MY EXPERIENCE TEACHING ENGLISH LANGUAGE

ONCE WHEN I WAS TEACHING IN SMK AYER HITAM , KEDAH....I HAD GREAT FUN AND CONFUSION WHEN MARKING MY STUDENT'S EXERCISE BOOK.I ASKED THEM TO WRITE A LETTER TO A FRIEND . IT WAS AN INFORMAL LETTER....THE FIRST PART OF THE LETTER WAS LIKE THIS:-



Dear...............,

                       How are you ?.....I'm in pregnant well... 

I was so shocked by the sentence ,so when I entered the class, I called the girl to come and explain what she meant by that...

She showed me her pocket dictionary....a very small one,with limited words and Malay translation...


It was clear to me that PREGNANT was translated as (KANDUNGAN)   -  and WELL  means         ( SIHAT) .


If we were to  translate these two words back to English.....PREGNANT means in the state of..... while WELL means fine.....

Moral of the story:-

1. Teachers...please advise your students not to translate word by word when doing or reading essays....It might give you different meaning 

2. Please help them -  supply a good dictionary