English Teacher with more than 10 years of experience teaching IELTS, iBT, SAT Reading, Writing, and General English.

Find out more about Andrian Rhyse

• 1) Apakah Anda berbicara bahasa ini dengan lancar karena latar belakang Anda atau karena ada seorang guru atau tokoh yang menginspirasi Anda untuk mempelajari bahasa ini?

  It was my wife who inspired me to learn English.
  
  I started to develop a lot of interest in English when I was still in my first year in senior high school; it was May 5th 1993, to be exact. Honestly, before that day, my English was too poor to be proud of. Ever since that day, my English improved by leaps and bounds thanks to my Australian neighbour next door, who happened to have a gorgeous daughter on whom I had a crush.
  
  Her name's Maria, and she would be celebrating her 15th birthday on May 12th that year. I thought it was the perfect moment to give her something special that was unforgettable for her. Well, it was common for young boys in the era to express their interest to girls by sending them a recording of memorable songs on a cassette (no CDs or Spotify were invented at that time) along with the written lyrics.
  
  I'd decided to give her a song from Tommy Page called "A Shoulder to Cry On." Everything was perfect, the song was sweet, and I had some savings to buy a blank cassette for the music. Still, one problem remained, my English was too poor to transcribe the lyrics from the radio since I didn't have any written lyrics, nor did I have enough money to buy the original album. For the next three days, I transcribed blindly from the song I'd managed to record from a radio station on the air. I struggled until I was nearly at my wits' end, but I never gave up until I finished it.
  
  Even though she was smiling and frowning on her face while she was reading the transcribed lyrics on her birthday party, it was a successful mission. She became my girlfriend for the next six months until her family moved back to Australia along with her. I did a long-distance relationship with her until I proposed to her ten years later, and now she's my wife with two wonderful children.

• 2) Dapatkah Anda menyebutkan karakter atau tokoh yang hidup, historis atau fiktif yang menurut Anda merupakan representasi simbolik dari sebuah budaya bahasa yang anda ajarkan?

  They are the "Angels", people of a small remote northern tribe who once lived near the Danish-German southern border region (5th to 6th centuries).
  
  They emigrated, around AD 600, from the frontier to a land which they named "Englaland", derived from the genitive case from "Engle" ("Angels") and "Land" ("land"). Literally "land of the Angels." They named the country after themselves and spoke what we now know as "Old English", which is related to other Norse languages ​​in the Germanic family of languages.
  
  However, that has changed a lot since then. Today, we recognize that British English represents the culture of Great Britain, and American English represents the culture of the former British colony, the United States of America. In addition, other English speaking counties, such as the Republic of Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, adopted the culture of Great Britain because they were colonies of the same culture, except for the Canadian province of Quebec. where French is the primary language.
  
  In addition, African countries, such as South Africa, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Nigeria were also British colonies, so they speak English with different dialects because their local languages interfere with English.
  
  Last but not least, there are India and Pakistan. Although they were also British colonies, English represents neither their ancient nor current cultures.
  
  To sum up, history is strange. A small tribe in the remote north decided to leave their homeland and invaded and occupied the Celtic-speaking land we now call England. For all practical purposes, Celtic languages almost disappeared, and "Angles" dominated the world in many ways.

• 3) Apakah ada kata khas, frasa, tradisi, atau perilaku dalam bahasa yang Anda sukai?

  I find that English has different patterns compared to my native language, Bahasa Indonesia. Therefore, we cannot acquire English by simply learning it through naive translations.
  
  For me, English is a contextual language that can be pretty different from Bahasa Indonesia. Thus, to have a good command of English, we have to learn and be familiar with how the native speaker of English would say a specific context or expression.
  
  In my mother tongue, there is an expression for getting sick or ill, which can be hilarious when we translate it verbatim into English. The term is "badan saya tidak enak." The word-for-word translation is "my body is not delicious." Of course, we are not talking about cannibalism, but it simply says, "I don't feel well."

• 4) Mengapa berbicara bahasa ini penting bagi Anda?

  Once Charlemagne said, "to have another language is to possess a second soul." This is definitely true because the language we have is tightly related to culture and our way of thinking. Therefore, by having another language, we enrich ourselves with other cultures and other perspectives to deal with a certain problem we're trying to solve.
  
  Moreover, a lot of research around the globe has proven that bilingual children have better working memory skills and cognitive ability than monolingual children. Thus, it is important to learn English as a second language, not only will it potentially enhance our brain, but also it opens new possibilities and opportunities for us because English is widely used, and it means we can have a wider interaction and networking with people around the world.

• 5) Apa kesulitan utama dalam mempelajari bahasa ini dan apa yang dapat membantu Anda dalam proses pembelajaran?

  The main difficulty for Indonesian people to learn English is getting enough immersive exposure to English. Most of them know English through reading, and as a result, only a few can speak English. It seems that the level of education has nothing to do with English fluency and accuracy. Because English is supposed to be acquired, not be learned or studied.
  
  The best solution is to stay in English-speaking countries for at least a year, but this is not feasible for most Indonesians because the cost needed to go into a long home stay program is not affordable. Therefore, I always try to create an artificial condition to get my students an immersive exposure to English through available situations and sets of skills which is quite challenging because most students only care about getting an instant result with as little effort as possible. Remember, "No pain, no gain."

• 6) Ceritakan pengalaman unik atau menarik Anda yang pernah terjadi selama pengalaman Anda mengajar bahasa.

  In my opinion, a good teacher is an inspirational teacher to their students. Because when we can inspire our students, we have changed their tomorrow.
  
  Once I had a rebellious student who never paid respect to her teacher. She never did her homework and always came late to class. Most teachers would probably punish her or judge her as a bad student. However, I tried to look at the problem from a different perspective because I believe there's no such thing as a bad student; there is only a bad teacher. It might sound a bit cliche, but it's served me well.
  
  I tried to find the roots of the problem, and it turned out that she had a strict father. Her father wished her to be his successor to continue the family business. So, she would be sent to Singapore to study business and finance, which was none of her cup of tea. Since she would study abroad, her father took her to an English course to prepare for the IELTS exam, and there I was as her teacher.
  
  I showed her through some university advertisements that she could take more than one major at once, so it was a blessing instead of a curse that her father would send her to Singapore. The next day, she transformed from a rebellious student to a diligent and bright student. In the end, she got a flying colour in her IELTS result.

• 7) Bagaimana pengalaman Anda dapat membantu Anda meningkatkan keterampilan dan pengetahuan Anda tentang bahasa?

  My experience in acquiring English has brought me to the point that learning a language is also getting to know the culture and the pattern. I believe that this knowledge will make my next journey to learn another language after English to become easier. It is also applicable in teaching my students that I know better how to make them acquire English effectively.

• 8) Apa yang membuat Anda menjadi seorang Guru teladan dalam hal bahasa?

  Within the past ten years of teaching English, I have realized that pursuing passion is much better than doing a routine because when we do the same thing over and over again, we would forget the excitement of doing it. As a result, we would care less about our student's needs and difficulties. Passion drives me to constantly better my teaching, and most of all, it makes me a result-oriented teacher.