As a leading English language institution in Indonesia, committed to quality learning, Lembaga Bahasa dan Pendidikan Professional LIA (LBPP-LIA) believes the importance of providing English language teachers with teacher development programs aimed at enhancing their professionalism. Thus, in commemoration of LBPP-LIA 50th Anniversary, on Saturday, July 18th 2009, LBPP-LIA Pontianak held a one day seminar on Learning English and Content with the subtopic “ Enhancing students’ ability in using English to learn and learning to use English, featuring Ms. Selestin Zainuddin, M Hum and Ali Aljufri Spd from Teacher Training and Development Sub-directorate as the key speakers.
The seminar, located at ASMI_ABA Campus on Jalan Imam Bonjol, attracted one hundred teachers consisting of 20 kindergarten teachers, 17 elementary school teachers, 7 junior high school teachers, 8 senior high school teachers, 16 vocational school teachers, 17 university students and 15 teachers from LBPP-LIA Pontianak itself. Because of their various backgrounds, the participants were divided into 2 classes, each of them with 50 participants. The workshop had 3 sessions: A presentation on “An Introduction to Content and Language Integrated Learning”, a workshop on “The Implementation of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in Classroom and a question and answer session on “Challenges for English Teachers in Implementing Content and Language Integrated Learning”.
The seminar was beneficial and got positive responses from the participants. For example, Mada, a junior high school teacher, mentioned that she had actually applied this CLIL but wasn’t aware of the term. Through this workshop she understood the theories better and she wanted to apply them in her classroom. Uray, a teacher from elementary school, expressed his difficulties in teaching English because of lack of facilities and no positive support from the school. He got lots of suggestions and solutions from the speaker as well as from other participants. Another teacher from SMP Koperasi, Asmin Adi Purna confessed that it was the best workshop on CLIL that he had ever attended. The speaker helped him to understand bilingual concept better through CLIL. He hoped that LBPP-LIA could hold another event with different topics to enrich the knowledge of the English practitioners in Pontianak.