Mathematic For All

Mathematics was born from the idealism that everyone had in their own mind. That idealism came from the reality problem that had to be solved. That is why mathematics is used to solve some problem with its unique method. Mathematics was taught for a long time, generation by generation. It is a precious science for life, because it’s needed for human life.

          In my class, Professor Marsigit told us about his experience with his granddaughter. He taught his granddaughter about the concept of “sebentar” and “lama”.  It’s a simple concept, and it’s the beginning way to have experience about mathematics. We can’t learn well mathematics when we have not any experience about it. We have to remember that experience strengthen our intuition. That is why experience became one important thing in learning mathematics.

             Mathematics need to be learned for all people, not only for university student, but also the secondary school. It is learned to give experiences for the student. By having those experiences, the student can understand many concept of mathematics. Moreover, the student has a capability to implement that concept to the real life. That is useful because mathematics become the basic skill to solve most problems in the world.

             In an opportunity at my class, my other lecturer, Mr. Ilham, told his opinion about mathematics for younger learner. He said that to learn any concept of mathematics, we should have an experience about it first. Students have to learn from what they have already known. It is impossible to learn something that has no relation to our life. So, the duty for us is to looking for what they have already learn that related to their life. Usually, we can use game as the media to learn some concept of mathematics. The younger learner is near with game, so they usually do not find it difficult. The game can be their experience to understand the concept of mathematics.

             Learning activity such as I written above, usually called contextual learning. It means every learning activity related (to) and ready (for). Everything that we learn always has the aspect of relation and readiness. It has to relate in order to ready, Professor Marsigit said. Readiness is an important thing for us to face the new challenge. If we are ready for something, we will do it well. From readiness, we can reach our goal, to be success.

The Journey Of Mathematics in Our Life

            Mathematics is a familiar science in this world. Not only in the school, We meet mathematics in every single part of our life. We know that mathematics is an useful science that can be used to calculate something. When we meet some problems, we can use our knowledge about mathematics to solve it. But we need to understand, how to solve it in mathematics way.

            Many people say that mathematics is about number. But, when my lecturer, Professor Marsigit asked about our memory in number, actually I don’t really memorize it. He asked us, since when we understand about number exactly. I really don’t remember the first time I understand about number. But I know about number, such like number one (1), two(2), etc. Professor Marsigit explained to us that is because an ‘intuition’. Intuition is a condition when we understand something, but we don’t really know the first time we understand about it.  So, we can assume that we start learn mathematics using our intuition.

            Intuition can be obtained from our experiences in our life. To start learning mathematics, so we should have experience about it first. To strengthen our intuition, we have to get a lot of experiences in our life. But, we should make sure that experience is a good experience for us. That experience should be appropriate with our purpose in learning mathematics. As an adult people, we know that we can learn many things from our experience. Many people say that experience is the best teacher for us. So, we have to be wise to do something, because it can be a valuable experience for us.

            We understand that to learn something, we must walk on our process as well as mathematics. Those experience that can be strengthen our intuition, include in the process. For young learner, they usually be taught with concrete mathematics. When they grow up and understand about concrete mathematics, then they can be taught with formal mathematics or abstract mathematics, or university mathematics. So, mathematics is a journey, and we have to walk on it process. Its process can develop our intuition and our knowledge.

How to Improve My English

            There are many ways to be expert in English. We need to understand, what should we do to improve our English competence. I think it is important for us, as a candidate of a teacher. Moreover, that English competence is a basic skill so that we can compete in the world wide. In my class, Professor Marsigit told us about how to improve our English.            Before we go to the point of improving our English, we need to equalize our perception about English. We assume that English is life, so that we can use a life method to improve our English. We will walk on our process, so we need to be disciplined.            First thing that we can do to improve our English is make a continuous learning. English is life, and life is continues, so we have to learn it continuously. We can do many exercises, but we need to do it continuously. From that, what we’ve learned can be completely absorbed in ourselves.            Second thing that we can do is get various method of learning English. From that various method, our knowledge can be expanded. We can know many things about English, in many view point. Therefore, we will get many experiences that can we use for our future. To get that various method, we should be creative. We can look for it in the internet, in the library, and we can ask that from our teacher.            To be a professional, we have to establish our habit of study. Habit of study is an important thing for us, because a good habit can afford a good thing. To establish that habit of study is not easy, because sometimes we need to push ourselves, so we can walk on our good habit of study. That habit can develop our character, so we can be a professional learner at least. In case that we are adult, so we can do that habit of study as an adult people. We don’t need to be a lazy people, because that is not the character of an adult people.            To establish our habit of study, we should have a plan of study. We are required to build a plan that we can do and useful for us. We have to understand what we need. Moreover, we have to understand how do we study well. From that, we can put it down to our plan of study, that compatible with ourselves. When we have our plan of study, we can do it diligently. Practice is a good way to improve our ability of English. First practice that we can do is about writing in English. we should do this continuously, so we will have a habit of writing in English. We can write about our reflection, some stories, poetry, or maybe a novel. Second practice can we start from listening English. we can listen some music in English, English conversation, a movie that use English (Without Indonesian subtitle), or from video. Then, we can also reading many things about English. We can read many book that use English as its language, we can read newspaper in English, or we can also read many things in the internet with English. To express our English, we can talk directly in English. We can imitate someone speaks in the video. We can also write something first, and then we talk about it. It can improve our ability of speaking in English fluently.            In our old school, we usually learn English to understand some daily conversation. In case that we are a student of mathematics education, so that English can be used for us to explain about mathematic, education, etc. English can be implemented in our study, also implemented in our future, when we become a teacher.            There are some components for us in learn English. First component is motivation. Motivation appears inside us. Motivation can give us a spirit to do the best. Second component is facility. In the class, there are some facility that has given to us. For example, article in English, exercise, etc. It can help us to accept English deep down in ourselves. The third component is a facilitator. We have our facilitator, Professor Marsigit and Mr. Ilham. They are our lecturer, that teach us about English. The last component is resources. We need to have some resources when we learn English. We use it as our references to learn about English.            English is life, we need to make it sure that is acceptable for us as our assume. So, we should enjoy to learn it. I think, we need to enjoying life so we can walk on it well. Same as life, English can be walked on with enjoy. So enjoy it. Thank you.