Monday, 4 December 2017

Assignment: EDU70171 Intercultural Education

Part 1
a) Rationale/Challenges:
A unique characteristic of our schools is that the students are from three different ethnic groups namely Malay, Chinese and Indian. These three dominant ethnic groups have their own beliefs, culture, values and norms that will affects their behaviors and actions. It’s a goal of Malaysian education and schooling practice to enhance social integration among these various ethnic groups beyond mere physical integration, and intends to eliminate social prejudices and discrimination. In Malaysia, the objective of nation building and forging national unity amongst the various ethnic groups ranks very high in her educational and political agendas. In fact, national unity and integration are the cornerstone of the education policy. It was stated as our major goals of the national education policy as the following: ‘To inculcate and nurture national consciousness through fostering common ideals, values, aspiration and loyalties in order to mould national unity and national identity in a multi-ethnic society’.

One way to achieve these goals is to provide an opportunity for students of different ethnic groups to interact with each other. In essence, the argument holds that bringing all ethnic groups together will lead to cross-racial contact, which will lead to better understanding of other races, or ethnic groups and would promote greater social tolerance and interaction. Teachers in multicultural classrooms must be open to their students and put forth the effort needed to get to know their students inside and outside of class. If a teacher is hesitant about being open, the reciprocate and the students will become estranged from one another and the teacher. In order to be open, teachers class will must be interested in their students, fearless, willing to try new and different things, sure of themselves in order to avoid taking things personally, and non-judgmental of his or her students. Many cultures have many different mores and folkways. Teachers must be open to what the students are doing and find out why they do what they do. This openness will create communication in the class, which will ultimately develop into a classroom that is learning, understanding, and culturally fluent. In addition to openness, teachers must know the learning patterns of the students in their class. Teachers must understand the learning patterns of the students who grew up in a culture other than their own.

Observations in various schools in Malaysia found that it can be hard for a teacher to understand and grow accustomed to students diversity. If a teacher uses instructional methods like group discussion, student presentations, and tries to activate students as they lecture, the teacher may become frustrated, disenchanted, and may even think that students are below average students with below average intelligence. This is not the case, Malaysian students are taught to sit, listen, and recite memorized information. Students do not participate in the class and believe everything that the teacher says is absolutely true. Teachers who open themselves up to cultural difference will effectively handle culture clash while teachers who assume that Malay students are rude and Indian students are dumb will close communication in the classroom and destroy any hope of having a multicultural classroom. The best way to handle culture clash is to be open, knowledgeable, and not be afraid to talk about the cultural differences in class no matter what discipline the teacher is teaching. An open teacher will create an open class and an open class will have open lines of communication that will create a positive and beneficial learning environment for everyone.
Language difference is another major issue that teachers must address when establishing a multicultural classroom. A teacher who tries to learn the native tongue of her or his students, if only a word or two, will convey respect for the culture of his or her students and increase their potentially suffering self-esteem. Introducing the language or culture of all students in the class into the curriculum will communicate that students of that culture are important. However, a teacher should not assume that a Chinese student grew up in the Malaysian culture and knows about it. In order to establish a respect for other cultures in the classroom, teachers must move beyond "multicultural moments" or pseudomulticulturalism (Miller, 1997). Miller suggests that one very simple way for all teachers to add multicultural ideas and content to his or her curriculum is to build a classroom library of multicultural literature (Miller ,1997). No matter what subject you teach you can build a library of books by and/or about different cultures.

An important step in teaching children to be comfortable with their cultural background and essentially themselves is to encourage and value their input in a small group of other students. This has to do with the organization of the classroom and the development of lesson plans. When grouping students, teachers should put students from differing backgrounds and ethnic together.. An accomplished teacher should be able to create projects for a group of students from different backgrounds and ethnic groups that will require students to work together, therefore allowing each student to be an important part of the group and learn information through the interaction of the group. Lesson plans that can do this and interest students will become invaluable for teachers to posses as the need for teachers to become culturally fluent continues to grow. This is rarely done in the schools observed.
The observations done also found that teachers are not competent enough regarding to multiculturalism. Teachers should be competent in the context of actual pluralism will mean being able to participate effectively in a multicultural world. It will mean being ‘’bicultural’ as well as bilingual. It will mean knowing how to operate as a competent actor in more than one cultural world; knowing what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate, what’s acceptable and unacceptable in behavior and speech in cultures that differ quite radically from one’s own. Competence in a pluralist world will mean being able to function effectively in contexts people had previously only read about, or seen on television. It will mean knowing how to be ‘different’ and feeling comfortable about it; being able to be the ‘insider’ in one situation and the ‘outsider’ in another. Managing diversity, then, may very well be part of an on-going process which enables teachers to become world citizens—persons who are able to transcend their own racial/ethnic, gender, cultural and socio-political reality and identify with students from different ethnic groups. They are thus a transcending people who know no boundaries, and whose operating life-principle is compassion. This is the principle that should be modeled in schools at all levels, in the process of living diversity.

There are many reasons to account for this concern. Many experienced teachers, especially older teachers who earned their degrees more than 10 years ago, were not required to take any courses specifically related to multicultural education. These teachers have become acquainted with multicultural education concepts and practices through a variety of avenues based on their own interests and levels of motivation or the insights and incentives of their school and district administrators. Cultural diversity was not a clearly defined educational issue when many of them began their teaching career. The Malaysian education system contains some multicultural aspects according to the National Education Philosophy but a fully multicultural education system is not implemented. For some teachers, however, courses in multicultural education were included either at the undergraduate or graduate courses level, but the multicultural education concepts frequently were constructed as additive to education rather than infused into the curriculum and instruction. Similarly, a few teachers may have completed a course labeled multicultural education that was actually more of an ethnic course – not a course exploring multicultural education inclusive of people, policies, programs, process, and practices. Courses such as these did not elucidate the meaning of multicultural education.

Discovering diversity takes creativity, extra effort, diligence, and courage on the teacher's part. Thus, schools in Malaysia have rarely offered an enthusiastic welcome for student difference. However, a multicultural classroom must thrive on these differences and use them as a foundation for growth and development. Differences command work, resolution, openness, and understanding. Teachers who address these differences and add them to the curriculum will succeed in creating a multicultural classroom that will advance the educational goals of all students. 

Reference:
Miller, Howard M. "Beyond 'Multicultural Moments' (Middle Gorund)." English Journal 86 (1997): 88-90.

b) Lesson Plan
Subject: English
Level: Year 5                                        
Duration: 1 hour
Theme: World of Knowledge
Topic: Culture and Traditions
Focused skill: Writing                         
Integrated skills: Listening and Speaking

Specifications:
1. Listen to simple descriptions, recounts and factual texts and talk about them.                        
2. Talk about actions of people and animals in a story read, heard or viewed.                            
3. Construct simple sentences and compound sentences based on a given stimulus.
4. Write simple descriptions with guidance.
                                                                         
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of the lesson, pupils should be able to:
      i.        State three different features of culture and traditions practiced by different ethnic groups, which are Malay, Chinese and Indian.
     ii.        Complete a text with missing words and simple phrases while listening to a recording by dictation practice.
    iii.        Take part in dialog by asking partner about their favorite festival and how they celebrate it.
   iv.        Create a short paragraph to describe ethnic groups.

Previous Knowledge: Pupils have been taught about different ethnic groups in Malaysia.
Moral Values:
      i.        Respect other culture and traditions to foster a harmonious relationship among multi-cultural society.
     ii.        Preserve rich cultural practices of the peoples in Malaysia.  

Teaching Materials: Flash cards, video and audio recording, worksheets and descriptive text





Descriptive Text:
Instructions: Fill in the blanks as you listen to recording on festivals celebration in Malaysia. The recording will be played twice.
FESTIVALS IN MALAYSIA
Malaysia is a (1) _______________ country consisting of Malays, Chinese, Indians and numerous indigenous people. There are many festivals celebrated in Malaysia.  (2) ________________________is practised almost all the festivals, which means inviting (3) ________________________to house on festivity occasion. Special dishes are served for festivals and friends during "open house".
Major festivals in Malaysia include Hari Raya Aidilfitri, Chinese New Year and (4) __________________.
Hari Raya Aidilfitri is the most significant celebration for Muslims. It signifies the end of the (5) _____________ month of Ramadan.  The words ‘Hari Raya’ means day of celebration. It is also the time for (6) _________________________.
Chinese New Year is celebrated by the (7) _______________ community and it lasts for a full two weeks! It begins with a reunion dinner which is (8) ______________ for every member of the family to attend. Chinese New Year is the time when spirits are appeared and (9) ________________ are made to Gods. The unmarried youngsters are given Ang Pows which are gifts of money enclosed in little (10) ________________.
Deepavali on the hand is an Indian festival of lights. Deepavali means (11) ____________________. It celebrates the (12) _______________ of good over the evil. Hindus take a traditional oil bath in the early hours of the morning on Deepavali day and after prayers entertain their friends and guests to "open house”.
Part 2
Sociopolitical Setting
As far as demographic composition is corcerned, Malaysian society is very diversified. The Malays and other indigenous communities who constituted about 60 percent of the population are classified as Bumiputera. On the other hand, ethnic Chinese who made up about 37 percent and Indian communities who contributed the remaining 11 percent. These two groups were classified as non-Bumiputera. None of these groups are homogenous, being made up of peoples with varying languages and religions. Whilst the Malays are all Muslims and speak Malay language, other Bumiputera communities especially in the two Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak practise differing religions and have their respective ethnic languages, On the other hand, the Indians are mainly Hindus and speak Tamil, whilst the religious and language backgrounds of the Chinese are much more complicated. The religion and language divisions in Malaysia, therefore, occur both within and across ethnic groups. In spite of the general increase in population, from about 10 million in 1970 to approximately 22 million in 2000 as indicated in the censuses of 1970, 1980,1990, ethnic composition in Malaysia has not changed significantly. As far as nation-building is concerned, it is the Bumiputera and non- Bumiputera ethnic divide that is perceived as most important by many Malaysians as it illustrates the delicate demographic balance between the two categories, each constituting about half of the population (Shamsul A.B., 1996a;323). And within this division, it is the Sino-Malay relations that is perceived as most crucial as reflected in the socio-political development and tend to dominate the politics of nation-building in Malaysia.

Ethnicity Nationalism and Nation-Building
In Malaysia, the Malays felt that Malay nationalism that matured in 1957 should be the basis for the country’s nationalism, as other nationalism were externally oriented (pre-independence Chinese and Indian nationalism in Malaya). However, the non-Malays were skeptical about this view, as they saw that accepting Malay nationalism and its hegemonic tendencies might result in the encapsulation of other ethnic communities into Malay society. This is something that would ultimately undermine the culturally pluralist basis of the polity that was established in 1957. For the Malays, their intention to subordinate other ethnic communities into the framework of ‘Malay nation-state’ was obstructed by the consociational framework that anchored the political system. This system is based on power sharing mechanism in which every ethnic groups attempt to seek maximum power to protect their interest and influence national policies. Therefore, ethnic struggle in this connection may not be so much about political independence, but rather about getting some limited objectives pertaining to economics, cultural, religious, linguistics, and so on within the framework of the existing state. These illustrate the notions of ethnic ideology of nationhood held by each individual ethnic group. Perhaps, this might be the same factor that ‘saved’ Malaysia from plummeting into endless ethnic confrontations, as the system provides adequate space for conflict regulation, despite being severely challenged in the 1969 racial riot.

Managing Ethnicity and Consolidating Nationalism
History has shown that Malaysia is never short of nationalist ideals to form the basis of a nation. Indeed, the country’s independence was largely attributed to the struggle of Malay nationalism. However, within Malay nationalist movements of the pre-independence era there were clear ideological divisions between the radical and conservative groups (W.R. Roff, 1994; Ariffn Omar,1993; Ikmal Said, 1992; Firdaus Abdullah, 1985). Even after the conservative-nationalist group represented by UMNO managed to dominate the post-independence Malaysian politics, the aspiration of creating a Malay nation-state has not been materialized. Instead, the nationalists had to compromise to the creation of ‘a plural society nation’ when independence was granted in 1957 and shared power with the non-Malays, who were mainly immigrant communities then had settled in the colonial Malaya in the 19” century. Nevertheless, despite the creation of a power sharing mechanism at the Federal level which illustrates the formation of Malaysia’s model of consociational democracy, Malay political supremacy was reconstituted, enshrined in UMNO as the backbone of the Alliance ( 1957- 1974) and later the BN coalition government. Malay centric or rather UMNO centric government has been the hallmark of Malaysian politics. Thus, in contrast to theideal consociationalism’ arrangement (Lipjhart, 1977), the system in Malaysia can be considered as a system of ‘hegemonic consociationalism’ (Milne and Mauzy, 1999: 18). Whilst the Malays are politically dominant, the non-Malays, especially the Chinese are economically superior. This delicate balance or perhaps an outstanding discrepancy has further complicated the project of nation formation in the country.
The post-independence era, saw that Malay hegemony has been fiercely challenged by the non-Malays. They felt that Malay dominant thesis was an ideology that served to dominate them, hence perceived that there were conscious attempts by the nationalists to turn nation-building as an ethnic project which will ultimately threaten their ethnic identities and the basis of the ‘plural society nation’. This partly explained the reasons behind the non-Malays opposition to the national language and education policy in the 1950’s- 1960’s, and the national cultural policy that was introduced in 1971. Apart from that, the post-independence Malay nationalism has also to cope with challenges from other factions within Malay and Bumiputera communities who espoused the notion of an Islamic state; and notions of Kadazanism and Dayakism as the definitive identities in the two Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak respectively. Nation-building in Malaysia thus could be seen as a struggle of every ethnic groups against the state (read a Malay centric state) on one hand, and on the other, against each other to materialise their respective versions of a ‘nation’. But the most obvious contestation was between Malay vis-a-vis the non-Malay groups anchored by the Chinese. This is the most salient struggle which had left several damaging political scars to Malaysian society, the worst culminated in the 1969 racial riots. This is also a struggle, which formed the basic characteristic of Malaysian politics. While the New Economic Policy (NEP 1970-1990) has made a number of significant impacts in terms of rectifying socio-economic disparities between the Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera communities, the framework of nation formation embodied in the policy did not transcend the premise of conflict management and racial harmony. On the contrary, the Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera dichotomy that was created during the NEP period has further deepened ethnic differentiation in the society. For non-Bumiputera, the question was why the new Malaysian generation who were supposed to have equal citizenship rights and status had to carry the burden of the historical baggage of previous generations that clearly affected their current position. In turn, the Malays argued that, the compromise was based on a ‘sacred social contract’ between the founding fathers of the country in 1957 which had set the basis of every citizen’s constitutional rights. Obviously the institutionalization of ethnicity seems to be the core factor in such a debate, and will inevitably continue to be so, as long as the debate on national identity and nation formation is not resolved.
Whereas the Malays were concerned about sustaining Malayness and strengthening Malay- Islamic hegemony as well as improving their economic gains, the Chinese fear was the perceived threat to Chinese culture and Chinese language, the defining features of Chineseness, from the exertion of the Malay or Islamic dominant ideologies. Although Wang Gung Wu (1988:4) asserts that, ‘the Chinese have never had a concept of identity, only a concept of Chineseness’, the perceived threats to aspects of their ‘Chineseness’ such as Chinese language and culture, be it real or imaginary, that came from Malay nationalism and Islamism had resulted in the revitalization of Chinese cultural movements to project Chinese identity. For ethnic Chinese, the symbols of their identity lie in Chinese schools, the Chinese mass media (especially the press), and Chinese associations. The main functions of all these institutions are to promote Chinese language and culture, thus sustaining Chineseness. Therefore, as long as the basis of cultural pluralism is maintained in Malaysia, the Chinese and the other non-Malays’s aspirations to sustain their distinctive ethnic identities will be guaranteed.

References:
1.    Lijhart, Arendt (1997). Democracy in Plural Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press.
2.    Miline, R.S and Mauzy D.K. (1999). Malaysian Politics Under Mahathir, Routledge: London.
3.  Shamsul A.B. (1996a) ‘Nation-of-Intent in Malaysia’, in Stein Tonnesson and Hans Antoev (Eds.), Asian Forms of the Nation, London: CurzonPress, pp. 323-347.

Tuesday, 20 May 2014

The Rationale for the Implementation of GST
By: Lit Jhun Yeang,Benjamin
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took a huge risk by raising Japan’s goods and services tax (GST) rate from 5% to 8% during its economic recovery period because he believes that a broad-based revenue collection system is needed for sustained economic growth. (Fong, 2013). In Malaysia, Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak announced that GST will be introduced with effect from 1st of April 2015 to replace the current sales and services tax (SST). GST is inevitable if a nation wants to achieve high-income and developed status and be more competitive in the global market. Hence, I believe that Malaysia has made the right decision to implement GST because of its ability to boost the national economy, levy a fairer tax equitably and reduce business costs.

First and foremost, GST has the ability to spur economic growth because it increases the tax base and hence maximizes revenue collection and minimizes fiscal debt. The Ministry of Finance (MOF) expected 0.3% growth in our country’s GDP at 5% GST rate. (Borneo Post Online, 23 September 2013). Furthermore, as government revenue increases, the decrease in personal and corporate taxes can be realized by widening the income tax bracket so that people could work harder to achieve a higher income and our country could attract more foreign direct investments (FDI). Next, 80% of the domestic capital goods were sent overseas to avoid heavy taxation. (Idris, J., 2013). This can be prevented, because under GST, complete and proper records are kept and firms will have almost no way to evade taxes on capital goods and have to contribute to government coffer.
            Secondly, GST, which is a fairer tax system, taxes consumers based on their spending and not their income. According to the Inland Revenue Board, only 5.6% of the population in Malaysia is taxpayers and only one quarter of the employees pay income tax. (The Star Online, 2014). This shows the necessity to implement a tax which is broad-based and can enforce tax compliance. On the other hand, GST eliminates the cascading effect of SST, which would incur up to a 16% rate on products because consumers only pay a 6% flat rate incurred at the final consumption stage. Additionally, GST allows businesses to claim input tax credit incurred on expenses easily by automatic deduction in the tax returns and to get rid of the hectic procedures needed to obtain tax exemptions and credit under the present SST. (Royal Malaysian Customs Department, 2013). GST also benefits businesses by offsetting multiple tax effect and reducing production cost.
           
Some critics mentioned that it would be the low and middle income groups who will suffer the most after the implementation of GST. They state that GST is a regressive tax which imposes a greater tax burden on the poor because the poor spends a higher proportion of their income on consumption. However, the government announced that basic necessities such as food, public transportation, health services and education would not be taxed. Apart from that, the MOF recommended a sales threshold of RM500000 for GST to effect on business establishments. (Lim and Ooi, 2013). Therefore, it can be argued that low-income households are quite lifted from the burden of GST after accounting for the exempted and zero-rated supplies because the tax burden for a household with RM2000 monthly income is only RM39.16 per month at 6% GST rate. This is because merely 32.63% of its total expenditure is spent on standard-rated supplies. (Khazali, A., 2014).To further mitigate the impact of GST, the government has developed several financial assistance programs such as BR1M and SARA 1Malaysia to help the needy citizens.
Based on the above arguments, it can be seen that GST is extremely vital to lessen budget deficit and raise national income and to tax consumers and businesses more reasonably by reducing their tax burdens. The Malaysian government should do a better job in communicating the benefits of GST to the public by putting up more billboards, publishing more GST-related articles and organizing more seminars and conferences. Also, it is important for the government to manage and spend the tax revenue wisely so that it could also be used develop the nation.
                                                                                                                        (666 words)



References
Borneo post online. 23 September 2013. GST critical to increase revenue, reduce budget deficit, viewed 19 May 2014, < http://www.theborneopost.com/2013/09/23/gst-critical-to-increase-revenue-reduce-budget-deficit-analysts/>.

Fong, C.O., 2013. Merits of the GST system. The Star. [online], Available at:< http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2013/10/05/Merits-of-the-GST-system-Its-the-fairest-method-of-taxing-general-public-and-can-fuel-economic-growt.aspx/> [Accessed 16 May 2014].

Idris, J., 2013. Why goods and services tax is vital. The Star. [online], Available at:< http://www.thestar.com.my/Business/Business-News/2013/10/21/Why-GST-is-vital-It-will-broaden-the-tax-base-and-help-those-most-in-need/> [Accessed 20 May 2014].

Khazali, A., 2014. Is the Malaysian goods and services tax regressive?. The Star. [online], Available at:< http://www.thestar.com.my/Business/Business-News/2014/04/07/Is-the-Malaysian-GST-regressive-The-GST-aims-to-overcome-the-inefficiency-of-the-indirect-tax-syste/> [Accessed 20 May 2014].
Lim, K.H. and Ooi, P.Q., 2013. Implementing goods and services tax in Malaysia, Penang institute. [online], Available at:<http://penanginstitute.org/gst/GoodsServicesTax_20131008.pdf> [Accessed 20 May 2014].

Royal Malaysian Customs Department. 2013. Impact on Consumer. Available at: <http://gst.customs.gov.my/en/cp/Pages/imp.aspx>. [Accessed 16 May 2014].

The Star Online. 4 May 2014. The good, the bad and the ugly of tax, viewed 20 May 2014, <http://www.thestar.com.my/Opinion/Columnists/The-Star-Says/Profile/Articles/2014/05/04/The-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-tax/>.

 

 

 






           


Thursday, 24 October 2013

The future of standardized testing: How well can it function as college admissions criteria and academic performance predictor for students in the United States
By: Lit Jhun Yeang,Benjamin
Introduction
Americans place much importance on the idea of providing every citizen with an equal opportunity to vie for limited places in the colleges of their choice. The only way to realize this is to have standardized college entrance examinations which are taken by all applicants in the same manner. Standardized college admissions testing which consists of mostly multiple-choice questions was established in the United States in the early 20th century by the College Entrance Examination Board to make college admissions procedure a uniform one (Zwick, 2002). The following section shows the comparison between hybrid tests and pure achievement tests and the predictive effectiveness of one of the admission tests which is ACT on the academic success of students of various ethnicities in the U.S.
Achievement Tests versus Hybrid Tests
American high school students are very familiar with the two types of standardized tests which are the SAT and ACT respectively. Both of them are hybrid tests which measure a student’s inherent ability and also academic accomplishment. They are also widely used in U.S. to predict a freshman’s success in college. In predicting college grade, Zwick (2002) states that “the correlation coefficient of hybrid test scores is 0.36, compared 0.39 for high school grades and 0.48 for high school grades and hybrid test scores combined.” From the statistical measure shown, it can be deduced that college grades has a weak and positive relationship with hybrid test scores, high school grades or both. Meanwhile, achievement tests are tests which measure students’ obtained skills and knowledge. They therefore measure how much students have learned and how much they knew about a particular subject. They are being viewed as fairer tests because they serve as a better predictor for a colleges students’ success. It is proven that “achievement tests have a correlation coefficient of 0.784 to what a student knows”, although their relationship’ with students’ first year college grades are not revealed, but they do have the potential to replace most of the aptitude tests, which only take students’ innate talent into consideration and not their efforts made and determination shown to do well. The current achievement tests which are available for high schools in the U.S. to select from are the SAT IIs, the International Baccalaureate tests and the Advanced Placement (AP) tests. The SAT II subject tests which last for an hour, provides candidates a variety of subjects to choose from. On the other hand, the Advanced Placement (AP) tests could measure students’ academic performance in college as well as in high school. The only disadvantage that they have is the long testing duration. If they were to be used to measure students’ high school performance, a minimum of 5 subjects tests were to be taken on 5 separate days for more than 10 hours. The next best alternatives of the achievement tests mentioned above are ACT, PLAN and EXPLORE tests respectively which are all hybrid tests. The ACT tests last for about 3 hours, whereas PLAN and EXPLORE tests last for about 2 hours and consist of only multiple choice questions. The 3 tests are offered by the same organization and hence their contents are taken from the same source. This means that students who take 3 of them consecutively in certain duration of time would obtain similar scores for them because the 3 tests have a mutual relationship. In a nutshell, although achievement tests are more time consuming, however they are able to help students to improve their academic performance by displaying them the areas that require more attention. Most importantly, achievement tests are based on and relevant to the high school curricular. 
The Predictive Value of ACT and High School Grade Averages
The ACT Assessment which is vital for college admissions and course selection decisions in the U.S. gauges students’ academic skills and knowledge which were taught and learnt in high school. Students who received a well-versed education in high school or did well in college-preparatory courses will be more likely to obtain higher ACT scores, which will in turn be more successful in their freshman year. However, it is interesting to note that African-American and Hispanic students generally have lower scores on standardized college admissions testing and this situation has caused an allegation that standardized tests are “biased or unfair” (Marklein, 2000). The fact is that they usually do not perform very well in most of the academic achievement measures used to admit students, including high school examinations (Zwick, 1999). This is proven by (Noble, Crouse and Schulz, 1996) who state that African American students typically score lower on Mathematics and English in college than their white counterparts given the same scores in high school Mathematics and English tests. According to (Young and Kobrin, 2001), “students’ actual freshman grade point averages (GPAs) are higher or lower than their predicted GPAs.” Prior research also show that the freshman GPAs of African-American and Hispanic students are lower than that of white and Asian-American students given the same admissions test scores and high school averages. Therefore a study is conducted the investigate the effects of using ACT aggregate scores, high school grade averages or both on the admission rates and freshman year academic performance of African-American, Hispanic and white students.

Results
The study shows that if ACT aggregate scores, high school tests averages or both are used as college admissions criteria, then, without explicitly considering ethnicity, less African-American and Hispanic students would be admitted into colleges compared to white students. Interestingly, this study also reveals that the ACT aggregate scores or high school grade averages predict the likelihood of attaining academic success in college (achieve a freshman GPA of 2.5 and above) more accurately for African-American students than for white students. Furthermore the ACT scores and high school grade averages serve as a less accurate academic success predictor for Hispanic students than for white students. Also, it is important to note that the results which are obtained from this study cannot be applied to all higher education institutions nationwide (Noble, 2003).
Conclusion and Implications
Based on the results shown above, it will appear that it would be hard to maintain the diversity among student populations on college campuses in the U.S. if standardized test scores and high school grade averages continue to serve as college admissions criteria in the United States. However, it is possible for tertiary institutions in the U.S. to admit students who are less academically well-prepared, provided that they will be given extensive remedial classes to ensure that they have a wonderful college experience too. And most importantly, although debates about the usage of standardized college admissions testing are still very intense, more and more SAT and ACT candidates can be seen and about 90% of American colleges continue to use the SAT or ACT examination as a tool to make college admissions decisions.

References
1.      Crouse, J., Noble, J. P. and Schulz, E.M. (1996). Differential prediction/impact in course placement for ethnic and gender groups. [pdf] Available at: http://www.act.org/research/researchers/reports/pdf/ACT_RR96-08.pdf [Accessed 24 October 2013]
2.      Kobrin, J.L. and Young, J. (2001). Differential validity, differential prediction, and college admission testing: a comprehensive review and analysis. New York: College Entrance Examination Board.
3.      Marklein, M.B. (2000). GPA jumps to head of class. USA Today, p 10D.
4.      Noble, J. (2003). The effects of using ACT composite scores and high school averages on college admissions decisions for ethnic groups. [pdf] Available at: http://www.act.org/research/researchers/reports/pdf/ACT_RR2003-1.pdf [Accessed 24 October 2013]
5.      Zwick, R. (1999). Backdoor affirmative action. Education Week, pp. 56, 35.
6.      Zwick, R. (2002). Fair game: the use of standardized admissions tests in higher education. New York: Routledge Falmer.







Monday, 11 March 2013

Rock Cafe'


Last Friday weekend , I went to “Rock Café” , with a friend of mine. We went there at the evening time about 6 PM but we didn’t notice that the sun don’t go down at this time. We were expecting something shady here in Malaysia.
Rock Café is a restaurant that has various varieties of food, such as , Malay food , Chinese food  ,Indian food and European food. The rime, that says “ Malaysia truly Asia” came through my mind because of the look of these combination of the food-restaurants.


The prices of those foods at Rock Café are from RM 2 to no more than RM 13(Malay currency). (RM3 is roughly equivalent to 1 USD).
The good thing about that restaurant is that it has two place where you can dine in , inside the restaurants which is inside the building and outside the building which is in the open air. The inside of this “Rock Café” restaurant is a bit humid. So, we decided to sit outside the open air. The restaurants Rock Café also play or show MTV and some sports channel at around 6 o’clock. Which complete the first word of the name of the restaurant Rock then Café.


(Rock Café)View from outside of the building.
To order a food that you want in Rock Café is simple , you will just have to walk over the restaurant and order it by yourself and they will bring it for you. For that , there is no waiter service, they only have waiter service for the drinks.

The taste of overall rice and chicken was nice ( the steam rice and chicken slightly melt in your mouth together like they are meant to be eaten together) except the it’s a little bit salty which I experience that most the food in Rock Café are more or less salty. It would be better for you to tell the restaurant to manage the taste yourself by not letting them use much salt, if you don’t like the taste to be strong.
I have also heard that one of the main sponsors of Rock Café is Carlsberg beer and because it was Friday night we order couple of Carlstberg beer. The small bottle of Carlsberg beer that we had in Rock Café was RM 7.50 which is much cheaper comparing to other restaurants inside the Pyramid shopping complex.

My friend and I, when we went out for that kind of evening ( Friday evening ) because of the mood of weekend , we were quite relax. The open air dining, with casual restaurants around me and a couple of beers  set me up with the mood to talk with my friend any kind of topic, topic from religion, politic to social.
If you are looking for a casual restaurant and don't know what you really want to eat, I would suggest you to go Rock Cafe' because of the multicultural food from Asian to European that you can get a Rock Cafe'.
 Address of Rock Cafe' : 2 Jalan PJS 11/20 (Bandar Sunway),  
                                      Petaling Jaya, Selangor 46150, Malaysia
Name: Hanczar Zaw Than
Group: 5
 Subject : PLNG_012

BLISS 33


BLISS 33



     On Sunday, after worship my friends and i went to the "BLISS 33" Restaurant to have a lunch. My friends took me to there. This is my second time visit to the restaurant. After the first time visit , i already love  the restaurant food. There has variety of food in the restaurant. The food are very delicious. The Restaurant is newly open -"Bliss 33 Cafe". It jus like a small coffee shop which situated at USJ 2 which is near to Petronas petrol station. The food quite alright & the price reasonable. There are variety of food includes Western and Asian. The place is cosy and great.



This is the menu of the restaurant


Food
Bliss Special Chicken (RM6.90)
Mee Mamak (RM5.90)Salted Egg Butter Cream (RM9.90)"Petai" Fish Fillet Rice (RM9.90)Ice Plum Lemon (RM4.70)Salted Fish Fried Rice


BLISS33
Address: 31-33,Jalan USJ2/2C,USJ, 47600 Subang Jaya, Selangor
Phone:012-322 3992
Hours:

Monday hours 8:30 am–11:30 pm  



Name: Kevin Tie Kiong Tung 
IC: 950609-13-5917
Group: 5
Subject: Business Communication
Lecturer: Miss Dionne