MENDORONG POTENSI BERBAHASA ASING
Beberapa minggu terakhir ini, saya merasa sangat senang karena ada banyak kegiatan yang sangat kreatif dilakukan oleh aktivis mahasiswa IAIN Sunan Ampel. Tidak hanya kegiatan yang dilakukan untuk mahasiswa IAIN Sunan Ampel saja, tetapi juga kegiatan yang dilakukan untuk para siswa yang kelak mungkin akan menjadi mahasiswa IAIN Sunan Ampel. Sebut saja misalnya kegiatan Lomba Shalawat Banjari se Jawa Timur yang dilakukan oleh Ikatan Mahasiswa Tahfidzul Qur’an, Contest Matematika yang diselenggarakan oleh Himpunan Mahasiswa Matematika untuk siswa SMA atau sederajat, Rektor Cup untuk mencari bibit atlit dalam rangka menyongsong kegiatan Pioneer oleh Kementerian Agama RI dan kegiatan News Reading Contest Bahasa Inggris yang diselenggarakan oleh Mahasiswa Fakultas Adab IAIN Sunan Ampel.
Seluruh program yang sangat baik yang diselenggarakan oleh mahasiswa ini tentu saja menjadi pendorong bagi semuanya untuk memiliki kontribusi bagi pengembangan kemampuan penalaran mahasiswa atau siswa, penelusuran bakat dan minat mahasiswa atau siswa dan juga sebagai pendorong semangat berprestasi. Agar seseorang bisa berprestasi, maka dibutuhkan medium untuk mengaktualkannya. Makanya, medium untuk mengoptimalkan potensi tersebut mutlak diperlukan. Mengikuti David Mc Cleland, bahwa setiap manusia memiliki potensi untuk berprestasi. Dan untuk itu maka menciptakan peluang untuk berprestasi menjadi penting.
Hari ini, saya diminta untuk membuka acara yang sangat baik, yaitu reading contest dalam bahasa Inggris. Dan untuk ini, maka saya siapkan teks dalam bahasa Inggris –ala kadarnya—mengingat kesibukan luar biasa akhir-akhir ini, sehingga tidak mampu menyiapkan sambutan yang sangat baik. Berikut ini adalah sambutan saya.
First of all, I would like to say thanks for all of you. Especially, for Mr. Dr. Harisuddin, The Dean of Adab Faculty, the vice dDean of academic affairs, the vice dean of administration and finance, the vice dean of student affairs and all of the staffs. Also thanks for the chief of student senate of adab faculty, the chief of steering committee and organizing committee of this event and all of my student and the participants.
I am very happy this morning because I can attend the excellence program of the student, namely News Reading Contest in English Language. This program is very creative and outstanding. Therefore, I am so happy with this program. It is not only because this program is very important, but also very urgent in the world now and after. Reading contest as a part of reading capability is very urgent for the students and also for the lecturers. We know that reading is the window of science. Without reading we don’t know the development of science.
I usually ask to my self, how many hours every day do we spend the time for reading. As a student or a lecturer, we must read and understand in many topics of science or especially for the science that we concern.
And I usually ask for my student, how many hours that we need for study especially for studying the English language. We must understand that the English language is very important for us. We are now living in the global era, and the indicator of the people in the global era is how to communicate with the others by the English Language. We can enhance our social networks and communicate with the people in the other regions or states through our English ability.
For example, we can go to the other state, if we have the capability to understand their language. If we don’t have capability to understand the way they communicate, absolutely we can’t communicate with the others. By this statement I would like to give the stressing that language is very urgent in global era.
There are two indicators of global era. The first, there is no distance between one region and another. No distance between state and the others. We can communicate to the people in the other region by phone, by email, by face book, by twitter, by Friendster, etc. We can communicate to our friend easily. By the information and communication technology, the world is unity, and no distance.
The second is the universe of culture. In the conceptual idea, we call that as the popular culture. For example, many cultures in The United State can be implied in Indonesia. Many cultures in the west could be practiced in Jakarta, Surabaya etc. So, we are living in the global culture.
Many universities have the regulation about the proficiency of English language. For example the Airlangga University has a regulation that the student can be pass if their TOEFL is 450 score. So does The Surabaya Institute of Technology. The State Institute of Islamic Studies Sunan Ampel will make a regulation too in order to develop students’ English capability.
Now, we know that many universities have an international class. For example The President University in Karawaci Jakarta, The Pelita Harapan University in Jakarta, College of Business of Prasetya Mulya in Jakarta, Surabaya University in Surabaya and many public universities like Gajah Mada University, University of Indonesia, Bandung Institute of Technology etc. So that, the State Institute of Islamic Studies Sunan Ampel. To support this program, we see that the capability of English and Arabic language is very importance and urgent.
In the global era, if we want to compete in side, so we must have at minimally one capability and the prerequisite is the capability in English language. The meaning of this activity is to support our purpose to develop our capability in English language.
In the next time we must have any activities to push the our English proficiency by creating many programs of English Contest in order to improve and develop the capability of our English language.
In short, by the Basmalah, I open this Reading Contest of English program formally. Thank you very much and see you later in the other program.