គម្រូ Motivation Letter របស់លោកហ៊ុយ សម្បត្តិ
Motivation Letter
My ambition to become an educator, to revolutionize my country’s education system, began when I was suffering endlessly while in high school. I, including other students, was deprived of a good quality of education. Teachers were not motivated, not determined and unqualified. Corruption prevailed. Most importantly, the curriculum was badly designed and out-of-date. Together with the financial hardship and insufficient materials, it is difficult to imagine how much students could actually gain from school. These cases are not uncommon in such a Third-World country. With this hindsight, despite the poverty trap my family was in, I was fortunate enough to be able to pursue my higher education after I won and was awarded the full national scholarship from
With this hindsight, despite the poverty trap my family was in, I was fortunate enough to be able to pursue my higher education after I won and was awarded the full national scholarship from Royal University of Phnom Penh, the national most prestigious higher educational institution. Having fixed ideas in mind, I decided to major in Education in English (TEFL) with the aim of changing the contemporary education system through gaining the insight into those western countries’ ones. Errors repeat. Contrary to my expectation, though in university, there are still shortcomings. Admittedly, despite the fact that some improvements have been made ranging from human resources to material ones, the main problem that still persists in higher education lies in the curriculum. That includes the curriculum that is poorly designed, complicated, ineffective, and not user-friendly. To say the least, they simply do not know what and how to teach. The courses assigned to be taken at the university are the examples. Most of them are just the exact duplication from those of foreign countries, which are hardly digested by students. Some are hard to understand while others are easy, but ineffective. In addition, poor instructional methods, shortage of effective instructional resources and insufficient pedagogical know-how further hinder students’ growth while they cannot really benefit from what they are being taught.
Having witnessed these perennial problems, my passion to be a teacher grows stronger, from an ordinary one to a senior educationalist working for the Ministry of Education whose role is to design and prepare curriculum for students of all levels since, currently in Cambodia, we do have very few of these specialists. However, in order to be one, learning in my country alone hardly helps. I have to explore the knowledge, techniques and skills practiced in other developed countries with high standard of education. Hence, in this meantime, I am applying for SAT Erasmus Mundus Undergraduate Exchange Program to take B.A in Education to study education-related courses at University of Minho, Portugal. Portugal, University of Minho to be exact, where education is highly prestigious, is an ideal platform for me to realize this wild dream of mine. University of Minho is renowned for its civilized system of education in producing scholars and having completely changed the image of higher education in Portugal. I really want the same scenario to exist in my country. Hence, at University of Minho, with its diverse and unique course offers, I hope I will be able to gain state-of-the-art knowledge and techniques in the field of education in order to develop and design a civilized and standardized curriculum for my fellow Cambodian students, a system that helps unlock their untapped potentials, offers them with the right and most practical knowledge, and importantly, helps them learn faster, easier and more effectively. Upon my course completion, I hope I will be one of the agents of change of my country’s education. By sharing my knowledge to others and putting it into practice in the very near future when returning back, under the most hopeful scenario, I firmly believe that my fellow youth will get chances to acquire a better system of education which is effective, up-to-date and well-structured. Moreover, education in my country will be soon as prestigious as that in the Portugal, breeding outstanding individuals for my country’s future development.
Taking my clear goals, determination, experiences as well as academic performance into consideration, I hope I am one of the successful candidates to be admitted to join this program. Nelson Mandela once said education is the most powerful weapon used to change the world. However, I said education alone has no power unless the systems, the HOW and the WHAT, of education itself are first powerful enough; and I am pretty sure that this program will provide me with these things: the knowledge that will ultimately shape the destiny of my nation.