World Language Practitioners Attend International Conference on English Education UIN-UPM

Rectorate, UIN News online- Some language and educational leaders form world's leading universities is scheduled to attend and deliver presentations in English Language Teaching Conference of Indonesia-Malaysia as The 1st Indonesian-Malaysian English Language Teaching Conference (I-MELT) in Jakarta, Thursday -Saturday (16-18 / 3/2017). They are expected to give contribution ideas on the educational model and teaching languages ​​for educators in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Said the Chairman of I-MELT Committee, Prof. Dr. Arskal Salim GP MA to UIN News Online in the Rector Building on Monday (13/03/2017). Among them are Alan Maley, Carolyn Graham, Jan Blake, Brian Tomlinson, Hitomi Masuhara, Fuad Abdul Hamied, and Ivor Timmis. " a number of academics from various universities in Indonesia and Malaysia are also scheduled to attend and present their paper in seminar sessions," he said.

Alan Maley,  one of the practitioner, is academic English language teacher who have numerous career track from several countries. She has worked for the British Council in Yugoslavia, Ghana, Italy, France, China, and India before appointed as a director-general at the Bell Educational Trust in Cambridge (1988-1993). She was then appointed as a senior fellow at the Department of English, National University of Singapore, and then continued her career as a dean of the Institute for English Language Education, Assumption University in Bangkok. In addition, she is an author and editor of Oxford English teaching Resource Books for more than 20 years.

As for Carolyn Graham, she is the creator of Jazz Chants method which is popularly used in teaching English. This method was developed for English teaching (ESL) for more than 25 years at the American Language Institute of New York University. With her experience as an English teacher, dozens of teaching English book published by Oxford University Press. Among them, The Oxford Picture Dictionary for the Content Areas: Worksheets (2003), Grammarchants: More Jazz Chants (2003), Creating Songs & Chants (2006), and Longman Young Children's Picture Dictionary (2007).

While Blake, the winner of Female Storyteller in 2012 and the British Awards for Storytelling Excellence (BASE) in 2012, has performed storytelling in various countries for more than 25 years. Regularly, she works at the British Council to give education on storytelling for the sake of teaching English to various educational institutions around the world.

It is known that UIN Jakarta and Universiti Putera Malaysia hold agenda on Teaching English Indonesia-Malaysia Conference or The 1st Indonesian-Malaysian English Language Teaching (I-MELT) Conference in Jakarta, Thursday-Saturday (16-18 / 3/2017).  The conference board invites speakers, researchers, and educators of English from other countries and a variety of world universities. Hopefully, the conference could formulate a model of the best English language learning of both countries.

According Arskal who is also Chairman LP2M UIN Jakarta, I-MELT is expected to be a platform to exchange information about best English teaching model based on the experience of lecturers and teachers of English in Indonesia and Malaysia. "Therefore, in this event, we invite lecturers, researchers, even the teachers to attend and participate to share information, ideas, and thoughts about the best English language learning model," he said.

Arskal said both Malaysia and Indonesia has a culture and relatively similar challenges in the field of English language teaching. That is because both Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, have the same roots of language, Malay, so there is no significant difference on every day use. This condition make the use of the English language is not a majority and as a result it leads to a lower English skill.

At the same time, Arskal continued, both Malaysia and Indonesia face the challenge of regionalization and globalization such as the ASEAN Economic Community and Cooperation in South-East Asia Free Trade Area (AFTA). Enactment of global-regional economic cooperation demands each community the mastery of English language.

With such conditions, Arskal explained, consequences to professors-researchers at universities to design a better English language learning as teaching model to teachers of English. "Teaching better English requires scientists and practitioners to respond by constructing of serious, premeditated, and systematic English teaching model." he said. (im)