A 12-year-old boy in Malaysia recently went viral on TikTok after proudly announcing that he failed his English test.
In a short video from his now-deleted TikTok page, the Year 6 student showed his test results, revealing that he scored only 26%.
Source: WeirdKaya
Despite this, he coolly threw a peace sign and wrote the reason for his low score: “Why did I fail? Because I am Malay not British.”
The boy’s sentiment drew strong reactions from Malay netizens, who stressed that learning English is as important as Bahasa Malaysia.
Some believe that the boy would regret his ideals when he grows older and faces opportunities that require him to use the language.
Source: reddit
The issue was also reposted on reddit, where users said that the boy was being overconfident and immature.
Source: reddit
One netizen even wrote that it was not just the boy’s score that was worrying, but also his behaviour.
The 12-year-old is not the only young social media user who believes it is not important to learn English.
On TikTok, it seems to be a trend among young Malaysian and Indonesian students to undermine their English studies.
Source: TikTok
They post similar videos showing their test papers, books, and school activities with the caption: “It’s natural that our English scores are low, we’re Malaysians/Indonesians, not English people.”
However, some also added a disclaimer that they are only posting the sentiment “for content”.
Also read: ‘We are dying mentally’: Teacher in M’sia frustrated by student copying exam questions as answers
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Featured image adapted from WeirdKaya and TikTok.