The fifth week and oral exam

In fifth week we did same things as usually, but also couple different exercises like plays. Those were really funny and I liked to do it, though it was quite hard trying not to laugh. In the end of the week we did exercises by ourselves, so I did many oral exercises and conversations with my partner Mirna.

Then it was time for test week, and we did our oral exams. I think my own exam went quite fine. First I was a little nervous and tense but after I relaxed a bit I got a better flow to my speaking and did better in the end. I was very happy with the result and there was nothing to be scared about :-)

I liked this course really much, because I like to speak English but also learn to do it better, so this was definitely the course for me. I learnt new words and many different things to help my English. Very good course!

(#5) End of the course and the oral exam

I think it was wednesday when we put together three little plays and performed them front of the class. Every play were good and I enjoyed the time though it first felt like a bad idea to perform anything.

We also listened chapter where was this nigerian girl. After that we did conversation exercise and it was hilarious to hear when people spoke with different accents.

On friday our teacher let us do exercises by ourselves. In my table we read two chapters and we also did couple conversation exercises.

Test week
On test week I was in history matriculation examination so I didn`t manage to come to the lesson which was held on monday. The next day, tuesday, was the day when the oral exam was held. One thing was pretty weird, I wasn`t nervous at all. First me and my partner had time to practise about twenty minutes and then we went to the exam.  First part was easy I think. We just had to read a text and ask couple questions about it. Second part was the hardest part. I had some difficulties with telling the main idea of the text. Third part was a bit harder than the first part. Still I think our performance wasn`t below average.

The course was fun and I really enjoyd it though I were first a bit afraid what it brings. I hope everyone enjoyed the course like I did.

Number 5 and oral exam

This final week was definitely the best week!

We got to choose one story that we had to a play or a scene from that story with different genres like action, reality TV etc. We chose Little Red Riding Hood and it was so hard to play the roles without laughing – and we did laugh a lot. Even though we laughed a lot I really think that we did well because we didn’t have so much time to prepare. 

We practiced to recognize different accents after listening to jokes from the tape( jokes were bad :DD ). We also did exercises together with my group and it was great to talk about different topics with them and see what kind of perspectives they had.

We had also oral exam and I think it was nice and I did quite well although I didn't know my partner so well that I was little bit tense. The oral exam was good and it was better for me too that I spoke with little bit unfamiliar class mate and  thereby exam wasn’t as easy as I thought. 

It was good that I took this course, it turned out to be really versatile. I highly recommend taking this course!

Week #5 and the oral exam

So this was the last week of our course and the oral examination was still to come. It was after all the most enjoyable week so far. We did exercises, listened few chapters and also I did some exercises of my own on the preparation class. After all week went fast by but at least I enjoyed so far most so far as I said earlier.

We listened chapter 10 "Welcome to my World" on one class.  It was really touching story of Nigerian girl who granted permission to enter the UK. I did A-B exercises with my partner which was related to the chapter. I gave a try for different accents and one of them and I really liked the Indian accent.

At Friday we read two chapters out loud in my group. We thought that it could be really useful for the oral test which was ahead of us. Especially chapter 9 "Are you being server" was really good chapter for us, in my opinion. That chapter truly gave me new perspective for the customer service. Service can be undoubtedly difficult each other. We acted like they did in the chapter and tried to really be hard customer or salesperson. We have done many different oral examinations but this one I liked and it was helpful.

On Monday I had warm up lesson for upcoming test. Since my partner was doing history matriculation examination I had to practice on my own. I read different chapters I had heard during the course and did some exercises too. Also I wrote bit my journal too. After all I wished that my partner would have been able to come but it was ok. It was fine but could have been better warp up for the test.

The next day I and my mate had the oral exam. First of all the preparation time was not that long but manageable. It could have been much longer but I got main points of the text. I did have no time read my partner questions. I just had to read throught my own topics. But what can I say. Everybody had the same time to become familiar with the material.

I was bit nervous at the beginning of the oral exam but soon after I was comfortable. Hardest task was the second one where I had to re-tell the topic to my partner. But the third part was easiest if I could say. It was not that easy but it was easier than the other two parts.

The course is now over and I have learned a lot during the course. Course 8 was much different compared to the other ones. My oral skills has been improved still does. Thanks to this course!

Good job!

The oral exam

On Friday I was doing my Finnish matriculation examination, so unfortunately I didn't have a chance to be in lesson doing the independent work. On Monday I had the oral exam. I was pretty nervous before the exam, but anyway I survived it.

We had only little time to prepare for our exam and I didn’t have time to do all the preparations.  I went to the exam without even looking at the text that I had to read, so I was a bit irritated. After all I didn’t too big failures when reading the text and asking questions. Yet, it was hard to answer my partner’s questions because the subject was unknown to me, and I had never even heard about that.

After reading, it was time to do a summary about a text. My text was about Finland and tourism. We had to summarize the text in our own words, and I had a few problems with it. I have never done a summary in oral about anything so that was difficult! It was hard to come up with similar words that there were in the text, and still tell the story without changing it.

The third part was discussion. We decided to discuss about ticket disaster. It went pretty well: my partner and I both had a lot to say.

From my point of view, the oral exam was a bit difficult, and I could have done better in it. At any rate it was good practice for the future because I’m going for an au-pair next year, and I have to do well in the interview and so on.

(#4) End of the course is closing

Mainly I remember the circus game. I felt it was a fun game though some guys in our table didn`t want to play it properly. Still I don`t blame anybody because everyone played the game. Tasks I got were easy so maybe thats why I liked it.

We also watched the cirque du soleil video. It was awesome video and in that video was something funny because I tried to hold my laugh. It might be something about the costumes people were wearing.

I think friday was the day when some people brought cards and everybody tried to perform card tricks. I wasn`t in school then so thats a shame.

We also had the phrasal verb test. That didn`t went well but I pulled some points out of that.

(#3) Third week

Third week we had quiz. We were divided in three teams. In a round each one of us answered in one question. Some of the questions were pretty hard but there were easy ones too. I got my questions right by good luck.

Then there was that speaking exercise where we had to plan conversation and perform it front of the class. I usually freeze in those kind of situtations and so I did then. I maybe got one sentence out of my mouth and that was it.

We practised alphabets by trying to pronounce the letters correctly. Also we did exercise which idea was about saying letters in order to form name of a person or name of a place where you have been. There was something else too in that exercise but I don`t remember. We did that exercise with a partner.

I wasn`t in couple lessons and I hope there was nothing important that I missed.

The Last Week

This was the last week of the course! Time does fly really fast.

We had one double lesson to do whatever we wanted. Sometimes it's nice to decide what you want to, it can't be like that always, of course but it's a nice change sometimes. Everyone has their own ways how they learn things and sometimes in class it's just not possible to do things the way it's best for you. That's why I liked the lessons where we got to choose how we want to learn.

I went on computer and listened to this radio station online in English and read news paper online in English. I love doing both of them, just hearing them speaking English..... I just love listening to it. At the end of the lesson I also had time to go through the blog and see what kind of experience the others have had. Those were my ways to spend the lesson and at the same time prepare for the oral exam.

The next day we had the oral exam. Before the exam I was kind of worried about what kind of topics are we going to have because it's hard to talk about something in English if you have no clue about it in Finnish either. Luckily our topics weren't that hard so it wasn't too bad.
      I think the exam thing is really good. Especially because the course 'makes people who don't want to talk to talk'. And also I think we'll get a report which shows our level speaking the language which is good for example when you are applying for a job. The exam was testing many sides, not only reading or just talking basic things.

Overall this course was much more fun than all the others. So much more talking and just learning things by talking about them in English. And pretty much all the things we did, we did them in a fun way (acting, playing...) I would take this kind of course again if I could!  Thanks to everybody who was part of the experience!

The oral exam

I had my oral exam with Elina on Tuesday. We tried to go through the whole exam before going to the actual exam. But we didn't quite have enough time to prepare for it. I think Elina and I did a good job considering that we were not completelly prepared. Especially the last part which was a conversation at a party went really well in my opinion. 

The night before the exam and in the morning I was a bit nervous because I didn't know what topics to expect. But on the exam situation I was nervous only at the beginning. 

I think the oral exam was a good experience and I'm looking forward to hearing the feedback and grade from the teacher.

Fifth week

I think this week was my favourite of all weeks. The week was a bit different because some of the group had the English listening comprehension on Tuesday so we came a little late to the class. And also at the end of the week we had to do exercises independently. 

I have to say that I liked the acting exercise although I'm not really into acting. In groups we had to choose a fairy tale which we then had to perform to the rest of the class. The twist on it was that other groups gave us a genre for the performance. We picked Little Red Riding Hood and the genre the groups gave us was crime series. It was quite hard to play it but I think we did good and had a lot of fun. 

We also listened to some jokes with different accents and we had to guess which accent the joke teller used. Some of them were hard to figure out and the jokes weren't even funny :)

I did quite many of the independent exercises with Joona. We did  those A-B-dialogues and then talked about many different questions. For example we discussed about whether the best things in life are free or not. On the prep-lesson we talked about the matriculation exam.

So this was a fun week and as I said my favourite! :)

#5 Week and oral exam

This was a great week, because we got to choose what exercises we would like to do with our group! Before that we did this listening exercise where we had to match the right picture and the accent, and I think the indian accent was the best!

And you really have to watch this video of indian rally car's map reader (who uses that indian accent), it is easily one of the funniest video in internet which I have ever watched! :D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKrNaa829K8

In Friday we chose in our groups what exercises to do, and we decided to read chapters out loud and do the exercises from them. It was really fun because I like to read texts out loud in english, and in fact I have read others blog texts in here out loud and tried to practice my english speaking by doing so.

Next monday I wasn't on preparation class because I had my history matriculation exam.

I don't remember what day I got late in the lesson but neatherless the funny reason for that was because I have my phone's alarm doing snooze about 3-5 times before I fully wake up, and in that particular day when I got late, I was having a dream where Madventures-travelling tv serie hosts Riku Rantala and Tuomas Milonoff "Tunna" were cooking something nice foods (I don't remember what those were) and every time my snooze went off, for me it was a signal that they started to cook another type of food with different ingredients. So I was half-sleeping and half-awake and went to turn the snooze off over and over again thinking that it was a food bell :D Typical morning for me...

Oral exam or not, I still have practiced my english speaking skills almost every day before this course by reading english language texts in internet or in video game, and for first time I'm doing it because of preparing in something school assignment such as in this oral exam.

I think the oral exam went almost perfectly, I was little freezed at the beginning and stumbled with some of the words but by the end I got it and I had like an momentum going on because of the way how easily and smoothly the english words came in my mind and out of the mouth. Definitely the best task in the oral exam wast the last one which was, in our case with Santeri, a discussion about addictions. In that the conversation was really smooth and went really well, and it was pleasant. I got quite open and revealed some personal stuff from past and even information of reasons why I don't use alcohol, drugs or anything other intoxicant, and I had even forgot those partial reasons myself before having that conversation.

Before the test I didn't even know who was going to be my partner in the oral exam, and 20 minutes before test started and we were going to prepare for it with partner I found out that he was Santeri, and that was really good because I think we worked really well together. I don't know if I would've exceeded in that oral exam so well if the partner would have been somebody else, but that is not essential. The only thing that matters that the oral test (in my opinion) went perfectly! Of course there were some minor mistakes but I know that those were only because of the little nervousness I sometimes had during the test, and I could have done those well in other situation.

The text I had to read directly was, according to the teachers, the most difficult one than all the others. It was about awake surgery and the words in it were kind of challenging but I think that I managed to do it great :)

#4 Week

I kind of got lazy about writing these blog texts (again), but now I'm going to make writing marathon and write those all blog texts down without even leaving this chair once.

This week was pretty good, we did various exercises such as having a conversation with partner in something particular situation, played circus game and did some magic tricks with cards. I still think practising those conversations are good thing to do and can be useful.

That circus game would've been maybe more interesting if our group had decided to obey the rules and do those, but in the other hand those punishments looked so cruel and heart breaking so I'm just glad I hadn't do them, I don't know if I would've survived those.

Magic tricks with cards, what could possibly go wrong with doing them? Many things if you ask me, because I have never played card and so I didn't know what the icons and card names were standing for. At the beginning of the trick I was little doubtful about how I could pull this off, but all in all I think I managed to do it pretty all right. My classmate Nassa showed me very neat card trick of his own which was amazing!

To summary up, this week was pretty fun like I said earlier and we did some useful and fun exercises :)

Oral exam

Peppiina and I had our oral exam last Monday. I'm not sure if we got to prepare ourselves well enough since we were a little confused with the directions... As soon as we figured them out we just quickly tried to make enough notes of our own texts we were supposed to summarize to each other. It felt a bit like running out of time. But considering that, I think we did well. I wasn't that nervous and I feel like I was pretty much able to produce speech as well as I know I can. We were done in about 15 minutes I think, so that was a little less than the "preferred" amount of time. But I don't think that matters since I feel like we got to show our skills well enough.

All in all, I think that the oral exam wasn't a bad experience. I felt like it was done before it even started. I don't think anyone should be nervous about it beforehand.

The fifth week and something about the oral exam

Last week we had a lot of fun acting the fairy tale scenes. Our fairy tale was The Little Red Riding Hood and I played the grandmother. What made it even more fun was the different styles everyone had to perform their stories. I think that was the best lesson we've had during this course!

We also listened some "jokes" (they weren't even funny :D) in different accents and I think that was an interesting exercise. Some of them were quite hard to guess but I recognized most of them. 

At the end of the week we learned how to agree and disagree politely. I think that was a very useful thing to go throw because it's good to know how you can especially disagree politely and not just say "you're wrong". We also did some exercises by our selves. I did several exercises with Elina; we did few of those A/B-things and some other exercises. We also talked about the upcoming English matriculation exam with the whole group. 

Today I had the oral exam with Miina. I wasn't that nervous before the exam or even during it, but I got stuck with my topic when I had to explain my text to Miina. So that part didn't went that well but the rest of the test went quite fine I think. 

Test week and oral exam

I had my oral exam today with Enni and it went quite okay. We had about 20 minutes time to prepare our test and fortunately we found time to go through all three parts of exam. When the test started I was a little bit tense. For a start we read texts about some cruises out loud and then we asked to one another a few questions. I think that this part went pretty well. At the second part of the test we had to give a summary in English about some texts. My text told about Finns and Finnish cottage culture. At the third part of the test we had discussion. We imagined that we were family members who discussed about how to get a pet and what kind of pet. I think that my part of conversation wasn't very good because I forgot many words.

I think that we had a good preparation but the test situation was stressful so I forgot words and words mixed up in my head. Now I'm relieved that it's over but I'm interested to hear about my grade and the teacher's opinions how the test went.

Oral exam

I had the oral exam today. I didn't stress about that earlier but when we had to go to room where we started to prepare our exam, I got really nervous. I think that 20 minutes wasn't enough.

At the first part of the test we had to read a text. I read it too fast and that's why my pronunciation wasn't that good.  I just little paniced. Then we talked about the texts, which we had to read out loud, whit a partner.

Then the second part of the test we had to tell a text, which was in Finnish in our own words in English. I would like to have a little easier topic and because I was nervous I just forgot the words. I had to talk about global warming, UV-radiation, the ozone layer, the athmosphere and things like that.

The last part of the test was ok. We had a conversation with a partner and we discussed about a scene from a shop, where a customer wanted an particular item.

The fifth week

This was the last week of the course and this course has went through really fast.
At this week we listened a few chapters from our book. At the same time the part of the croup was doing English listening comprehension.

Then when the whole group was together, we did some plays. The plays was about fairy tales. Our group fairy tale was Little Red Riding Hood. Then the other groups gave us some genre, which we had to play. We got Crime series and it didin't maybe went that well but at least we had fun, I think..

We also did one warm up exercise, where we heard jokes in different accents and we had to match the accent and the picture clue, based on what we heard. I think that the Indian accent was awesome.

At the end of the week we discusted about debating. How to disagree and agree in debate. The topics were interested. When we got to do exercises that we wanted, me and Pihla discusted about these debating arguments, because we seemed it to be the most interesting thing.

The fourth week

At this week we also did useful stuff, as usual. For example we went through the communication skills and they are really important in our daily life. It is important to be polite for other people. If we compare our Finns habits in Finland, they are quite bad, because we just ignore all people at the street. So it's really good that at school we can learn how to be a polite, because all Finns don't know what is good behaviour. Of course there is culture differences, but still.

We also played the circus game. It was fun! I like these games, which we have played, because we can practise our English skills and also have a little fun.

We had a little test beginning of the week. I was the phrasal verb test. Studying them was a quite frustrating, because there were so many verbs! Of course these verbs are useful, so sometimes there have to do some frustrating work. But I think that we will need these in future and also maybe now.

ABOUT ORAL EXAM

I had my oral exam last week because Roope's pair was sick. I was pretty nervous. And I think it dropped my points in the exam. We made good preparations but when it was time to talk about the subject, all words were gone. I liked to listen other one and answer the questions but when it was my turn to speak I lost the words. I still think I made it pretty good. Our subjects were easy to talk about and we had the mind-map instead the debate which was blessing.
All in all it was good experience and finally I had a chance to get grade about my oral skills. If they are good I'm happy but if there is something to improve, then I'll improve it!

The fifth week

Agreing and disagreeing...Some was fun but some ones were not. I mean, it was hard to react according the dice. So we changed a little bit and disagreed and agreed personally. We also listened jokes in different accents. I'm so sorry but most of them sucked. The Scottish weren't Scottish at all.. Afro-American and Indian were good. My favorite accents are Scottish and British accent. I don't know why, they just a lilt that Americans don't have. Maybe it's also  because I find them so amusing, especially queen's English. "I am not amused.".. Before I Hated Indian accent but nowadays I find it adorable. Afro American accent is bearable in small sections if I had to listen it hours I would become crazy Black people have some kind of  defying tune. "ARE you messin' up wit ME?!" 

Then we made plays about fairy tales. It was fun and we laughed a lot! We made it from the Hansel and Gretel. It would be better if we would have got the genre first that we could think together what action effects we could use. But I understood the point there that we had to improvise:) 

Last lessons we were able to do whatever exercise we wanted to. In my opinion it was the best. We talked about technological progress and how the those who are now in secondary school doesn't know what audio cassette is...  The two-syllable exercise was useful. There we had to know which stress to use.  For example: The PROceeds will be donated to charity. - The company's collapse proCEEDS unnoticed. It was damn hard but fun too. I'd really liked to learn how to stress the words right. 

The 5th Week

The fifth week was probably my favorite week of this course. I thought it was so fun acting out the fairy tales, and the little twist - soap opera style etc. -  that was added to the exercise made the whole thing even more fun. I loved all the acts, enjoyed watching them, and laughed A LOT. It actually surprised me that I, a person who doesn't like acting, liked that exercise. That was probably the most fun English lesson I've ever had.

On Tuesday we had the English listening comprehension test, which, on my part, went as I had hoped and expected, and I'm happy with the result. I was very happy I didn't zone out even once during the test! (:

What I also liked about week number five was Friday's class. Our group had a lot of fun going through all the exercises. We accomplished a quite a lot, I think, doing probably at least 10 exercises, or so. We discussed giving micro loans, what we knew about old electric devises, and what we think about immigration. We also discussed briefly what we would wish for a birthday present if we had the sky as the limit. It's nice to dream every once in a while...

Today I had the oral exam with Linda-Maija. I think we did well, considering the fact that we didn't have a whole lot of time to prepare for the test (especially because it took us quite a while to grasp the idea of how the test is supposed to be done). I know I could have done a lot better in the first part of the test; I've never been very comfortable reading things out loud to others, but there's not really anything I can do about my nervousness. If I had read the text just by myself with no one aroud, I most likely would have done a lot better. By the time we got to the second and third part I had loosened up a little. The third part was my favorite, because I like those kinds of exercises, and I'm very used to having a conversation in English.

WEEK FOUR

Okay, so this week was so much fun!  We laughed a lot but also learned stuff. Being polite was harder than I thought. First I thought "I know this stuff", but when I got in the middle of situation it was damn hard. So I think it was very good exercise:)) The card tricks were hard, okay first one was easy but I had to do the harder one I didn't get it.
The circus game was fun, although we didn't have to use the forfeits because we knew most of the answers. (guessing or without, of course.)
The youtube -video about cirque du soleil was AWESOME!! The dances were unbelievable and of course because it is Michael Jackson, it makes it even better.

Fun week, indeed:)

The fifth week

During the fifth week I was sick so I wasn't at school on Monday. So sadly I can't comment anything done that day.

The following day I had the first part of the English matriculation exam, the listening comprehension test. Some parts felt more difficult than earlier, but I think the last part was pretty simple. We'll hear the results of those today if we want to, exciting.

So the only lesson I was at during this fifth week was on Thursday. That's when we were allowed to do the exercises of our own choice. We did mainly conversation exercises in a group of three. I really liked those and we were able to speak a lot which was useful. Good practice for the upcoming test on our English speaking skills. I liked the one where there was a list of older technological things like "Pac Man" and we tried to recognize them and remember if we had them as a child and so on.

So yeah, today is the day of the final exam of this course and after that, it's all done! It's been one of my favorite English courses because I personally love speaking English and getting better at it. I think I got a lot out of this.

The Fifth Week

This week was pretty short for me because I was sick but we still got to do some new things. We listened different accents and tried to guess what it was. That was fun! And it is very important to understand different accents even tho it might be hard sometimes. Because not everybody speaks american english which is the easiest accent to understand, at least for me. Hearing different accents and getting used to them helps you to communicate with so much more people and the more you hear them the more you'll understand them. I think that is so important for me especially because I was an exchange student and there were so many different accents. So I do know how important that is.

We also practised agreeing and disagreeing. That was good exercise for the future. Everybody who is going to speak english in the future will probably face these things. I don't think there's anybody that you'll agree with everything so it's good to know how to disagree politely. I think everybody know how to disagree but it's a different thing to know how it actually should be done.

We did some drama too. Those impovised dramas are always fun way to practise. At first it was hard because our group had forgotten a lot of those stories, like how they go but finally we got something to perform for the others.

Unfortunately next week is going to be the last one for this course. Time flies.

The fifth week

During the week 5, we went through the communication skills of agreeing and disagreeing. I liked practising it and I’m sure it will help me if I have to do an essay or speech and present disagreements and agreements. The warm up exercise, in which we had to listen speaking on the record, and then guess what accent it was, was cool. I loved hearing the Queen’s English accent because I think that it's very nice one and it sounds beautifully sophisticated.
 

Then we did some drama, too. We were distributed into groups and every group chose one fairytale which had to be acted out for the audience. It was funny to watch other people's acting and when it was our turn, I totally cracked up in the scene. It was very comic. 

At the end of the week we started working with our own chapters. We had finally an opportunity to choose which exercises we wanted to do. Our group did e.g. the warm up exercise of the chapter ‘Diamonds are forever’ and had a nice conversation, and then we also read some chapters out loud.

The 4th week

In the 4th week we did many interesting exercises such as the culture warm up discussion, the circus game and being polite exercise, in which we acted out different situations with partner and tried to be as polite as possible. The best, after all, was the lesson when we were doing magic tricks with a deck of cards.

It was good that we went through the communication skills: being polite, and learned to be polite in discussions. It was useful to brush up those things again because they are sometimes forgotten, especially among our Finns. In Finland, it is normal that people don’t say anything while somebody is speaking, but in other countries a person who don’t react in any way to speaker’s words, would be considered impolite. 

The warm up exercise, the topic of which was culture, was fun.  It was useful to practice the AAA (Answer, add, ask), and culture as a subject was interesting. The circus game was also a fun task, though I didn’t do well in it because the questions were too hard. Doing the tricks was what I really liked in the 4^th week. First I didn’t understand anything about how the trick would be done, but then eventually I got it and succeeded.

Week four

We had the phrasal verb test this week, and even though I first thought that it would be impossible to learn all these (I mean, there were like hundreds of them?? :D), it wasn't that bad. Some of them were familiar already and some of them were new for me. And I think it was very useful because they are things that you really may use while speaking English. 

We also got some tips for presentations and speeches. I found that very useful because you'll never know when you are going to need that information. I also noticed once again that Finnish habits are quite different than English.

And last but not least we played the circus game. I think it's nice that during this course we have played different games and not just read the book or done some exercises from the book. It's fun to learn by playing with friends and I also learnt some new facts playing that circus game. 

The 3rd week

I didn't like the quiz we had this week, it was waaaaay too hard at least for me...:D And I guess I wasn't the only one who find those questions too difficult, even though the teacher thought that "everyone should know" them...  I liked that we did it with some new groups, though. 

The "acting scene" exercise wasn't one of my favorites either... I mean, it was really funny to watch everyone else acting but I found it quite awkward. Maybe it was the political topics. Was politics the theme of the week? Not my favorite theme, sorry! :D

It was fun to brush up the alphabets and I liked the pronouncing too. So I could say this was not the best week on this course but it was still quite useful.

Week #4

Course nearly ending and still speaking. We went through some useful guides how to give speech or presentation. I think it is useful to practise more and more because there is always something we could improve. Many of those tips were basics and already heard but in my opinion it was useful for me.

Our class had also phrasal verb test. We do not have that many tests in this course so it was nice to have this test. You never know when you need them. Test could have gone better but after all I am ok with the result.

On Friday we did some magic tricks. I already knew some tricks already but these were unfamiliar to me. It was nice to learn new tricks even though it failed bit at the first time but mainly tricks went well. Explaining trick to the other person can be bit hard  but after all my partner really nailed it. Good job!

Number 4

At this fourth week we did a lot of different things and that's why I like this course! :) We had one task about communications skills and being polite. We had a test on phrasal verbs and I noticed that those verbs are really useful and actually I wasn't sure what phrasal verb means but now I know that I've been using them for a long time :D Well there were some words that I had never heard but now I know. We had one game about circus which was really funny and I laughed when someone made a mistake (they had to do pantomime and other funny tasks).

We watched on video about circus performance and it was amazing. I had never heard about Cirque du Soleil and I would have love to if I could have been able to look at their performance!!! Maybe next time :)



 (Cirque du soleil - America's Got Talent: Finale Live Performance)

The 5th week

This course has gone really quickly and we have only oral exam and two lessons left next week. This week we listened to a few new texts and my favorite text was chapter 10 Welcome to My World because the narrator spoke with an African-American accent. I love that accent so it was nice to hear that text. We also listened to other accents, for example Scottish and Indian, with some warm up exercise with jokes. I think it's cool that English is a global language and has the different accents so therefore it's a colorful language and all dissimilar varieties are allowed.

We discussed about debating and agreeing and disagreeing. We went through some useful debating phrases for example how to opening a debate and how to show in a polite way that you are disagreeing. In groups we read a few debating topics and we thought that one of the most interesting topics was 'Stricter laws should be passed to limit gun ownership'.

On Thursday we could choose independently which exercises we would do. In my group we discussed about old inventions and how more modern inventions have replaced them. We also chatted about expenditure and why some people spend a lot of money on status symbols. The conversations were interesting! It's was nice that we had opportunity to choose which exercises we want to do.

Number 3

The third week was good at least we had to tell jokes and we could only hear that one time from the tape and we had to explain the joke to a partner understandable... It was quite funny because jokes were so stupid... : D

 But it was quite challenging because we heard it only once. We had also one quiz where we split into groups of three and questions were about political issues. The quiz was really difficult and some things I had never even known. I didn't like so much about the quiz because that topic was so hard...

We also did one play about some political situation and my group chose to pretended to be a British royal family talking about princess and price's future. In the play prince chose his becoming wife and eventually ended up throwing a coin. And he chooses the stupid one. Play was quite funny too :D 

We also did practice the alphabets and it was good to review them and also training the pronouncing was great because there is sometimes so big opportunity to be misunderstood... 

Waiting for next week ! :)

                                            

Number 2

 In this second week we spoke much in English and explained some words too and I learned many new words when we studied health vocabulary. Some of the people said that the phone language exercise was good and they learnt how to communicate through phone. Health vocabulary is very important to know because if you get hurt abroad you may have to explain what happened etc. of course your body language helps you but it is always better to make things clear. I was not present when they did job-interview exercise and had different conversations so I think I lost good information because it would have been useful in later life when I may apply for a job abroad. But I will have time to read that book and try to learn that by myself.

So the second week went by fast too. My posts come now because I finally got an invitation to this blog and now I can add my own blog posts. It took little time but better now than never! :)


Here is one funny picture about job interview, hopefully this doesn't happen to anyone! :D 

Number 1

Summer vacation is now officially over and the first week went by quickly. I think that it has been very useful that we do every exercise using only English. And when we discuss in our group we usually use only English because then we will get full advantage of the course.

 At the first week we played games and we did speak a lot in our groups. I think that it is really good that we are really speaking much on this course because I am a bit tense when I speak English and I would like to get the courage to use it more. And I know that I make mistakes because I have not had the opportunity to use it very often. I wasn’t present in one of the lessons, when the tasks were about different '' real'' life situations and in which students had to react in the right way. That task would have been really useful for me too so I read those pages. I think that that task was really good. I learned new words to use, especially in those new situations where I really needed to think what I was going to say and how I was going do it.

 I was really excited when I heard that Miina would keep a presentation on Friday about her exchange in Croatia because I am going to Croatia on October and two people will come from there to Finland on September. Perhaps they will also visit our school. Miina’s presentation was really good and it was really nice to hear about her exchange and about Croatia.

 I don’t have anything to complain about the first week of this oral course. I'm looking forward for next week and I hope that it will be as good as this was.



And here is a song that Miina played to us :)


(IN VIVO ft.BOYANT- MOJE LETO)

Week four

Like others have already told, we went through some tips for speeches and presentations. I think that was good, because there will be situations when those tips are going to be really useful! Also the circus game with forfeits was fun like almost all games we have played so far :-) We also kept on learning some more conversation skills.

This week we also had our phrasal verbs test. For me it went really well, even though I didn't have too much time to study for it, but I think it was also good to study those verbs or at least some of them, because it really helps our understanding in English if one knows them. All in all the fourth week was normal but nice, and now we have only this week left!

The Fourth Week

First of all the course is turning to its end. It has been fun and the classes are still like they used to be, a lot of talking and learning new stuff in a fun way!

We had a test on phrasal verbs. I actually never thought about the phrasal verbs before this course. I used some of them normally without noticing. I think going through those verbs was really good. Now that I have studied more of them, I realize that you see them everywhere. So they are very useful and also they show a different side and larger vocabulary when you talk and that's important so you wouldn't use the same words all the time.

We also did some listening exercises where we had to fill in the missing sentences by listening. That helps you to understand and actually think about what they are saying and also, how it is written.

We went through couple of new texts which means new vocabulary - Always good!

We have been practising our pronunciation especially with similar souding words. It's good to go through that kind of words, just in case you won't mix them. Sometimes it can be quite funny when people pronunce a word just a little bit differently and it turns out to mean something totally different. Also practising pronunciation is always good, not only because we have an oral exam coming up but really bad accent can be really hard to understand. It also helps misunderstandings.
                 We did some exercises of this topic. For example the tongue twiters that we did are fun way to practise it!

I think we also did some acting which was so much fun, little bit of improvising is always good. In real life you never know what kind of people you'll face and what they are saying so it's a good thing to know how to act and imrpovise in some cases.

This course is still so much fun!

The fourth week

So far I've liked this week the best! Mainly because it has been the funniest, but I think I've also learned the most.

I really liked the circus game, it was so much fun (even though some of the penalties for giving the wrong answer were kind of scary). The things I learned in that game weren't maybe the most important ones to master but fun to know at least. We also had a lot of fun doing the exercise where we had to act out the given situations. My favorite was the one where a salesperson tried to sell the customer as expensive sports equipment as possible. And the fun continues: the magic tricks on Friday. I wasn't the smoothest magician but at least I can do something magical now! If I even remember how to do those anymore...

And then the learning part. We had the phrasal verb test on Tuesday which I studied pretty well for. Of course most of the verbs very pretty common and familiar, but there were some brand new ones as well. I tried to learn the new ones as well as possible. And it paid off, since I got everything right in the test :) Now I've got new verbs and their meanings in my head and from now on my English can be more colorful.

It was also very useful to go through how to write a speech. We went the details through so well that I hope that no one does stupid mistakes anymore writing one in matriculation exam, for example. It would be annoying to lose points for being careless.

The 4th Week

This week we did some pretty fun exercises, once again. What I liked was the circus game. The forfeits were funny and it's always nice to play some games. I also liked the culture warm up conversation and the magic tricks we tried on Friday (even though I sucked at it, and it's clearly not my future profession...). Don't quit your day job is what my American friends would say!

In my opinion, it was good to go through the tips of how to give a speech or ace a presentation. It's definitely important to know those things, and although I've heard those tips many times before, it was still nice to go over them one more time.

We also went over some communication skills, addressing people and so on. I'm already used to all the "Mr. & Mrs." stuff, thanks to my exchange year, but I assume it can't hurt to brush up those skills, too. By the way, Americans really do NOT understand that in some cultures people don't just talk and talk and talk all the time. I heard some people thought I was stuck up because I was such a quiet person. That's one thing I learned from my exchange year, and now I was reminded about it again: keep the conversation going and don't keep quiet.

The phrasal verb test was a good addition to this course, I think. I already knew majority of the verbs, but there were also some unfamiliar ones, or some that I haven't heard or seen very often. All in all, very useful.

Week #4

This week we practiced conversation skills with an exercise that had different situations and we had to act them out. One situation was that person A had spilled coffee on person B in a cafeteria. Another exercise we did relating to conversation skills was about varying your tone depending on the situation. It was weird how different the conversation was with only changing your tone even though the sentences were the same.

I also liked the two dice game that we played. The theme was circus so the questions were about circus history and circus animals etc. The forfeits were fun because you had to for example mime something or act like a lion tamer.

And on Friday we learned a couple card tricks which was really different compared to the other exercises we had done during the week. I enjoyed it really much :)

The 4th week

During this week we spoke a lot as usual. We went through the tips about how to become a great speaker and how to give the presentation. We also discussed about communications skills and politeness. In my opinion it's useful to think about these things because we have different habits here in Finland in comparison with the UK, for example. We don't tend to use usually many little words like 'please' or formal addresses like 'Sir' or 'Ma'am'. But in the UK it's normal and desirable to use these words so it's necessary to train the things like that. I think that the best exercise of the week was warm up exercise of culture. It was nice to talk about that topic because I'm interested in almost all kind of culture. 

On Tuesday we had phrasal verbs test and it went pretty well. We also read crime vocabulary and did some vocabulary exercises. We played some game in which we threw two dice and had to answer the questions about circus and things like that. It was fun! On Friday we did a couple of magic tricks with a deck of cards. In my opinion the tricks were quite difficult but luckily we managed to do them.

Week #3

During third week we did the listening comprehension test. I have done many of them but still it feels like I am learning more and more. Most of our school students have test coming very soon. So it is really important practice while we can. Listening and understanding is one of the main things about verbal interaction so it is very important handle listen and understand.

On one lesson teacher divided us into three small group and told that we have little quiz today. It was quite different as usual. I have never had quiz in English so I was really enthusiastic about it. Some questions were difficult than others and we had to answer alone which made bit pressure each other’s but at least I had fun. Everything is not that serious. Mainly quiz cool.

Also we practiced alphabets. The alphabets are bit different compared to Finnish language. We have three more letters than English. It was good that we practiced spelling them because it can be tricky sometimes. It may seem like easy task but it is not in my opinion.

Week #3

During the third week I was sick so I missed a couple of lessons. Anyway, when I was present I learned some new words, pronunciation and listening.

The listening comprehension test was very useful, because we’ll have the real one in the following week. It was good that we practised to pronounce some homologous words, too, because it is sometimes hard to discern the same kind of words from each other.

The best thing that we did in the third week was the joke-telling exercise. It was a little difficult one, because I didn't always remember what happened on the joke, but it was fun to tell them to partner. I also liked the acting. I have acted before in English and French, so that wasn't such a hard thing to do. And, it was cool to watch other classmates' performances.

The 3rd week

I spent my third week in Norway. The trip was really nice and I saw many awesome and beautiful places. We spent the most of our time outside and I liked it. Nature was totally different in comparison with our nature in Finland, for example there were many mountains. We lived one week in a small village called to Borselv and there weren't so many people there.

Fortunately I still hear and speak English a little bit during our journey. Our host family's son spoke English with us. One day he brought a big alive crab in front of us and told some interesting information about crabs. We had to help our guesthouse's cook Jean in kitchen and we communicated in English. We also met one Italian man who was at breakfast in our dining area. He asked things about Finland and our life here and he also told funny things about Italy. It was a nice conversation! At the end of our journey we visited in Alta which is a quite big city. We went to Alta museum where was the exhibition of the rock paintings. There was a guide who told us information about paintings in English.

Although we had everyday a lot to do and see, I still had time to study a little. During the long bus trips I crammed phrasal verbs and read for matriculation examinations.

The third week

At the third week we kept up going exercises and speaking in English. I have lerned at this course that the exercises what we do is really useful.

Well, the less useful exercise was a quiz. The questions were really hard and most of us didin't knew the answers. I hoped that it would have been a bit more useful. It was quite funny though and we got to work with other people because we changed the groups a little.

Then with our partner we went through the alphabets. Spelling is a lot more harder than I expected, so it was good to have that kind of exercise. Then we kept going with our partners and we had to tell jokes, which we had heard from the cd. Even though you understood the jokes, it was quite hard to repeat them to your partner.

Then at the last of the week we did a listening comprehension. We have done them a lot, but I think that it is not able to do them too much, because they are always different and quite challenging.

The second week

The second week went really fast. Now when everybody started to have some kind of daily rhythm, these weeks goes really fast..

We did really useful exercises. For example we learnt words about health and studied health vocabulary and there was words that I haven't heard yet. That vocabulary is really useful abroad and I think that almost everyone of us is going to travel so it was good to study it.

We also did the phone language exercises and I think that it was useful too. Most of us haven't speak English on the phone so it's good to know how to act when that kind of situation comes.

And then there is also one exercise, which I want to tell. It is the job interview exercise. I'm sure that all we know how to act in the job interview, but it is also really important to know what to speak when you do it in English, because some one of us can get the job from abroad.