During Language Camp B

           A briefing among the facilitators as well as the committee members is conducted by the camp director (Mohd Hafiz) to ensure that our last preparation is completed. Although we faced problem with the PA system, our facilitator who is responsible for it (Khairul Syafiq) managed to solve the problem with the help from the school staffs.

Before we begin each of the activity, each of game masters will distribute all the materials needed to each group and also make sure that it is enough. Only after that we will start the activity. We officially start this camp with the ice breaking session. Each of the facilitators was given a piece of paper with a superhero’s name written on it, in big size to add. The students who got the superhero’s name will go to their designated facilitators with the same superhero’s name. This activity runs smoothly although the students seem to feel very awkward looking at each other faces (* I find this very funny though. I can’t stop laughing when looking at their faces :P).

As time flies, their shyness also flies away. In the second activity, they start to talk to each other in order to complete the group cheer and logo. To my shock, all of them are very creative in creating their group’s logo although some of them are not using English as their means of communication. Even so, I still encourage them to talk in English by using this language the whole time. Although they are not very competence in using this target language, I can sense that all of the students in my group understand my instruction. Well, sometimes I will need to paraphrase my instructions in order for them to get the intended meanings of my sentences. That is not a problem for me. They just lack of self-confidence to response to my instruction in English.

Although this is not my first language camp, it was a very great experience to be able to learn from the real experiences. I learnt to deal with the real students, the real teachers as well as the real problems in teaching English as second language.

Picture : Teamwork among my group members