Facilitating Student English Proficiency Improvement, Fisipol UGM Reopens Essential Skills Program: Intensive Writing and Speaking Classes Batch IV

Yogyakarta, August 26th 2024─Faculty of Social and Political Sciences UGM reopened the Essential Skills program: Intensive Writing and Speaking Classes Batch IV. This program offers assistance to develop students’ abilities in argumentative writing and academic presentation. It is hoped that this program can improve the skills and confidence of undergraduate students of Fisipol UGM in improving, conveying, and discussing their ideas in English. 

This program is a collaboration between Fisipol UGM and the School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne. This collaboration program was first implemented in April 2023. Since the first batch was opened, this program routinely opens a new batch every semester until now entering the 4th batch. The 4th batch will start in the second week of September and finish in early November 2024.

Programs that Hone Essential Skills

Essential Skills assists participants to enrich the four components of skills including reading, writing, listening and speaking to build and convey arguments in English. Not only that, participants are also invited to practice defending their arguments and ideas in English. “Hopefully, through this program, students can be more courageous and accustomed to using English because many can already speak English, but lack confidence and rarely have the opportunity to use it daily,” said Jingga as staff of CDC Fisipol UGM.

Comprehensive Program Implementation Mechanism

This program will present experienced tutors from both universities both in theory and practice. In class, participants will get material sessions and discussions together with the tutors of each group. Participants will also get individual assignments, group assignments, and peer evaluation as part of the exercise. Later, the assignments will also be evaluated by the tutors as feedback and improvement materials for participants.

The class will be divided into groups with a maximum of 10 participants. The groups will be assisted by Fisipol Tutors and UniMelb Tutors. Before the class begins, each Tutor will conduct a pre-assessment or need analysis to map the needs of each participant more specifically and be able to assist the improvement of participants’ abilities more intensively. 

The class will be held 7 times with a division of 3 online classes with tutors from UniMelb and 4 classes (2 online classes, 2 offline classes) with tutors from Fisipol UGM. Three online classes with UniMelb tutors will be held through Zoom with argumentative writing material. Classes with Fisipol tutors, both online and offline, will enrich participants’ abilities in presenting academic presentations. Each online class session lasts 1 hour each.

The last meeting will be held offline with an English Day event that will conclude the program. English Day consists of games and poster presentations to hone participants’ ability to produce arguments both orally and in writing. As a closing event, English Day will be opened to the entire Fisipol UGM community including those who are not Essential Skills participants.

Registration and More Information

This program is open to 60 Fisipol UGM students and preferably those who are active undergraduate students of Fisipol UGM. There are several requirements to join this program, namely:

  1. Preferably active undergraduate students of Faculty of Social and Political Sciences UGM who need support learning English with skills that are already at the intermediate to upper intermediate level
  2. Have a high commitment and motivation to actively learn English
  3. Able to follow the schedule that has been determined by the tutor optimally
  4. Complete the registration file
  5. Fill out the registration form ugm.id/EssentialSkillsCDC4. The second wave of registration is open from August 26, 2024 to September 1, 2024.
  6. Willing to fulfill the learning contract and pay a commitment fee if passed with a nominal value of IDR 200,000 for undergraduate students and IDR 300,000 for graduate students. Commitment fee will be fully refunded if participants fulfill the minimum attendance.