Facilitating English Club For High School Students: “Life to The Max”

Abstract

This article reports a community service in the form of an English Club programme conducted for students of SMA Immanuel Kalasan, a private High School in Sleman, Yogyakarta. The lecturers of the English Language Education Department (ELED) of Duta Wacana Christian University (UKDW) became the facilitators of the programme with several ELED students being the facilitator assistants. The English Club was conducted in the second semester of the 2018/2019 academic year and it became the third edition of the English Club co-conducted by the school and the ELED. With speaking skill as the target, the programme used the principles of whole-person education in which the focus of the instruction was not only on cognitive aspect, but also on the affective, behavioural, and spiritual aspects. This programme was themed “Life to the Max” and there were in total seven meetings conducted every other Thursday in which each ninety-minute meeting had smaller theme in relation with the big theme. These themes were “communication”, “bullying”, “comparing self to others”, “health”, “sports”, “environment”, and “relationship”. The instruction was in general conducted in a highly communicative way with most of the activities conducted in small groups with the participants making vlogs about the topic being the after-class task. Based on the reflection of what went well and what needed improvement in this programme, some conclusions and recommendations on future programmes were made.

Online English Club for High School Students: Going Globa

“…First of 2020/2021 Change All the aforementioned English Club programmes had been successful. For example, in the second semester of 2018/2019 conducted with the face-to-face method, the participants were very enthusiastic in participating in all activities and were able to produce a final project in the form of a 1-minute video blog (vlog) which was quite good in quality (Subekti & Wati, 2019). Furthermore, as the continuation of the theme of the English Club in the first semester of 2020/2021, which was "Change" facilitating participants to change for the better, the theme of the English Club in the second semester of 2020/2021 was "Going Global".…”

“…The English Club programme conducted in the second semester of 2020/2021 was less successful than a similar programme with the same school partner in which offline or face-to-face method was used (Subekti & Wati, 2019). In the English Club programme with the face-to-face method, the participants were very enthusiastic in participating in activities in class and very diligent in doing home assignments (Subekti & Wati, 2019).…”

“…Secara umum, tingkat keberhasilan kegiatan ini lebih rendah dari tingkat keberhasilan kegiatan serupa di sekolah mitra yang sama di tahun 2019 yang menggunakan metode tatap muka (Subekti & Wati, 2019). Pada English Club dengan metode tatap muka, para peserta sangat bersemangat dalam mengikuti kegiatan baik itu di dalam kelas maupun penugasan setelahnya (Subekti & Wati, 2019). Kurangnya motivasi para peserta pada English Club periode semester genap 2020/2021 ini kemungkinan disebabkan beberapa hal yang terkait pembelajaran daring.…”

“…In this regard, as a department preparing prospective English teachers, it could be very strategic for the English Language Education Department (ELED) of Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana (UKDW) to carry out community service activities with school partners. For this reason, there have been several community service activities with such partners in the past (Subekti & Kurniawati, 2020;Subekti & Rumanti, 2020;Subekti & Susyetina, 2019Subekti & Wati, 2019). Besides the relevance of the discipline with such community service activities, such activities are also in line with one of the four UKDW core values, "Service to the World" (Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana, 2017).…”

Training of Academic Writing for Senior High School English Teachers: Formulating Research Questions

“…Hence, an MGMP representative contacted the English Language Education Department (ELED) of Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana (UKDW) to see any possibility of its lecturers giving some kind of workshops to equip the English teachers to write scientific articles in the framework of community service programme, one of Three Pillars of Higher Education comprising education, research, and community service (Eniyati & Noor, 2010). These MGMP teachers' needs were also seen as an opportunity to implement one of UKDW's core values, which is "service to the world" encouraging all the people within the institution to share kindness and give service to people around and society in general (Subekti & Susyetina, 2019;Subekti & Wati, 2019). Besides, it was fully realised that sharing knowledge to teachers was very important and worthwhile for English lecturers teaching at such an education major as the ELED.…”