Mentoring program to develop students’ English language proficiency: a case study at Nurul Jadid Islamic Institute Probolinggo

Mentoring is believed as an activity that can help individuals develop their skill and obtain new insights and experiences for both of the mentor and the mentee. Previous studies in mentoring indicated that mentoring is usually done by a professional mentor, and it is considered essential to also explore how mentoring is run by a mentor who is non-professional. Thereby, this qualitative study investigated a formal mentoring program in English language teaching context at FLDI Nurul Jadid Islamic Institute. The mentoring in the institute is to develop the students’ English language proficiency. As a case, as at FLDI Nurul Jadid Islamic Institute the mentors are in the same position as non-professionals as the mentees, different from other existing mentoring programs. FLDI (Foreign Language Development Institute) is a non-formal educational institution at Nurul Jadid Islamic Institute Probolinggo equipped with an English institution that runs a mentoring program to develop the students' proficiency in English. This study used observation, interview and test to collect the data. The findings indicated that FLDI Nurul Jadid Islamic Institute has no specific design for the mentoring program. Each pair of mentors-mentees at FLDI Nurul Jadid Islamic Institute is handed to design their own mentoring process. FLDI Nurul Jadid Islamic Institute has three levels in dividing the mentees level for their English proficiency; elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels. For the mentees’ English language proficiency development, FLDI Nurul Jadid Islamic Institute succeeded to develop the mentee's English language proficiency development though one mentee does not have the same and fast development to another. These findings imply that the mentoring program by non-professionals designed at FLDI Nurul Jadid Islamic Institute succeeded in developing the mentees’ English Language Proficiency. This design of peer-mentoring can be a reference for other education institutions in developing the English proficiency of their students.