Dear Frees,
What a coincidence a former high school of mine was called a free school, and I just found out recently alumni are called 'Frees'. So permit me to use the designation for all of you. :) After several years of stint as the Moderator of Singapore Freecycle groups (freecycle.org), I am now teaching English for free to university students in Medan, Indonesia. Not many people would have read Dave Graddol, who mentioned in his book 'The Future of English', which although sponsored by British Council, candidly assessed that English is now the possession of the entire world, not just the English native speakers, and hence it should come in variants according to local culture. Not to mention that the nuture of English is not as bright as the future of Mandarin, Hindi or Arabic, as evidenced by the Global Language Group in Facebook. Also, not many of you would have known that to study English here in Indonesia to a decent level, would have cost a fortune to the average Indonesians. As such, for many reasons beside the obvious ones you might think, in the spirit of Free Culture, I decided to teach English for free. Now what I need for my students is real world practice. It's difficult to come by English speakers here in Medan, unlike cities in Java or Bali, and so I turn online for help. The idea is for you to be willing to be paired with my students as language sparring partner, be it in speaking or writing, and for you to start exchanging information with each other, much like the pen pals of old. I have created a Facebook group titled 'Taman Bahasa' which means 'Language Garden' for this purpose, initially using people I befriended during my twelve years living overseas, but response from them have been slow coming. Perhaps they need to imbibe the spirit of Free Culture first. To accelerate matters, are you willing to be involved in this language exchange project, and hence could join the Facebook group at < http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=147559438606912&ref=search>? We'll tell you more on the next steps once you join. With Coolio's song in mind, 'I'll see you when you get there'. :) With best wishes Surya Medan, Indonesia
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