Students set record for collecting most number of newspaper articles

KEPALA BATAS: The Penang Matriculation College is reaching for the stars, with The Star.

Last weekend, the college made its way into the Malaysia Book of Records (MBR) for the most number of newspaper articles collected from The Star in a single day.

About 2,500 students partici­pated in the two-hour activity that saw 20,000 newspaper articles collected and clipped as reading material. This broke the previous record in 2011 where 14,255 articles were collected by a secondary school in Ipoh, Perak.

MBR official Nurul Huda Zakaria, who was present at the college, confirmed the record.

The lecturers of the English unit in the college decided on this feat after their matriculation student Nadeera Niroushya Rajapakse attained the coveted Band Six in the Malaysian University English Test (MUET) last year.

Out of 75,000 MUET candidates in the country, only eight ma­naged to enter Band Six, which is the top category in a test of English proficiency.

The college’s English unit head Mohammad Shafiq Syazwan Mohd Ashri said the college started using The Star’s Newspaper-in-Education (NiE) pullout two years ago, and quickly realised that using the newspaper consistently in lessons was a recipe for success.

“The pullout enhanced the students’ language skills besides keeping them up-to-date with current issues.

“We decided to invest in The Star for our English lessons and the results have improved tremendously.

“Fifty-three of our students scored Band Five, which is a 140.9% improvement compared to 22 in the previous year. The number of students in Bands One and Two has also decreased,” he said.

With the comprehensive collection of articles from The Star at their disposal now, the lecturers will formulate mock examination questions to prepare their students for MUET.

“We hope that with the continued use of NiE pullouts and The Star, more students will attain at least a Band Three,” said Mohammad Shafiq.