Narrativas coletadas pelo grupo ALMS na Finlândia
Narratives collected by the ALMS team in Finland
19. Iina, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry
Kaleidoscope reflection
Needs:
Currently I need to read plenty of books and articles which are related to chemistry, microbiology and biotechnology. I’ve planned to go in foreign university after I take degree of candidate. Because of these matters I should speak English more fluently and I should learn vocabulary of my own subject. In the future I may need to give presentations and write reports and academic articles.
Skills:
Reading academic texts is currently my biggest concern. Though this is my second year and we have read only few English books or articles. While reading I concentrate too much on the words of the text instead of understanding the message of the text. My writing may be too simple. When it has been long break in writing it is real effort to write texts (like right now). I should maintain my writing skills. On second thought I really should try to maintain also my speaking skills. In everyday life I had to listen and read English. My conversation skills are like my writing skills. It is always hard to start. In conversations I fear to much of failure. Listening isn’t almost ever hard, but some accents makes understanding difficult. Sometimes fast speech makes understanding hard. But in these kind of situations I often understand main points and wholeness. While writing this text I notice that I cannot put dots in right places and I have problems with prepositions.
Motivation:
My motivation to study English is to meet peopl and be social. I dream that I could work in foreign research group for example when I go as exchange student abroad. I want to be understood wel land I want to be convincing. I also love to learn something new.
Personality:
Before this ALMS-course I thought myself to be too shy to speak English. But I’ve realized that thisshyness is really fear of failure. I think too much of how others see me and my skills. I realized that it is more important to be understood than be accurate as possible. From these four type of learners I’m definitely theorist. I should be more of these each type of learners. I’m absolutely visual learner. I often draw pictures like mind maps and patterns to understand things. In exams I remember often the situation of some sentences in the book. This happens especially when there have been picture next to some crucial sentence or explanation. I also learn effectively by doing concrete things and making exercises.
Learning background:
I’ve studied of course English and Swedish but I have also studied German and Spanish. In upper secondary school we had also chance to travel for one week to Russia. It was like a little exchange program. So I lived one week in little family in St. Petersburg. I learned slightly Russian though we communicated mostly in English. I’ve been always very motivated to study languages. I’m excited of thought that I could communicate with people from whole different cultures. I have also few inconvenient memory of learning languages: In some classes we had turns to answers the questions. These turns were determined by sitting order or name list. This method is still most terrifying. I feel like always on my turn my answer is wrong. Some teachers made language learning real fun and some made it felt like court of justice:) Memorizing vocabulary has always been boring. I prefer exercises.
