Month: June 2022

“My Language 5 Self-assessment 2022”

fernandasoto2 Comments

Wow! Time flies! I can’t believe this semester is finishing in two more weeks. For me this fifth semester has been the most different, for instance, I could have presential classes the entire semester, I could study and review either for a test or a quiz with my friends at the university, and I could meet my teachers (Teacher Jaime Pizarro, María Angelica, Flora Mandiola and Carolina Urrutia). This semester was not like the other, this reminds me what I wrote in my post “My self-assessment Language 4”. In that post I refer to the fourth semester which was a little bit different from this one since during that the semester most of my classes were online and a few presential, I could meet my teachers, but I did not had classes with them, I only had presential classes with teacher Jaime Pizarro. These were the differences between fourth and fifth semester.

Now I would like to talk about “My Goals, Challenges and expectations for Language 5”. First, I would say that I achieved some of my goals, challenges and expectations, and the others I didn’t. For example, from my goals I achieved only one, and it was the one related to “the skill of writing”. Now I know how to write an Article, Review, a Story. Additionally, I learn a little more about the punctuation and that is important because it helps you to improve your writing skills. Learning the punctuation helped a lot on improving my writing, I was told that I improved my writing, the teacher who told me that was teacher Flora. The other goal that I had for this semester, and I could not achieve was to “learn new Idioms and Slangs expressions”. I could not achieve it since I did not have much time to learn and study Idioms or Slangs, but I am not sad about it, because I know I still can learn some of them during the career.

 

The challenge I achieved was “to be confident when I will have to speak in English”. Although I still have problems with the fricative and affricate sounds, I think I am more confident than the rest of the semesters. I am still a timid person, but as the beginning of the semester. The challenge I could not fully achieved was the one related to reach to level B2 which belong to the level of an FCE. In my opinion, I reached to the level B2 because I learnt new vocabulary, new words, new grammar, but I do not feel that I reached it in a 100%.

 

 

 

From my point of view, I believe I achieved my 2 expectations. These were to participate more in class and to ask more questions in class. This semester I participated more than ever and every time I had a doubt about a specific topic, I immediately asked the professor a question in order to solve my doubt.

 

 

To sum up, this fifth semester was different from the other semester. I could have presential classes, study at the university and the most important thing I have improved a lot my English. That makes me feel I am over the moon. I would like to post this quote because I like it and makes me feel I can do everything I want, even though the process can be slow. The person represents me, and the moon represents my dreams. 

Here are the links of the pictures I put; in case you cannot see them well:

My goals: https://www.canva.com/design/DAFDWR6d1QE/EENxCbjXYcOB9P1Awv5u1A/view?utm_content=DAFDWR6d1QE&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

My Challenges: https://www.canva.com/design/DAFDWY2GbHE/oVGarnE0eNurVdmnnB4bAw/view?utm_content=DAFDWY2GbHE&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

My expectations: https://www.canva.com/design/DAFDWVTzak4/uFSVQOpF5fC4IQRGHJCAEg/view?utm_content=DAFDWVTzak4&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=sharebutton

 

Listening into Writing

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When people travel to a country like United State, Italy, France, etc., they see lots of different traditions and culture. But what is the definition of “culture”? And why is it important to know their culture?

Based on the video Why is culture important? (2017) culture is defined as:

“the way we do it here, so what that means, this is our culture, this is the way we do it, this is what matters to us, these are our values, this is our purpose, this is our commitment, this is the way we want people in this organization to behave.”

From my point of view, I agree with the definition given by the video since “culture” because represents our own behavior, in other words, the way we behave in front of the rest of the people. It also means for me, the way the rest of the people can see us, for example, the rest of the world see us (as Chileans) always happy, making jokes, using lots of slangs and idioms. These represents who we are, I mean as Chileans, and I say this because this is also an experience that I had, since someone told that, the way he and his friends see us. He also told me that sometimes it was difficult to him to understand us because he said that Chileans use too many slangs and idioms that are difficult.

Taking this into account, I think it is important to know the cultures of the countries we want to visit in order not to generate any misunderstanding or embarrassing situation as it happened to the protagonist of the Outsourced Culture shock video. A man traveled to India and when he arrives did not know the culture of that country and from what the video implies, he was not happy at times, he had trouble understanding why you cannot eat with your left hand, what to do when you go to the bathroom, etc. He felt uncomfortable with all these situations.

Finally, I would like to emphasize once again the importance of reading and learning about different cultures, which helps us to understand them better and avoid uncomfortable situations.

Links of the videos: