Reflective Section

How has been English III for me?

This course has been incredible for me, because it had all the things and more, that I had expected of it. There were several elements that made this course fascinating.

First, the professor was amazing, she is a really good person, wise and full wanting to teach. I learned pretty much with her help, her many differents ways to teach and her personality that inspires everyone to want to learn more. She taught us new vocabulary, new expressions and the most important thing, take away that "fear" to speak in English. I think that people who did not like English, with her at least they learn how to find that "nice" side of the language and for me she only inspired me to learn more and more, and to never give up.

Then, there are the topics of the course. For me the topics and the contents are really important in a course, because most of the time and the lessons will be spent in them. Of course there were topics not so interesting (for me), but most of them were fascinating. 

One of the topics that I really enjoyed was "Exploring the World", because we talked and discussed about people from another places and their lifestyles. For example we made a little essay about Bhutan, how the Bhutanese people try to live in a country which is far from globalization and so closer to its traditions and culture. It was so interesting learn from other cultures.

And finally the classmates, for me they are an important element for an excellent course. I know that you are by yourself in the matter of learning, but you have to know how to deal with other people. My English classmates were excellent, friendly and the most important, respectful, because in terms of learning all people are no equal, some learn faster than other or some topics are difficult for some people and all the entire class were respectful. Also they had the sense of companionship, if you needed help, they heleped you and if there was group work, they were very responsable, and so with other things.

Besides from having new classmates, I met some people who is very friendly and kind, so much so we are now really close friends. This are one of the most important things that the course left me.

All the learning and the experiences that I had in this course were amazing and excellent and my expectations for the English rose, because all the things that I learned help me to beat myself and to know that I am able to learn difficult things and to improve every day.

Grammar

Grammar has been difficult to me and I guess for every person who starts to learn a new language. In case of English for this level, there are many topics some have been pretty easy, but others not so and of course I have tried to learn the difficult ones with many different ways besides the course. For example when we studied "Causative Form", for me was a llitle bit difficult because of the structure that the sentece needs and the practice which I did in class it was not enough for me, so when I came to my house I had to search mor information about that topic and also many practices to do, because in class I got kind of confused. After I did those practices that I found on Internet I was ready to do the homework from the Workbook, so I did it and now I clearly understand that topic.

For all the topics that we studied in the course only this was difficult to me and I think that people who do not understand a topic concerning to the grammar part, the best solution to learn it is practicing a lot, you ought to find many different excersices, practices regard on the structure and many other things.

I am going to attach the links from the websites which I found the information related to the Causative Forms and its excersices 

Let - Make - Have - Get

Let - Make - Have - Get (Excersices)

Causative Verbs: Have/Get Something Done

Out-Of-Class Contibutions

Do you know another options to learn English?

If you don't, I think you are absolutely wrong. There are many things to learn English besides the course. I have been learning English in regular classes, but through time I have learened so many words and expressions by other ways. For example, watching TV or movies. I think that watching TV shows or movies in Enlgish it is a good way to improve the listening part of the learning, of course trying no to read de captions, but you can streamline your ears by listening "natives" speakers and it is excellent to learn expressions such as idioms or particular accents.



Another way that I have tried to get better my English is listening music, there are a lot of good songs that you can pay atention to lyrics by listening it. Also you can search for its lyrics and read it, it is perfectely to learn vocabulary and it is a really great way because it is not boring on the contrary, is funny and you can do a lot of times with your favorite songs or maybe you can try with new artist or genres.

                                         

There is also a formal way that actually I do a lot, which is reading news and articles from Internet, maybe CNN or BBC. I have learned vocabulary applying this. It could be a better option if you want to learn, because you can read about any kind of topics, somthing that you really like maybe health, politics, technology, showbiz, sports. 



Anyway reading is one of the best options to improve your English and if you want to go a little bit higher you can read a book. Actually I have been reading a good book, that my teacher lent me. It is called "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck, is a interesting story of a southern family that trying to make a new living. I almost finished and when I started to read it I usuallly misunderstood a lot of thing, but through the chapters and time I understand most of the vocabulary.  So options abound, I try to apply most of them and there have been very useful to keep learning English out of class


                                

In-Class-Contributions

In my English class the teacher is very hardworking and also she is an active person, so she likes to do many activities with me and my classmates with the main purpose to learn and improve our English.

To do the lessons more active and funnier she does a lot of games and I think that learn in that way is more helpful and interesting. For example charades, we played that at least 3 times in the whole course and it is really funny, because you challenge your brain to think only in English, gussing words and putting them together trying to create a sentence, so that is a good way to learn a new language.

For the grammar learning, I guess that it is a little bit difficult to teach in another way, but our teacher does the best, so she teach us grammar with something that is request in all the English courses which is the E-Magazine. Writing essays of many different and interesting topics is an excellent way to improve our manner of write in English, of course it is important because we learn about our mistakes with the spelling and structure of the sentences and besides we learn new vocabulary, expressions and idioms which is better to enrich our "dictionary" in the language. 

Besides our learning would not have been complete without the help of the "Active Book". The "famous" book in which we do our practices of the many topics concerning on grammar and vocabulary. A lot of practices which are the most important part of the English learning. From completing sentences to reading and comprehending texts, this helpful book is our daily bread". Furthermore there is also the "Work book", using the same structure as the Active Book, the Work book is focus in the practical part of our learning, it has all the topics of the course but not as theoretical way.

This is an essay that me and my classmate Jerry did about Bhutan, it was very interesting and fascinating because by the we wrote the essay we had learned a lot of that country through a video which the professor had showed in class.