Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta has a master plan to become world class university 2026. UKM Bahasa Asing “SAFEL” serves as a platform in the plan, and Talent Scouting becomes one of the key elements to realize it. UNY Talent Scouting for Preparation of the National English Speech and Microteaching Competition 2025 or UNY Talent Scouting for short, is an intensive speech and microteaching training program for UNY students. The orientation of this program is to prepare excellent UNY candidates to participate in national English speech and microteaching competitions, such as UNY English Competition (UNESHCO).
First held in 2024 and now this is the second year of this program. This year, UNY Talent Scouting opened a new branch, that is microteaching. The initiation to opening a new branch such as microteaching is to give a platform to UNY students that have a potential talent for teaching. Through rigorous selection, 27 people as a total were selected as official participants for the two branches. As a way of fostering the program, SAFEL has also managed to collaborate with Nutrihub Yogyakarta.
The training was held at UNY Student Center Building, Mohammad Yamin Building, and Nutrihub Yogyakarta from April 13th to May 16th, 2025. UNY Talent Scouting training was divided into 3 main agendas, encompassing the Technical Meeting (April 13th, 2025), Regular Daily Meeting (April 16th–May 2nd, 2025), Last Big Meeting (May 3rd, 2025), and UNESHCO Semifinal and Final Intensive Training (May 14th–16th, 2025). The participants were trained directly by Teguh Wicaksono, S.Pd. (Speech) and Anna Stasya Prima Sari S.Pd., M.Pd. (Microteaching) as the tutors of UNY Talent Scouting 2025.
UNY Talent Scouting was held for three weeks in a row, with 3 meetings each week. For speech participants, they were encouraged to perform their speech with a script according to the newest trending topic in the world such as the usage of AI, national growth, climate changes, and many more. Meanwhile, for the microteaching participants, they were given fresh material for their Lesson Plan using new curriculum that Indonesia apply for students at school. The type that our tutors use to approach their participants is similar. They applied a friendly approach that can make participants from each branch keep motivated and enjoy the training process.
The results of every participant could be seen when they had the opportunity to show their best performance at the Last Big Meeting agenda. This agenda also crowned the 5 best delegates for each branch. The best delegates were selected based on the highest scores given in the final assessment from each branch. The best participants from speech who qualified for UNESHCO 2025 semifinal round were then further incubated to hone their critical thinking skills during case building and presenting their ideas. This is because, in the semifinal and final rounds, participants were only given 30 minutes to prepare their speeches based on the news articles and videos provided. As for microteaching, they were given 30 minutes to present their Lesson Plan that they already made before. In UNY Talent Scouting, we gave our best to provide an overview of the semifinal and final rounds that they will face at UNESHCO 2025.
To achieve our success in the second year of this program, we encountered so many obstacles and problems. Despite numerous challenges, with the dedication of our participants, hard work from our committees, and also a very supportive help from our beloved tutors, we manage to achieve first place for the speech competition and second place for the microteaching competition in UNESHCO 2025. The most important part from UNY Talent Scouting is not just a place to improve public speaking skills, but also a supportive and comfortable place for participants to interact with each other and make new friends from this 3-week journey.
Finally, we would like to express our deepest gratitude for all parties’ contributions that have made UNY Talent Scouting 2025 come true and created a positive environment for UNY students to practice their public speaking skills. Under the theme “Let Your Voice Resonate, Inspire the Next Generation”, we hope UNY Talent Scouting program continues strengthen the voice of UNY students to step confidently as well as gain achievements in various national English speech and microteaching competitions.
– Chika and Abid –
