Introduction: English in Music Program

The Kolej Mara Seremban (KMS) English Tour program is a joint effort between the students of Mara Seremban College and the college itself in facilitating and motivating secondary school students to learn English. Since it was first founded in early April 2010, the program has been to various schools all around Malaysia such as Tunku Abdul Razak Integrated school (InSTAR) in Pahang, MRSM Kepala Batas in Penang, Ampangan Vocational school and Tunku Jaafar Technical High School in Seremban. 

The aims of the program are to increase awareness among Malaysian students on the importance of English and also to motivate them to learn this wonderful language. The KMS English Tour programme focuses on using interactive English-learning activities that emphasises heavily on building up the students' confidence in speaking, creativity in writing as well as nurturing a genuine interest on the language itself.

The English in Music program is another project which could be considered as the side-project that compliments each and every aspect of what KMS English Tour program module is all about which revolves around the 4 main objectives:-

1. To boost up the students' confidence level in using the English language

2. To help the students to be creatively minded in producing ideas and expressing them through writings

3. To guide the students to other alternatives in learning English

4. To motivate the students to learn English

The 2 weeks English in Music program is a class based program basically uses anything related to Music (eg. songs, lyrics, melodies, singers and etc.) as its main teaching tool to bring out the students' interest on the English language. This program could only accommodate not more than 50 students per class and most of the activities in this program are designed specifically to fulfil all the objectives mentioned above. For example, students are highly and often motivated and encouraged by the facilitators to volunteer and share their ideas and opinions to the class whenever a topic is discussed. 

The program as the whole as well as the activities in it are also much more personal in terms of the relationship between the students and the tutor/facilitator. The students who are chosen to be part of this program will be divided to a smaller group comprising 3-4 students in which each group will be assigned to a tutor. The objective here is to provide an environment in which the students being in a smaller team would be able to bond with the tutors and feel comfortable enough to allow the assigned tutor to help and guide them throughout the intensive 2 weeks program. However, the class will be mainly conducted by a facilitator known as the 'Conductor' that has not been assigned to any group. The Conductor helps to guide all the groups as a whole throughout the activities - conducting discussions involving the whole groups, calling out volunteers from each group to share their ideas and opinions and many more that involves the whole class.

Hopefully, this program will be as successful as the KMS English Tour program!

Hazim :)