Category: English Teaching

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.

On June 17, 2013, 17 graduates of the Goducate Training Centre (GTC) in Iloilo, Philippines, passed through Singapore on their way to Batam, Indonesia. For many of them it was the first time leaving the Philippines, so their excitement was evident.

The 17 are the second batch of GTC graduates to be attending the Goducate Language Centre in Batam, where they will spend 3 months learning “survival” Bahasa Indonesia and Indonesian culture before they are sent out to various parts of Indonesia to serve as community development workers. Goducate believes that there is no better way to learn a language than through immersion, so their training in Batam will not be confined to classroom teaching. The students will be interacting with the locals to practise their Bahasa and to experience the local culture firsthand.

The number of countries in which Goducate is helping the needy is gradually increasing, and the Goducate Training Center is about to start training its fourth batch of students to be community development workers (CDWs). Circumstances and needs vary from place to place. For our trainers to be able to fine-tune the curriculum and prepare the trainees appropriately for their future postings, it is important and helpful for the staff to visit the places where the CDWs will later be deployed.

I and two other GTC staff members have just spent about 10 days in Indonesia on an exposure trip to Goducate projects in various parts of that country. We did not get to Indonesia on a direct flight so we went through the immigration checkpoints of different countries and learnt to get about on various forms of public transport. We saw that motorbikes were the commonest mode of private transport in Indonesia, and were terrified seeing how Indonesians zip in and out son their bikes.

We were exposed to Indonesian culture—its food, family traditions, arts, dances, and language. We enjoyed our exchanges with the locals in our limited Bahasa Indonesia and they in their limited English. We learnt how important it was to speak slowly when communicating in an unfamiliar language. We had fun learning Indonesia’s traditional dances and songs and appreciated the richness of its culture. We realised how Filipinos might have to adapt to the spicy food, but that should not be difficult for we soon were enjoying eating it, even with our bare hands.

We observed how Goducate workers entered communities and addressed their needs. For example, learning English was quite difficult for most Indonesians but learning it through songs and activities made it more interesting and easy to pick up. It was amazing to see how the locals would open their homes for the CDWs to help in areas of English, agriculture, health, and counselling. It was also fulfilling to see the locals mentored, and to see them mentoring other locals in the areas in which they had been trained.

The spirit of flexibility, hard work, and love are very important for every CDW to possess. We enjoyed the family spirit and hospitality exhibited by the Goducate workers who hosted and accommodated us. Such bonding time created an atmosphere of encouragement and unity.

This short exposure trip will help us in preparing the trainees to enter communities, not just with skills but most importantly with the right character and attitude that could bring love and hope to needy people.