While school exercise books are supposed to improve students' mastery of
Mathematics and Science, errors in the books' English-language portions might
be giving children the wrong impression about the language.
A check by The Star at several major bookstores found some UPSR-level
exercise books with language errors in their questions.
Examples include:
1. What can be done by a farmer to prevent the fish from being rotting.
2. Recently it is raining season. Joanne's mother realises that the clothes
are difficult to be dried up. What is the reason that causes this?
3. What is the best conclusion about the animals (in the diagram)? A.
Animal feed their youngs.
4. What is the meaning of human reproduction? D. Remove the faeces from the
body.
Most of the errors spotted appeared to be the result of direct translation
from Bahasa Malaysia, with minor grammatical mistakes seen throughout the
books, especially in the multiple-choice question sections.
Even English exercise books are not free from errors in the language.
One idiomatic mistake: "I was just pulling your legs", when the
correct phrase should be pulling somebody's "leg".
One of the books claims to publish copies of past UPSR papers, with
permission from the Malaysian Examinations Syndicate.
However, on average, based on the check on UPSR exercise books, most books
released by major publishers and available in popular bookstores are
error-free.
