IHateManwir, please.

I cannot believe it lah.

Ivan has said that Manwir deducted his marks for using words she doesn't entirely understand in essays and she pretty much doesn't bother checking the dictionary to check if the usage really is completely wrong.

Last year, we did an essay as a group, Ivan wrote the essay for our group, and Manwir commented that "apparently the essay wasn't written by" us. Because she didn't think any of us could produce essays this good.
Yeah, What The FISH.

This English exam, she circled a word I used in my essay she didn't think exist, and didn't give me any marks for the entire paragraph. I had important points in that paragraph, okay. No such word as 'chock-full' meh? If only she had bothered to go look up the dictionary. Gah.

First, she teaches us all the wrong pronunciations.

"Class, do you know this word? Have you seen it before?"

She had written the word 'angst' on the blackboard.

"It means anxiety. It's pronounced ang-GEST."

Yeah, she pronounced it ang-gest, with a hard 'g'. I'm not an English teacher, but I know enough to know that it's pronounced pretty much like it is spelled, without the hard 'g'. If you can't pronounce it right, don't go "It's Pronounced -- ".

Then she tried teaching us how to pronounce 'poverty'.

"Class, it's pronounced PAH-verty."

Cringe. 'Cause it's really POH-verty. Just like how it's spelt. If students know that, there's no reason for Manwir to mess that up. But then again she's Manwir.

Then she tried teaching us literature.

But she pretty much told us what we already knew about the poem, then proceeded to try and analyze what it was about, but managed to only tell us what it meant on the surface, not what the poet was really trying to convey. If she bothered looking it up in any literature reference book, she wouldn't have to tell us her own interpretation, which is sometimes totally different from what is found in a few of my reference books.

Obviously reference books correct la, 'cause Manwir probably hasn't done any research on the poems prior to teaching us. One time, she was doing the Baba-Nyonya poem in Form 4, she stopped at Page-1. Then she started talking about it. Then suddenly - "Oh look, there's a second page! The poem hasn't ended yet!"

You know a teacher is totally unprepared for class when her first time seeing and going through the poem is during class. How irresponsible can you get?

If you're asking why I remember details like the above, haha, lemme tell you, I don't remember them intentionally, I just go "what the hell?" during classes and it just sticks to mah bwainn like glue.

I can tell you, half my class could be a better English teacher than Manwir. Because Manwir "so so suxx"! But she speaks with so much confidence (*cough* cockiness*cough*) that people tend to just take in whatever she says as completely true.

Our class must've done something awfully wrong to not get Pn. Shanti or Sharmini or Mr. William.

And to think, Manwir is my neighbour =(