Journal

Start of this course hasn't been that easy for me because I have two courses at the same time. The other one is history and it's the prep course for the matriculation examination. So it has been pretty hard to balance between these two.
This english course is about oral skills and at school I have been mostly in history, so at home I have gone through out loud as many exercises as it has been possible. So far I have learnt some school words in American English and Britain's English and also pronouncing them. I hope I could be in the English lessons more next week.


WEEK 2
This week went by so fast (and probably the following ones will too). It was a bit easier to wake up in the mornings and actually it was nice to come to the school. It's crazy to think that next month we'll be doing the matriculation examination. It is a little scary.

In the English lessons we were doing exercises from traffic words to doctor's appointment and there were a lot of words in the traffic vocabulary that I didn't know or remember. Word guessing with partner and doctor's appointment were both fun exercises and they were good because we had to improvise what to say. Outside of the class I was doing some exercises with Johanna and Emily which was a lot of fun. I got also good teaching in pronouncing from Emily.



WEEK 3
This week  I had only two or three lessons of English because of history and information thing about matriculation examination.

At the lessons we were doing for example a quiz about politics. I felt that the quiz was too difficult because the things asked in the quiz where strange and most of the vocabulary were new to me. Good about the quiz was that I learned some new words.

At home I have been doing some oral exercises on my own just like speaking them through. I have also watched  tv-series in English and I have read pocketbooks in English. Sometimes I even have been reading them out loud.

Though I have been so little time at this course I think I like this because it's helping a lot when repeating how to pronounce words and even letters in a proper way. All the oral exercises at the lessons and home makes me more confident talker so this course is exactly what I need. I hope I could be without panicing when speaking about the oral test but I think it's impossible.



WEEK 4
I personally think that this week's exercises were a lot of fun. The oral test is closer and we did practice some parts of the test. There were for example a part where we had to debate with a partner and I thought it was quite fun but hard in a way. Because when there is a subject you don't know or you don't have opinion about, it's hard to find something out from it that could affect the other person and the debate somehow.

We also played this game about circus and it was fun to do with the girls. We also went through the whole forfeits part where we had to do something like impersonating a clown or acting as you were a ringmaster. Acting made the exercise more funnier and more interesting.

With a partner or a group we did a lot of oral exercises from dialogues to discussion about customers and salespersons. A magic trick with cards brought good variation to the lessons. It was fun to do and I liked it even it was pretty much reading from the paper during the whole time. All in all this week was good.


WEEK 5
Week five and the course is coming to its end. This course went by so fast and that is kind of sad not to have it on the timetable anymore. The course was much more funnier than I first thought. This was also good recap for the next week's big exam. Lessons were fun because we did so much different things from dialogues to plays and to a quiz. Also the people whom I often worked with were just great!

So we had a crazy week because of the English listening exam, phrasal verb test and also because there are more exams coming at the following weeks. The panicing now changes to a smaller feeling, excitement. That is good, I think.

At this week's lessons we did practice for the oral test and there were this part where you have to summarize a text to your partner on your own words. I thought it was rather difficult. But we did manage well. We also did practice listening different accents and it was pretty easy except the Nigerian and the African-American parts! With a partner we were disagreeing and agreeing at one exercise by reading a statement and then throwing the dice to see what your opinion would be. The parts when you had to feel strongly about something were the best ones and the funniest. We were also acting as a customer and a salesperson.

What did I learn this week? Maybe the biggest thing was that the English listening was hard. But I have noticed that I learn every week some new words so this week I mainly focuced on the chapters on the book. And I found a lot of useful words.
 This course was really useful to me because I'm not that strong and confident at talking in English and this might help me in the future if there will be situations where English must be used.

At the last lessons some had the oral tests and some had to prep. Johanna and I, we were at the cafeteria and we were talking in English during the whole time. It was good for the coming oral test. We had good prep class on our own.

Oral Test:
So we had finally the oral test on monday and it was nerve wracking. We were with Johanna so scared and nervous before the test but luckily we got to read all the assignments before the test.

The test itself was really scary situation because there were two teachers listening to us. I thought that the test went okay and we even had fun in it. My pronunciation wasn't that good because I know I could have gone through the texts more carefully and slower but still I think I had good parts also. Together we were communicating well and when we didn't know a word we were expressing it with our hands or something like that. Giving a grade to myself is pretty hard because I have no clue what was important in our performance for teachers and it's always hard to remember how that thing went when you were so focused on the text. But I think I did well in the test so maybe the grade could be somewhere between 7 and 8.