MY STORY1:

SELF DEVELOPMENT THROUGH AN ENGLISH CLUB

Marham Jupri Hadi2.

East Lombok, 28/11/2013

Joining an English Debating club at

school

When I was in senior high school, I joined

an English club organized by a group of

university students, who had their

teaching practicum in my school. I was in

my second year at the moment. They

trained us a few things and one of which

was English debating skills. I was very

enthusiastic to enhance my English

language skills and be more proactive in

all of the club activities.

After a few meetings, we were to take

part in a West Nusa Tenggara school

debating championship. For me, it was

quite breathtaking as we had to compete

against delegates from all regencies in

West Nusa Tenggara. Fortunately, we had

a really encouraging trainer who kept

1 It is especially written for English Study Club members of Nahdlatul Wathan University Mataram

2 A post graduate student of University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia

supporting us mentally and coached us.

As a result, during the competition, I was

nominated to be the best speaker

although I failed to be selected to

represent West Nusa Tenggara in a

National Debate Competition.

I learnt many valuable lessons from that

English club as well as from taking part in

the debate competition. One of the most

important lessons I learnt that it is

important to have a goal when learning

English. Goals will be our both internal

and external motivation to trigger us to

study harder and harder. Without having

goals, we might find learning English

aimless and discouraging as there are a

number of challenges facing the learners.

Another thing that I learnt is that it is

crucial to interact using the language we

have learnt. To be able to interact in

English, we are required to have friends

who have the same interest. Such friends

are available in an English Club.

Being a member in a language

community in University

When I was in my first year in the

university, my English was still quite

poor. That made me feels less confident

with it. However, after sharing my feeling

with others classmates, I found that I was

not the only person who felt such a

feeling. I was happy with that situation as

knowing that reality helped reduce my

psychological burden. In contrast, I tried

to improve my spoken English by getting

involved in a language community. To be

honest, we did not have any club for

many years in English language

education. But because we needed it,

then some friends and I decided to

organize one. We named the club

Mataram English community.

In that club, our focus was only to

develop speaking and listening skills

because we were weak in those areas.

Only a few students participated in our

club, however number of members was

not our big concern. Instead, we were

quite happy to have such a club because

it enabled us to interact in English. To be

honest, that club looked a bit strange for

other students in English language

department. We did not care about their

comments. We only cared about our own

goals.

Setting the club programs

Our goals were clear and we needed to

have relevant programs to help us reach

our goals. We discussed the programs

and planned everything regarding the

programs. One of our programs was to

invite a native speaker to our club.

Thanks God, we were very fortunate to

have an American guy who voluntarily

became our regular native speaker. It

was very encouraging for us. We learnt

about pronunciation and a variety of

interactive activities to improve our

spoken English. Furthermore, we tried to

make a good relationship with that guy

and we eventually became good friends

until our graduation.

Some Important points

1. Know your expectations

2. Share your common interests

3. Set club goals

4. Design and run the programs

5. Be consistent and focus to reach your

goals

It is worth bearing in mind that all those

aspects would not change anything in

you until you start doing them. Therefore,

I strongly recommend that everyone

being a member in an English study club

should identify their own expectation to

join an English club. Afterwards, they

have to share their expectation or

motivation in order to get input from

other members. Following that, every

body’s expectations should be seen as

the club goals. Based on the goals, they

can design the relevant programs and

implement them. Lastly, it is highly

recommended that each club members

focus to reach the goals. All the best!!!