Lab Bahasa Asing (LBA) FEB Unsoed held a webinar with the theme “English Communication Skills: Why Does It Matter?” on Saturday (19/03) by inviting Prayogo Hadi Sulistio, S.Pd., M.Pd who is a lecturer at the Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Universitas Jenderal Soedirman as the speaker. The event which started at 1 pm was opened by Prof. Wiwiek Rabiatul Adawiyah, M.Sc., Ph.D regarding the importance of mastering English which is an advantage in competition on many things, especially business. One of the ways to support this ability is by attending lectures at the international program at Universitas Jenderal Soedirman, which provides several choices of study programs in Science and Technology and Social Sciences.

The event from the LBA of FEB Unsoed was hosted by Najla Athifah and Elisabeth Ashley as masters of ceremonies and moderators who enlivened the seminar with speakers. Pak Prayogo started the seminar with the reason that English is an important skill nowadays. English is indeed the most widely spoken language in the world and therefore is often used as the lingua franca in many affairs, especially international business. He also explained that the accents carried in the pronunciation of English words are natural things that come from the mother tongue and add to the diversity of languages.

Several questions were asked from the 126 participants who attended. Most of what was discussed was about the experience of troubles in learning English, and the speaker responded in a relaxed manner and some light jokes about the need to learn with the practices and strategies discussed previously, namely approximation, literal translation, and stalling or time gaining.

(by Aldi Matriansyah)