Compiled by MARTIN CARVALHO, C. ARUNO and R. ARAVINTHAN
NEARLY all candidates interviewing for teacher training lacked skills in organising documents, while a small number dressed inappropriately for the occasion, Sin Chew Daily reported.
According to Dr Chew Fong Peng, an associate professor from Universiti Malaya’s Faculty of Education and an interviewer for the Postgraduate Diploma in Education (DPP) programme, the vast majority of interview candidates fumbled when it came time to present their documents.
Many would take their documentation out one by one from their backpack when asked to do so, she said.
Among Chinese candidates, Chew pointed out that the most common mistakes they made were failing to use proper honorifics, poor Malay language skills and inappropriate attire, all of which were a source of frustration for her and other interviewers.
Chew said all interviewers for the programme were PhD holders themselves and many Chinese candidates failed to address them appropriately by their title.
“Chinese candidates like to address interviewers as ‘awak’, ‘kamu’ and ‘engkau’.
“In fact, just address everyone as ‘doctor’ in the second person, and that will be sufficient,” she said.
She added that she has seen female candidates in Kelantan and Sabah, who were Chinese, dressing in very short skirts, which led to awkwardness among the interviewers.
No matter how impressive a candidate’s academic achievements may be, such interview faux pas will leave a poor first impression on the interviewers, she stressed.
> A university student in Taiwan threatened his teacher with a box cutter knife after he received zero marks for an assignment.
The daily also reported that video footage of the incident showed a male student walking towards the teacher in class while holding the blade.
He then demanded the teacher give him higher marks for his assignment.
The teacher urged the undergraduate to remain calm and provided him with an explanation for the zero marks received.
The undergraduate eventually calmed down before retracting the blade, crumpling the assignment into a ball and returning to his seat.
The video was widely circulated on the social media platform Threads, where many netizens expressed their concerns for the teacher’s safety.
One netizen even joked that teaching could now be deemed a high-risk profession.
When contacted, the university in New Taipei city declined to comment on the incidet, saying that they had to protect the privacy of the student involved.
The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a, it denotes a separate news item.
