Cinta vs Harta

“Maaf, Ka kita akhiri saja hubungan ini” suaranya memecahkan keheningan malam ini. Seketika pikiran dan nafasnya nya terhenti bersamaan dengan degup jantung nya, dia serasa mayat hidup yang tak mampu bergerak. Rasa sedih, bingung, kaget, marah, kecewa dan segala rasa negatif berkecamuk dalam hati dan pikirannya. Hanya satu kata yang terucap bergetar dari bibirnya masih dengan tatapan kosong, “ Kenapa, Hans ?” “karena kita udah nggak sejalan lagi, Ka “ sahut Hans singkat dengan sikap dingin “ apanya yang udah nggak sejalan ? 4 tahun nggak cukup untuk bukti kalo kita sejalan ! “ jerit Kika sambil memeluk pinggang Hans. Tangisnya pecah namun hal itu tak mampu memecahkan sikap dingin Hans yang seketika menggenggam tangan Kika dan melepaskan dari pinggangnya. “ Bukan gitu, Ka. Aku nggak bisa jelasin sekarang ke kamu, pokoknya menurutku kita udah nggak sejalan dan percuma kalo kita tetep maksain lanjut. Titik ! ” jawab Hans singkat dan tegas dan berjalan menembus kegelapan malam. “ Hans, tunggu !” teriak Kika sambil berlari namun teriakan nya tak kunjung membuat Hans membalikkan badan bahkan menoleh saja pun tidak.

Sebuah taksi berhenti di depan rumah Kika. Rumah sederhana berwarna biru yang hanya dikelilingi oleh pagar kayu berwarna putih. Ketika Kika membuka pintu, suasana di rumah sudah sepi dan gelap seperti suasana hatinya saat ini, semua penghuni nya sudah terlelap. Setelah mandi dan berganti baju, Kika berbaring di atas tempat tidurnya namun rasa letih nya tak kunjung membuat matanya terpejam, padahal dia sudah menghabiskan waktu seharian di luar rumah. Pagi tadi dia sudah harus menempuh rute dari Karawang menuju kampus nya di bilangan Jakarta Selatan, sorenya menghabiskan waktu bersama Hans untuk nonton sebuah film komedi di bioskop. Ya adegan yang terakhir itulah yang mungkin membuat rasa kantuknya hilang entah kemana. Tanpa disadari kedua pipinya sudah basah oleh air mata.

****

2 minggu kemudian, ketika Kika keluar dari ruang tamu menuju teras rumahnya, perhatian Kika teralihkan oleh sebuah amplop coklat yang terselip di kotak pos rumahnya. Dengan tatapan heran Kika mengambil amplop itu dan membaca tulisan yang tertera di amplop itu. Seketika jantung Kika berhenti dan tangannya gemetar setelah mengetahui bahwa amplop itu adalah undangan perkawinan serta nama Hans dan Rina ada pada amplop itu. Suasana pagi itu seketika berubah seperti suasana malam sewaktu Hans mengakhiri hubungan dengan Kika. Kini Kika mengerti kata-kata Hans waktu itu. Hans sudah mempunyai seorang calon pendamping hidup. Seketika hp-nya berbunyi, Kika membaca sms yang baru masuk itu, nama Hans tertera di layar hp-nya. Kamu sudah menerima nya kan ? aku tunggu di café tempat biasa..oke. itu tulisan dari sms Hans.

Sepulangnya dari kampus, Kika melangkah masuk ke sebuah mall dekat kampus nya dan mendapati Hans sedang duduk di salah satu bangku di café kopi. Café itu adalah tempat mereka merasakan love at the first sight, jadian, malam mingguan, namun kini sepertinya café ini sekaligus akan menjadi tempat perpisahan mereka. Dengan langkah enggan Kika memasuki café itu dan menghampiri tempat Hans duduk. Hans yang terdiam seketika menengadah melihat Kika yang masih berdiri. “ Hai, Ka. Baru sampai ya ? silahkan duduk.” Sapa Hans tampak berbasa-basi. Kika pun duduk tepat di depan Hans. “ ada apa lagi sih ? bukannya urusan kita udah selesai waktu itu ya. “, Tanya Kika dengan nada datar setelah seorang waitress pergi dengan catatan menu pesanan mereka. Hans tersenyum masam “ Iya, sih tapi kan aku belum jelasin alasan nya ke kamu waktu itu.” “ o..semua udah jelas kok dengan amplop coklat itu..selamat ya “ ucap Kika dengan nada cuek. “ Thanks..nah itu yang mau aku jelasin ke kamu sekarang, kalo aku udah di jodohin setahun yang lalu dengan Rita, anak temen mamaku yang ada di Aussie, 2 minggu yang lalu kami lamaran dan 2 hari lagi kami akan menikah di Jakarta ” jelas Hans. “ Ow gitu..rather in a rush ya, pasti dia punya charming yang lebih dari aku ya, sampai kamu berpaling gitu, trus sekarang masih ada yang perlu dijelasin lagi nggak, kalo enggak aku mau pergi masih ada urusan, sekali lagi selamat ya”, sahut Kika dengan nada tegar walaupun sebenarnya hatinya menangis, kebetulan mochacinno pesanannya sudah tersedot habis. “ Maaf ya, Ka. Tapi aku percaya kok kamu akan menemukan yang terbaik daripada aku. Aku berharap kamu bisa datang ke resepsinya” sahut Hans tanpa menggubris ucapan selamat dari Kika sambil bangkit berdiri dan memberi tangannya untuk menyalami Kika. Kika menyambut tangan yang selalu menggandeng mesra tangannya dan selalu memberikan selama 4 tahun, tapi kini harus dia ikhlaskan. “ Thanks ya. Lihat nanti ya, aku usahakan.” Sahut Kika sambil melangkah keluar café itu.

****

Kika menatap dirinya berbalut busana pengantin di cermin sebuah meja rias sebuah salon langganan mamanya. Ya hari ini adalah hari pernikahan Kika. Pagi ini Kika sudah harus mengenakan baju pengantin dan make up di salon ini sebagai persiapan pemberkatan sekaligus resepsi pernikahan nya siang ini. “ “Yuk, sudah siap kan, Ka ? “ Tanya mamanya yang langsung membuyarkan lamunan Kika.” Sudah Ma. Doakan Kika ya Ma” kata Kika sambil menatap mamanya.

Sesampainya di pintu gereja, “ Ayo sayang, sudah siap kan ?”, sahut seorang pria yang akan sebentar lagi akan resmi menjadi suaminya langsung menggandeng tangan Kika “ oke” sahut Kika sambil tersenyum. Mereka pun berjalan bersama para orangtua serta keluarga inti melewati para undangan yang hadir. Tepuk tangan serta senyum menyertai langkah mereka menuju altar. Setelah mengucap janji pernikahan dan resepsi mereka pun kini resmi menjadi sepasang suami istri. “ Kika selamat ya.. bener kan kataku kamu telah menemukan yang lebih baik dari aku” sahut Hans sambil menyalami Kika dan Edho di pelaminan. “ Terima kasih ya Hans.. oya mana Rita kok ga ikut ? “ sahut Kika. Raut wajah Hans seketika berubah, namun pertanyaan Kika belum sempat terjawab karena Hans terdesak dengan para undangan yang juga ingin menyalami sekaligus memberi ucapan selamat kepada Kika dan Edho. Beberapa bulan kemudian, Kika baru mengetahui kabar bahwa Rita dan Hans sudah bercerai karena Rita sering bertugas di luar negeri dan ketahuan suka berselingkuh dengan para rekan kerjanya di setiap negara tempat dia pernah bertugas. Hans kini menjadi seorang duda dan tinggal dengan dua anaknya di sebuah apartement bergengsi di Jakarta. Ya mungkin inilah resiko yang harus Hans terima, kini dia dapat mengerti dan merasakan perasaan Kika ketika mengetahui Hans meninggalkannya demi menjalin hubungan dan menikahi seorang wanita kaya raya hanya karena urusan materi belaka.

Perjuangan

Darah ini
Raga ini
Jiwa ini
Nyawa ini
Ku korbankan bagi negeriku yang tercinta ini

Demi negeri ini
Aku rela kehilangan nyawa
Demi negeri ini
Aku rela kehilangan raga ini

Cucuran darah ini
Sebagai bukti kegigihanku
Demi merebut negeri ini
Merampasnya dari tangan-tangan para penjajah
Demi melihat Sang Saka Merah Putih
Berkibar di bumi Indonesia Raya ini
Demi mendengar lagu Indonesia Raya
Berkumandang di angkasa ini

Koruptor

Hatimu keras dan dingin bagai tembok penjara
Yang tak bisa tertembus oleh jeritan dan tangisan orang-orang yang lapar
Simpati dan empatimu telah tergerus oleh rasa egois

Aku , aku dan aku
Untukku, untukku dan untukku
Bagianku, bagianku dan bagianku

Sampah masyarakat
Mata, hati dan pikiran mu telah dikontaminasi oleh bakteri dan virus
Yang bernama kerakusan, kelicikan, kemapaman dan kekayaan

Wahai para Koruptor
Para pembohong publik, sadarlah

LOVE

You never know when it will come and go

You can’t see it by your eyes, hear it by your ears, think it by your mind even touch it by your hands

But only one thing

You can feel it by your heart

The place when you can feel sad, happy, disappointed, even hurt

Yes, that’s your heart, dear

Because it lies only in your heart

BARRACK OBAMA

So energetic, romantic, powerful, faithful
patriotic, modestly, cheerful, optimistic,
care, friendly, full of self –confidence and charisma
That what I see since you exit from the plane that have departed at Halim Perdana Kusuma Airport
The plane that have brought you and your lovely wife from to Jakarta
Yeah Jakarta
Your hometown at forty years ago
With your lovely mom, dad and sister
Menteng Dalam
The place that had become one of the witness of your childhood
The place where you spent the time by played with all of your friends and cousins
The place where you felt sad, joy, happiness even sad with all of your lovely persons
After the second divorce of your parent
Your mom, sister and you had moved to United State of America
But it has become a history
The history of one of United States of America President
You have proven, Obama
That success also opened and possible to be reached for all people even a broken home boy

How to Teach Reading

In language instruction, reading materials have traditionally been chosen from literary texts that represent "higher" forms of culture.
This approach assumes that students learn to read a language by studying its vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure, not by actually reading it. In this approach, lower level learners read only sentences and paragraphs generated by textbook writers and instructors. The reading of authentic materials is limited to the works of great authors and reserved for upper level students who have developed the language skills needed to read them.
When the goal of instruction is communicative competence, everyday materials such as train schedules, newspaper articles, and travel and tourism Web sites become appropriate classroom materials, because reading them is one way communicative competence is developed. Instruction in reading and reading practice thus become essential parts of language teaching at every level.

Strategies for Developing Reading Skills

Using Reading Strategies

They seem to think reading means starting at the beginning and going word by word, stopping to look up every unknown vocabulary item, until they reach the end. When they do this, students are relying exclusively on their linguistic knowledge, a bottom-up strategy. One of the most important functions of the language instructor, then, is to help students move past this idea and use top-down strategies as they do in their native language.
Effective language instructors show students how they can adjust their reading behavior to deal with a variety of situations, types of input, and reading purposes. They help students develop a set of reading strategies and match appropriate strategies to each reading situation.
Strategies that can help students read more quickly and effectively include

• Previewing: reviewing titles, section headings, and photo captions to get a sense of the structure and content of a reading selection
• Predicting: using knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions about content and vocabulary and check comprehension; using knowledge of the text type and purpose to make predictions about discourse structure; using knowledge about the author to make predictions about writing style, vocabulary, and content
• Skimming and scanning: using a quick survey of the text to get the main idea, identify text structure, confirm or question predictions
• Guessing from context: using prior knowledge of the subject and the ideas in the text as clues to the meanings of unknown words, instead of stopping to look them up
• Paraphrasing: stopping at the end of a section to check comprehension by restating the information and ideas in the text

Instructors can help students learn when and how to use reading strategies in several ways.

• By modeling the strategies aloud, talking through the processes of previewing, predicting, skimming and scanning, and paraphrasing. This shows students how the strategies work and how much they can know about a text before they begin to read word by word.
• By allowing time in class for group and individual previewing and predicting activities as preparation for in-class or out-of-class reading. Allocating class time to these activities indicates their importance and value.
• By using cloze (fill in the blank) exercises to review vocabulary items. This helps students learn to guess meaning from context.
• By encouraging students to talk about what strategies they think will help them approach a reading assignment, and then talking after reading about what strategies they actually used. This helps students develop flexibility in their choice of strategies.

When language learners use reading strategies, they find that they can control the reading experience, and they gain confidence in their ability to read the language.


When reading to learn, students need to follow four basic steps:

1. Figure out the purpose for reading. Activate background knowledge of the topic in order to predict or anticipate content and identify appropriate reading strategies.
2. Attend to the parts of the text that are relevant to the identified purpose and ignore the rest. This selectivity enables students to focus on specific items in the input and reduces the amount of information they have to hold in short-term memory.
3. Select strategies that are appropriate to the reading task and use them flexibly and interactively. Students' comprehension improves and their confidence increases when they use top-down and bottom-up skills simultaneously to construct meaning.
4. Check comprehension while reading and when the reading task is completed. Monitoring comprehension helps students detect inconsistencies and comprehension failures, helping them learn to use alternate strategies.

Goals and Techniques for Teaching Reading

Instructors want to produce students who, even if they do not have complete control of the grammar or an extensive lexicon, can fend for themselves in communication situations. In the case of reading, this means producing students who can use reading strategies to maximize their comprehension of text, identify relevant and non-relevant information, and tolerate less than word-by-word comprehension.

Focus: The Reading Process

To accomplish this goal, instructors focus on the process of reading rather than on its product.

• They develop students' awareness of the reading process and reading strategies by asking students to think and talk about how they read in their native language.
• They allow students to practice the full repertoire of reading strategies by using authentic reading tasks. They encourage students to read to learn (and have an authentic purpose for reading) by giving students some choice of reading material.
• When working with reading tasks in class, they show students the strategies that will work best for the reading purpose and the type of text. They explain how and why students should use the strategies.
• They have students practice reading strategies in class and ask them to practice outside of class in their reading assignments. They encourage students to be conscious of what they're doing while they complete reading assignments.
• They encourage students to evaluate their comprehension and self-report their use of strategies. They build comprehension checks into in-class and out-of-class reading assignments, and periodically review how and when to use particular strategies.
• They encourage the development of reading skills and the use of reading strategies by using the target language to convey instructions and course-related information in written form: office hours, homework assignments, test content.
• They do not assume that students will transfer strategy use from one task to another. They explicitly mention how a particular strategy can be used in a different type of reading task or with another skill.

By raising students' awareness of reading as a skill that requires active engagement, and by explicitly teaching reading strategies, instructors help their students develop both the ability and the confidence to handle communication situations they may encounter beyond the classroom. In this way they give their students the foundation for communicative competence in the new language.

Integrating Reading Strategies

Instruction in reading strategies is not an add-on, but rather an integral part of the use of reading activities in the language classroom. Instructors can help their students become effective readers by teaching them how to use strategies before, during, and after reading.

Before reading: Plan for the reading task
• Set a purpose or decide in advance what to read for
• Decide if more linguistic or background knowledge is needed
• Determine whether to enter the text from the top down (attend to the overall meaning) or from the bottom up (focus on the words and phrases)

During and after reading: Monitor comprehension
• Verify predictions and check for inaccurate guesses
• Decide what is and is not important to understand
• Reread to check comprehension
• Ask for help

After reading: Evaluate comprehension and strategy use
• Evaluate comprehension in a particular task or area
• Evaluate overall progress in reading and in particular types of reading tasks
• Decide if the strategies used were appropriate for the purpose and for the task
• Modify strategies if necessary

Using Authentic Materials and Approaches

For students to develop communicative competence in reading, classroom and homework reading activities must resemble (or be) real-life reading tasks that involve meaningful communication. They must therefore be authentic in three ways.

1. The reading material must be authentic: It must be the kind of material that students will need and want to be able to read when traveling, studying abroad, or using the language in other contexts outside the classroom.
When selecting texts for student assignments, remember that the difficulty of a reading text is less a function of the language, and more a function of the conceptual difficulty and the task(s) that students are expected to complete. Simplifying a text by changing the language often removes natural redundancy and makes the organization somewhat difficult for students to predict. This actually makes a text more difficult to read than if the original were used.
Rather than simplifying a text by changing its language, make it more approachable by eliciting students' existing knowledge in pre-reading discussion, reviewing new vocabulary before reading, and asking students to perform tasks that are within their competence, such as skimming to get the main idea or scanning for specific information, before they begin intensive reading.
2. The reading purpose must be authentic: Students must be reading for reasons that make sense and have relevance to them. "Because the teacher assigned it" is not an authentic reason for reading a text.
To identify relevant reading purposes, ask students how they plan to use the language they are learning and what topics they are interested in reading and learning about. Give them opportunities to choose their reading assignments, and encourage them to use the library, the Internet, and foreign language newsstands and bookstores to find other things they would like to read.
3. The reading approach must be authentic: Students should read the text in a way that matches the reading purpose, the type of text, and the way people normally read. This means that reading aloud will take place only in situations where it would take place outside the classroom, such as reading for pleasure. The majority of students' reading should be done silently.

Reading Purpose and Reading Comprehension

Reading is an activity with a purpose. A person may read in order to gain information or verify existing knowledge, or in order to critique a writer's ideas or writing style. A person may also read for enjoyment, or to enhance knowledge of the language being read. The purpose(s) for reading guide the reader's selection of texts.
The purpose for reading also determines the appropriate approach to reading comprehension. A person who needs to know whether she can afford to eat at a particular restaurant needs to comprehend the pricing information provided on the menu, but does not need to recognize the name of every appetizer listed. A person reading poetry for enjoyment needs to recognize the words the poet uses and the ways they are put together, but does not need to identify main idea and supporting details. However, a person using a scientific article to support an opinion needs to know the vocabulary that is used, understand the facts and cause-effect sequences that are presented, and recognize ideas that are presented as hypotheses and givens.

Reading research shows that good readers

• Read extensively
• Integrate information in the text with existing knowledge
• Have a flexible reading style, depending on what they are reading
• Are motivated
• Rely on different skills interacting: perceptual processing, phonemic processing, recall
• Read for a purpose; reading serves a function

Reading as a Process

Reading is an interactive process that goes on between the reader and the text, resulting in comprehension. The text presents letters, words, sentences, and paragraphs that encode meaning. The reader uses knowledge, skills, and strategies to determine what that meaning is.
Reader knowledge, skills, and strategies include

• Linguistic competence: the ability to recognize the elements of the writing system; knowledge of vocabulary; knowledge of how words are structured into sentences
• Discourse competence: knowledge of discourse markers and how they connect parts of the text to one another
• Sociolinguistic competence: knowledge about different types of texts and their usual structure and content
• Strategic competence: the ability to use top-down strategies (see Strategies for Developing Reading Skills for descriptions), as well as knowledge of the language (a bottom-up strategy)

The purpose(s) for reading and the type of text determine the specific knowledge, skills, and strategies that readers need to apply to achieve comprehension. Reading comprehension is thus much more than decoding. Reading comprehension results when the reader knows which skills and strategies are appropriate for the type of text, and understands how to apply them to accomplish the reading purpose.

How to Teach Listening

When we teach listening we need to teach not only English, but we also need to teach how it is used. We need to teach both :

• The language system, (our knowledge of language : grammar and vocabulary, etc )
• The use of the language system ( the skills of language use )

Our knowledge of the language system includes our knowledge of words, how these words are properly put in order ( syntax or grammar ), how these words are said in connected streams ( phonology ), how these words are strung together in longer texts ( discourse ) and so on.

Using the language system involves how we apply this knowledge of the language system to understand or convey meaning and how we apply particular skills to understanding and conveying meaning.

Listening skills are often divided into two groups :

• Bottom up listening skills ( bottom up processing ) => refers to the decoding process, the direct decoding of language into meaningful units, from sound waves through the air, in through our ears and into our brain where meaning is decoded. To do this students need to know the code. How the sounds work and how they string together and how the codes can change in different ways when they're strung together.
  

• Top-down listening skills ( top-down processing ) => refers to how we use our world knowledge to attribute meaning to language input; how our knowledge of social convention helps us understand meaning.

" An understanding of the role of bottom-up and top-down processes in listening is central to any theory of listening comprehension " ( Richards, 1990 : 50).

Listening Strategies
=> are techniques or activities that contribute directly to the comprehension and recall of listening input. Listening strategies can be classified by how the listener processes the input.

1. Top-down strategies are listener based; the listener taps into background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language. This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next. Top-down strategies include

• Listening for the main idea.
• Predicting.
• Drawing inferences.
• Summarizing.

2. Bottom-up strategies are text based; the listener relies on the language in the message,
that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning. Bottom-up
strategies include

• Listening for specific details.
• Recognizing cognates.
• Recognizing word-order patterns.

Strategic listeners also use metacognitive strategies to plan, monitor, and evaluate their listening.

• They plan by deciding which listening strategies will serve best in a particular situation.
• They monitor their comprehension and the effectiveness of the selected strategies.
• They evaluate by determining whether the combination of listening strategies selected was an effective one.

Integrating Metacognitive Strategies

Before listening = Plan for the listening task

• Set a purpose or decide in advance what to listen for
  
• Decide if more linguistic or background knowledge is needed
• Determine whether to enter the text from the top-down ( attend to the overall meaning ) or from the bottom-up ( focus on the words and phrases )

During and after listening = Monitor comprehension

• Verify predictions and check for inaccurate guesses
• Decide what is and is not important to understand
• Listen / view again to check comprehension
• Ask for help

After listening = Evaluate comprehension and strategy use

• Evaluate comprehension in a particular task or area
  
• Evaluate overall progress in listening and in particular types of listening tasks
• Decide if the strategies used were appropriate for the purpose and for the task
• Modify strategies if necessary

Using Authentic Materials and Situations

Authentic materials and situations prepare students for the types of listening they will need
to do when using the language outside the classroom.

One-Way Communication
Materials :

• Radio and television programs
• Public address announcements ( airports, train / bus stations, stores )
• Speeches and lectures
• Telephone customer service recordings.

Procedure :

• Help students identify the listening goal : to obtain specific information; to decide whether to continue listening; to understand most or all the message
• Help students outline predictable sequences in which information may be presented : who-what-when-where ( news stories ); who-flight number-arriving / departing-gate number ( airport announcements ); "for [ function ], press [ number ]" ( telephone recordings )
• Help students identify key words / phrases to listen for

Two-Way Communication
In authentic two-way communication, the listener focuses the speaker's meaning rather than
the speaker's language. The focus shifts to language only when meaning is not clear. Note the
difference between the teacher as teacher and the teacher as authentic listener in the
dialogues in the popup screens.