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| IALF Surabaya's New English Courses for 2004 and
'Our new IEPOS course begins in 2002 - it means Intensive English Program for Overseas Study. It's for students who are planning to study overseas and they want to study academic English intensively. They've got time to move to Surabaya and stay here for 16 weeks to study English intensively 5 hours a day. The course is for 16 weeks, 5 hours a day, so 25 hours every week. That is a total of 400 hours. To join the course you already have to have a reasonable intermediate level of English. Probably 5 on the IELTS test. What we aim to do is to push the skills, the academic English skills, listening, reading, writing, and speaking, push them up to the 6 or 6,5 band score on the IELTS test. For S1 it's usually 6, for Master Programs, S2, usually 6,5. But for foundation programs, diploma, they need 5,5. There's a demand for a course which is more intensive. Often students finish high school here in Indonesia and they decide they want to study in Australia. We have therefore developed an intensive course so that they can fill in their time more effectively and really focus on the language studies in a simulated an English language environment. The 16 week course will be quite difficult and as the name suggested, intensive? Classes starts in the morning at 8.30 and then there are 3 classes, 2 in the morning and 1 after lunch. So the class will finish at 2.30. We will then encourage students to use our library or self-access materials to study for a further 2 or 3 hours every day. The students would be in the classroom for 5 hours a day. There would be breaks between classes and each day they will be socializing and talking to other students but using only English. After class they would be going to the library or the resource center and doing exercises in English again. If they are really smart and they all move to the same guesthouse, when they're at home they can speak English there as well. We're looking for students who are dreaming of studying overseas
- students who want to apply for scholarships overseas, students who are
highly motivated, young, enthusiastic, and of course students who are
prepared to work hard to achieve these goals'.
We have a number of students who study here in Surabaya from Balikpapan, Samarinda, Manado, Ujung Pandang, Makasar, as it is now. And they have time to study academic English intensively. But there are no schools offering that kind of course. So if they come to Surabaya to study English, they leave their families, they perhaps find their accommodation in Surabaya either kost or with a family, and they can really focus on their English without so many disturbances.
The IALF in Jakarta and the IALF in Bali have been running academic English programs for many years. We have done work for AUSAID, the Canadian Scholarship Program, and BAPENAS preparing students for study overseas. So yes, there's a lot of experience and a lot of resources. These courses have been scheduled to coincide with
the enrollment date for Australian universities, which are usually around
June-July, October, and February. So the course is finished and the students
have time to process their visas and organize all the necessary administration
before they go'. More about IALF Surabaya and Alex Alex has worked at the IALF Surabaya since 1997. He has lived in Indonesia for about 9 years and always in Surabaya. For 3 years IALF was situated at UNAIR but the school developed and grew in size and needed larger premises. The new IALF Surabaya is in Jalan Sumatera, which is 2 or 3 times the size of the old UNAIR premises.
Alex says IALF Surabaya will be continuing with their study preparation program. There will be 6 levels in Study Prep and some of the students who are going on to Masters Programs will do Academic Writing and Academic Discussion. There will also be SMP English, which is a course especially aimed at SMP students. There are 3 levels. The course is very much project and task-based. 'We want to get away from that sort of General English, grammar, approach to language learning. Students who are coming into SMU have good grammar skills but their confidence in speaking and expressing themselves need s a lot of extra work and practice. So these new IALF Surabaya courses aim to develop those things'. There are also plans to open an English Conversation Club at the new location to provide people and the public to come and sit, have a drink, have a chat - all in an English language environment. All students at IALF get automatic membership to the conversation club but if other members of the public would like to join, they can do so. There's a small administration fee for membership cards. |
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