JET, Terminal Jerteh, Gate SMA Ittifakiah

I apologize for the radio silence over the past few months, it wasn't a literary ploy to build suspense for the TOEFL JET story. I've been engaged in flying below the radar.The second JET program took off from SMA Ittifakiah in Jerteh, Terengganu. It was a collection of 3 schools from Jerteh and Kuala Besut. Since this was return flight for Ezani and his team, things went really smoothly. There was some unforeseen turbulence in the form of tie for first place in the group competition. Therefore, the flash decision made from the control tower was to have a shootout between the two teams to determine a winner. 

During this program, we followed the same schedule:

8am - 10am                Instruction 

10:30am - 1pm          TOEFL Junior Test

2:30pm - 5:15 pm      Fun Activities

Fortunate for the students, they received proper guidance and realistic practice. The name of the TOEFL game, both Reading and Listening, is finding the keywords. Students must first locate the keywords in the questions then the answers before diving into the text. Skim/ scan reading skills were refreshed. The next step after finding keywords is thinking of similar words. The technique of crossing out wrong answers was also transferred to the students. Since the TOEFL Junior test is multiple choice without any penalties for wrong answers, student are trained to never leave the answer blank (Don't stress, guess!). 

The participants enjoyed the games and the oasis to practice their English skills in an enjoyable setting. One fringe benefit of the program was I had the golden opportunity to work with 2 sterling colleagues, T. Pravin and T. Shahida, from the Access School Teacher Training. They treated me to the season's sweetest and most delectable durian that deserves mention.

If you wondering what happen next in the JET story, let me tell you. JETS had a third program in the state of Negris Sembilan, however, the program was only the test and activities. By the end of the year, we were shy of our target of 6 states. Nonetheless, there is still a happy ending. The MoE extended the program for 2019 too.