And you must read, read and read."
"What shall we read, sir?"
"The Queen's English, of course. If you read rubbish, you will learn rubbish."
"Where can we get the Queen's English to read?"
"Go to the library and borrow some books to read at home. And read the newspaper everyday. That's one of the best ways to improve your English."
Very true indeed. For me, reading the daily newspaper was the most important single factor that contributed to my rapid improvement of English that year. It was not easy, as I did not have any English newspaper at home. So every evening I cycled two miles to a club house to read the Strait Echo. My effort was richly rewarded, for by the time I entered Form Two, I could write good English composition.
Ah Peh Boon Seong was one of the very interesting teachers of Penang Free School. You will meet some of them as you read along.
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