My dear upper six
students,
Your performance in the recent trial exam has been quite disappointing
for me, especially your paper 4. While a few of you have shown good attempt in
respond to Question 2, most of you did not make the cut for Question 1. It is
as if you have not been trained to do the writing at all, with quite a number
of you not giving the title, and most importantly the Overall View. Analysis of
the features are difficult to understand as the language is chaotic, leaving
the basic rules of the structure – Subject-verb-object out.
As in Question 2, the biggest problem is still the organisation of
ideas, which you do well in practices, probably through the discussions that we
had before every session of writing. And of course some of you have structures
that is almost incomprehensible, mostly due to direct word by word translation.
As expected, those who very seldom send in their practice compositions, some
did not send at all, performed very badly.. The PMR candidates from Form 3 D
write better than you.
Please go through the sample essay that I have prepared for you as a
guide for your next practice.
Remember that you will have a hard time getting your choice of
university courses with a band 1 in MUET, no matter how high your CGPA is in
the STPM.
MUET Trial exam
2012
Sample answer for
Paper 4 (Writing)
Question 1.
Priorities in Life
for Young Men and Women.
The table shows the priorities in life of young men and
young women. Generally, the men’s ranking of priorities is different from the
women.
The men rank having a highly paid career the highest but
women rank it second. Instead, the women put getting married on top, which the
men rank at only fourth. There is also
not much difference in both genders’ priority on being healthy, 6th by the
women and 7th by the men.
Two priorities are however ranked the same by both men and
women – saving money for old age and travelling the world, 8th and 9th
respectively.
At 2nd place, men put learning new skills which is only 2
steps higher than the womens’ rank of
4. Another difference of two steps is
spending time with friends which the men
rank 3rd while the women, 5th.
The lowest ranking by the women is buying a house, at 10.
However the men rate it as priority 5th.
While having children is the 3rd priority for women, men only put it at 6th.
The priority at the lowest ranking of 10 by the men is charity work, which the
women rank at 7th.
In conclusion, there
is an obvious mismatch between the priorities in life between young men and women.
Question 2.
Poor academic performance among students is caused by their obsession
with social networks like Facebook. Do you agree with the statement? Justify
your viewpoints with suitable examples.
Judging on the great number of
hours that students spend browsing the
various social networks, it is difficult for me not to agree with the
statement. However, on second thought, it would also be unfair to blame only
this obsession for the poor academic peformance, as there are many others factors
involved. Besides there is also no denying that these social networks do bring
some benefits for the students, directly or not.
Yes, spending a great number of
hour on the facebook is a threat to students’ academic performance. Imagine the time that they are supposed to
spend revising and doing homeworks are wasted in the excitement of socialising
in the digital world, with friends in the same community and those far away. As
revision and homeworks are among the keys toward succesful academic achievements,
there is no doubt that these students might
fail their examinations. Things would be worse if the this ‘social
activitiy” goes on until the wee hours of the morning, where students would be
coming to school yawning away and there would be no focus in lessons. The worst that could happen is they would
fall asleep even before going to school.
Having mentioned the negative effects of social networks on
student’s academic performance, I can’t help but to think of other reasons that
could do the same thing. Peer influences that lead students into negative
activities like playing truant, loafing,
and smoking have been long known as the reasons for students failing
examinations, as they tend to lose focus on school. Missing a large number of
lessons due to these activities will cause them blank during examinations. These
cases of low academic performance has nothing to do wth obsession with social
networks.
What about cases of students who
are born with low IQ? These unlucky students have learning disabilities that no
matter how you drill them in academic, they will not perform. The low
functioning would not be able even to master the basic reading skill while the
luckier would benefit enough if the could just read and count at the basic
level. Some would be lucky to have talents in other than academic, such as in
vocational traning. Special attention have to be given to these students,
which, at the end of the day, would still show no good result in academic. And most of these students are not
intelligent enough to have accounts of the social networks.
There are also cases of bright
students who end up not doing well in public examinations due to laziness, having no purpose in life, indiscipline, and
neglect by parents. On the other hand, other bright students who are obsessed
with these social networks go on doing well in life as they are more
disciplined, smart enough to control themselves not to let their socialising
activities jeorpadise their academic performance by strictly obeying their
study schedules. Of course parents also play their role, monitoring the
children’s activiities and their academic progress. All these are just proofs
that obsession with social networks can be controlled, and not let it affect
academic performance.
In conclusion, it is alright to
socialise via the digital world, getting to know people from all over the world
and having fun at the same time, so long as academic performance is put into
priority. The moment a student realises that studying is affected, he should
buckle up and make things right.
