FCE Course

When I entered this class since first semester I believed that this would be the typical English class, but it wasn't. This class is very different from the other English classes, it is kind of harder but at the same time it is easier, harder in the sense that the topics and the deepness in it are more complex. But on the other side, the class is so relaxing, we are not under pressure and even with some pressure, we aren't totally stressed. From this class and during this specific semester I have learned a lot of things, specially from myself or in other words, I have learned better my weaknesses and strengths. With the FCE practice (which was at least half of the semester) I directly learned some vocabulary I never heard about and some techniques to answer the exam. Indirectly I learned that my English is not very well, even if I can understand it almost to the perfection, my communicative skills are, as in Spanish, very weak. Also I've learned indirectly from this first part of the semester that I must not get confident of my habilites, because in the worst moments I forgot about the important things. Finally I also learned that I don't know we're to put "in/on/at", I'm still practicing that but I'm still not quite well. From the second part of the semester I learned a lot of things about the different types of speeches, specially from the public speech. I did not knew that speaking was that difficult! Maybe it is not that difficult, but for me it is, specially because of my poor communicative skills. With the first speech, the demonstrative speech, I learned that if I don't practice enough, even if it is a topic I dominate, I will commit mistakes and get nervous primarily because I do not know how to express what I want to say with the correct words, in general I don't know how to explain anything. From the speech we are preparing for, the public speech, it seems to be way more difficult as it is larger, we could not use a visual resource like a presentation, we need to memorise a lot of what we are saying and saying it with a tone that brings the attention from your public. From what I learned of my last speech, I will try to apply it for giving a better speech. This semester we read a book, "The Old Man 👴🏻 & the Sea 🌊". Kind of interesting, specially because of the way the author writes. The plot was not very attractive for me, but I could not negate that it was different, and the different things are the best. I identified with Santiago, the old man, as he is lonely and kind of aloof, maybe I did not see myself being a sailor in the future, but maybe I will have the attitudes of Santiago considering my current attitudes. It makes me reflect a lot of if being alone is bad or not. This semester was nice, and part of that was because of this class. Thanks.

Why is word transformation important? -I believe word transformation is important because, as the name suggest, it helps you to practice and check how you manage derivations, specifically how wide your vocabulary is. Knowing and evaluating the wideness of your vocabulary is important because in every language, variations and derivations of words exist and are very changing, a dedicated word changed only by one letter could change the whole meaning of the sentence, plus knowing this helps you to have a lot of synonyms to words which could not fit very well in some cases. In general, word transformation is for evaluating your vocabulary. The vocabulary is a fundamental part of language because with it you made everything else. Vocabulary is the basic thing to know, without it you are not able to for sentences or ideas. -I guess that more than evaluating your vocabulary, it evaluate your facility to conjugate and transform words with different prefixes and suffixes. As those are the one that mostly conjugate the words there are important to learn, specially the uncommon ones. -As I said in my previous reflections, vocabulary is one of my weaknesses and by reflecting the importance of it, I could conclude that the reason why I am not a 100% English speaker is because of my short vocabulary. I will still try to improve with it and try to learn and memorice uncommon words or prefixes/suffixes so that when I am giving an speech I have a great variety of options to use.

What did I learn from preparing and presenting the demonstration speech?

-I learned that it is very important to know and understand what you are presenting, also that you need to practice enough so as when you are presenting you could talk with fluency as your ideas are already organised. Also I learned that material resources other tan a presentation could be very practical and helpful because it helps you to present your topic with a better understanding of it.

What are my strengths? What are my areas of opportunity?

-I believe that my strengths during this speech was that I knew the topic perfectly, but what I need to improve is my way of explaining, maybe my ideas were organised, I knew about the topic and I practiced, but explaining a topic like that was very difficult as you need to do it yourself to understand completely what I was talking about. I believe that when giving an speech I have the advantage that I understand the information very easily and I can remember it, but my way of explaining is very ambiguous, so I could improve a lot there.

How was my teamwork?

-As I prefer to work alone, i didn’t had a teamwork, but usually I adapt very quickly to a companion and I try to involve him and get involved so as we could have a better presentation and organisation.

Did we practice enough?

-I practiced like 4 times but I believe it wasn’t enough because when I passed to explain I was very nervous and had lack of fluency. I think that if I would practiced a little more, my presentation would’ve been very nice.

How did I feel about our performance?

-I think I covered the most important things about a demonstrative speech but some other like the fluent speech or the material resources, don’t.

•What have you learned about preparing something to be shared with others? -I’ve learned that I should not be nervous when talking because it makes the presentation looking bored and bad as it seems that I’m not well prepared if hesitating when talking. I also learned that the voice tone is very important when narrating something because it makes the presentation variable and interesting to the public, it also helps to remark the most important part of what you are narrating and it expresses the feelings for what you are telling. •What did you learn from writing and sharing your anecdote? -It was very funny and interesting to tell and listen to the others something, specially an anecdote because we tell something which could be personal and which represent our life. I learned that I should try to tell non-common anecdotes so as the people who I’m talking to gets interested in what I’m saying and comment something useful or important, maybe you could’ve climb the Everest, but if it is something that the people had heard before a lot of times, it could get boring, so it is important to try to talk about something new. Also I learned that it is very important to tell details about what happened so as to make the anecdote more interesting. •What fears do you face when speaking in public? -Most of the time I don’t have fear of talking in front of the people, but something that makes me upset is that the things go wrong and not as planned, for example technical failures or being more nervous than you expected so that your ideas get disorganised. Also not knowing with exactitude what I will say or what I will talk about. •How do you overcome your fears? -I practice a lot but only if I don’t feel prepared or I don’t know what I’m talking about with precision. Also I try to persuade the public if I forgot something important at the time of presenting.

•How do you think you did? I think it was easier than the first time I did it, maybe I believe it was easier because I was more prepared and my knowledges are more. This time I'm almost sure I will certify B2. •What did you have difficulties with? At the beginning of the test I didn't remember some things of the use of English part, I had some difficulties at Key Word Transformation because there were vocabulary I wasn't used to, at an exercise we needed to use the word "set" for expressing a wish or an action and I was lost at that question because I didn't knew it was even possible to use that word in that context. As I always said, I need to expand my vocabulary. •What was easy? Why? How? I believe easier than the first time I did it, but I think it was because my knowledge increase, I joined the things that my old teacher told me and teach me with what my actual teacher teach me, I believe that the first time I did it I haven't the capacity of someone with B2, but now I have. It was easy as I was used to a lot of thinks that came at the test, not only because I did it before but because I practice a lot during this semester at the English class. •Now that FCE is done, what do you expect from class? What would you like to do in class? I would like to practice my oral skills and specially my vocabulary skills, my oral skills are not just bad in english, but in Spanish too, my way of communicate my ideas is more concise and at the time of having a large speech I fail almost always. I'd also like to practice for another certification exam because it would help me to get a better preparation.

•What have I learned so far? What do I need to improve in the following terms? During the last semester and this first term, I've learned a lot of things, but specially I've reflected about what I really need to practice. In my past reflections I almost always said that I need to improve my vocabulary and all of that speaking thinks, and with the exam of this term I've learned that not only my vocabulary but my spelling, common mistakes like writing "specially" with only one "l". The vocabulary thing is still pending cause I've a lot of mistakes (almost all) in my exam because my vocabulary is limited or because I forgot the words, for example, I didn't knew what "clockwise" was, or that the word "width" was the one correct instead of "widened" and that word doesn't even exist! It's kind of weird how in the most important moments I locked myself and forgot words. I've also learned details to make a good easy, how to do it good not only by the structure, but at the time of encouraging people to read it, something I wasn't conscious of, was the structure of the body paragraphs, in secondary school I learned how to write different kinds of texts but only the general structure, it is interesting how in a lot of essays a nuclear structure is still functional and easy to do. Even when a lot of people told me to learn another language because I've already know a lot of English, I believe there is always something new to know and I keep improving day by day. By the way, I also could improve my listening skills in which I used to believe I was fine, but judging by the results of the FCE exam that I only not certificate B2 cause a mistake on listening, I still need to improve in that part.

+What are your strengths/weaknesses? •I believe one of my strengths is the listening parts, I consider myself an auditive person. It's kind of ironic that when I first made the FCE exam, I only not passed because of the listening part. My weakness, not only in English but in general, is the speaking part, I don't organice my ideas, forget basic vocabulary and don't use grammar very well. To improve I need to habilite my brain to concrete logical speeches and don't forget the words I want to use. +How was practice with your classmates? Did you learn anything from them? •It was helpful as I can compare my speech and ideas with them and improve this skills (in which I'm kind of weak). I believe it's important for the teacher to give us tips and more practice in speaking as the FCE evaluators evaluate how you let your companion to speak and how each one of your ideas relate, plus being intelligent at the moment of telling and synthesise your ideas. +Did you teach them anything? •I didn't but I could as I've already done the FCE exam once and know how they evaluate you and the kind of strategies we could use. For example, a strategy at speaking and something they always evaluate is how you let your companion participate, and if he doesn't lend you the word how you interfere to speak, or in the listening part in filling the gaps to identify what kind of word is the one that misses (adjective, noun, verb...). I believe this course is going well and I wish I could improve and strengthen my weaknesses so as to complete my formation in this language.

The lady of the tiger is a story that let us thinking about a lot of things. This story teach us that sometimes what we want doesn't depends on its quality, in this case the lover wanted to marry the king's daughter, not the pretty woman. I believe the woman wanted to kill his loved because as she was of barbarian blood and she hated so much the woman behind the door, she would rather prefer to killed him so he couldn't be with anyone else, especially with that woman. Even this story seemed kind of boring because of its extension and vocabulary it was very interesting the concepts like justice or desire it manages. The vocabulary was kind of challenging for me because I'm not very used to some words and I get out of context, plus the fact that the length of it makes it confuser. The kind of justice is very strange, maybe it is justice as there are the same amount of opportunities, but imagine that a guilty man open the door with a woman, that wouldn't be justice as he committed a crime and it is being awarded. I learned that sometimes the only thing we could do is decide blindly through decisions we don't wanted. Life is like that actually, there's not so much to do with this capitalist system, the only choices we have are, working or dying. That's kind of sad considering this system is one of the better ones. This story manages an open ending, I hate open endings because it makes the story feel like it was inconclusive and kind of bad. Analysing it we could deduce she would point the door with the tiger because of her personality and hate to the woman behind the other door.

During this 5 weeks of taking the course, I have practiced a lot my grammar, specially the parts of speech and some rules for writing sentences, all this has helped me to improve and polish my writing skills as we learn how and when to use commas, columns, and periods. Almost all the activities that we did during the first and second weeks were, in my case, a review of what I had saw before, because I already had take the FCE certification, even so I still learn new things. During the other three weeks we saw things like the run-on comma sentences, parts of speech, order of adjectives, types of sentences and how to identify them. Most of this things teach me new things, for example what was a interjection, or the types of clauses when doing different kinds of sentences (independent clauses, subordinate clauses), when and how to use "in", "on" or "at" in time or place, all the different types of pronouns, what was a preposition, etcetera. The partial exam we did two classes ago helped me to polish my knowledge about the formation of sentences with an specific word, how to identify better when it is only used a clause and when it is used more than one. I'm happy with the course. I wish the course have a good tracing and keep going like it is now, I still want to practice my oral skills with activities like a conversation with the classmates or more listenings, or even with the presentation of new vocabulary, because as I said in the other blog entries, I believe it is important to enlarge my vocabulary so as to have a better speech. I still expect to improve and have better results on my exams, I will try to made all my homeworks and I expect to learn the necessary to speak with native speakers of English.

Using properly the parts of speech is very important and fundamental because each one exist for a reason, helping us to understand the purpose of the sentence. I saw in class that there were 8 parts of speech, each of them have a purpose in the sentence and if it is not well used it can change the meaning of the sentence, for example the verb-form give the meaning to a sentence, if you put "made" instead of "make", it makes the meaning change as you are writing an action in past, while what you want to said is in present. It is fundamental to know how to represent your ideas clearly and concisely, if you can't then there is no purpose on try it because that is the purpose of language, communicate your ideas properly. Also using every part of speech is very important because the parts of speech complement each other so as to have a better understanding of what you want to said, for example the adverbs complement an adjective, a verb or even another adverb. Using them all makes you a better English talker and helps you communicating better in different styles and situations. I still need help in the use of parts of speech, specially in the oral field, I believe the best way to improve is keeping studying each of them and practice with practical exercises with classmates or even the teacher, someone who have a better use of English ,so as for him to correct me and if I can help him too, both will win new knowledge. The parts of speech I still need to improve the most are the interjections,conjunctions, and prepositions, I still don't get how to use them and in which situations use each of them, but a review of each of them would not be bad for keeping improving, specially in the oral field.

I have been studying English since I was 2 years old, I was good at the subject and I like it, but with the years I realise it wasn’t that easy. I have made 3 certifications, two of them (TOEFL & FCE) was academic certifications and the other one was a teacher certification: Teacher Knokedge Test (TKT). Even I know the fundamentals of teaching and of english, I still have problems with it, for example, in my TKT course, I learn that there was different types of learning, mine was listening, so it means I was pretty good at listening exercises but I had and still have a really big problem, my fluency when speaking, this one is one of the most common problems when studying English and it is one of the most important, which means I can’t achieve my goal (learning English at the perfection) without help. I believe another thing I need to improve a little is my grammar, I still need help in some areas of it, this is another problem because grammar is another of the important things to learn when studying English. This one is not a big problem but is still necessary: Vocabulary. I think I can improve with my speaking if I improve increasing my vocabulary, I know this because sometimes, when I am giving an speech, I don’t know how to said some words and I can’t find synonyms to most of them, which makes me nervous, so I think this one is important to improve in my English. Because this points I repeat my course of English instead of picking another language as subject, because I want to improve until I can speak English without any problem. I wish here I can achieve my goals.