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.
