Friday, November 26, 2010

My experience learning English at the university


When I was at the school, I first learned German languaje, since I was four years old. Then, when I reached the fifth basic grade, with ten years old, I started learning English, and I remember it wasn't difficult at all, because I've been learning another languaje since I was a child. Then, my parents moved me to another school: the first one was very expensive but very good too, this one was a rural state school, so it was free but, I'm really sorry to say, it was very awful: most of the teachers didn't even have a teaching degree, and neither our english teacher. She was an uneducated woman, sorry to say so, but she didn't even speak spanish well!, quite later I knew she didn't even finish school.
When I reached the university, I didn't know if we were going to learn English languaje, and at the firsts two semesters, I really ignored if there was an English class. Then, at the third semester, I knew we were going to have English classes, because they tested us in an exam at the computer lab. I made the test very quickly, I think was even funny and easy, just like a quiz, and at then I finished plenty of time.
Later, at the fourth semester, I started having my English classes. At first, I used to miss a couple of classes, because I was working as a waitress in a restaurant all the weekendsand holidays, I was really tired all the week, and fridays were specially hard to wake up for me, knowing I had to work the next day. But then I gave up that job, because I was lefting apart the university, and I certainly didn't want to do that: I prefered to give priority to the university.
The classes used to be nice for me, friday mornings, I was much more relaxed as an unemployed person. At the first hour, we do some grammar or vocabulary exercises, and then, at the second hour, we go to the lab and work in a single computer each one of us. At there, we write on a personal blog, about different topics, all of them can let you express freely, I mean, it's not necessary to do a research, or look up for information at the internet, most of the time. All the topics have questions that you can answer by yourself, directly, about your taste or your life experience.
I think that's a great way to learn English languaje, because you don't have to use technical vocabulary, and you can write an entire text without consulting for information, so you can work exclusively in the computer lab, and write about many things you like. It has been good for me because I've learned vocabulary and reinforced grammar, I use to practice English by listening songs I like and translating them, as well as reading blogs in the web that are written in English.

Friday, November 19, 2010

A beautiful soul

Today I have to tell you what's my favourite classmate's blog, so I'm going to talk about my friend's blog, Once upon a time or maybe twice.
She's very shy and a very serious person, she doesn't like to be well known, I guess. Right now she hadn't come to class, maybe because she's ill. Lastly we had to study much more than the other weeks, and she felt very stressed. What can I tell you about her?... Well, at first, she's a wonderful person, very sweet and gentle. She's incredibly smart and funny, but as she's so shy she doesn't make jokes very loud, only with her friends. I'm very proud of knowing her, even more of being her friend. She likes to make things perfectly, that's why she gets so stressed. I'm much more mediocre in my studies, but she gives the best of her and never gives a bad work. She's so responsible and studious, that sometimes make me feel really lazy myself. But this is very good for me, because it makes me want to be a better student, and person too. She always make feel like that, but without making feel ofended, instead, you feel you can give much more than what you're doing. She's gorgeous too, but she likes to be very refined and calm.
Her blog reflects her thinking, that's why I love it, she writes with no shame, freely and sometimes is very caustic. For the first time, there's someone I know with such a great english level, I'm not myself a great english speaker, but I had always been very upset about don't knowing anyone who talks and writes it well (excepting some english teachers), until I knew her. Reading her blog, apart from it's very interesting, it helps me learning english, because she manages it. Also, as she can write better in english than anyone else in the class (sorry guys, but she's the best in it), she can write clearer and more preciser than others, I might say I'm a little envyous about her because of this. Sometimes I really didn't know how to say something in english, but she always knows, even more, she thinks in english as well as in spanish. I wish I could have that great mind skill. The post I like the most is the next: Nowhere man... (actually woman), where she'd spoken about nothing at all, because we had to write about any topic we wanted (I wrote about I nightmare I had), but she couldn't choose anything, and finally she talked about this strange confusion of matters... I JUST LOVED IT.
She's amazing.
As her blog is in english, I think she would easily spread her thoughts around, to whoever wants to read interesting posts, and know this wonderful soul.
Cheers for Nardy!

P.S.: I was just forgetting, she loves the Lord of the Rings books, so I've put some images about it.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

The Greatest Chilean

When I think about some hero or heroine of this country, I can't imagine one that could be entirely my favorite, because I don´t like them to had killed, even defending their own country, and many of the national heroes had done that. Or another had been womanizers, which is something that I really hate. Or some of them died resigning their beliefs. Some others have done great things for the country in other areas, as literature, art, and science researching, but I can't choose only one. I think I can tell you that there's a group of people I admire, but they're not exactly "chileans", the mapuche people. I mean, they don't consider themselves as "chileans", because they know they're an extremely different culture, not inserted in the system, and that's why they had been exploited, their lands and beliefs. I've already said that I condemn killing, but when they fought in the Conquest against the Spaniards, they defended their lands and their families, also their culture, bravely, until nowadays. They are not evil, or ambitious in a bad way, instead, they just defend and preserve what is theirs. They’re very respectful of land and nature, and their religion tells us that they believe in deep powers, which can be performed by a person, a good witch, called “machi”, who can stop diseases and get apart the illness. They also celebrate good harvests, and they feel thankful to the land, which lets them live comfortably and plenty. We have so many things to learn about them, about their knowledge. We feel very proud about our modern society and technologies, but we ignore too many things about cosmos and our own nature that they know very well.


Friday, November 5, 2010

Brandon Lee R.I.P.

Hi everyone!
Today I'm going to talk about the movie I like the most, which is The Crow.There are three movie versions with this title, but this one is starring Brandon Lee, Bruce Lee's son, who also played in action movies.This movie isn't an action movie, I guess, because it's more related to drama and suspense. Eric Draven and his girlfriend Shelly Webster are murdered by a band of junkies, they rape her until death and he is pushed through the window, dying on the street. He comes back from death, in a raven's body, and takes revenge of their terrible death. One by one, he kills all their murderers, and finally he dies in peace. I like this movie because of its gothic set, kinda rock and underground. Eric Draven was in a rock band when he was alive, so he recovers his clothes, dark leather pants, a black shirt and boots. He steals a guitar from a corrupted salesclerk, he lectures his behaviour, tells him that behind every dirty marriage ring he buys to re-sell there's a life behind that's gone because of his ambition. He extracts the heroin from a prostitute's body, and tells her to stop sellying her body, because there's her daughter waiting for her around the streets, in danger of being abused. He says: "Mother is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children".
The crow is not a simple avenging, he kills for revenge, steals, destroys, and sets fire to spread his anger and sadness. He's the opposite of a surrender, he avoids his own death, and comes back to take the lifes of the damned and swine.
Some parts of the movie remind to Edgar Allan Poe's sad poem, The Raven, which means Crow.
Brandon Lee couldn't finish this movie because he died in an accident on the movie set: in a scene, he was supposed to be riddled by a group of gangsters, but one of the guns had a real bullet instead a false one. He died a few hours later, and the case is still open.


Thursday, November 4, 2010

Hobby? or Job? I need to feed myself!

Hi everyone!
Today I have to talk about the job I would like to do in my life, it's a hard question to answer, because I'm already studying at university, but I'm not pretty sure if it's what I really want in my life... Perhaps I think that life is something too big, too long, so I'm a little confused about what I want in all that time, I think I'm afraid of failing, being wrong about what I want to do in order to live my whole life. I only know that I would never work in an office, I mean, with four walls around me, because I need air, freshness, nature, wind and/or sun, so it can't be on a desk, telephone, or computer all the time... I think I would like to be a painter, an artist, but a very educated one, interested in all kind of arts nowadays,  but I'm not really talented, so I think I would probably die by hungry that way lol...
I would also like to get involved with people, like a museum guide, I think that's a perfect job for me, I like to talk to people, feel that I'm spreading knowledge about art, I don't like the idea of being a teacher, but a guide would be perfect for me, I also love to walk around, and I love art, of course.
I would also like to be a librarian, but maybe it could be too boring for me, even I would spend all the time reading all the books I could.
At least, I have to say that I have some plans for future, which implicate kids, so I would like to travel around the world, doing art research, and hope children's education won't be difficult because of that, instead  it could be a huge source of knowledge and life experience.