VELiSS

Recruiting travellers of native speakers of English whilst visiting as tourists to assist with the teaching and learning of English is a model that can be applied to countries where English is a foreign language to improve populace’s English proficiency. It is a constructive exposure for English learning.

The importance and strategic role of English proficiency to boost nation’s competitiveness is widely recognised. It is believed that a high proficiency in English among populace is an asset to improve nations’ competitiveness as it will help people to relate and communicate productively with other. In countries where English is a foreign language, like Indonesia, to improve populace’s English proficiency has always been a huge task and faces numerous problems. It is a huge task partly because providing effective English learning programs relatively require a big investment. Among the problems of English teaching and learning in Indonesia are the practice of English teaching still dominated by traditional method focusing on the structure of English, low competency of English teachers and very rare and limited opportunities to learn and practice English. This project aims to increase English proficiency of teachers and learners. In doing so, the project will recruit volunteers of native speakers of English to assist with teaching and learning English. This project adopts volunteer-tourism concept. Meaning that whilst visiting Indonesia as tourists, this project will encourage and facilitate travellers from English speaking countries to involve in the project. A chance to directly interact with English-Speaking foreigners is a constructive exposure for English learning and offers some practical answers to the problems. First, native speakers feel extremely comfortable with the language so they can use the language in a playful and dynamic way that can facilitate light and fun learning. Also, they can provide much more authentic learning. Second, native speakers will transmit far much better pronunciation equally to learners and their teachers. Last, the fact that the volunteers come from English speaking countries can work as an unconscious trigger for the learners to speak English. All these will improve learners’ English proficiency beyond their English structural knowledge.

English learning programs for young people that effectively develop their English communicative competence are very rare particularly for those who are economically unfortunate to attend commercial English courses. In today's globally connected world and culturally diverse workforce, young people may miss opportunities only because they cannot productively communicate in English. The VELiSS aims to learn and build knowledge and skills on the area of English proficiency improvement to prepare active and informed global youths ready for the world and ready for work.

I am a strong believer of "butterfly effect" that we are all connected in one way or another and a small cause can bring big impacts. Thus, I believe that by offering global communities (English-speaking travellers/tourists) opportunities to assist with the learning of English in locals' schools and community learning centers,offers great benefit to future of young people's lives by helping improving their English proficiency. In the long run, it is hoped that by connecting global community to help local young people, we can foster a more peaceful, sustainable and prosperous world.

The overarching outcome of the project is to improve English proficiency of participants of this project. However, this project is also expected to deliver following outcomes:

• Enhanced motivation to learn English.
• Enriched teachers’ English language teaching strategies.
• Improved oral English communicative competence among teachers and students.
• Increased the number of tourists visiting respected regions/countries.
• Boosted local, regional and national economy.
• Strengthened linkage between countries.

Review of documents (report, list of Participants)

• Observation

• Interviews (individual or group interview, structured, semi-structured, or open-ended)

• Questionnaire (survey)

- 1 school for 1 native of speaker of English volunteer with 200 students.