Thursday, November 24, 2011

Reflection

So now you know the importance of learning English. The next step is to consider, what you have learned, how useful it is and how it may affect your future.

Let's start with my experience!

STAGE 1: English for Pre-School

Before I entered elementary school, my parents put me in English class for Pre-school. It was a diverse ambiance. Teachers came from different backgrounds, combined with students from different races. Of course, most of the teachers were Americans. That is why, the first thing people notice about my dialect is American. I can't say that my dialect is hundred percent American, but in general, I would  speak and talk more likely most American would talk.

What have I learned?
I learned about alphabet, numbers, words and colours. Most of the time, teacher combined with story telling and songs. No wonder now I still remember song called "Twinkle Little Stars". But there was a funny and interesting experience I had here. By the time I knew that "Daddy" is a word to call one of our parents, I use to call my dad as "Daddy" since then. I remembered when I got home from the english class, I ran to my dad and shouted over and over again, and said, "Daddy, daddy, daddy". He was surprised and thought I learned so much from the class.


STAGE 2: English for Elementary School

Well, clearly the girl in the picture is not me. I provide this picture to give you visualize of elementary school in Indonesia. I can say that at this stage, there was no diverse ambiance. Most of the teacher were Indonesian and the students were mostly dominated by Chinese students. This is because I went to Catholic Elementary School and most of the Chinese students went to either Catholic or Christian Elementary School. However, we had English Subject as our second important foreign language after Indonesian or Bahasa.

What have I learned?
I had lesson about preposition, of which I'm still confused, a little bit of vocabulary and grammar. Usually covered in a broad terms, such as Food, Entertainment, and Family. I can't really recall of what I've learned at elementary school specifically but the rest of the course covered with fun games and a performance as in theater.


STAGE 3: English for Junior High School

Again, one of the students there is not me. But this is absolutely the uniform that I used when I was in junior high school. I went to the exact same Catholic School, but it was at junior high level and still met Chinese students and Indonesian teachers. Even more surprising, I met the same Chinsese students since they were also continuing to the same Catholic School.

What have I learned?
At this stage, I learned tenses, mostly about Present Tense, Past Tense and Present Perfect. The vocabulary began a little bit specific, such as Government, Advertising or Economic. I didn't have english theater performance, but I remembered at the final test of our English Class, I needed to perform drama relating to specific tasks. It consist of four to five people and we decided to perform drama about Russian History. So of course, word such as 'destory', 'çonquer' and 'colonial' were included in it. Unfortunately, we didn't get higher grade since we too much focused on the hitting scene rather than english dialog.


STAGE 4: English for High School

I know you probably ended up bored when I told you that yes, I went to the same Catholic School again, but only on advance level and met the same Chinese students. Most of you would think that in a way, it's nice to have the same friends surrounding us so that we don't need to adapt more relating to study environment. However, it was definitely boring and you don't really have space to expand your socialization. But that is what I thought.

What have I learned?
English began to increase to advance level. More specific vocabulary and grammar. I also learned about complicated tenses used for specific events, such as Past Perfect, Past Continuous, Conditional Tense and other tenses. At this stage, I learned to make english essay or short writing text in english. This experience helps me through my university level because a lot of assignments are based on writing and reading comperhension.


STAGE 4: English for Institute

Okay, so now I'm clearly one of the students there. After I graduated from high school, I went to International Institute, higher than high school but lower than univeristy level. At this stage, I experienced a true diversity, because lecturers and tutors came from Australia, America, England, India and even one of them came was Dutch. I realized that eventhough we speak the same english language, but the way we talk could be really different. I found hard to understand Australian lecturers, rather than the American ones just because of their dialects.

What have I learned?
I learned so many things in here. Since all of the students were expected to develop their own paper and should not plagiarise other people's ideas, at this stage I learned how to make in-text citation, quoting and made reference. It was compulsory to read harvard business journal as our secondary source.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Why Is It Important to Learn English?

I'm sure everyone would think and ask to themselves before they started learning a languagé, either it's English, French or any other language.

"Why do I need to learn this?"
"Why is it important to learn this?"
"Are there advantages by learning this language?"

I'm sure this particular questions has popped out into your mind. But certainly, everyone need to have a clear purpose in learning a language. So, why is it important to learn English than? Perhaps, it's even more important compared to other languages.

Let's discover regarding the fact!

LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD

                                                                                                                   Source: Lincoln Public School

As you can see from the figure above, after Mandarin, English is spoken by more people than any other language and is the native language of more than 350 million people. More people speak English than those who speak the Arabic and French language combined.

There's also another interesting fact!


TOP 25 LANGUAGES
                                                                                                         Source: National Geographic       

Those graphs based on research by David Harmon and Jonathan Loh, 2010. Surprisingly, eventhough Mandarin has been dominating of world's language, English is still second important language to learn. Moreover, English is the international language of diplomacy, business, science, technology, computing and even music around the world!

There's also a survey from Global English Report, taken from 26,000 employees from 152 countries around the world. More than 90% of employees say english is required for their job. They have recognized that the need to be critical in Business English not only to perform their job effectively, but also effecting their further carreer. In addition, approximately 93% of employees agree that English language is required or important to get promotion.

The fun fact is, English language offers the biggest vocabulary of any language with a choice of 500,000 to 1,000,000 words, including technical and scientific terms! But don't worry, learning English could be fun too! Since English language has been the common language of the world, it's now impossible to find country where learning English has not become a norm. Therefore, by learning English, it will definitely help you to understand on what is happening on the other side of the world.

So, are you still asking yourself?  
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Saturday, November 12, 2011

About The Author

Hey there, readers!

Before most of you thinking that 'Journey of My English Language' sounds boring or dull, but let me get this straight. I will do my best and try so hard to make it as interesting and creative as it can be, okay? So, before I actually start, firstly, let me introduce myself. You don't want to end up reading anonymous or uneducated person talking rubbish, do you? In other words, let me 'sell myself'. Hahaha..

My name is Diniari. It's a typical Indonesian name. Friend usually calls me Dini. Yes, as in "deey neey". As I just typed before, I originally come from Jakarta, Indonesia. So that makes me Indonesia (of course it is!). Currently living in Groningen and studying at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen :). I'm sure this part of my summary, would probably make most of you though "Okay, she must be at least a little bit educated". Am I right? :)

Now let's move on to the actual blog. Since it's a journey of my english language, so what's the purpose of making this blog? Why it's even have to be a specific topic, which is English? Okay, here's the reason:

First of all, since I'm taking International Business and Management, surely there's a part of my study course consists of English Study. The program expects student to create language learning blog and presenting at the end of the course. It counts 20% of the total mark. Whoa, how big is that? Therefore, you know why I'm making this blog in this exact moment.

Secondly, I want to share all of you about my english experiences. From what I have learnt until how I actually improve. I am going to explain it in detail in my other posts. One topic per one post. So it's for everyone's good.

Therefore, I hope this language learning blog can help all of the readers to understand and improve their english language and become just one of those native speakers. Have fun! :)


Sincerely,


Diniari FPK

About This Blog

About This Blog

  © Blogger template Brooklyn by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP