Scholarship / DEVELOPING AN AFFORDABLE ONLINE ENGLISH COURSE FOR MIDDLE-LOWER LANGUAGE LEARNER NEEDS (#1 ESSAY) [2]

Dear reviewers, here I attach my leadership and influence essay for my Chevening application. I hope you wouldn't mind to leave some feedbacks. Thanks in advance!

When I was an undergraduate student in 2016-2020, I intentionally took part in various activities, events, and job. I am aware that in my city, Samarinda, the cost of English course is rarely affordable for all economic background, especially those who are in the middle-lower level. Having such emerging fact that was happening around me, I decided to start to take some real actions that were possible to me.

I joined an English club in my city and began to teach English for free in a local orphanage. Although it only lasted for around two months, I was so grateful to know that their motivations to learn English were incredibly growing in each meeting. I initiated to approach, to motivate, and to understand their state of mind before began to deliver English lesson in a simple and undemanding way. Yet, the fact was that they admitted that the class was very helpful, at least to follow English subject in their schools.

Furthermore, in my university, I registered myself in an organization of my department namely English Students Association (ESA) and voluntarily taught children who live nearby my campus through one of the organization's programs so called ESA Fun Teaching. Most of them were coming from a low-economic background. I was teaching a group of four and I was quite surprised that I have to deal with their attitudes, both verbally and physically. I attempted to inspire and influence them by demonstrating a good way to talk and behave and told them that it was an important point to follow to have many good friends. Time passed by, and I found them started to remind each other when one of them were doing or saying unpleasant things.

The aforementioned experiences encouraged me to develop EnglishLab.id, a private English course where I and my colleague are the teachers, a couple of months before I started my class in my undergraduate degree. After three years providing offline classes, I proposed the idea to open affordable-online classes. EnglishLab.id started to post useful English material on Instagram before offering the online program afterward. Today, EnglishLab.id have been trusted by around 21.000 students, up to four programs, and a total of 13 team members. Additionally, it will shortly launch a TOEFL preparation program that I have initiated to be developed in July 2020. Apart from the offered paid programs, our Instagram account @englishlab.id is still active in posting materials related to English and self-development.

In conclusion, I have tried to lead EnglishLab.id to be a platform that language learners across Indonesia from various backgrounds can afford. However, I am desired to widen my experience and knowledge to cope with problems in language education. Thus, I believe that I need to pursue my masters in the UK to be able to create more program developments that can meet Indonesian language learners' needs with less expense. In which, it will consequently support partnerships between Indonesia and the UK in science and innovation to develop a knowledge-based economy.