22-year old Iza is a Yelaoshr tutor at the Kota Kemuning branch and she is the ONLY MALAY among the 200 Yelaoshr teachers all over Malaysia. In a community where chinese language is the main communicative language, Iza is like a rose among thorns.
Both of Iza’s parents are Malays but her parents sent her to a kindergarten that speaks chinese.
Iza smiled and said, “They heard my uncle saying that learning chinese will make it easier to find a job later. Among my siblings I am the only one that is able to speak chinese!”
5-year old Iza arrives in a world surrounded by chinese language, she remembered that the first month communicating was difficult, but after a few months, she slowly learned chinese and was able to communicate with the teachers and other students. Iza went on to learn chinese for six years in primary school, continuing her chinese syllabus included in the secondary school syllabus. Later on when she moved to a new place, she was transferred to another secondary school without any chinese lessons conducted and did not cross paths with the chinese language anymore. Nevertheless, Iza’s passion for chinese had never ceased.
“My mother seemed to know this fact and after I graduated from university, even though I took up civil engineering, she encouraged me to find some jobs related to the chinese language to enable me to come in contact with chinese again. Then, I came across Yelaoshr on the internet.” – Iza
Iza teaches Bahasa Malaysia and english in the centre. Even though she does not teach chinese, but to ensure that students can understand some meaning of the words, Iza will sometimes use chinese to explain and from that she learned and improved her chinese.
“Actually when I first joined Yelaoshr, I was rather afraid because of the people around me are Chinese, in addition that I had not used the language for some time. Now, half a year had passed, I think I adapted quite well.” – Iza
Perhaps, we are more shocked to learn that Iza knows the chinese language but to Iza, she was even more surprised that children who come to Yelaoshr, a lot of these chinese students do not know chinese.
“Parents and children alike would ask me why do you know chinese. They are curious about the fact that I understand chinese. However, at the same time I was equally curious why Chinese would rather speak in english rather than chinese, and that they do not know chinese?” – Iza
To Iza, everyone should love their own mother tongue. It is just like how every Malay speaks Bahasa Malaysia naturally. Hence during teaching, when she encountered Chinese students, Iza will first use chinese to communicate with them. If she realised that the child cannot speak in chinese, she will only then use other languages to communicate.
“When I first taught a child, he did not gave me any response even though I had been speaking to him for half a day. Later on I switched to english and finally he responded. I was really surprised that there are chinese children who actually do not speak chinese.” – Iza
Iza admits that her chinese level is not at the teaching level but she hopes that some day she is able to teach the chinese language.
“Now, I would use my free time to read chinese books. I also bought reference books for Chinese pinyin. If I face any doubts I’ll ask my colleagues.” – Iza
She also shared some verbs that she learned recently, which includes “experience”, “encourage” and “advise” etc..
I believe that Iza’s “special identity” will be able to set a great example to children who want to buck up their chinese language. To help children rekindle their interest in their mother tongue, Iza finds much happiness within it.
We having a special offer RM98 (4 lessons. Usual price is RM290) for our one-to-one Mandarin, Malay and English programmes as well as abacus mental arithmetic so that your child can experience the fun and unique learning at YelaoShr® Creative Learning Centre. This offer is valid at all 59 centres nationwide.
More info: https://teacheryap.com/voucher/
