AAS45m1 Class

This one has been my second home for the last two months and will be continued until the next two months, which means we almost reached half of this course. We are fourteen people with a similarity in our major to be taken in the next study. We are under a general economics course, while I particularly plan to take master's degree in taxation, still closely related apparently. We have Simon Hotchkiss as our core teacher, Barbara Wiechecki as our cross-cultural instructor, Simone Samuels as study skill specialist,

Rina Dewanti as our library instructor and also Dedy Satriadhi as the computer-class instructor. Fortunately, we all are government officials with a range of institutions, such as State Audit Board, Directorate General of Taxes, LIPI, State University, also Echelon I under the Ministry of Finance.

at Our Munggahan Moment, before Starting the Holy Ramadhan

I, personally feel so thankful of having this class with good teachers which are beyond my expectation, as well as friends who always share joy, happiness also assignments (pfiuhhh) together. In addition, to keep in our memories, we already have a hoodie and a shirt with our class name and AAS icon thereon. Looks cool yeah :P Hopefully our friendship will be last forever...

Above (left-right): putri, mas cahya, mas agus, simon, mba wulan, mas tohari, puji, thariq
Below: rizki, pandu, cahyo, mas bram, me, novi, mas danang

6-7th week: Battles before Deserving a Holiday

Yeaaa...I am writing this post in my early holiday. During the last two weeks of my course in IALF, I would say that it was not that easy to pass through because I had to pass the third practice test in week 6, as well as do the IELTS pre-test and submit my 500-word essay draft in week 7.

The practice test was going like the previous, but I felt unfocused during the listening session and it resulted in a remained constant score compared to my preceding. Similarly, I thought that my writing also showed a decrease huhuhu. But, at least it was over right? and hopefully there will be an improvement since then. Moreover, as days went by, I also realized that I should regularly practice for the task 1 writing, I think it's getting harder now with a variety of the questions and thus the sample answers.

How about the pre-test? Honestly, I did no preparation for this one. But, surprisingly it made me feel relax during the test. I just tried to enjoy doing the listening and reading tests. Hehehe, so it might be true that doing something for pleasure could benefit more.

Lastly, the essay assignment, which I initially thought as a hard one, was ended up. I should admit that I really enjoy the writing and the research but not for the short time-limit. It was stressful to finish reading the journals, making the annotated bibliography and also writing the essay in the given time. But, one thing I thereby learned is that having an adequated annotated bibliography would definitely help you easily and quickly accomplishing the writing. I proved it. Thus, it becomes a good bridging into my future assignments in uni, in sya Allah. And alhamdulillah I got a good feedback from my teacher yet "there are still a few structural problems in the first and second main bodies" he said. It will be my another homework for the rest of the holiday because it may be too early to revise right now. Hope the holiday could be a refreshment before starting the second half of the course. :)

       

5th Week: Dealing with Paraphrasing and Summarising

Let's talk about what I have done in this week. We got so much new knowledge also experience, which were mostly about writing skill. Paraphrasing and summaring...yaa we all know and must be already familiar with this tasks, but I then realised that it was not as simple as my previous thought. How come?

Parapharasing...mainly, this technique becomes essential for referencing someone's writing. In paraphrasing, we only restate the paragraphs (or sentences) in a different style. Otherwise, we would be considered to do plagiarism if we just copy the sentence although we put the citations. At the same time, we should retain the same meaning. 

While, in summarising, we would deal with reducing unnecessary details and examples yet stressing the key information in order to have a quick and easy understanding. Before doing this task, a note-taking is suggested since it helps us getting the key words as well as the main ideas.

Both of them are very useful, I think, as in our future study we will get many books and also journals to read so these techniques will enable us to grasp their substances. Furthermore, it will help us coping with the assignment which is mainly writing tasks. I really should thank the teacher for introducing me the proper methods...hehe. In fact, the teacher also gave us  an assignment to summarise an article which was due on friday. To finish this task, I did reading first, making note, drafting and ended up with a proofreading by my classmate. I also got some comments from Putri, and finally it triggered me to revise some parts.

Image was taken from www.ournettalks.com

Visa and Family Entry --- Getting an Update

According to my initial plan, I was sure that I, Kinanthi also my mom could depart to Australia concurrently. Yet, after attending a briefing held by AAS pre-award team, I was disappointed as they said that it would only possible for a particular case, such as a breastfeeding mom. huhuhu Moreover, I, again, confirmed my case to their representative when conducting another briefing session. Unfortunately, I got the same answer. They asked me to check out avac website in order to get information of visa. Also, they suggested that it is better for my husband applying visitor visa, instead of dependent visa during his 3-months-stay plan in Australia next year because of an insurance requirement for a dependent visa which costs significantly.

Regarding the visitor visa's features, they told me that this visa allows a tourist staying in Australia for 3 months period only. It means that my mom who will accompany me and Kinanthi should return to Indonesia every 3 months :( I still can not imagine since my mom is almost sixty regardless that she usually travels alone when going to Semarang to visit papa's grave, but travelling overseas is different. Later on, I will contact avac office to get detail information about visa features and other related requirements. I hope there will be an easy way for me, Kinanthi, my mom also my husband arriving and staying in Australia as our prior plan...in sya Allah.

4th Week: Road to Practice Test 2

Image is taken from www.canstockphoto.com

So many things happened this week, the 2nd speaking practice test on Monday, doing CC-Seminar, receiving assignment comment, as well as having 2nd practice test on Friday (usually IALF conducts practice test once in every two weeks). 

Well, I had no preparation for the speaking test, even though I have already seen in the timetable that we would occupy the language laboratory on Monday :D. Consequently, I still felt bad with my performance. However, I realised that I seldom practice speaking, apart from the class activities so I plan to increase my speaking-practice activities since then. 

That's why I seriously did a rehearsal, a day before having the CC seminar. I thought this would be a good opportunity to improve my speaking skill. The seminar was done relatively smooth because luckily I got such a great group which each member considered this seminar as a sharing session, so there was no reason for being challenged, nervous and so on. We, therefore, had an exciting discussion and definitely I should thank Barbara for giving us this project since we got so much useful information helping us to cope with transportation matters in Australia, etc without doing research for that topics. 

Next, I also obtained comments for my one-sided essay assignment. The teacher pointed out on my language which, in some parts, still need to be improved while overall he gave me a relatively good grade (Alhamdulillah :)). However, it motivated me to do more writing exercises and keep improving my writing skill.

Lastly, we had our practice test again huh. As usual, I was struggling with the reading and listening as well while surprisingly I have finished my writing tasks, unlike the first test (although I am not sure with the result). I hope that the more we have practice test the more well-prepared we will be for the real battle.