These celebrations come and go, don't they? But for the last 31 years of my life, I could never forget Puan Rahmah, or Miss Rahmah as she is affectionately known, my first secondary English teacher.
I came from a kampung school, in Johol (that's in Negeri Sembilan) to be exact to enrol in MRSM Kuantan in 1977. In my old school, it was awesome to be able to pronounce 'Hero' as he-ro and not hair-ro. Well, welcome to the real world girl!
This wonderful school had what they call free periods - break between the hours - whereby students could spend their time in the library to browse, read or sleep - you know - just do your thing.
Early in the year, Miss Rahmah made a deal with us - that whoever could recite examples of homonym would be let off early. So we stood in a circle to take turn. Yours truly was lost - what could I say with my limited English, let alone vocabulary? Actually, it went like this Errrrrr..... a number of times, i.e until there were only 4 of us left in class.
The kind Miss Rahmah let us go without penalizing anyone more than the embarrassment for our ignorance. It made me think, and think very hard I did. How could I patch up my weakness? After some thought, I visited Miss Rahmah's room. Knocking the door made me sweaty. imagine standuing there stumbling on my words.
I asked her if she could provide me with extra exercises so that I could improve my English. She didn't even blink her eyes when she gave me a book with a picture of a tiger in front of it. She marked the ones that I had to do. I promised myself I would make a dictionary my best friend (I still keep that promise till today).
After finishing the work, in sadness I must say, I went to her room a few days later. there were a few guys, in From 3 and form 4 in front of me. I was the last to go ini, but I noticed something. They were doing the exercises from the same book as the one that I did. It's the Tiger book! Hey, suddenly, I realized I wasn't so bad, and I know I made the right decision that early in time. Well, I made some mistakes but...what the heck - those guys discovered them when they were ALREADY in form 4. I skipped back to my room while singing along the way.
I've come a long away since then. In the US nobody understood what I wanted to say when I said it the Malaysian way. I had to learn to change my but-ton to butt - en and more..but that was fun. Who cares, I'm Malay and a Malaysian. I never expect an American to speak Malay perfectly.
Miss Rahmah had freed me from my English and inferiority complex. Two years earlier, Cikgu Haris and Cikgu Azizah from Johol had forced upon my twin sister and I FREE TUITION.
Beautiful teachers - these individuals - that's their kind heart and Ikhlas.
MAY GOD BLESS THEM FOREVER.
Manis Jean Tan
p/s: Can you imagine if teachers force free tuition on their students nowadays? How do you think that can happen?
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