Review of another English lesson

Here now a short overview of our English lesson:

Bob had a wonderful and good presentation of how creating questions in English;

E.g.
The short question: Who are those people?
changing that in a long question, the verb and nound is switched: I do not know, who those people are!

Within this presentation, one big question popped up: The behaviour of the reported speech. One important fact there exists: if one sentence is written down as a direct speech, the reported speech is always one tense back.

Which means normally:
Clara says "I leave now" --> reported speech: Clara said, that she left. But I know, that there is another rule, when the reported speech is in the same tense, than the direct speech. I will look that up and post it here as well then.

Then we reviewed a text out of the chapter "Trade" with the topic "fair trade"!

A few new vocabulary we also did, I repeat them here:
Application forms:

• incomplete --> e.g. the formular filled out is inclompete
• unclompete --> e.g. my picture is unclompete -- or also unfinished
• blank --> e.g. the piece of paper is blank
• empty --> e.g. my purse is empty
• unfinished --> e.g. the test is unfinished, because I was running out of time

the difference between
tariff --> in conclusion with money
quota --> the amount of something

other Vocabulary:
commodity --> the exact translation is "Rohstoff"

prosperity --> "Wohlstand" and the adjectiv is: "to be prosperess"
poverty --> "Armut"

If two people meet and one says " I haven't seen you for a long time, you got prosperess", in this context, it means: that someony got a bigger belly! Funny expression, and I will defenitely remember that!

After that we got the homework for the next time:
p. 85/A,B

At the beginning Martin checked, if everybody has bought his books, where everybody will write the phrases and vocabularies and all interesting things, that we do in class, into it. Interesting fact is, that everybody got his/her books, including me, because I always have my Kollegblock with me, and at home I collect them in a map. Roland even though plans to buy 4 books, to write in one the vocabularies, in the other the grammar parts, into the third the phrases etc.

What we did today:

• started a new chapter: Employment.

• 1st exercise: (out of a list in English book) find the most important points for getting a job (like: experience, qualification, references etc.). My group chose experience, qualification, personality, appearance and references.

o Out of this topic we turned to the vocabulary "to rank". Meaning of to rank: "to order according the importance".

At the moment Martin wrote the meaning of to rank on the board, everybody took their books and wrote the vocabulary in it. I guess Roland has started then his vocabulary book today (by the
destiny, that a a vocabulary was discussed first), and now he has to buy another book for grammar
and phrases! :-)

• 2nd exercise: we joined in groups of two people and need to find out and discuss the best/worst job, the best/worst boss, the best/worst colleague etc..

• Weekly Presentation:

Christian was the lucky person, who presented us the use of the word "should"; it was a
good presentation and very well prepared -- especially because Christian handed out a
Summarize of his presentation paper. The presentation was good – probably Christian
would say, that it was not so good – but I officially state here: It was good.

o I will definitely remember: "Ought to" can be used as should do and has also the same meaning; but "ought to" sounds more intellectual!

• Thoughts to the topic speaking English:
  

  Many people always have a very low self-confidence at the English language. That is why, they are then shy at talking English, and some people also try to prevent to talk in English. I understand that point, if something feels not comfortable, than it is not easy to do exactly this not-liked thing. But I think it is good that we have English once a week during the Fachhochschule – two hours once a week is not very much (actually for getting more practise in Speaking far too less), but still it is good and important for us to get in touch again with the grammar and the vocabularies. At every test everybody has to learn a lot new vocabularies and help to extend the vocabulary knowledge. But to get comfortable with speaking English 2 lessons are to less, but to help to get more self-confident in speaking English those 2 hours/week are ok – especially if people have to do presentations and exercises.

o Then we turned to the vocabulary "metacognitive". An interesting and very good description (to me) of the word "meta-" is: think and talk about a process. So if I talk about how to speak a language, this is meta-language. So cognitive would be e.g. speaking in social situations, and metacognitive would then be: How do I get speaking practise (e.g. by reading or by writing or by speaking?)

• As I wrote in my last reflection, I also had my presentation of the topic “countries, nationalities and language”. My feeling was that Martin expected a short presentation, with the main information, that words in combination with countries or nationalities always have capital letters at the beginning. But because the chapter in vocabulary in use covered more information, my presentation got longer. That is also the reason, why I did not feel comfortable in front of the class any more, then I also reduced the presentation content to finish earlier and summarizing, I am not satisfied with the presentation, because it was not so well. But in any case: This main information (capital letters) reached the class. But I also think, that I could put the usage of words with countries and nationalities a little bit across!
  

• At the end the homework: p. 78 --> A,B,C

awareness of writing always long texts

I was reading the last blogs by myself, and the following fact dramatically again came up:

I cannot write short texts! Never... :-(

I always start typing with the goal to write shorter texts, but it always ends up in a long text. Martin (our professor) always remembers me at homeworks, that if he gives us a homework to write a text with 150 words, that I shall write 150 words, and not 200... and every time I have to write the text (minimum) 2 times, until I have the 150 words!

So sorry for that, whoever reads my blogs -- posting short texts I have not accomplished yet! Except this one! ;-)

memories of the last english lesson

Actually I wanted to post this new post yesterday, at the end of our english lesson -- during the last 10 minutes; this was actually the plan by our teacher, that we all shall post in these 10 minutes the review of the last english lesson. But when I was nearly ready to post my review, the teacher of our next lesson arrived and I was the lucky person to spend the whole lesson in front of the class, in the spotlight of the professor, presenting and expanding the homework. What a nice saturday afternoon! :-)

So here now my review:
The last english lesson was three weeks ago, so first we reviewed the topics we did the last time. Afterwards Martin had his (good) presentation of a grammar or vocabulary chapter, and his topic was the meaning and difference between "have to" and "must". And I think my classmates all understood the meaning and difference of "have to" and "must" after a few practise exercises with those two words afterwards.

Then we did three exercises out of our english book to the topic "culture, which is the chapter that we work on at the moment. In detail we had 2 listening comprehensions (which we always have during an English lesson) about phrases to use for getting a person known, excuses if e.g. the name could be understood, coming late to a meeting etc..!

At the end we got our homework back from the last time -- Martin corrected my last post from the blog "news in Spring" and I had a big but also quite funny mistake in my post: I always used instaed of the word "vocabulary" the word "vocab", which was an invention by my own. So he already corrected me the last time to use the word "vocabulary". And I used the word correctly, but if I wanted to use the plural of vocabulary, I took the word "vocabularies", which is a bad mistake. The singular and plurar of vocabulary IS vocabulary.

Besides of our "normal" homework, I also got the homework to present a unit of the vocabulary book -- the topic: using country vocabulary with big starting letters, like Netherland, English etc...

So this was it, a review of the last english lesson!

News in spring

A long time has passed, since I posted into my blog. But today I have time, and I just seize the chance to inform you about my experiences during the last weeks:

First of all I had the english vocabulary test in english, which I luckily passed successfully, but here I have to say something: I was sitting 2 days learning english vocabularies again, which I did years ago the last time -- and it was hard. It was really hard, and I recognized, how many vocabularies in the english language exist, which I do not know (what an awareness;-)) ! Although I beleive -- or better: I beleived -- that I know plenty of vocabularies. I also recognized, that I use a lot of vocabularies at speaking, whose exact translation into german I do not know, which was quite funny to learn then. And an interesting experience as well... Vocabularies are, sadly, the basic of a language, and it is especially then sad, if I have to learn them, and then recogizing that there are still a lot more to learn -- and it is not ending. But on the other hand: There also exist a lot of german words, which I still do not know... watching this fact, english vocabulary learning gets more friendly again! :-)

Then I had to visit Amsterdam again (a visit for and with my company) and it was a funny trip again. Although I went out the night before our "working-day", I was speaking -- or maybe: because of this fact?! -- quite good english; the netherland people are very hard with the english language: Nearly all of the netherlands speak english fluently. TV in Netherland is on english, and only some channels have subtitles in dutch (but still: the spoken language is then english). Also in school many subjects are in english. This is the reason, why nearly everyone speaks good english -- and also many people understand german as well. Some people also can speak german, but in any case: most of the netherlands understand german. So they always know, what a german person wants to say, and then they hear the english translation. But Amsterdam visits are always a good training!

After this trip I had my last tests for my first semester (it was a very stressy time for me) , and I passed all of them and I am really happy now. On the day I noticed this fact I was running around with a BIG smile during the whole day! And I was a little bit proud, that I accomplished this barrier at the end of the first semester!

For today I finish my update from the last weeks, it got long again. But soon there are coming more news...