During Language Camp B by Kew Shirley

During the day, we gathered at D05 and departed at 7am to SMK Kota Masai 2 by bus. I appreciate the kindness of Mira for offering us a ride from KTF to D05.

We reached our destination safely and on time thanks to the help of Alison for giving us the correct direction to the school. It was a long but comfortable ride, I believed that all of us will share the same thought.

We were informed that our activity will be held at the hall of that school. The hall seems small for me to handle 20 groups of students. Each facilitator included me was assigned different superhero for our group. I was surprised and pleased by the group name of ‘Thor’. The students will be arranged in the same group based on the superhero paper strips that were given to them earlier before the camp started. There were a total of 9 students in my group.

During the ice breaking, I introduced myself as a facilitator of my group. Most of the students in my group were shy and reluctant to speak in English. Being aware of this, I encouraged them and made some jokes for them to release their tension. Through the conversation, I realized that the dominant factor that impede them from speak out loud is their limited control of English vocabularies. They had the intention to voice out their opinion, however, they may end up with keeping silent since they did not know the proper way of using English words.

It was an enjoyable moment during the time they did their group logo drawing. All of the students cooperate with each other to complete their task. They discussed and assigned role for each member to get their job done. I realized that they knew their group mates better and more open minded to share their thoughts embedded in mind through this activity. A clap for them!!

One more thing that I wish to share is the environment of the hall. It was hot and I think my students complaint a lot about this. They felt uncomfortable and impatient due to the hall environment and thus sometimes may hard to engage fully in the language game.

However, I was surprised by the students’ engagement in the drama competition. They felt excited and commit fully to their storyline and characters. I gave guidance and opinions to their drama since they failed to find out the proper English words to convey their message at certain time. Although we did not manage to get into the final of the drama competition, I am still proud of their courage and commitment.

I wish to attach the photo of me and my students with our poster since they did an outstanding poster drawing. However, I had lost all of the photos due to the technical problem of my phone L