Hi readers you're reading akhlis-purnomo.com. It's a blog dedicated to those who love learning English.
As the site's name tells, the owner of this blog is me, Akhlis Purnomo.
On English and Academic Pursuits
I was born, spent my childhood and teen years in my hometown, Kudus, Indonesia. I don't know when I exactly started to fall in love with English but all I know is I used to watch Remington Steele, Little House on the Prairie, Silk Stalking, Melrose Place, Bonanza, Macgyver, The A-Team, and many others. Some of those series were airing at night and my grandmom freaked out to find out her grandson who was a kindergarten student wide awake at midnight watching some of those late night shows. That paid off, however.
What one watches during his/ her childhood does shape one's personality in the future. No doubt about that. As I grew up, it dawned on me that I truly love this foreign language. I took a weekly English course as a sixth grader of elementary school after years learning bits of English vocabularies. I couldn't speak the language but at the very least I know how people should speak in proper and natural English by watching Western movies and TV series. I thank God because I started to learn English in terms of phonetics (how English speakers make meaningful sounds and utterances). Many people start learning by studying grammar rules (especially tenses), which I think the most uneffective way to learn. Grammar is fundamental but that is learnable later on the more advanced stage. Look at babies around you, do they learn grammar rules first? No, they hear and imitate the people's voices around him/ her. That is how we - adult learners- ought to learn English (or any other foreign languages).
After leaving senior high school in 2001, I was majoring in English Lit at Universitas Negeri Semarang (Semarang State University). I completed my bachelor's degree in English Literature in 2005 and managed to take a master program specializing in English Lit (again) at Universitas Diponegoro Semarang (Semarang Diponegoro University). After three agonizing years combatting academic boredom, I graduated in April 2009. Pheeww!!
By telling this, I'm not claiming that I am an accomplished learner but I'm a learner with overflowing zeal to share what I know and learn what I haven't known together with you, readers.
On Blogging and Blogosphere
I first had a contact with blogging world in September 2007. As a blogging virgin (a term I borrowed from Oprah Winfrey, who once called herself 'a facebook virgin'), I wrote my inaugural post in September 2007 but had hardly ever regularly updated the blog ever since. I did write in English about varied topics and failed to maintain my blogging enthusiasm. The blog was named www.theworldofakhlis.blogspot.com (may it rest in peace because I had 'buried' this blog as I started another newer one).
I built another blog with fresher themes in August 2009, still on blogger.com's platform. It was www.akhlispurnomo.blogspot.com. I wrote posts about English learning and other meaty topics about politics, econimics, jokes, and whatever I liked. I am running some other blogs, too. I started to write posts on Korean learning at www.learnkoreanwithme.blogspot.com but I barely update it on a regular basis. I also built www.myliberatedmind.blogspot.com to accomodate my irrelevant posts (which mostly covers various discursive topics) on my current English learning blog: www.akhlis-purnomo.com. I bought this domain in the end of November 2009 but still relies on blogger.com in terms of hosting service. I prefer to run a Wordpress blog, nonetheless.
Why akhlis-purnomo.com?
This blog is meant to assist me and others to learn English-related skills, to share my and others' experiences. I realize classroom English learning starts to go obsolete. I try to offer something new. I know how painful it is to learn something when your teacher or conventional learning methods can't tackle problems you're dealing with.
I started this blog in August 2009 because I wanted to blog about something that I'm familiar with most. Because I hate to confuse my blog's readers about the blog's main theme, I decided to buy a new domain and focus more on English learning. Since then I’ve added well over 100 articles/ tips.
This blog is NOT meant to be a sheer compilation of English typically-textbook materials. I want to get the materials across without any lecturing style (something that I avoid here). I want it to be lively, casual, and simultaneously inspiring. This blog may serve as a virtual classroom but there's no teacher and boring conventional teaching methods here. Everyone can be a teacher or a students whenever they'd like to. Say goodbye to boring English learning methods.
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I hope this blog benefits you so keep visiting it.
