Author: Guest *

Goducate’s Sing Your English (SYE) program aims to help Indonesians (and other nationalities) to speak English. Indonesian students learn English in school but after 12 years most of them can hardly speak a few words or sentences of English, although they have hundreds of English words/phrases in their heads. There seems to be a “traffic jam” between the head and the mouth. This is probably because in schools the focus of the teaching of English is to help their students to pass their English exams, which puts more emphasis on written rather than spoken English.

SYE aims to clear this 10 cm “traffic jam” between the head and the mouth, through its fun songs. After over a year of testing SYE programs in many schools and organizations in Batam and Pekanbaru in Indonesia, we believe that SYE does clear this “traffic jam”. Children confidently sing the songs and speak the words and phrases learnt (albeit in a sing-song manner). Their fear of speaking English is removed and replaced with the fun of speaking English.

We will be expanding our program to many other schools and organizations , both in Batam and Pekanbaru. On Sept 9 we invited 50 community leaders in Pekanbaru to a seminar to introduce them to SYE. The response was overwhelming.

At present we have 9 Filipino community development workers (CDWs) stationed in Pekanbaru but we will soon need many more. Thankfully, there are 40 CDWs being trained at the Goducate Training Center in Iloilo, Philippines, and many of these will join our Indonesian SYE team.

“It’s All About Me!” was the theme of Goducate’s Sing Your English (SYE) one-day camp held on May 25th in Pekanbaru, Sumatra. This SYE’s first one-day camp attracted almost 300 Indonesian campers, who were grouped into 6 teams—namely, Blue Eagles, Red Lions, Green Dragons, Yellow Sharks, Purple Pandas, and Orange Foxes. The electricity cut in the morning did not stop proceedings.

The aim of SYE camps is to create an environment wherein the campers enjoy reading, using, singing, and speaking English and where they have a memorable time bonding with friends. SYE is program for teaching English in fun ways and through many interesting and character-molding activities; for eliminating the fear of speaking English; and for creating a desire in campers to learn English, dream big, and believe that they can accomplish whatever they aspire to achieve.

These aims were accomplished through different camp activities. Some of the activities that were big hits among the campers were the Cheers & Yells Competition, during which each team performed with painted faces and props that included pompoms flags; the Traditional Song & Dance Competition; the SYE Awesome Race, which was a combination of a Treasure Hunt and an “Amazing Race”; and the Big- Ball Volleyball, which campers enjoyed since it was their first time playing with this game. At the end of the camp, each camper was able to use the accumulated points they got from the different competitions and activities to “buy” items from the camp store.

The campers are looking forward to more SYE camps. One of the parents commented, “This is so far the best strategy for learning English. Learning English through songs is so much fun & motivating!”

Guest writer Jenet, Volunteer from Philippines