Post 10 >> English Language Challenges

> What comments can you make about your experience learning English at university?

In the most of times I avoid all the things that have relation with English language, but in this year I received this knowledge with more enthusiasm, because is my last semester at the university and I want to grasp the opportunity that I have to learn English with the best teachers! This semester I had English with teacher Claudia, I knew her in English 2 at year 2013, so It was a great surprise to find her this semester, because I have good memories of that course. I learnt  so many things, and today I can see how far I have progressed.

In English 3 I remember I had a crazy teacher, she always arrived late to class, and sometimes she never arrived. That miss dropped out the course in the middle, so we didn't have too many classes. And I had to take an oral test at the end of semester. 

In English 4, this year I  was really enjoying  the classes of miss Claudia, she know a lot of things and she is always there willing to help us.



>What about the use of blogs?

I think the blogs are a good tool to learn how to write in English, sometimes is hard to think how you have to write a word, or translate a sentence from English to Spanish. 

 > What aspects of your English need to be improved and how do you plan to do this?

I think I have to learn more vocabulary because I always need to check the words that I don't remember or don't know.

> Outside the English class, how much are you using English these days? What for?

Always, because too many words in our society are in English. In the university are the papers, so I always use the English

CHANGES TO MY STUDY PROGRAMME

I'm studying Psychology, in my career we have a lot of courses, there are 48 courses distributed by 5 years of career.  In the better cases the students  have four semesters with six courses until second year. In third and fourth year they have five courses  per semester. The last year ( number 5) the students have the practice and they write the thesis.

In general the career has a lot of problems with the curriculum. For example, most of the futures clinic psychologist don't practice with patients until the last year, this is a big problem, because they are reading about therapy four years, without any practice. For this reasons, the last year the teachers and the students organised a process of curriculum innovation. In that process the students and the teachers learn and discuss about the problems of the curriculum with the objective of create a better curriculum and improve the conditions of the students. I didn't participate, but the people who went to the meetings said that it was very important. Most of the times the teachers don't know about the problems of the students, so they learn a lot of things about  the demands of the learning of our discipline.

Nowadays I'm in the fourth year and with the experience of all of this years I think in the curriculum we need more practice, because when I come to the reality the things are very different to the papers.
About the classes I really hate how the teachers use the Power Points, sometimes in the class they write the topics and the principal ideas, and they only read them in the class.

IN COLD BLOOD

My favourite book is A Sangre Fria or In cold blood , it is a non-fiction novel write by the journalist and american writer Truman Capote. It was published in 1966. It is the real history in details of the murder of the Clutters happened in 1959, a 4 members family from a little town in U.S.A called Holcom, in Kansas. The second part of the book center the history in the murders, two criminals after a long and  extensive search are found and sentenced to death.

I like the book because it tells the history with a lot of details, and it creates a psychological profile of the criminals, Truman Capote makes an exhaustive investigation and he even visits the criminals in the jail!

But what struck me the most with the book was that  you can fell a lot of sensations: in the first part you want to find the criminals, and in the another you know their lives, and you dont what their deaths. It is a really good job, because the author imparts a more human dimension to the killers.

I really recomend the book, is a good chance to know the bad part of the human society, the hidden thoughts of some humans are disturbing. 

Truman Capote has anothers creations , but he didnt write anything after this book. He was severly afected by the history. You can learn more about his life in a movie called "Capote" starring by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

postgraduate

The postgraduate studies I would like to study is a degree in music in Pedagogico c:. The reason of that decision is because I really enjoy learning about music concepts, and listening the sounds of the instruments, playing instruments, and composing songs. I really love it. The extension of the career is 5 year, a lot of time, but I`m so young yet to learn!. I dont like the postgrades of Psycologhy because I would like  to know others kinds of experiences. In the social science you have a particular mode of produce knowledge: you have to read, and to be a lot of time sitting in front of a computer, writing about ideas, problematising any conduct, or social phenomenon. Most of the times, the text is assessed by the teacher and it doesn't have any other function, no one outside the university read those ideas.

In the other side, the music have a lot of other attributes , you can open minds with a song because  is have a message and produce a sensation. With the art you can change the society, like a political speech, the music maintain alive the memories, relive the history . For example today exist in our country really importants art productions, like the Victor Jara songs, or Violeta Parra.

Nowadays I'm singing in a really great theater company called Voces del Presente. We relive the history of the toma de la "Herminda de la Victoria". We have a political spech, we used the art to keep in mind the past.
Here your can learn more about it! :)

https://www.facebook.com/VocesDelPresente/

Hi, today i will write about the place where I would like to go this summer.

This summer I will work in the North of our country: The Feria del Libro in La Serena. The last summer I worked in that place too, is a really nice job, the kids zone is really fun. In that zone the kids come and can read stories with their parents, is like a library, but specially made for children. Some parents think it's a nursery, but it's not!. We do a lot of things, for example, I was a storyteller in the kinds zone, and I invited the kids to learn how to read the stories. So the activities planes for this summer is to work! 

The other place that I want to go is......anywhere in the world with my boyfriend!. I dont know where we will go yet but I want to go to Valdivia and check out the Beer Party, because we really like the beer. It will be nice to taste different kinds of flavours.  

This summer i wanna sing too, play guitar, swim in the sea, to be with my cats, enjoy the life with my friends, take pictures in beautiful landscapes, read books, watch the figures of the clouds in the sky, fell the wind in my hair, ear the music of the birds, write, and live.

Brother Bear

Usually the movies I like are the children movies , maybe because when I was a kid my dad bought every end of the month the premiere. We would go to Blockbuster and with my brother chose the one we liked the most (plus a microwave popcorn). So, that were our movie nights. I was about 7 years old and my brother 5, my little brother was still a baby so I dont think he remember these nights .  When we got home and we cooked popcorn in the microwave, we waited for the explosion and then went to the TV with our treasure in VHS, to watch our own premiere. We saw so many films, The Lion King, Mulan, A Bug's Life ... and many more. So today my favourite movie is Tierra de osos o Brother Bear. 

Is about three brothers, Kenai, Sitka and Denahi. In the film, Kenai pursues a bear in revenge for a battle that he provoked in which his oldest brother Sitka is killed. He tracks down the bear and kills it, but the Spirits, angered by this needless death, change Kenai into a bear himself as punishment. In order to be human again, Kenai must travel to a mountain where the Northern lights touch the earth, and learn to see through another's eyes, feel through another's heart, and discover the meaning of brotherhood. 

Hope you watch it

Have you ever experienced with drugs

I did not like the subject, I think that drugs can be the gateway to parallel realities, in university life sometimes we need to travel half late to forget the burden of reality. Our common problems, as members characters of "higher" education.

My first experience with drugs was on the street, in the corner of Campo de Deportes with Grecia Ave. He wore dirty clothes, some torn jeans and a scent of gasoline which could be smelled from the moon. It looked like he kept his years on his pocket, perhaps he was 16 and in his hands he had a plastic bottle, half full, half empty of an oily yellow liquid. He looked at me amused and suddenly began to enunciate words I did not understand, then I realized he wasn’t talking to me precisely, he was speaking to someone who was beside me, but I couldn’t see anyone. In reality no one was there, he had imagined it, he was so drugged that couldn’t distinguish the place where he was, he said he had to go home, but was too far away, seeing strange figures in the morning sky. I felt no fear, I felt nothing similar to what people feel about a drug addict. Patiently waiting for the bus I thought about that child's mother, thought about her life with the smell of gasoline that could be smelled from the moon. The bus I was waiting arrived, I sat down in an empty seat, he stayed down, staring into space and laughing, as if I could see it too, but I couldn’t. And I kept watching him until the bus left, and as the landscape was moving, tears rolled down my cheek. I kept looking at him laugh at something no one else could see but him, and then he slowly disappeared, the invisible boy flew to the stars of the indifference of the city, while his stench swam through the streets, between cars, between the houses, through thick walls of concrete…