Week by week

Week 1

This English course has taught me grammar skills that I've been missing. During the first week of classes, the professor showed to the classroom all the course politics that were going to apply during the semester. Knowing the course program, I got interested in keep coming to all the sessions because I want to improve my English skills, and of course, this is the course that is going to help me achieve that personal goal.  It seems that we’re going to be working hard all the sessions, because the second and third day we were already working on writing things and preparing all the tasks that we are going to hand in next week. We will have to hand in an essay and we have to prepare a brief speech. But besides the hard work, I think this course is going to help me a lot to improve my English speaking and writing, because Nico Wiersema takes the time to check all the work that we finish in order to correct all the mistakes. Even though I have a lot of homework from other courses, I’m still inspired in doing my best during all the next weeks that are coming. 

Week 2

After the first week of class, we started with an activity about a reading that we had to do for the weekend. We got into pairs and we had to share the answers in order to write the best one in a paper that the professor gave us. The next two days we had to do our individual presentations, and myself I was one of the first five persons that presented. There were many presentations about Africa, the world's changing, animal rights, environment, etc. The first half of the group presented the first day, and the other second half the next day, but the teacher said that all the students that volunteered to present the first day didn't have to come on Thursday. 

Week 3

The first day of the third week, we started working in the creation of thesis, having different topics to write for. Two examples of those topics are life on other planets and the use of technology in language education. By doing fifteen thesis statements, I can infer that a thesis is a theory that has to be proven by doing research about the topic. On Wednesday we had an activity involving studies in another university. For this activity we had to write a formal letter using conjunctive adverbs. The third day of class was the headline to hand in the letter to the university, then during this last day of the week of the English class, we worked in brainstorming all the option that we could do for the video presentation. 

Week 4

For the fourth week of this English curse, we had to work in an activity involving ethics in the place of work and in the university. This was related to the topic that I talked about during my speech of second week. And this topic of the first day of the week was interesting for me to do researching. The second day we had to watch other team’s videos, and also my team had to present our video, while others were evaluating us. Finally, on Thursday we had to work in pairs involving an investigation about the author of the book called The Old Curiosity Shop. Charles Dickens was the name of that author, and the research involved his whole life as a writer. For the weekend we had to buy the book and start reading it, because the objective was to do an activity in the following days. 

Week 5

The beginning of the fifth week was light because we watched a movie. But the intention of this first day was not to have a relaxing day, it was useful for the second day activity. We had the task to read two large articles called "Why be Honest if Honesty Doesn't Pay" and "Keeping Your Colleagues Honest”. These two articles talked about ethics and why it was important for some persons to be honest. These articles were related to the movie we watched during the first day. The second day was to create an essay that involved all the learning that we acquired by reading those articles and by watching the movie. This was related to the previous weeks activities of the importance of ethical behaviour and business decisions when a bad circumstance shows up. Thursday was a research day with my team video. During this day we had to do an investigation of some countries that had English as their official language. At the end of the day, we made a presentation to the other classmates.

Week 6

Sixth week was a productive week. On Monday, we worked on the first round of the writing contest of the institution. I wrote about ghosts. The second day was to get involved in a new team and think about the possible solutions of creating a good presentation that involved the book The Old Curiosity Shop, for next week. We ended up that our presentation was going to be a cartoon TV that we were going to elaborate with a cereal box, and interactive images. After we uploaded our proposal to Blackboard, we had to work on our blogs. Thursday was another research day, for this day, we had to look up for Shakespeare and his life. This day was not good because we didn’t have wi-fi connection in the classroom and building. We had to work outside the room. 

Week 7

During the week before Semana i, we had to research a classic writer for the first day. With my pair, we made that writing about George Orwell in 650 words around. This investigation was posted in this blog at the end of that session. The second week we met up with our video team’s but now we had to read a chapter of the book called How English Became English. After reading, we had to create a powerpoint presentation and upload it to the blackboard system. Our chapter was about writing and talking properly, as well as the evolution of grammar. The third day we had our presentation about the book read last week. There were many creative presentations of other teams, and there were others that seemed that didn’t give any effort. 

Week 9

After coming back from Semana i, we had to do an investigation about how English is now the English that we know nowadays. For this research, a writing paper of around 700 words had to be handed in by the end of the session. During this activity, we searched how and why English was at the beginning of the second millennium, at the middle, and at this new one. We also related a verse. For the second, we had to read a two-page story about a murderer and his homage to one of his victims. That second day was about this reading. We had to answer some questions in my team, and post those questions to the institution system. The third day was about the preparation of the mega quiz that is going to be next week. In order to get prepared for the quiz, we had to present our chapter that we read before semana i, to the whole classroom, so they could take notes and study from them. This Thursday was an interactive day. 

Week 10

For the first day of tenth week, we worked in a new presentation with my video team. This presentation is about a research of one country that has English as an official language, and for that, we chose Ireland. We decided that we are going to present social issues, its geographical, political, and economical aspects. The second week, with my other team, with Olga and Maricarmen, we had to do an activity of the philosophy of a poem and painting. This day was fun because it was interesting how each other had different points of view. The third day was the mega quiz that we had to get prepared last week. It was a fifteen question exam about How English Became English.

Week 11

The first session of the Week 11 was interesting because it was a challenge. We had to sit up with a new pair and we had to pick up a paragraph from anywhere we wanted, and we had to copy it by hand in a piece of paper. In that paper punctuation was forbidden, because the objective was to give that paper to the partner so she, in my case, would have to write down all punctuation needed. It was challenging. The second day was a “relaxing” day but we had to watch the movie so we could do an activity for next week. The last session of the week was to get into our video teams and start preparing the final project. This preparation was to make a proposal of the project. My team and I, decided to talk and write about globalization. This proposal had to be posted in the forum by the end of that class. 

Week 12

Week 12 was all about learning new cultures of the English speaking countries. During the first day, we had to get prepared and finish our presentation of Ireland in our case. My team and I decided to finish up working on the different aspects to be presented, like for example the political and social aspect. The second and the third day were about presenting different countries: Hong Kong, Ireland, South Africa, Scotland, Kenya, Malawi, and Singapore. Some teams had to present on Wednesday, and the other teams on Thursday. The teams that presented on Thursday had a little trouble because some team members of those ones had to go due to the Bulats exam they had to present. 

Week 13

The first day of Week 13 was to do an activity related to the presentations made last week. We had to do the activity in partners, so we weren’t able to talk about the countries each partner presented. We had to write like a summary of what we’d learned about those presentations, we could look up for the information in the forums, because in a forum there were the team’s powerpoints. The second day was an activity that we could do before the class or during the class but without going to the classroom. This activity was about to read two articles that contained some information about plagiarism. Afterwards we had to write our learning of reading that, and how we were going to avoid plagiarism in our final projects. Also, we had to write something in someone else’s post. The third day, I missed it because I had a tournament in Mexico City, but I did the work over there. For this day, we had a homework: we had to read three short stories. About these short stories we had to answer some questions that the professor posted in Blackboard. Some of the questions were about writing our understanding about the reading of Unto Dust. 

Week 14

The fourteenth week was another relaxing week but we had to pay attention because we were going to have an activity on Thursday. This movie lasted the two first sessions of the week. The third day, as already said, was about the movie, it was an activity that the professor gave us to write down in a piece of paper. It was almost to relate the movie and the readings that we had to understand last week. 

Week 15

Last week, the professor told us that we had a homework for next Monday: read the American Short Stories and make a presentation with your video team. The first day of the 15th week was about the presentations. We were the first team to present because Rebecca had to go earlier that day. The second day was about our final project presentation. We created a website that included all the information about English and globalization: the history, some disadvantages or advantages of it, etc. The third day, the professor said that he was going to attend a conference, so he left an optional activity for an extra grade. The activity was about a reading in an old English probably, because there were words that I couldn’t understand, I had to read it more than eight times to understand it.

Week 16

During the last week of classes, November 20, we had a free day. On Wednesday, our professor gave us permission to evaluate our team members. And also, during this day, we had to do an activity regarding our satisfaction of being in this course. I am very pleased for having taken this course.