Goducate … Go And Educate! – Page 127 – Helping Asians Help Themselves

2012-11-20

First Batch Of Students Start At Goducate Language Center at Batam

Last week I visited the newly opened Goducate Language Center in Batam, Indonesia.

Batam is an island of almost 1 million people. It is an hour’s ferry ride from Singapore. Most of the people in Batam work in factories, many of which are owned by foreigners. It is also a popular tourist destination for Singaporeans, especially at the weekends. As such, those who are able to speak English are in great demand.

Though Indonesians learn English in school, for most of them what they are taught in school helps them to pass exams rather than to speak English. This is especially true for those who come from rural areas.

The Goducate Language Center hopes to teach Indonesians to speak English, so that they can optimize their potential. To do so, we will need a large pool of English teachers in order that the students will learn much of their English from conversations with their teachers rather than from listening as part of a large class.

The first batch (6 ladies and 2 men) of such future English teachers have arrived from Goducate Training Center in the Philippines, where they learned how to teach English to foreigners. They are at the Goducate Learning Center in Batam to learn to speak Bahasa Indonesia so that they can be more effective teachers in Indonesia.

We hope that they will be able to complete their Bahasa Indonesia course in about 6 months and then begin their roles as English teachers.

2012-11-162012-11-16

Goducate’s Sing Your English Program undergoes testing in Batam schools

Sing Your English is a Goducate extracurricular program for schools that uses songs as the main tool in teaching English. Sing Your English was conceptualized last year and launched in two schools in Batam, Indonesia, in August this year.

In the Sing Your English method, if the topic of the lesson is Myself, then a song about “Me” is taught to them, along with some writing, drawing, or coloring activity. If the lesson is about Basic Parts of the Body, then the song will contain the relevant vocabulary and will be supplemented by the appropriate activity.

Sing Your English is quite effective because the students can remember the songs and can be heard humming them unconsciously out of class. Starting a class by singing songs learnt is a fun and easy way of reviewing previous lessons. Singing the songs with action helps students remember the meaning of words.

Sing Your English is an extracurricular program, so there are no examinations and gradings, which reinforces the fun and activity aspect of learning English. This would help change the mind-set that English is difficult to learn.

ShowingActivigyFolder2 — Showing their activity folders

The Sing Your English program is not confined to teaching vocabulary. The students also learn conversational English, because during class they are taught and made to practice simple phrases, as well as the names of objects they commonly come across.

The testing of the program will be intensified next week at our first Sing Your English two-day camp to be held for students in their last year of primary school.

2012-11-132012-11-12

Goducate helpers offer combined academic and music lessons

Goducate aims to help the needy help themselves. One group of people in Laguna who have benefited from Goducate projects, and who have in turn been helping others as volunteers teaching academic subjects or music to others in the villages, have banded together to offer their services in the town for 2000 pesos a month per student. For this fee, a student will receive, each week, an hour of one-to-one tuition in academic subjects 4 times a week, and an hour of music lessons every Saturday. The music lesson will be given in small groups of 3.

The teachers will be Goducate helpers who are college or university graduates, and the 15 Goducate scholars. These Goducate scholars are those students who are continuing their college or university education on scholarships offered by the institutions on the strength of their musical ability.

We hope that this endeavor will serve as an example to other Goducate beneficiaries of how they can use their skills to help themselves and their families.