This week is the first week of my master degree
study in UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta. Starting this week, I will be
spending my weekend by going to campus for studying. Hopefully I can learn many
things even though I only come to class once a week for each course. Here I
take English Language Teaching as my major. I took the same major as my
bachelor degree program. Although it is the same program, of course there are
many new things around. Well, now I am surrounded by all new friends. Most of
them used to be UIN Syarif Hidayatullah students. At first I felt a bit
intimidated by this situation. It felt like I am a stranger who came into a
group’s base. Besides new friends, certainly the lecturers are new for me
(actually there is one of them whom I am familiar with. He used to be my
lecturer). I have also a new campus here. I still need to get used to the
system (especially the flow o information or announcement) of this campus. Last
but not least, I have got a bunch of new spirit to study. It is the spirit of
master degree student. This feeling is not like what I felt when I started my
undergraduate education. It feels different. Now I am more aware about my
study. I do really care what I am doing during my learning journey of this
program. I take it to not waste my time, energy or money, and to not merely
have fun. I am here to be a learner ho learns more and more.
On this reflection I would like to share whatever I
have in mind about two first days of my study. This writing is not
intentionally written to any specific task or assignment. It is as my effort to
practice my writing skill. I need to practice organizing my ideas on writing
well. I will try it out by writing down my thoughts by the day, Friday and
Saturday.
Alright, let’s start with Day 1, Friday. As I told
you before that this is my new campus so I am not really familiar with the
location of classrooms. It took me a few minutes to find where my class is.
Even I went to faculty office to ask and make it sure. Actually the class is
scheduled to start at 1.30 p.m. No wonder that there was no one in class
because I came at 1 p.m. It was too early. It was like a shame for me. To be
honest, before I thought the class started at 1 p.m. I didn’t read the schedule
carefully.
After waiting for a few minutes in class with some
friends, an old man was coming into the classroom. There he is the lecturer of
the first course of the day. You know what? He did everything very slowly in
moving his body, giving questions and responding to students’ opinion. It took
so long for only getting to know each other session. It was more than 30 minutes.
I was feeling he was slowing down the air flow in class. As usual, the lecture
introduced the course at this first meeting. However, I got annoyed in the
middle of the class. It was because he told a quite long story (more or less 15
minutes) which had no relation with the course. It was such a waste. By the
way, this course name is Issues of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign
Language) in Indonesia. The lecturer said that attendance of this class was
crucial. It was because he is the only one resource of the course and there was
not any reference or other resources outside. I was surprised anyway (really?
Is he the only one?). The test is going to be given referring to whatever he
says during class. There is no book recommended. Well, I am not sure that there
I no other people or institution talks about this issue. I think there must be
other references around, at least the books which talk about more or less the
same thing to enrich and develop students understanding. I need to try finding
it out though. Alright, I have one more thing. He was alone coming to this
class. Actually he is going to do this course with his partner. He said may be
his partner would come next week. Both of them are going to take turn week by
week.
The second course of Day 1 is Qualitative Research
(QR). I came late to the class because I went out for praying. That is why I
missed the part when the lecturer introduced himself. Once I came in, he was
giving some questions for students to think about. The questions were what
students’ think this course is about, what the goals of the course are, how
students will go through the course and what students’ expectations are after
taking this course. Well, those are like guiding questions for introducing the
course. I looked around the class, particularly at all friends’ facial
expression. Personally I like his idea to ask questions to start the class. It
is like to have students’ engagement. However, it looked like no one concerned
about the lecturer’s questions. May be the questions were not clearly stated so
they got lost. I also tried to get the point of the lecturer’s questions and to
guess what kind of answers he expected from us. I am not sure that the lecturer
had developed well the questions before. As a result, students could not get clearly
what the lecturer’s question was. For me it showed he didn’t really prepare for
the class, or it might be just the way he is. No matter which one it is, in my
opinion, a teacher or lecturer must get ready for the class, at least by having
preparation before. After having discussion about the course, the lecturer explained
more clearly about it. About the course, he told us to get familiar with
research, especially QR. To conduct a QR, someone has to be ready getting along
with people (let’s say key informants) and listening to what they are telling.
Well, I am interested to do a research anyway. I got some ideas coming to my
mind. At the end I got a bad impression of him because he finished the class
before the time was up. It was not what supposedly happened.
Alright, that is the end of Day 1. Now let’s move on to Day 2, Saturday. There
were two courses on Day 1, and three courses on Day 2. By the way, I made Day 1
for my observation step. Especially it was to observe all friends in class
before getting along with them. I stayed in my circle. But then, I can start
making friends on Day 2. It was time to break up the circle and get out of it.
The first course of Day 2 is taught by a lecturer of
mine when I was studied in Sampoerna School of Education (SSE) taking my
bachelor degree. Here he is teaching Teaching English for Academic Purpose
(TEAP). The lecturer presented the course module clearly. It was great. Everything
was clearly explained, even on some details like the course itself, materials
and assessments. Then there was a session for us, students, to discuss in pair,
then in group and a representative shared discussion points of ideas in class. In
general, this course is going to talk about some skills which expectedly
achieved by students in teaching English for undergraduate students. There will
be microteaching and presentations of EAP teaching techniques as parts of the
course assessments. I enjoyed the class.
The next course of the day is Advanced English
Language Study (AELS or AE). It is delivered by the same lecture as TEAP
course. This course talks more about writing and speaking skills of students. I
am going to have a project to write a paper with 2500 words length and to
present the writing in a classroom conference. In TEAP course, I study how to
teach EAP for my future students, but in this course I am studying the EAP for
myself as a student. The course module presented in class was developed by UIN
Syarif Hidayatullah in 2010. It is not updated. I am not sure whether it is
still compatible with current academic year. I found some things on module to
be clarified and explained more anyway. I
asked, but no answer. The class was over an hour earlier than time on the
schedule. It might be because it was an introduction class, and not for the
following classes.
The last course of the day was Second Language
Acquisition (SLA). I had this course before in SSE. The course module was
introduced briefly by the lecturer. Next, we had asking and answering session
to discuss about the topic. It was quite interactive discussion. I learn a lot of
things. In this course, I need to read a lot and observe the issues of SLA
around.
Those all are the stories of my first two days. This
initial experience flashes me back to my learning journey when I was in SSE. I
become more grateful to have experience studying in SSE. It is the best
education ever. The lecturers always come and well-prepared for the class. All course
assessments are clearly described. However, it may not be my reason to not do
my best on my study. Please wish me luck and pray for me in my study. Thank
you.
