<![CDATA[Education students of Universitas Ma’arif Nahdlatul Ulama (UMNU) Kebumen in collaboration with Bimbel Ekuivalen, a non-formal tutoring center in Logede Village, Pejagoan Subdistrict, Kebumen Regency, Indonesia. Grounded in the principles of English for Specific Purposes (ESP), the program was designed to improve children’s English-speaking skills through a structured, seven-meeting module covering greetings and introductions, asking permission, family, hobbies, food and drink, weather, and shopping expressions. A descriptive qualitative approach was employed, with data gathered through classroom observation, field notes, and documentation, and analyzed through thematic analysis. The findings indicate that children’s speaking competence developed across four dimensions: confidence, vocabulary, pronunciation, and fluency. Structured speech templates and dialogue scaffolds, consistent with Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, were instrumental in reducing speaking anxiety, while personally relevant topics enhanced motivation and participation. Role-play and pair-work activities further strengthened interactive and pragmatic competence, particularly in distinguishing formal and informal registers. The study concludes that thematic, scaffolded, and interactive ESP-based instruction is effective in developing young learners’ basic English-speaking skills in non-formal educational settings, and that collaboration between university students and community tutoring institutions offers mutual benefits: practical teaching experience for prospective educators and systematic language instruction for children beyond the formal school curriculum. The findings contribute to the growing literature on ESP-based community service learning and offer practical implications for the design of speaking modules in similar non-formal contexts]]>
