This morning, I attended a mass lecture for a subject called Life Science. Basically, it's just one of the prerequisite subjects that I should take for my course. 

We shall go to the 'embarrassing' part...

The lecturer was giving her lecture in front and she's the type of lecturer that prefers interactive class. She would read the notes on the slides, provides some explanation and points to random student and ask for his/her opinion on the particular topic. Today, I was one of the random students being picked by her. Not once but twice!

So, what is so embarrassing about today's lecture? 

As I said earlier, I was chosen by the lecturer to give my personal opinion on a topic. It was something about the economic disparity between the urban and rural areas (if I'm not mistaken). The lecture was conducted in Bahasa and the question that was posed to me was also in Bahasa. So, presumably, I suppose to respond to the question in Bahasa. 

So, I stood up in front of the other students. I was pretty much sure that there were more than 100 students in that lecture hall. I think it's more than that. Anyhow, I stood up and started to give my respond to her question in Bahasa which I somehow find extremely difficult as I could not express it by using proper Bahasa. I'm not saying that being enrolled in the TESL program has made me lost my ability to speak in Bahasa. No! This is actually a problem I've been facing since my schooling years. I've no problem communicating in Bahasa but the type of Bahasa that I'm using is only applicable for informal situation. I also use the other variety of Bahasa - the Sabahan dialect. 

I had a very difficult time in using formal BM and I ended up getting laughed by my friends. I think the rest of the students in the hall were also had a hard time to comprehend my response. Blame me for my terrible usage of formal BM. So, along the way, I decided to explain by using both Bahasa and English. 

After the lecture I could not stop myself from feeling too embarrassed by the experience. Really need to polish up my Bahasa. Seriously.

Post a Comment