A TEST QUESTION GETS GRAMMARIANS ARGUING

On pronouns and possessive antecedents.

It’s rare for a point of English grammar to feature on the front page of a newspaper, but on 14 May 2003 a dispute over a subtle issue was so reported in the Washington Post.
In the USA, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) administers PSATs (Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Tests), for high school students. A question in a recent test caused the problem. Try it yourself. Is there a grammatical error in this sentence: “Toni Morrison’s genius enables her to create novels that arise from and express the injustices African Americans have endured”?
My guess is that the great majority of readers will not be able to find an error; I would certainly mark it as grammatically correct, if stylistically poor. So did a small majority (53%) of those who took the test last October. All the experts who reviewed the test before it was issued — some 30 altogether, the article reports — also said it was grammatically impeccable and that the right answer was to mark it as such.
However, Kevin Keegan, a high-school journalism teacher, argued the answer was wrong. After months of dispute, and consultation with an outside panel of experts, the ETS has deleted the question and re-scored the test.
So what’s wrong with the sentence? Mr Keegan says that it’s not correct for a pronoun (her in the sentence) to refer back to a noun in the possessive case (Toni Morrison’s). He would insist that the sentence be rewritten.
Many of the linguists who have since debated the subject on various lists have never heard of this rule. However, it does appear in a number of current American style guides, including The Penguin Handbook and The Scribner Handbook For Writers. More often, grammar books say nothing about it, which suggests that they don’t acknowledge the rule exists. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage (regarded as a dangerously permissive work by conservative grammarians) is a rare public opponent of the rule. It says that “This sort of logic … does little more than impose an unnecessary burden on the writer” and argues that a type of notional agreement is occurring that makes the usage legitimate.
Certainly, there’s no ambiguity in the sense. If somebody says to you, “My neighbour’s wife left him”, or “John’s mother loves him” (both of which would be outlawed by the rule) you understand the meaning at once. Indeed, you will find it next to impossible to rephrase these sentences elegantly and without repeating yourself. (“John’s mother loves John”? Hardly. That’s what pronouns are for, after all.) The construction has been used by good writers for centuries. In Nicholas Nickleby, Dickens wrote: “It was Mr Squeers’s custom to call the boys together and make a sort of report, after every half-yearly visit to the metropolis, regarding the relations and friends he had seen”. And another example from an impeccable source: “The writer’s colleagues in the Department of English in Cornell University have greatly helped him in the preparation of his manuscript” (William Strunk, The Elements of Style, from the 1918 edition at Project Bartleby).
The problem really comes down to sense versus logic. The formal approach of the rule treats such sentences as though they were something akin to a computer program, which has to be correct in all particulars or it will not work. This is the view of what is sometimes called rather pejoratively “traditional grammar”, which is ultimately based on Latin models in which case agreement is important. Modern linguists prefer to work using concepts such as discourse analysis, in which the topic is clearly Toni Morrison, and it is legitimate for a pronoun to refer back to this implied topic. Also, “Toni Morrison’s genius” can be rewritten as “The genius of Toni Morrison”, which makes the relationship obvious. This conforms to the common-sense view of the way English works. You can tell this is really the nub of the problem, since Mr Keegan is reported as arguing at one point that the exam wasn’t testing whether sentences were clear but whether they were correct.
The consensus among the linguists who have written about this since the newspaper article appeared is that the supposed rule is daft and that it’s a legacy of attempts by grammarians of earlier times to impose a Latin-like structure on our language by diktat, without considering the way people actually speak it. However, Mr Keegan made one point which is incontrovertible: the rule exists, and some instructors insist on it (as Mr Keegan does), so that it’s unfair to include a question in a test when teachers disagree about the right answer. This argument seems to have been the one that finally convinced the ETS to change its mind.
One contributor to the American Dialect Society discussion on the issue summed matters up thus: “The high school sophomore who is ready to ponder the ambiguities of a possessive case noun serving as an antecedent does not exist”. That goes for most of us.

[I’m grateful to various members of the American Dialect Society and Linguist lists who have discussed the issue for many details in this piece.]

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME

Losing something in translation?

One of the things that makes us the human beings we are is a powerfully-developed pattern-matching facility. Momentarily spot a profile in half light and the person is instantly recognised; listen to someone at a crowded party and we can usually “join up the dots” between half-heard snatches of speech and turn it into a meaningful statement. But sometimes this superb ability tries hard to make sense of something that is too alien for it and nonsense results.
Take the residents of Richmond in West London about the year 1860 who spotted a plant with tiny white marigold-like flowers in their gardens. They had never seen it before, so naturally they took it up the road to the experts at Kew Gardens, who recognised it immediately as an escaped specimen of a recent introduction to the Gardens, brought back from Peru by one of their collectors. “Oh yes,” they said, not having an English name for it, “That’s Galinsoga parviflora”. That patterning ability went into immediate operation, the unfamiliar Latinate first word sounding a bit like something that made sense: Gallant Soldiers. And so it has been called in Britain ever since.
A better-known example of this process of what might be called the “dumbing down” of names is the Jerusalem artichoke, Helianthus tuberosus. You will not be surprised to hear that it does not come from Jerusalem. It is actually a sort of sunflower from North America (sunflower-artichoke is another English name for it) and the Italians, who imported it first, called it girasole: “heliotrope”, or turning always to the sun. (In a slightly different form the same word turns up in English as a name for an opal that glows reddish in the light, the “fire-opal”.) Anyway, the pattern-matchers got hold of this plant name and turned it to “Jerusalem” in a twinkling. Artichoke shows an even greater set of shifts, across three languages. The name was originally Arabic, al-kharshuf, which travelled via Moorish Spain into Italy as arcicioffo. People had all sorts of goes at turning this into English when the plant was brought here (“in the time of Henry VIII” according to Hakluyt): archecock, hortichock, artichoux, hortichoke (something that overran the garden) and even heartychoke. The name didn’t finally settle down to the modern spelling until the eighteenth century. By this time it had also been added on the end of Jerusalem for no botanical or other obvious reason, perhaps because that name didn’t sound complete by itself, or perhaps because the longer name was grander.
Then there’s pennyroyal, a name for the mint Menthe pulegium, once prized as a medicinal herb. This name is just the “turn it into something we understand” pattern-matching technique applied to the Old French name puliol real, which was originally the Latin puleium “flea-plant” — Pliny said that fleas were killed by the scent of the burning leaves.
Another strange change occurred with the avocado, but this time the pattern-matching took place in Spanish; the Nahuatl word ahuacatl for it (the word also means “testicle”) was creatively misheard as avocado (spelled abogado in modern Spanish), meaning a lawyer (the modern Spanish word for the fruit, aguacate, is closer to the original). This was curiously converted still further in English into alligator (which itself was a corruption of the Spanish el lagarto “the lizard”), or alligator-pear from its shape, a name it had in England for some decades at the beginning of the eighteenth century before the Spanish name triumphed.
But for the most extraordinary example of shifting names we must go to the aubergine, once known also as the brinjal in India. The story starts with Sanskrit vatin-gana “the plant that cures the wind”, which became the Arabic al-badinjan. This moved into Europe, again via Moorish Spain: one offshoot — keeping the Arabic article prefixed — became alberengena in Spanish and on to aubergine in French; another transformation became the botanical Latin melongena through losing the article and changing the “b” to an “m”; this then turned into the Italian melanzana and then to mela insana (the “mad apple”). Another branch, again without the “al”, became bringella in Portugal, whose traders took the plant, and their version of the name, full circle back to India, where it became brinjal in Anglo-Indian circles (the usual term among English speakers in India today is the Hindi baingan, or aubergine). In another branch of its history, the Portuguese word turned up in the West Indies, where it was again, but differently, corrupted to brown-jolly. All names for the same plant.

With No Immediate Cause

Here's my choice to commemorate the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, albeit three days too late. This is a crude, straightforward poem. You will find no metaphors here, this is the awful truth. This isn't a poem to enjoy, it is a poem to make you think.

With No Immediate Cause

every 3 minutes a woman is beaten
every five minutes a
woman is raped/every ten minutes
a little girl is molested
yet I rode the subway today
I sat next to an old man who
may have beaten his old wife
3 minutes ago or 3 days/30 years ago
he might have sodomized his daughter
but I sat there
cuz the men on the train
might beat some young women
later in the day or tomorrow
I might not shut my door fast
enough push hard enough
every 3 minutes it happens
some women’s innocence
rushes to her cheeks/pours from her mouth
like the betsy wetsy dolls have been torn
apart/their mouths
menses red split/every
three minutes a shoulder
is jammed through plaster and the oven door/
chairs push thru the rib cage/hot water or
boiling sperm decorate her body

I rode the subway today
and bought a paper from an east Indian man who might
have held his old lady onto
a hot pressing iron/ I didn’t know
maybe he catches little girls in the
parks and rips open their behinds
with steel rods/ I can not decide
what he might have done I
know every 3 minutes
every 5 minutes every 10 minutes
I boughtt the paper
looking for the announcement
there has to be an announcement
of the women’s bodies fond
yesterday the missing little girl
I sat in a restaurant with my
paper looking for the announcement
a young man served me coffee
I wondered did he pour the boiling
coffee on the woman because she was stupid
did he put the infant girl in
the coffee pot because she cried too much
what exactly did he do with hot coffee
I looked for the announcement
the discover of the dismembered
woman’s body
victims have not all been
identified today they are
naked and dead/some refuse to
testify girl out of 10 is not
coherent/ I took the coffee
and spit it up I found an
announcement/ not the woman’s
bloated body in the river floating
not the child bleeding in the
59th street corridor/ not the baby
broken on the floor/
“there is some concern
that alleged battered women
might start to murder their
husbands and lovers with no
immediate cause”
I spit up I vomit I am screaming
we all have immediate cause
every 3 minutes
every 5 minutes
every 10 minutes
every day
women’s bodies are found
in alleys and bedrooms/at the top of the stairs
before I ride the subway/buy a paper of drink
coffee from your hands I must know
have you hurt a woman today
did you beat a woman today
throw a child cross a room
are the little girl’s pants in your pocket
did you hurt a woman today
I have to ask these obscene questions
I must know you see
the authorities require us to
establish
immediate cause
every three minutes
every five minutes
every ten minutes
every day
-NTOZAKE SHANGE

PUNCA dan CARA mengatasi MASALAH Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran BAHASA INGGERIS

Punca 1:  Guru Tidak Kreatif Dalam Pengajaran

Bagi saya, punca utama adalah guru tidak kreatif sewaktu menyampaikan pelajaran. Chalk and talk tidak lagi sesuai pada masa sekarang (Dulu pun tak sesuai juga!). Dengan adanya pelbagaibahan multimedia, guru sepatutnya boleh membina pengajaran dan pembelajaran yang mampumenarik minat murid, walaupun pada asalnya murid tersebut tidak berminat. Lagipun, itulahtujuan guru dihantar ke sekolah bukan?

Saya faham bahawa tugas guru di sekolah bukan sekadar mengajar, malahan guru adalah arkitek,tukang paip, babysitter, tukang kebun, jurutera dan macam-macam lagi peranan guru di sekolah.Tetapi itu tidak boleh dijadikan alasan untuk tidak dapat membina PnP yang menarik.

Murid dilihat sebagai individu yang sebenarnya masih belum dapat mengenalpasti minat dan bakat mereka. Justeru, guru perlu dedahkan mereka dengan seberapa banyak perkara dan berusaha menjadikan perkara tersebut menarik.

Dari pengalaman saya berada dibeberapa sekolah (dalam tempoh yang singkat-singkat saja), sayadapati murid di kawasan luar bandar sangat gemarkan PnP berasaskan multimedia. Mereka rasakalau dapat belajar menggunakan komputer dan LCD projektor tuh, macam menonton tayangan filem. Berbeza dengan murid sekolah bandar, mungkin sebab peralatan kat rumah lebih canggih, mereka tak begitu teruja bila menggunakan multimedia. Mungkin juga, guru tidak kreatif kerana mereka banyak bergantung kepada buku teks dan buku kerja yang dibekalkan. Jadi, kebanyakan mereka enggan berfikir lebih untuk menjadikan pengajaran mereka unik berbanding hanya membaca buku teks yang ada.

Memang saya ada beberapa kejayaan mengubah murid yang gagal bahasa inggeris sehinggamendapat A, tetapi pengajaran saya tidak tersekat dengan buku teks mahupun silibus sekolahkerana saya mengajar bahasa inggeris di luar waktu sekolah.

Cara Mengatasi: Guru perlu lebih kreatif - saya pun tak tahu macamana nak hasilkan guru yang kreatif, agaknya kena tanya pensyarah IPG!

Punca 2:  Murid Tidak Minat

Ini banyak berkaitan dengan punca 1 dan saya rasa sebab utamanya murid tidak minat adalah kerana gagal melihat kepentingannya mereka belajar bahasa inggeris ini. Pendek kata mereka tidak tahu kenapa perlu belajar bahasa inggeris.

Cara Mengatasi: Guru perlu berikan sebab dan rasional belajar bahasa inggeris. Maklum ajelah, budak sekarang ni sentiasa nak tahu ganjarannya mereka lakukan sesuatu - termasuklah belajar.

Punca 3: Saiz Kelas Terlalu Besar/ Kebolehan Murid Tidak Sama

Jika saya diberikan peluang untuk memberitahu menteri pendidikan, inilah perkara pertama yang saya akan cakap. 1 guru = 40 orang murid. Sungguh tidak munasabah. Maafkan saya kalau ada yang rasa pandangan saya ini negatif, tapi bagi saya selagi masalahnisbah guru murid ini tidak diatasi, apapun usaha lain dilakukan untuk meningkatkan mutupendidikan, agak sukar untuk berjaya. Kumpulan kelas bahasa inggeris saya juga kecil, maksima 12 orang sahaja bagi setiap sesi. Ini
kerana saya rasa saya tidak dapat memberikan tumpuan individu jika jumlah murid melebih angka tersebut.

Apatah lagi apabila kebolehan murid dalam kelas itu tidak sama. Ini tambah menyukarkan keadaan dan menyulitkan guru mengajar. Banyak sekolah tidak lagi membuat pengajaran secara berkumpulan, sebaliknya murid dalam kelas dianggap lebih kurang sama.

Cara Mengatasi: Jika sekolah membuat streaming class, jumlah murid bagi kelas yang pandai bolehlah lebih banyak berbanding kelas yang tidak pandai. Pada pendapat saya, semakin mundur kelas tersebut, semakin kecil jumlah murid dalam kelas itu. Contohnya, murid kelas A ada 40 orang, murid kelas B ada 35 orang, murid kelas C ada 30 orang dan murid kelas D hanyalah 25 orang. Itu lebih baik berbanding setiap kelas dipuratakan. Selain daripada itu, murid juga boleh ditukarkan kelas bagi subjek tertentu contohnya bahasainggeris. Contohnya, bagi kedudukan tahun seseorang murid itu mungkin berada di kelas A,tetapi jika beliau lemah dalam bahasa inggeris, waktu bahasa inggeris beliau perlu ke kelas Catau D mengikut tahap penguasaan beliau.

Punca 4:  Guru Galakkan Murid Malas Secara Tidak Langsung

Walaupun tidak semua, tetapi banyak guru bahasa inggeris mengajar bahasa inggeris dalam bahasa melayu. Macamana ya? Memang bunyinya pelik, tapi pemerhatian saya dapati itulah yang berlaku.

Cuba bayangkan, sudahlah ibubapa murid tidak bertutur dalam Bahasa inggeris, waktu bahasa inggeris di sekolah adalah satu-satunya waktu murid akan mendengar bahasa ini. Tiap-tiap murid diajar bahasa inggeris dalam bahasa melayu. Jadinya macamana ya nak pandai?

Selain daripada itu, saya lihat sekarang ni murid juga tidak lagi diwajibkan mempunyai kamus.Ada murid yang langsung tidak tahu bagaimana nak gunakan kamus. Kita semua pun tahukan kepentingan kamus dalam pembelajaran bahasa.

Cara Mengatasi: Guru perlu tegas dalam penggunaan bahasa. Memang ada masalah murid tidak faham apabila guru mengajar dalam bahasa inggeris, tetapi guru perlu gunakan alternative lain untuk membuatkan murid tersebut faham. Contohnya, apabila guru kata sit down murid tidak faham. Jangan ubah kepada sila duduk. Sebaliknya gunakan bahasa isyarat atau buat contoh perbuatan tersebut.

Ada baiknya juga sekiranya guru bahasa inggeris bercakap bahasa inggeris sepanjang masa mereka berinteraksi dengan murid di sekolah, walaupun diluar waktu PnP. Secara tidak langsung, murid akan terdesak untuk berkomunikasi dalam bahasa ini. Kempen-kempen yang diadakan di sekolah sekarang cukup baik, cuma saya rasa penguatkuasaan tidak dilakukan dengan sempurna. Sewaktu minggu bahasa inggeris, pastikan semua guru dan murid bertutur dalam bahasa inggeris dan kenakan denda ke atas mereka yang melanggarnya -termasuklah guru. Kepimpinan melalui tauladan kan?

Punca 5:  Buku Teks/ Buku Kerja Tidak Sesuai Dengan Tahap Murid

Sebenarnya saya tidak pernah melihat buku teks bahasa inggeris, tetapi saya telah banyak kali melihat buku teks bahasa melayu. Pada pandangan saya, buku teks yang ada itu lebih sesuai untuk kegunaan murid-murid sedia bijak. Kalau buku teks bahasa melayu sebegitu, buku teks bahasa inggeris pun pastinya sama saja.

Cara Mengatasi: Kalau tidak silap saya, buku teks dipilih mengikut negeri/ zon. Pada pendapat saya, daripada mengadakan buku teks mengikut negeri atau zon, adalah lebih baik sekiranyabuku teks dibuat mengikut tahap - murid bijak, murid sederhana dan murid lemah. Pemilihanpula dibuat sendiri oleh sekolah dan bukan pihak negeri.

Maksudnya, sekolah akan menentukan majoriti jenis muridnya - bijak, sederhana atau lemah. Seterusnya sekolah akan memilih buku teks yang paling hampir menepati tahap majority muridnya. Walaupun ada di kalangan murid-murid sekolahnya yang lebih bijak/ lebih lemah berbanding majoriti murid, itu menjadi tanggungjawab guru sekolah menyediakan aktiviti pengayaan atau pemulihan bagi muridnya.

Agaknyalah, kalau betul-betul nak disenaraikan ada banyak punca masalah pengajaran bahasainggeris ni, tapi kalau difikir secara mendalam, kesemuanya berpunca dari etika dan sikap yangsalah samada oleh guru mahupun murid.

Bagaimanapun, inilah sedikit perkongsian saya hari ini, saya sangat mengalu-alukan jika ada kalangan pembaca yang ingin berkongsi pendapat dengan saya. Mungkin tidak semua pendapat saya di atas itu anda rasa betul, tetapi tidak semuanya juga salah kan?

Apa yang saya harapkan adalah kita semua dapat berbincang secara rasional dan terbuka tanpabertindak menuding jari menyalahkan mana-mana pihak. Kita mencari jalan penyelesaian danbukannya orang untuk bertanggungjawab. Semua ini demi kepentingan anak bangsa kita juga.

• Apple 
• Bus
• Cat 
• Dog 
• Elephant 
• Fish 
• Giant 
• Horse 
• Ice Cream
• Jungle 
• Key
• Lion 
• Mouse 
• Nose 
• Oaisis 
• Pig 
• Quick 
• Rat
• Sail 
• Train
• U Boat (a boat that goes underwater) 
• Vase 
• Worker 
• Xylophone 
• Yellow
• Zebra

The alphabets from A-Z are so informational.  It is an excellent video contains very useful information for child. Congratulations!! 
I think those elements, like the voice, music, and images make learning fun our kids! I loved that high pitched voice that did the letters.

• 
  

Can playing video games make you more productive?

 by Jo McLeay@http://theopenclassroom.blogspot.com/ at 9:30 PM 


What do you think of this Ted talk?

"Can playing video games make you more productive? Gabe Zichermann shows how games are making kids better problem-solvers, and will make us better at everything from driving to multi-tasking."

He speaks very fast but what he says is thought provoking. He is visioning a different future and making educators think about the implications of the world that our students currently inhabit on schools. I found Jane McGonigal's Ted talk on Gaming making a better world also excellent, and it is interesting that the school systems seem to be so very far behind in neglecting gamification in their curriculum design. But is that true? What is your experience? Maybe your students use games to learn, maybe your school sees the points that these two speakers are making and are redesigning students' school experiences. I'd love to hear what you think. Please comment or let me know of discussions on your own blogs on this topic.

Beyond the classroom By AMINUDDIN MOHSIN educate@thestar.com.my

As a boutique design institution, Saito College has carved a niche for itself by offering relevant courses and the chance to learn directly from its industry partners.

BETWEEN conducting research, completing assignments, attending lectures and tutorials as well as participating in extra-curricular activities, it is perfectly reasonable to gauge a college student’s enthusiasm towards his studies by how much time he spends on campus. But at Saito College, students are expected to be away from the classroom as much as possible.

This is because classes are conducted elsewhere. Saito College principal Ooi Chee Kok explains that its close ties with the design industry enables the industry members themselves to be the college’s teaching partners.

“The teaching and learning happens at the partners’ actual workplace, be it a design studio or office.

Brushing up: A student working on her painting in a studio on campus.

“This ‘real-life’ setting gives the students a glimpse into what the working world is like, so they can acquire the proper skills and work ethic,” he says.

The status of teaching partner and their premises as industry classrooms is commemorated by certificates hung on the walls of the college’s lobby.

“The certificates you see on these walls are our industry partners who’ve decided to become our teaching partners.

“The benefit of this arrangement is that there is no lack of attention from the students because they enjoy hearing what professionals in their field have to say,” says Ooi.

Providing our students with the best opportunity to showcase their skills and creative talents is what we strive for. - OOI CHEE KOK

Furthermore, students at the college are expected to make full use of the opportunities provided by the college for self expression by organising their own design exhibitions, roadshows, festivals and various events.

“Providing our students with the best opportunity to showcase their skills and creative talents is what we strive for. That is why we hold so many events.

“It is a recognition of their capabilities and it allows their creative juices to flow,” says Ooi, adding that the initiative the students put in to organise events and exhibitions is something the college is proud of.

Far from being self-indulgent affairs, the students’ art exhibitions serve to give them a greater insight into the industry and kickstart their careers, even before they graduate.

“Their exhibitions usually attract all kinds of attention. Sometimes this leads to guest appearances by very prominent artists,” says Ooi.

“This further enhances the students’ talents and skills by giving them an insight into the art of accomplished artists from different countries,” he adds.

New outlook

It has been around since 1988, steadily establishing its reputation as a boutique design school, and producing over 6,000 graduates in the process. Now, Saito College is looking to update its image and present itself as a more approachable, people-based institution, says Ooi.

Ooi explains that the rebranding exercise includes a better introduction to the college’s staff through direct engagement and write-ups in its course booklets.

“We want our staff to be accessible to students and parents and we’re going to position them that way,” he says.

“Our course booklets are more comprehensive now and we’ve highlighted our staff and students better. We put a ‘face’ to the whole thing to build familiarity.

“Hopefully this helps prospective students and parents who are interested in our college to get a better picture of what it’s all about,” Ooi explains.

As a design college that constantly pushes its students to think out of the box, the institution is used to unconventional thinking, but one of the more unorthodox decisions was to introduce a course on security.

Ooi shares that security is one of the fastest growing sectors in Malaysia which needs its fair share of trained professionals. As such, the college took the initiative and decided to enter the market by offering diplomas in security management.

“The security industry has been expanding and needs professionals to fill the shoes of certain positions within their organisations.

“With Datuk Kamaruddin Mohd Ismail, former Malaysia Airports Bhd security and safety senior general manager at the helm, we have an edge,” he says.

Kamaruddin is a senior lecturer at Saito College and is also the college’s business development director, says Ooi.

“With his expertise and advice, we decided to go into this field and set up our Security Management Academy,” he adds.

Kamaruddin explains that the security sector is more important than ever and training new blood to fill up the industry’s openings is crucial.

“These days security is a key important for all kinds of different businesses. It is no longer limited to monetary institutions and public transportation hubs.

“If you look carefully, security is everywhere. The retail sector uses quite a bit of security in malls and so do hospitals,” he says.

Kamaruddin has 34 years of experience serving in the Royal Malaysian Police at district, state and headquarters levels. He retired as police deputy commissioner. His experience includes criminal investigation, special branch, narcotics, training, lecturing, research and planning.

With such an extensive background, it is little wonder that Kamaruddin knows law enforcement and security.

Normally, the only way to get training in security would be by joining the armed forces or law enforcement agencies, shares Kamaruddin.

“But Saito provides an alternative through the courses available in our Security Management Academy,” he says.

“The subjects taught are industry relevant and relates to real-life situations which are very important in the business of security.”

Independent students

Ooi shares that the college holds a “non-stringent” attitude towards its students, offering a lot of leniency in terms of modules and allowing them to set their own pace for their studies.

“Our students here in Saito College are a very independent lot. Most of them are holding down part-time jobs while pursuing their diplomas here,” he says.

With flexible classes and the option of picking and choosing their credit hours for each semester, students have nothing to worry about if they opt to work while studying, he adds.

“This is especially true for the Security Management Academy, as many of the students were already working when they decided to take up the course.

“But we are happy with this development and hope to be able to continually cater to the changing needs of students by adapting ourselves,” he says.

Saito College is a contributor to the Star Education fund