Assignment: What I Have Learned In Class

Our fifth assignment asked each student to write about what they had learned in the past six weeks, and what tools helped them most to learn each skill - one paragraph per skill was required. As always, the students thrill me with their information and insights, and they help to make me a better teacher with their observances.

 I Have Learned...by Katrina

I want to say I was very lucky to be in this class because I had very beautiful classmates and a teacher that was totally unimaginable. I have a lot of happy points that I learned in this class. I would like to describe the three biggest points.
First, I learned how to write paragraphs. A good paragraph begins with a topic sentence that explains what the paragraph is about. Next come a few sentences to support the topic sentence. Paragraphs end with a conclusion sentence that summarizes the topic. I am still working on my paragraph to perfect it.

Second, I learned in class how to give myself a warm up before I start my main point. In class the teacher lets us listen to a song and then lets us write down what we got. It is so much fun and I have no worries about making any grammar of spelling mistakes. To make myself warm up in real life is also very important before taking a happy step to get to the main point. Now everytime I go to work I would like a cup of tea or coffee to make myself fresh. Now I like to listen to English songs which I never did in my life.

   Third, I learned to put capital letters in the first word of a sentence and for all the days of the week, cities, countries, states, people's names and "I". Also I am learning grammar skills. After I learn those I always make sure I follow the rules when I write mail to my teacher or to my kids' teachers. From now on I will pay more attention to making mistakes in my grammar. I am proud and happy to have a chance to improve my English skills on reading and writing from this class.

I Have Learned....by Mona

Types of strategies to be better in English grammar. The first strategy is learning the structure of different tenses. The second strategy is practice sentences with subject, verb and conjugation. A third strategy is to read articles from the learningenglish.com website of from another website, the important thing is to read. In conclusion, the first two strategies to improve your English grammar is to learn and practice, but the third is to analyze grammatical writing in articles.

Good communication in English as a second language with our enthusiastic teacher Carrie Allen in the class motivates us to speak without feeling shy and learn from our mistakes. That is, the teacher gets us to participate in class and make presentations. Second, good exercises are to listen and try to understand what we hear. Third, she shows us the good pronunciation and the meaning of words. This means in every class we are practicing. listening, reading and learning new concepts. To summarize, she is a good teacher, has knowledge and good skills to make us good students.

How I develop listening skills in English. The teacher teaches us different strategies to listen better every day. It starts with how we include new activities in our routine. First of all, we listen to podcasts that interest us. Second, we listen to music, listen to the song several times and then take notes on what we understand. Third, we read what we hear on TED and the short stories on Storycorps. To summarize, every activity you do in your day you can add any activity in English and that will help you be better.

I Have Learned....by Alina

In this class I learned how to write and speak better, and I am more comfortable with grammar. The class structure also helped me be a better listener and learn new words.

During this class we did many different writing activities. We used many different techniques that helped us improve our writing. For example, we wrote different stories about things such as classmates, our history, country and culture. We aslso spoke about the topics we wrote about. In every single class we had to discuss our homework.

My grammar has also imrpoved because I had to repeat different verbs in past, present and future tense. In enjoyed it when the teacher explained everything in class and after that we tried to build new sentences. We had to formulate sentences that question things.

For me, the best training method in class was listening to podcasts. These podcasts heped me hear and understand the English language. Each podcast was about a different topic or story, and each had a different tone or accent. I've never had to listen to podcasts before, but I thinkthey are a very effective learning method for English.

I Have Learned...by Flor

The teacher always has us listen to podcasts, write English verbs and speak and pronounce words. Let's start with podcasts. Our teacher provides us with a website with very interesting podcasts. Between these podcasts are stories about families, horror stories, and real-life documentaries. These podcasts are short stories but very fascinating and easy to understand. In these podcasts there are new words and a good amount of vocabulary.

Now to the English verbs. English verbs are a big challenge for me. Between them there is a simple present, past and future tense. We are also forming sentences with the verb 'to be'. We learn to write about our lives, like our own personal routines. All our classmates practice English among ourselves by speaking to each other. In this way we all get to know each other better and have a good connection.

Finally, in class we learn to pronounce words. We learn to pronounce words when the teacher asks us to read for the class. When I read, I can lose fear of an audience and it doesn't really matter for me if I mispronounce a word. I can become braver in this way and learn better from my mistakes. 

To get better at English I know that I must read more, and I love listening to podcasts about personal growth. I feel like I'll be more enthusiastic because it combines with my interests. My biggest challenge is to improve in each area of the English language.

I Have Learned...by Nataly

In this class I am learning to understand what the teacher and my classmates are talking about. This is good for me because then I no longer keep asking what they are talking about and I understand them on my own. I improved my comprehension by practicing, listening to music in English every day and watching movies in English with subtitles and writing down the words I don't understand and then translating them. In conclusion, to understand more English I need to practice and be consistent with my practice.

I learned to speak and to lose the fear of speaking in English thanks to the fact I felt confident and knew that my classmates would not make fun of me. Because we practice a lot in classes, interacting with each other, and because I learned vocabulary and grammar, I now know how to form clear sentences. I improved my speaking by interacting with my classmates and with the teacher, and listening to the pronunciation of words that I could not pronounce well. In conclusion, I achieved all this thanks to practice and losing the fear of speaking English.

I learned grammr which helps me to be able to do my homework, to participate more in class and to form correct and clear sentences. I achieved all this with practice by doing exercises in perfectenglishgrammar.com that the teacher provided us. Also, thanks to my teacher because she explains it to me very well and manages to make me understand, she does her job with love. In clonclusion, we can acheive everything with practice and dedication.

I Have Learned ....by Paola

This semester of English I have learned many things. First I learned to use more vocabulary in English. I also really like the methodolorgy that the teacher uses to teach English. I like the camaraderie that exists in my class. Everyone is kind when someone needs something.

I also learned to speak without being afraid of making mistakes in English. Sometimes I use the wrong words, but the teacher corrects me without making fun. And I can tell the teacher my doubts about words that I don't really understand. This semester I really like English class.

Finally my class has helped me understand the American people in English because before I didn't understand the logic of English much. I would like all teachers to be like my teacher who has a lot of patience. I actually feel very proud of myself for leaning things I didn't know.

 

Assignment: Native Country Presentations

Our fourth assignment was a presentation made by the students. These presentations are in the form of informational slide shows of the student's native country. Each student was asked to speak for 5 minutes and present a series of at least eight slides.

Paola's Presentation

Assignment: English Self-Analysis

 Our third writing assignment is a self-analysis of each student's individual English strengths and weaknesses. They focused on the general areas of speaking, comprehension, reading and writing. Each student was asked to write two paragraphs - each paragraph dealt with a different English weakness, explaining how that weakness affected their current lives, and how that weakness could be improved upon.

SPEAKING by Paola

   My purpose is to learn to speak English. I have some obstacles to achieve my purpose of learning more vocabulary. I am very ashamed of making mistakes when speaking English with only Latin people. At my job they don't speak much English, I spend time alone on a computer.

   In order to improve my English I am going to start recording ten words a week. I am also going to look for another job where they speak more English to learn more. I also want to work as a dental assistant to learn English and to learn about dentists in this country. I am going to overcome my fear of making mistakes in speaking English by talking to American people.

SPEAKING by Mona

   My biggest problem is speaking English. First of all, when speaking English with other people, I often have to repeat the same word. Sometimes I don't even know how to pronounce the word I want to say. For example, when I say the words "can" and "can't", I make the same sounds. I have been looking into how to improve my problem. First I'll try some tongue twisters. Second, I'll listen to some podcasts. Third, I'll speak slowly. In addition, I'll watch TV in English. To sum up, any English exercises that I do will help to improve it and be better.

    English grammar is something I need to improve to perfect my second language. First, when I am talking I say sentences that don't even exist and also there are some words that have many meanings, and I don't know how to use them. In addition, I have a hard time understanding and communicating with someone who only speaks English. There are many options to learn English grammar. I'll do grammer exercises, learn the grammar of words, and read a lot of books and newsletters in English. In short, if I do the exercises and practice everyday then I'll get it.

SPEAKING by Nataly

   I need three important skills to speak English well. First of all, I need grammar to be able to apply it in forming sentences. Second, I need to learn vocabulary to communicate effectively and clearly. Third, I need to pronounce correctly so that they can understand me and so that I can communicate at work and school.

   In order to master the grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation, I must do things like listen to music in English, watch movies in English, with or without subtitles, and practice in class and at work. In conclusion, in order to speak English correctly, I must learn grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and, above all, practice.

MY ENGLISH PROBLEMS by Katrina

   My biggest problems with English are idioms, pronunciation and reading. When I'm at work I can't understand well when my coworkers talk a lot or quickly. Also when they talk about any topic I am always stuc in the middle of the conversation. The best solution is to read more books, watch or listen to YouTube and talk with people in any place. Also leaning vocabulary is very important to gain my English speaking skills.

   One of my problems with English is also writing. I have a very small vocabulary and am not good at grammar rules. I have some solutions for writing. First, no matter what you have in mind. just write it down without thinking of too many grammar rules. Second, try to write an easy essay and need practive a lot of grammar rules (?) It would be good if you have the habit of writing a diary to improve your English as well.

MY WEAKNESSES IN ENGLISH by Alina

   In my mind I have a few weaknesses with English. They are speaking, reading and writing. For me, my main weakness is speaking. I work with American people. Sometimes in my work I have situations when peole are waiting for my explanations or my opinion, but I cannot explain, because I don't speak English  enough. One of my strongest points is comprehension. Personally, for me, I use a few ways to improve my English. I like to visit class offline. I very often listen to the radio in my car. and I always try to read something new and translate new words. I want to speak correctly, learn more English and grammar. I want to become literate.

    I like this class. We don't have many students in class. That's why everyone in class has the opportunity to work on their weaknesses. Some of the things I enjoy doing in class are listening to audio lectures and practicing writing short paragraphs about different topics. I would like in the future to read more and have discusssions about what we read. This way we can increase our vocabulary. I hope this helps develop and improve our weaknesses.