On Saturday (27/10/18) English Language Education and Arabic Language Department collaborated with English Language Education Department ofUKDW (Universitas Kristen Duta Wacana) to hold an extensive reading gathering. Around 300 students of PBI and PBA UMY and PBI UKDW joined the event from 8 to 11 a.m. This program aims at building student’s interest and awareness on reading, Andi Wirantaka, in his opening remark mentioned, “The foci of this program is to build students’ awareness to start reading and habituate the reading habit. And when it become a habit,then it will be a need, so finally they can be an avid reader”.
There were two sessions of the event. The first session is a sharing session with the speaker and second session is participant’s activity. Two speakers, Jordyna Austine and Graziela Dunarto shared their journey to become avid readers. Jordyna Austine was an avid reader, part-timer traveller, and an writer. Graziela Dunarto shared about her experience in extensive reading that affect her academic field and the tips to build the reading habit. The effect of extensive reading in her academic field is proven by her achievement in many competitions,especially in speech, storytelling and debate. In addition, she obtained high IELTS score and became an assisstant project of her lecturer’s research. She also mentioned about the tips to build a reading habit. She suggested to start reading with the book that students may be interested in, because that will make you like to read it. However, if you chose the book that you were not interested in, the desire to read that book will decrease.
The second speaker, Graziela Dubarto is a senior high school student, an illustrator, an animator and an extensive reader. Due to several reasons, she can not attend the program, but she sent a video about her experience in reading. She mentioned that reading can expand our knowledge, whether in general science or in linguistic terms, such as increasing our vocabulary and grammar structure. It refers to her experience when she got 610 for her TOEFL score because of her extensive reading habit.
In the second session of extensive reading gathering, the participants work on a quiz through Kahoot, wherein, they had to scan a QR code. The,n the story will appear after they scan the QR code, and they had to answer the question in Kahoot refer to the story. This is an effort that simultanously an ice-breaking to build reading habit among participants . One of the participant, Norman Sadiq said, “This program is affect me a lot. The information that is delivered in the gathering is really usefull and I can understand clearly what the speaker was talking about. The speaker is really good as well, and also the ice-breaking through kahoot made the gathering more fun and I hope this program can continue and give more inspiration to reading for many more people.”
Evi Puspitasari, M.Hum, one of the initiators of the program, shared her hope, ”Collaborating with UKDW is an attempt to show to students, that they are not alone. People of other universities also share the same struggle of advancing their English. This similarity hopefully can motivate them to read more. In the end, this reading date program is hoped to empower them through promoting reading habit among students.”
(zizi/puput)