REFERRING to the reports “Atrocious English in workbooks” and “Make English our top priority, says CIMB chairman” (The Star, July 22), I truly share the concern of our Deputy Prime Minister and top corporate figures like the CIMB chairman on the poor English of our youth and the effect this will have on Malaysia’s global competitiveness.

The poor English of schoolchildren is reinforced all the way up to university. Sometimes it is difficult to decipher what the student is trying to say as syntactic, lexical and conceptual errors are found in the sentences.