An English lesson that we should learn from Jack Ma

OUR Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s recent visit to China was indeed a great success that would bring huge economic benefits to our country. As expressed by Dr Martin Jacques, a British journalist and author of When China Rules the World, “The Sino-China relationship is crucial for the future of Malaysia.”

Apart from sealing the RM55bil East Coast Rail Line project and more than 10 business-to-business deals worth RM143bil, Jack Ma of Alibaba was appointed Malaysia’s digital economy advsor. As China’s economy is expanding, establishing a close relationship with this progressive country is certainly a step in the right direction.

Although Ma’s e-commerce success impressed me tremendously, even more impressive is his perseverance and foresight in mastering English. When he was a teenager, he went the extra mile to learn English. He went to a hotel near his home to communicate with Western tourists in English and when he wasn’t satisfied with what he had learnt from them, he decided to pursue a degree in English, graduating in 1988.

If Ma hadn’t taken great efforts to master English, he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to explore the enormous potential of the Internet in the United States in 1995. With that exposure, he finally returned to China to form Alibaba in 1999. And the rest is history. In less than two decades, Alibaba rose to an astonishing level, making its historic listing in the New York Stock Exchange two years ago.

Learning English in China is far more difficult than in Malaysia as it isn’t widely spoken. When I was in Shanghai in 2001, I noticed that many parents there were keen to send their children to kindergartens with outstanding English teachers. They were aware of the importance of this global language.

If our local university graduates failed in their endeavours to master English, they probably need to listen to the conversation between President Obama and Ma on the “Obama interviews Alibaba billionaire Jack Ma” website. Ma speaks impeccable English even though he didn’t have an environment conducive to learning this language more than two decades ago.

I am glad my daughter managed to clear her English competency test conducted by a foreign language institution before she was granted a two-year global opportunity to work in a company in the United States recently. The assessor stated in her report that my daughter has an excellent understanding of the structures of English and an ability to demonstrate a wide range of structures and vocabulary accurately in her written work.

I do hope that our local graduates could be inspired by Jack Ma to go the extra mile to master English so that they can compete effectively with those foreign graduates in the workplace. By the same token, many of our ministers do need to improve their English proficiency as well.

PATRICK TEH

Ipoh