About Me
Having English teachers as parents, I didn't always want to follow their footsteps. In fact, there was a point that I thought teaching would be the last thing on my list of dream jobs, considering how I was always the quiet girl doodling at the back of the class. It was only after I started readings books from Jacqueline Wilson and Roald Dahl during my "fitting-in phase" at primary school that I grew a huge infatuation for the English language. It was just in how the words truly portrayed feelings that I could really relate to at that time. Unfortunately back in those days, English language teaching was not at its best in my home country, Indonesia. What we did throughout our lessons was mostly memorising words without context for tests - a common teaching practice in Asian countries.
I knew that language was my "thing", so I felt like it was up to me to give to future students better learning experiences than what I had to go through. During my study for a bachelor degree in English Education from Widya Mandala Catholic University Surabaya, I volunteered for as many teaching opportunities as I could, ranging from assisting teaching at playgroups, high schools, exchange programs and camps. I then worked for a year as a Language Counsellor at the university's Self-Access Centre (SAC) and as an IELTS trainer at Vista Education Centre.
Some of the graded grammar, reading and writing self-access materials my colleagues and I developed at SAC |
Fellow IELTS and TOEFL teachers at Vista Education Surabaya |
Rumah Bahasa Surabaya |
After a few months into the job, it was difficult for me to vary my teaching activities and be innovative - the fear that I would one day turn out to be a teaching machine somewhat consumed me. I felt like I needed more training and exposure to cutting-edge teaching methodologies, so I joined a community at Rumah Bahasa (Language House) set up by the town mayor, where I met loads of teaching enthusiasts aspiring to take masters or PhD overseas. This community hosts ad-hoc language lessons (English, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, etc.) to locals completely free of charge to prepare our city for the ASEAN Economic Community starting in 2016. I guess, following the bandwagon, when any chance popped up for me to get a scholarship for further study abroad, I made a beeline for it. That is what led me here at Warwick University, UK, studying MA in English Language Teaching!