seribusatupelangi: MARVELOUS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE IN PENANG

Master of Education in Teaching English as a Foreign Language Faculty of Teacher Training and Education
Tanjungpura University, Pontianak-Indonesia

Who said that the quality of university in Pontianak is not better than universities in Java or other places? In Tanjungpura university especially Master of Education in Teaching English as a foreign Language Faculty of Teaching Training and Education helps the students to have international minded by facilitating the students to present at overseas conference.

MICOLLAC PRESENTATION

The 9th Malaysia International Conference in Languages, Literature, and Culture (MICOLLAC) 2016 was held for 3 days. It started on 16 to 18 August. It was in Rainbow Paradise Beach Resort, Tanjung Bungah, Penang. It was organized by Department of English, Faculty of Modern Languages & Communication, Universitas Putra Malaysia (UPM). By participating in this conference, we were able to meet colleagues not only from Malaysia buat also from other countries. There were many academics who shared their view and research. If you were academics, teacher, graduate students, education officers, language policy and program planner, or linguist, you might become the participant in this conference. In this forum, the participants could have meaningful discussion but still it was related to the theme of ‘Engaging Threads and Trends.’

Tanjungpura University Students
with Mark R. Freiermuth

There were 10 people from Tanjungpura University, Indonesia, who became the speaker in MICOLLAC 2016. They were Marwandi, Militansina Usman (Improving Speaking skill through problem-based learning and environment education for middle school), Slamet Tumpal Manurung (In transition: The students’ attitude towards the institutional policy regarding the use of internet enabled devices in the classroom), Dudi Effendy, Isti Arbaniah (Developing supplementary material to teach basic English Dialogue for EFL learners with value-based curriculum by utilizing web-page maker), Umayrah Tiffani (Improving vocabulary through V-A-K Learning model for junior high school students), Nurrahmiani (The urgency of developing midwifery reading materials using flash application), and Tri Mulyaningsih (An error analysis of overgeneralization, simplification, and interlingual interference by EFL young learners in speaking comprehension). They are still pursuing their master degree. Other two are Gatot Sutapa and Regina. They are lecturers in Tanjungpura University. Besides the speaker, there were 24 participant who are also the students in Language Faculty Untan.

In the paper presentation, the speakers were given 15 minutes to present and 5 minutes to ask and answer. In the question and answer session, some participant asked about the opinion of the speaker about the topics and some others gave their opinion and suggestion to improve the research. It was great time to see people from different culture and background presented their papers. It was also good time to open our mind for the criticism and opinion from other researchers.

By opening our mind, we could learn many things about the area of interest in our research, about the world, about research knowledge, etc. We were also able to build our confidence to present in front of other researchers from all over the world. Besides, we could get insight on other research field. Smart people would use this time to learn as much as possible and meet other researcher as many as possible.e

This conference was the first international conference I attended. Before attending this conference I did not have any motivation to do anything as I did not think that research would be interesting. But this conference gave me insight that there were a lot of smart people with different mind and different interest. They opened my mind that research can be so interesting. We can also share it to others and know how other people respond to it. We can also make contribution in our life from the research.

THE SPEAKERS IN PLENARY SESSION

There were many speaker in the plenary session. They are Adam Jaworsky, Yap Nge Thai, Cathy Carut, Hu Guangwei, Johan bin Jaafar, and Ismail S. Talib. In the first plenary session Associate Professor Dr. Yap Nge Thai presented about her three ongoing research about 1) the acquisition of second language phonology, 2) the development of the Malay cross-linguistic lexical task, and 3) multilingual brain. Her explanation was very clear and impressive. But, great people would never out from criticism. In the Q&A session there was some participants who did not agree with her mind especially about the purpose of the research. It is said that the problems of the research were not urgent and important due to some reasons. But, impressively she could respond it in a humble way.

Keynote speaker: Professor Adam Jaworsky
who presented about multilingual and globalization

We learned a lot from those speaker. Most of their researches were related to linguistics area. As My friend and I are from Language Education faculty, we actually expected that there was also a topic which discussed about language teaching in the classroom. We hope in the next conference, if we get another opportunity to attend it, we can find some researches related to that area so we can learn and apply it in the classroom.

FAVOURITE SPEAKERS

From all of speakers who attended MICOLLAC I personally have my own favorite speakers. They are Angela Karsten and David Yoong. Angela Karsten presented about Motivational Currents among L2 Learners in Japan. She said that there will be contribution of her research in the area of education. By doing this research, it is expected that this research will help professionals in the education area to add the current to learners’ experience by knowing how DMCs are triggered, sustained or even suppressed. It looked like this research would be difficult to be conducted as it was really difficult to measure motivation. In small number of students it is possible for the teacher to motivate them continuously and intensively. But in large number of students, it will be difficult to be applied. So, It think it will be a challenge for this kind of research.

David Yoong

Different from Angela Karsten, David Yoong Soon Chye presented about integrative system called MACRO (Management and Accounting of Learning Outcomes to help course coordinator, instructors, and curriculum designer (CIC) to manage and account for students’ learning outcomes. He looked so confident and could explain his research in understandable words. As we know that LO is very important to get more accurate picture about the topic that students should learn and about students’ learning experience. It then becomes a challenge for CIC. In the easy way, he could explain about the challenge faced by CIC when there is differences between expectation (for a specific course) and the actual results. When the result for students accomplishing LO are below expectation, there is a need to find out the reasons which in turn can be used to solve the problem before the next semester. It is stated that there are many benefits from MACRO especially in institutions located in developing nations or remote areas which make his article more interesting.

PERSONAL VIEW

Who Do you want to be? I always ask my self that question. I don’t want to be big fish in small pond. I want to be small fish in big pond. That’s how I feel after attending the conference. It was really great experience to be able to share your opinion and listen to others opinion from other point of view. The more you learn, the more you develop yourself. Those great people who I saw in the conference showed me that awesome people were not arrogant. Instead they were very humble that they show themselves as empty glass who are thirsty to knowledge even from people who haven’t had name.

I never regret the day I chose to be one of the students in Tanjungpura University to get my master degree. It is a right decision. I am really grateful for this faculty to introduce and facilitate me and my friends to have this wonderful experience. I hope someday I can have more than this.