HHHC9301 Life Long Learning
It’s all started when Dr. Adliah came into our class and said, “Those who get Band 4 and above
in MUET may leave, this talk is mainly for those who get below than that. However, if you want
to listen, you can stay.” So, here I am, writing this report because I choose to stay and eventually
attracted to join the English Enhancement Program handled by Dr. Adliah. What comes in my
mind when I agree to join this program is – I need something to enhance my pronunciation
because basically I just pronounce words the way I want. I used to be very bad in English and I
learned a lot through songs, movies and books but I think depending solely on that are not
enough for me to improve. I need more. Band 4 in MUET doesn’t means anything because there
are still people who manage to get higher than that, Band 5 and 6. So this program offered me
something that I want – room for improvement. Besides, knowledge is not something that dies, it
keeps on growing so there’s a lot to be learned and it will never be enough. Learning is a never
ending process, it’s a lifelong journey.
Okay, I think we have had enough with ‘how I joined this program’, so let see the
benefits of joining this program. The aims of this program are to enhance communication
competency in English and to enhance academic literacy skill in English. That’s the aim written
in the pro forma of this program and yes that is my aim too. Before started, I have to admit that
at the beginning I thought that this program might be easy for me since I have had an English
course with British Council before which mainly teaches about how to communicate with others.
Besides, I just need to repeat and pronounce sentences correctly but well life was not a bed of
roses. It does not give what you want or think of; it gives you what you need. This program was
not that easy and stress-free. Since I want to improve my pronunciation, this program really
helps in that thing. Just one problem, it taught us the British accent which is very challenging.
Well you can see how bad my pronunciation was from the picture below:
Yes, I do have an English course with British Council before, but they focus more on
how you communicate confidently, not really on how you pronounce words correctly using a
British accent. However, as I said before, learning is a never ending process You might think that
your pronunciation is good enough, but it’s not and when you have pronounce it well, there are
still many other accents used in pronouncing that words. So, through this program I learned to
pronounce words in British way in which they tend to prefer a deeper voice and they do not roll
their Rs and they also love to add ‘uhhh’. For example, in pronouncing ‘here’, it will sound like
‘heeuhh’ I have had problem with sentences containing this particular word before I realized the
correct way of pronouncing it. Thus, there’s always thing to be learned. Always.
Oh yes, have I mentioned that through this program, I get to know that I have difficulties
in pronouncing words started with the letter ‘H’such as how, here, help and hello. It was quite
funny when you can’t pass the minimum required marks for sentence as simple as “Hello, good
morning. Can I help you?” Only then I know that they pronounce the letter H differently for each
word so it is really crucial for me to carefully listen to the way they pronounce it, improving my
literacy skill too.
The fascinating things about this program are it does not only evaluating your
pronunciation but also the timing and rhythm of your speech, loudness and pitching of your
voice. This part was challenging too because sometimes when you were too immersed in
pronouncing the sentences correctly, you might have neglected the timing and rhythm of your
speech. For example, in the sentence, “Just a moment, I’ll have a look.” I will definitely have
problem with either the words ‘moment’ or ‘look’ because you have to stress on that words.
From what I notice when I focus too much on the pronunciation, I will have lower marks
compared to the usual in the timing section. That is why I have to be very careful not only with
the way I pronounce it but also with the timing of my speech because there was quite a long
pause between the words ‘moment’ and ‘I’ll’. Below is my progress after few weeks doing this
program:
I have improved a little bit on my pronunciation, pitch, timing and loudness. Well, I
personally think that it’s not how much have you improved that counts but are you improving or
not in that short duration. I have finally passed the minimum passing marks which is 60% in the
overall section! So, I’m quite happy with my improvement but well who doesn’t? Still, I should
not be easily satisfied with that little achievement. I need to evaluate myself and try to be better
since there were lots of thing to be improved.
As I mentioned before, this program was not that stress-free. There were times when I
was really stressed out because I could not reach the minimum passing marks. Sometimes, I need
to repeat the sentence about 20 times before finally reached the passing marks and sometimes it
could go beyond that. This is how I learned that this program does not only teach me on how to
improve my communication skills, but also on how to be patient when thing doesn’t go the way
you intend it to be. I also realized that, if I’m doing this when I was in a good mood, it was much
easier for me to reach the passing mark compared to the time where I was in a bad condition.
Because of that, I start to think that maybe that’s why we are being advise not to say anything
when we are mad; not only because we might say something that’s going to hurt someone’s but
also due to how different we may sound at that time (our voices pitch and loudness may go a
little bit higher than usual). I have never thought of this thing before, well I guess it’s never too
late to learn something new right? Below was my latest achievement in this program:
As the conclusion, I would say that I’m proud to be part of this program because
watching was not the same as doing it. I used to watch people doing this but doing it yourself,
the experience is priceless. It is funny how small thing could teach you a lot. Thus, other than
enhancing my communication competency and my patient, I finally get to understand why it is
so important for me to actually have a lifelong learning. A continuous learning process is
essential because everything around us are constantly changing and improving so why didn’t
we?