Javiera's Journal

Today, we talk a lot about stereotypes and prejudice. Glen and Jessica explain to me that in there still have some stereotypes, but there are not too different to us. With the difference that many times we hide this stereotypes and in there, you will notice immediately. Some of this stereotypes are about girls mainly that they have to be very girly, sweet and cute, as in the example. It was a kind of hard to talk about this topic and don't offend anyone. Principally because Chileans do have some stereotypes about people that had Asian characteristics. 

Today was really short, we only present to each other with my partner.  Actually, I have two partners, what is great I can talk more. Also, we start to talk about our college life, who we decide the career and why. However, we also talk about the city.  Where we come from, How it was our hometown and how is the city that we live to know. In the case of many of them, they had to migrate to study to a big city.  Personally, I think that we are very similar in that aspect and was great to share with them. They are really nice.

We start with some problems with the app of WeChat, but we solved very quickly.  My partners are the best, at the moment. They are really willing to talk and share what is happened in their days. In fact, they send pictures of their family.   We talk about many topics, principally describing our families, we also talk about pets. One of my partners could have pets because is allergic to them. He was really happy when I tell hem that I had 4 pets. By the other side, we talk about marriage and if she and he would like to get married someday.  

Share and talk about everything with our Chinese partners is the best. Mainly because they are willing to talk with us and share and learn from our culture.  Today, we talk a lot about traditions.  Principally, our celebrations, what are most important and what we do.  Festivals were the center of our conversation, mainly because they had one that is the principal one, the spring festival. So we compare they celebration with many of our celebration. However, they had a different celebration that I find it very interesting. That is the end of the second war.

If we talk about stereotypes and prejudges is hard to don't offend to anyone, but today it was not the case. Today I could have a really nice and fluency talk with my partner.  The way of our countries are seen by the other, and if we had some stereotype.  Personally, my partner doesn't have any stereotype of Chileans. Every time that she thinks in Chile principally imagine the places of the country and not the people.  By my side, I consider and probably the majority of us consider united states like a powerful country. Also, Chileans respect north Americans because we see them like very smart people. Principally by all the technology tools that they had created.   

Questions about the meaning of life and religion are big and deep questions.  Personally, I share the idea of them. That we are here, to be happy and joy the life. Despite that, through the life, we get different objectives that we want to reach.  I could notice that we had really similar goals, the different it's in the order. For exemplify you, we get to two majorities. The first one, that wants to end their studies get a job, travel know the world and finally make a family.  The second one, It's focus in their studies and keeps studying, probably to find a good job to develop their abilities. This way concluding  a family.  However, there are a few that don't want a family or had other different goals but, those are very similar anyway.  

I enjoyed the minimum time that I chat with Emily. We really not talk that much but what we talk and the questions that we made to each other were the really good answer. First, we talk about our favorite celebration. What she like the most, is Thanksgiven and Chrismas, principally because she always spends that time with her family. Besides, I explain to her that my favorite its Chrismas because for me is really special the whole celebration. Moreover, I illustrated her about how we celebrate the Christmas different to her. For example, that we open the gifts at middle night, some families eat and then went to the church other don't. By the other side, we also talk about college and how important our society consider this. In there, go to school and high school is really important so in consequent the majority go on to college.  In addition to getting a good job that it's also very important for them.  Again I explain to her that we are very similar in that too, because for us also really important go to college but not everyone can go by different reasons. The most common that some teens get in pregnant or other preferred to start to work after study but, this is also something that it's changing. Nowadays we had many young people studying. 

Talking about families in the video conference, was really good. Because in our culture class, it's something that we are in that now.  So we get many questions to ask them, it was cool. Yeah, we get some moment of silence but there was like 3 or 5 seconds that we use to change of question or to answer back the same question.  The majority show some interest, so they try to give us some answers. But, personally, I really don't see my partner really interested. Besides that, I give my point of view in some question, also I ask a few time about the topic of the class. That was family. For example, the way that families educated children. If it is different, depending on if is a boy or a girl? the answer was, that not really. That know those families are more equal, that they try to don't make differences.  For the other side, we talk about gay families and how common this is.  Most than a half said that gay families are really common nowadays in there. Even a few years ago, one of them said that in high school she had some friends that come from gay families. Now she knew like 6 gay families.

College life, it was about our first meeting. It was really nice, we present to each other and after that, we started with the bombard of the question.  we talk about many things, they explain us about tuition, some interesting facts for example, that they had something like 42 differents sports.  But, teams they had 9 of men's and 10 teams of women. Actually, what we did most, it compared their university and our university. To illustrated you, they asked about if we had a Starbucks .... and it was like nop.  But we had a cafeteria, where we can find something called coffee but, it is not real coffee, poor of us.  However, we explain to them that it was because of our campus kind of new.  Also, we describe the kind of weather that we had now. Because they are like in the end of summer and we are starting the spring. However, we let them now that in Chile, they can find a great variety of weather and places to know. For example, that Torres del Paine and Laguna del Maule that it is in our region.

Technology-Enhanced Language Learning (TELL). The search for and study of the application of the computer in language teaching and learning. It’s rare to find a teacher who doesn't use technology in his classroom. First, because technology now is the most important tool to assist teachers.  It could very useful to connect the classroom also, it could be better to enhance the language learning experiences. Secondly, the role that technology play today is very important, make easier to learn and also teach, it gives us resources to get the attention of the student, that is hard to do today. 

Today we had many ways to make the student learn and also improve every day their English with technology. For example, using the radio to practice listening, this is something that every teacher of English do and is very necessary for improve the listen is the teens, on the other hand, in an interactive way can watch a video. Even you can improve your English, even we can improve our English on the cell phone, There we can find many ways to enhance our five English Skill only downloading an app. Also, another way is to have a web page or a blog and practice writing skills. This is very useful the only thing that you need is a topic, something that you like or something that you know and you want to share your knowledge with others. 

Theater Sports Games is one of my favorite activities in Drama class. We start stretching, getting our body warm for the next activity that was Sculptures. We start giving examples of places this way the public, the girls, could understand of a better way what they have to do and then write some examples in the cards.  Now with the places in the cards, we start to play the Sculpture game. First, we play in the pair then come the best, we play with the students.  We include one of the girls in the public to play with us. She was the culture and also the sculpture, was the best because she really wants to participate with us and also I think that she gets a lot of fun playing with us. She doesn't talk too much but she tries to talk in English. The next game was Follow the Story, that for me is really fun. We have to improvise so we really don't know what is going to happen in the final of the story, for this reason, most of the time is very fun. Finally, play with emotions, we show our happy face, our sad face among other, for then play Replay the Scene.  In my case act a romantic date, first with no emotions and then angry, was really fun. 

Pronunciation

Antimoon has a lot of interesting articles, I read one about choosing between American and British Pronunciation. This article is very interesting for me because most of the time I speak with the General American but, some words are too difficult to me and pronounced with the British accent is easier for me.  Also, the majority of the people speak with GenAm (General American) because it's more global. We almost always hear movies with the GenAm accent, videos, and music among others. For this reason is normal that we speak with that accent.  In addition, only a 5% speak with British pronunciation, and this average compound by academics, actors, and politicians.

Obviously, we always have to be improving our pronunciation but, personally I have to improve my pronunciation of vowels.  Because most of the time I get confused with some of them.  Also, I need to modulate more, cause at the beginning of the year I don't modulate anything. Besides now I improve this aspect a little but I need more.

Have a good pronunciation it's necessary to get a pleasant conversation. When we talk to a person in real life, they probably will not notice our limited vocabulary or grammar mistakes but, they will notice our bad pronunciation. It doesn't matter if we have good grammar and vocabulary, this won't help us if we have a bad pronunciation, for that guy I will be the girl with poor pronunciation. In addition, we can live without an advanced vocabulary, we can explain everything with simple words and a good pronunciation to be understood.