My Work Experiences

My Work Experiences

Work experience is one of the most important components to show and prove how eligible we are for a particular job and career. It portraits our professional records of our major and special field, and it helps any correspondents find out our quality and how it fits the needs of their company or institutions when hiring us. 

I have begun to work as a teacher for over 10 years in formal schools as well as non-formal educations in Indonesia. I decided to start teaching when I firstly entered college. What made me feel interested in this profession was actually when I first got an offer to regularly tutor a secondary school student living near my boarding house.  He said he needed to prepare for national exam in which English was one of the compulsory subjects to test and wanted me to help him. I was very pleased to hear it and pretty sure that becoming a tutor would be a good way for me to apply my knowledge and develop my teaching skill. In fact, I believed that the more often I practiced teaching, the more knowledge and experiences I gained.     

I really enjoyed my time in campus joining all classes I took and participated in some extracurricular activities. However, for me, it was also important to have some teaching activities so that I could learn about how to deal with students and help them solve their learning problems. One day, in 2007, a friend of mine offered me an interesting job which completely stimulated my motivation in teaching English. He told me that some doctors and government employees from Dr. Karyadi Hospital Semarang were preparing to live in Australia for a duty, and they needed me to teach them English conversations for around 6 months. They said they would pay me with high wage if I accepted this offer. Well, opportunity comes once in our lifetime. Eventually, I said ‘yes’ and signed the contract.

All of my teaching experiences allowed me to improve a wide range of skills, which especially had something to do with various teaching and learning methods and strategies appropriately used to effective teaching. They also led me to develop and enhance my knowledge about the English language and its vocabulary. Nevertheless, someday, I found myself bored of any kinds of tutoring activity since I did not feel like I was a real English teacher who normally worked in school. But a year later, I was glad of being recruited to be teacher in a private school in Semarang where I firstly learned to be the real teacher.

1.     Sekolah Alam Arridho (2008 – 2009)

In this school, I taught students from primary to secondary levels and worked with other senior teachers designing syllabus and lesson plans. Here I implemented many different kinds of method, technique and strategy of teaching that I learned from my study in campus.

2.     Primagama Salatiga (2009 – 2011)

Having one year-experience in teaching made me want to try something much different. Working in office as a staff or clerk would be challenging I supposed. In July 2009, three months prior to my graduation, I decided to work as an academic staff in an Education institution located in Salatiga, a small town which is close to Semarang. 

3.     SM-3T and Professional Teacher Training Program /PPG (2011 – 2014)

After working in Primagama for about two years, I made an unforgettable decision by resigning from this job and being unemployed at home. However, four months later, I applied for the government teaching program named SM-3T which aimed to focus on developing education in remote and outermost areas of Indonesia. In this program, I lived in a very remote village teaching secondary students there for a year. Below is the school where I dedicated myself in teaching through the SM-3T program. Upon the completion of the program, all of the participants had to take one-year education in a teacher training institution called PPG. 

My first arrival at school

Going home to Kampoeng Muslim with students

Walking to home after teaching National Exam prep for 9 graders

Me and classmates at PPG class

4.     Permata Bangsa International School (2014 – 2015)

In one hand, I once thought teaching in this school was just a dream for me. The only thing which made me fall in love with this school was the English communication atmosphere it provides as well as its curriculum and authentic learning materials and sources from Cambridge International Curriculum (CIE). The regular workshops and training for teachers also enabled me to improve my pedagogical knowledge and skills in the ESL teaching contexts. On the other hand, due to its individual ownership system as a private institution, it is sometimes difficult for teachers to get equal rights on their tasks and salary given. But I really learned a lot and grew up from this school instead. In here, I found and read many useful books and materials from Cambridge which led me to be more rounded and to have broad understanding about English world. 

 

5.     Teaching TOEFL and IELTS (2012 - 2015)

Resigning from an international school was such a difficult decision to make. But this was the moment where I started to learn a valuable lesson that changed my life.  In my opinion, losing job does not mean that we also lose our profession. I had to keep learning and try new things. I had established TOEFL and IELTS preparation course since 2012 and planned to develop this business again. This course also provides an online or distant learning through interactive website and other social networking sites that I self-manage. Surprisingly, my all advertisements got a lot of responses from the visitors, and I could finally earn much more money from this business. In fact, running a business on TOEFL and IELTS like this still became a great idea since the number of people taking these tests has been increasing lately. Moreover, I believed that teaching these tests would even motivate me to practice and prepare those such tests. 

 

6.     Karangturi National School (2015)

Having a good quality time with family at home was so nice. But then I got a call from a friend telling me that her school in Semarang urgently needed a new teacher immediately, as one of the English teachers was absent for 3 weeks due to maternal reason. I approved this offer and worked there until the real teacher returned.

 

 

7.     LBPP LIA (2015)

LIA is known as one of popular English courses in Indonesia. With its branches spread all over the country, there have been thousands of students joining this course since its establishment. As the vacancy advertised, I thought undoubtedly about this teaching opportunity and immediately applied for the position required.

8.     Indonesian Merchant Marine Academy/ AKPELNI (2015 – 2016)

Teaching English in higher education has been my dream since I finished my undergraduate study. Honestly, I used to get an offer to work as a lecturer in a teacher training institute located in Madiun city, East Java (IKIP PGRI Madiun) in 2011. However, for some reasons, this dream did not come to realize since I had not received the official teaching letter (NIDN) from the Directorate of Higher Education, Ministry of Education. AKPELNI has finally helped make this dream come true. 

Journey of a thousand miles starts from a single step

It is not money that determines our success, but hard works and faith through knowledge and personal qualities absolutely do

Always learning and inspiring others forever

Presenting Paper 2

Is CLIL an Effective Approach Implemented in Indonesia?

(A Case Study in the Secondary Level Class of Permata Bangsa School Semarang)

 By Aziza Restu Febrianto

 Presented at the International Conference on Teacher Education and Professional Development (InCoTEPD) 2016

17 - 18 May 2016, Yogyakarta Indonesia

Abstract

Today, in some countries, English as a global language is used for all subject materials learned in academic context. As English becomes an international language, there have been inevitably a lot of materials and resources written and delivered in English used in schools. Being able to understand the materials which are written in English, students can gain wide knowledge and learn particular concepts used in global contexts. They will then be able to comprehensively formulate and explain the concepts internationally based on the authentic resources. In fact, it is also important for them to be well- prepared to face the global challenges in the future by mastering English language in all subject materials being learned.

Considering the importance of English usage as mentioned above, private schools offering international curriculum have been introduced in Indonesia nowadays. Some of the schools implement a bilingual method named CLIL in teaching-learning process. CLIL which stands for Content and Language Integrated Learning involves teaching a subject through the medium of a second or foreign language (Coyle, Hood & Marsh, 2010). Learners acquire knowledge about the content of the subject and language at the same time. Here I conducted an observation on how CLIL is implemented in Permata Bangsa School as one of International Schools endorsed by the Cambridge International Exam (CIE) in Semarang. In this school, all teachers are Indonesians who are graduates of Indonesian universities. However, not only meeting all the Cambridge standard qualifications during the recruitment process, as an international teacher, they are also obliged to constantly participate in the teaching workshop and training conducted twice in a week. Having trained by a professional Cambridge program director (Experienced Native Speaker), all subject teachers are expected to be able to teach their lesson in bilingual class effectively referring to the standard curriculum designed by CIE.

On the other hand, when it comes to the implementation of CLIL, apart from its ideal benefits on students’ content mastery and communication skill, many challenges are found. In an EFL country like Indonesia, subject teachers are not yet well trained of using English for their teaching instructions. In CLIL, all subject teachers especially Math and Science teachers must be able to use and deliver the classroom instructions in English. Meanwhile, in EFL learning context, students and teachers are not accustomed to using English in the teaching-learning process. In fact, most of the material resources such as books and the other learning support are not written in English. The other challenge faced is that the English proficiency of teachers and students in Indonesia is considered low, especially compared to other South East Asian countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines. According to the research of English Proficiency Index (EPI) conducted by EF (English First) in 2014, among the 63 non – English speaking countries, the English proficiency of Indonesian people were placed 28^th. Sweden where CLIL concept was firstly introduced stayed in the first position.

By drawing a conclusion from my one-year observation in Permata Bangsa School Semarang, in my presentation, I would like to share on how effective CLIL is when implemented in Indonesia and its challenges.

Presenting Paper 1

The Technique of Two Stay – Two Stray (TS – TS) to Improve the Students’ Speaking Ability in the Job Interview Class

(An Action Research in Grade 12 Marketing Department of SMK Negeri 2 Semarang)

Presented at

the 4^th International Conference on Language Teaching, Literature and Translation (ELTLT)

English Department, Semarang State University

Pandanaran hotel, Semarang

October 10 – 11, 2015      

     

By Aziza Restu Febrianto

This action research shows the improvement of students’ speaking abilities through Two Stay – Two Stray technique in the material of Job Interview in Grade 12 Marketing of SMKN 2 Semarang. The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which the technique of Two Stay – Two Stray (TS – TS) can improve the ability of students in speaking English, especially during the Job Interview class.

Two Stay – Two Stray is one of learning techniques in cooperative learning. In this technique, the students were given an opportunity to speak in turns. According to the Job interview teaching material, each student in group was given two different roles. In this case, each group consists of five students. Two students played a role as the interviewers and the other two students became the job applicants. And lastly, one remaining student became an observer whose job was to record the activity in the group. The two students who played the role as the job applicants visited all the groups to have an interview. While the other two students as the interviewers stayed in this group. This activity was done in turns. Therefore, all of the students got the entire roles. The subjects of the research were the students of Grade 12 Marketing class of SMKN 2 Semarang in the academic year 2013/ 2014. Thirty two students were involved in this research. To achieve the goal of the study, the researcher conducted an action research including a demonstration. According to Wallace (1998:4), action research is a process, which is done by systematically collecting data on teacher’s everyday practice and analyzing it in order to make some decisions about what her/his future practice should be. Hopkins said that the aim of action research as means of extending professional behaviours and encouraging flexibility in professional development (1993:71). The action research was carried out in two cycles. There was a simulation test at at the end of each cycle. The aim of the test is to measure the student’s progress and result of the teaching –learning activities using “Two Stay  - Stray” (TS-TS) structure.

Based on the data analysis, it can be concluded that the Two Stay – Two Stray technique (TS-TS) was really helpful for helping teachers teach speaking. The study shows how the technique could work successfully in improving students’ ability in speaking English. The result of the research can be seen from the data provided after the action research conducted. The result gained is concluded as follows; the mean score of speaking class in the first cycle was 6.61 and the mean score gained in the second cycle was 12.20. Therefore, the difference was 5.59. It is very obvious that there was exactly a significant difference found when applying the TS - TS technique in speaking class.

Keywords: Two Stay – Two Stray (TS – TS), Cooperative Learning, and the teaching of English speaking