WITH the slogan “Unleash Your Potential Within,” the Terengganu government, the state education department, Yayasan Terengganu and Petro-nas have organised the Mega Trenglish Camp for yet another year.
This collaborative effort enabled 240 Form Four students to attend a three-day programme facilitated by the Terengganu Hired English Language Personnel (T-HELP) while English teachers from selected schools acted as adjudicators for the competitions.
The goal of this camp is to encourage intellectual interaction and healthy competition among students who are expected to build a positive mindset as they strive to become fearless learners in mastering the English language.
This programme has helped students experience different learning styles as they were given the chance to improve their language skills through English competitions that provided equal opportunities for all campers to participate and prove their potential.
The competitions helped students to activate their multiple intelligence too; for instance, students used verbal and linguistic skills as they joined public speaking and scrabble competitions that tested their speaking and vocabulary skills.
While journal-writing activity helped students with their intrapersonal intelligence, the English forum and debate competitions developed their interpersonal skills as they shared and gained knowledge on different issues discussed during the competitions.
These competitions taught students about respecting different opinions, teamwork, professionalism, decision-making and analytical thinking skills.
In addition, the Newspaper in Education (NiE) activity challenged students’ level of imagination and creativity as they worked in small groups to create replicas of different objects using old newspapers.
The finished projects were later displayed in their respective booths to be evaluated by the judges. During this process of evaluation, students were tested on their confidence level and presentation skills as they explained about their projects and answered impromptu questions.
This programme taught students about hardship, showmanship and friendship. It may be competition-based but students were made to realise that there is nothing wrong with being second or third as it is the shared knowledge and time spent together that matter.
In fact, meaningful and beautiful memories are made of tears and laughter.
As this camp combined participants from both daily and elite schools with different levels of English proficiency, some have changed from zero to hero while others, from hero to superhero. But all of them can finally say that they love English 3,000.
MUHAMAD SOLAHUDIN RAMLI
Marang, Terengganu