Bulan: Oktober 2011

Interested again in Pencils

After filling a portofolio form of lecturer certification, I feel free now. I took a trip around Yogyakarta, and after buying a lot of book at gramedia Yogyakarta, I try to enhance my writing skill in in English. It is about pencil, the oldest tool for modern writing. You have used it when studying at elementary school.

In nineteen century, the philosophers  David Henry Thoreou developed pencil by his family manufacture. He separate pencil according to hardness and carbon contain in number 2, 3, 4, and so on. But the production stopped when England had found a big graphite resources which is a main component of pencils.

One advantage in using pencil is we can erase if we have an error on our writing. Of course we can use eraser for pen, but it leaves a stain in the paper, and sometime can break the paper. The pencil is appropriate for children who learn writing. It also has no dangerous liquid in ink as a mixture.

Now I always use pencil when taking an IELTS course at PPB UGM Yogyakarta. I do not know why I love pencil now. When I write something using a pencil, I can express my emotion and of course I use it for TOEFL and IELTS exam.

About Rp. 1 Billion/Person for Ph.D Dikti Scholarship

On 6-7th October 2011 some university in Australia gave presentation about their university at language education center of gadjah mada university (PPB UGM). The university are Curtin, Sidney, Adelaide and many more. After they had presented, the Dikti staff, Mrs Merry, gave an explanation about the scholarship. She explained why Dikti, the government institution which has a highest authority of high education, give 1,000 place for scholarship to study in Australia.

The English course at PPB UGM now is for second time (Batch – 2). From this course Dikti hope all of participants pass the IELTS score above 6.0, because some university require IELTS score 7.0. Fortunately, some subject (it my subject :)), only require minimum IELTS scor 6.0 and Mrs Merry, as an agent for scholarship in Australia, give dispensation if some one who participate in this course have IELTS score only 5.5, but he/she have to attand to 10 weeks IELTS course held by INSEARCH. Fortunately it’s free. At the end of speaking Mrs merry said that if you have finished your study by Dikti scholarship, you must go back to Indonesia, because one person for Ph.D degree, our government needs Rp. 1 Billion.

Checking Your Writing

Writing something in your blog will make your writing ability improve. For someone, writing is a difficult thing. How to make our writing easy to understand, interresting, coheren and grammatically right is the reason for someone to avoid writing. I thinks we must try to write somethings about everything for example, your own idea about hot news, your teaching’s modul or just write about your expression.

In order our writing skill improve, of course we must check our writing. In UK or USA, may be you must pay someone to check your writing, but I suggest you to check your writing by using information technology. You must be know google (www.translate.google.com), the famous sites, that can be help you correcting the wrong words. If you want to check your writing for errors or plagiarism, you should use another site for example http://www.grammarly.com

This site is very interesting for me as an IT lecturer because it include some soft computing algorithms. They can know weather our spelling, punctuation, style are good enough. It also know if our writing is a plagiarism. Here is the answer about my last writing, what a bad result !