This was our last week of classes :(

This week we only had one class. During this session we presented the web page that contain our final project to the rest of the class. I liked this class; nevertheless, I think that we were nervous because of this project's importance.

A brief message for a great teacher:

Now, the semester is over and I want to thank our teacher for being more than a teacher, a friend. Thanks for helping us whenever you could for spreading your possitive attitude to your students. I am sure that we all are going to miss you and your classes next semester. I hope that you also enjoyed this time that we have shared together and I wish you the best teacher :) 

Week 15

This week we only had two sessions because we did not come on Monday. 

As homework for our second session of this week, we had to read the story A Cristmas Carol and then we had to choose between 4 options: 

- How did Dickens invent Christmas as we know it?

- Describe the past, present and future life of Mr. Scrooge.

- Create and act out a scene of two of Scrooge's contemporaries talking about him. For example, the men asking him for money ("They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge’s office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him. ")

- Find images of some of the characters of the story and describe them. Dickens is very well known for the peculiar characters in his stories.

We decided to find images of the characters of the story and describe them because we thought that it would be more interesting than the other options. Once we had decided, we started making a powerpoint presntation that we presented to the class during the second session of the week. I really liked this homework because I think that we are all excited about christmas. 

During the third session we worked in our final project. I did not like very much this class because I was not founding enough information about the subject that we had chosen. We talked with the teacher to see if we could chance of subject and he told that it was possible to do so. Finally we decided to continue with our original subject because we had already advanced a lot in it.

Week 14

This week's first session, we saw the film Boy. It was about a group of siblings that don't have a mother and only have a nanny to be with them. After some time, their father goes to their house because he needed money but they thought that they wanted to be with them. We did not finished the movie because it was very long but we are going to continue watching it the next class.

During the second session, we saw the second part of the movie. At the end, Boy tells his father to go because he is bringing them a lot of troubles and the nanny comes back. I have encountered feelings for this moovie because I think that it was interesting; nevertheless, I could barely undertand what the actors were saying because of their accent.

During the third session, we were working in our final project. I had a lot of fun working with my team but I think that we are not being effective. Today we have talked about how we are going to gather and process the information for this essay but I feel that we have to write a lot of words. 

Week 13

The first sessison of this week, we had a quizz about the pressentations we saw the last two clases. I think that it was difficult because I didn’t came the last session and also because I had forgotten a lot of details. This was one of the most difficult quizzes that we have had in this class but I think it was because I did not study as much as I could have.

 During the second session, we had an activity related to the day of the dead. This task consisted on matching some sayings related to death with their actual meaning. After doing this activity, we had to write a short story using some of the new sayings that we had learned. I found this task very funny because I had the chance to work in team and I thing that this made the experience more funny.

On the third session, we made an activity in teams of 3. For this task, we could work wherever we wanted and we had to analyze a poem so then we could answer several questions. I worked with Martha Pacheco and Miranda Guillen. The poem we analyzed was about human beings and the relationship they share. I found very interesting this activity because it made me realize that we are all part of a whole and that we should care more about about others. I could see a clear relation between the poem and the lives of people today.

Week 12

During the first session of this week, we continued working on the presentation about Philippines. I had a lot of fun today because I had a great time with my team. I really like them because they are always positive and participative. I think that we have found a lot of surprising things about this country. It sounds like a joke, but after finishing the power point presentationnow about this country, I really want to visit it. One of the most random fact I found is that Philippinos have a fest called Lovapalooza where they celebrate love in Saint Valentine's day; they don't even have classes this day!

 Lovapalooza Fest

On Wednesday, we finally presented our work to the class. I think that they liked it as much as we did. We made a creative design and we tried to use an appropiate voice level so we could catch our classmates' attention. At the beginning I was nervous but when we were in fron of the class I was not afraid of failing anymore. I really enjoyed this task since the beginning and I learned a lot of things.

Today I could not make it to the class because I was participating at the Forum of Social Enterpreneurship. I regret not going to class because I really wanted to see my classmates' presentations. 

Week 11

For Monday’s session, we had to read the short story Homage Session. When we arrived to the class, we sat dawn by pairs and we strated answering some questions about the text. I liked this story because it was short and interesting. It was about a man that suddenly started working with corrupt men. Something I found interesting of this story we read was that the protagonist did not had neither Identity nor voice.

During the second session, we looked for countries whose official language is English. My team and I chose to look for information about Philippines. Then, we started gathering information to make a presentation in powerpoint that we are going to present later. While we were making the research, we discovered that Philipinos are very similar to us. In Philippines they celebrate a lot of things and they are very friendly people, just like us. The following is a video that we found which cointains interesting information about the Philippines:

The last session of the week, we gatheres with our video teams and we started talking about the final project. After considering different topics for our essay, we decided to make it about a brief history of the English Language. Then, we started filling a document by answering different questions about our Project and the objectives we wanted to reach as a team.

Week 10

This Monday, the teacher made teams of two and we had to complete a task about Shakespeare. This activity consisted of several questions about his life and some of the words and phrases we owe him. I liked a lot this activity because I discovered a lot of things that I did not new before. Another thing that I enjoyed, was working with a different classmate because before I used to work always with the same group of persons.

On the second session, we had the Mega Quiz. While studying for it, I felt frustrated because it was a lot of content; nevertheless, the information was quite interesting. When we were already in the classroom, we sat down in quiz position and we started answering the test. We did not had class during the third session because the teacher went to Puebla L. I hope he’s having fun there.

                                                                                                  

                                       

Week 9

For this first session, we had to bring an English-English dictionary and we had an activity that was more like a quiz. First, the teacher gave papers with a short story and we had to paraphrase it. For this activity we could not use any gadgets. I think that this quiz was cool because it helped us to develop our skills to re-write texts by using our own words.

During the second session, we had to work in pairs. Today’s task was to write a 250-words summary about the Battle of Hastings. I worked with Miranda Guillen and I think that we made a great job. Today I felt very motivated because the subject we were writing about was interesting. I think that now I have expanded my knowledge and this is something I really like.

This last session, we gathered with our partners of the video team. We had to read again the presentation that we had previously made about the book English as a Global Language. Then, one person of each team had to go with the other teams and to explain them what their part of the book was about. This helped us to get a general idea of the books’ content and to prepare ourselves for the Mega Quiz that we will present later.

Week 8

This first session, we had an activity in which we had to look for three different articles about Work Ethics. We did this task in pairs. Once we decided which articles we wanted, we had to make a summary of four sentences of each one and then a conclusion of what we learned from them. I find it really interesting because I realized the importance that this subject has in the business life.

In our second session, the teacher told the pages from the book that each team will have to read and summarize. In my team, we decided to divide the pages so that we could end up faster this task. We made a power point presentation with the content we had read. Even with the strategy we use, I think that we had not enough time to finish this task; nevertheless, we made our best effort and finally we finished our presentation.

This third session I did not go to the class because I was participating as staff in MIX, a merchandising symposium but I am sure that the class was very interesting.

This is a short video that explains a little bit more about business ethics, I hope you find it helpful.

Week 7

For the first session this week, we brought a magazine. The article I chose was pretty interesting, it was about swimming classes, the perfect age to start practicing this sport and the different advantages that it can bring.  Once we had chosen an article, we had to copy it by hand but without using any punctuation mark. Then, we had to give what we had written to our partner and he had to write the punctuation marks that were missing. I think that this activity was funny because at first it was difficult to understand the article but once we had started adding the punctuation marks, it recovered its sense. This activity made me realize the importance of punctuation marks.

Wednesday’s class was a different one. Today we had a guest speaker from Scotland. Before this class I looked up for information from this country so I could participate more and ask some questions. Our guest speaker is from Scotland and she told us a lot about this country. I enjoyed this session because it helped me to understand another country’s culture. I think that this experience has made us see things from a different point of view because know we can see things differently.

The last session of this week, we started writing a short story for the Creative Writing Contest. The teacher gave a list of subjects we could choose from. At the beginning, I had a lot of difficulties because I did not know what to write about. I ended writing about a little kid that had a fiend with magic powers. I did not like that much my work because I think that I was not inspired but I enjoyed to try.

Article

Scotland

                                                                        Me in theWriting Contest

Week 6

This week we just had two classes because we did not come on MondayL. In our Wednesday’s class, we had an opportunity to work in our project. My team and I had already recorded the video that we are planning to present next class; therefore, we decided to plan the outline of how we are going to present our project.

The last class of this week, we sat down with our team of the Dadid Copperfield's project. Then, we started showing what we had done. I enjoyed recording the video we delivered; nevertheless, I think that we could have made a better work. There was another team that also did a video and I felt ashamed when I saw their work because it had a very high quality in comparison with ours.

Week 5

In our first session of the week, we saw a movie called Wall Street. It was about a man called Fox that worked in wall street and he met Gekko, a corrupt man. They suddenly started working together until the crook tried to swindle Fox's father. At the beginning I didn't liked this film because I thought that it was not that interesting but at the end I liked it because of the way it ends. I liked how Fox realized that what he was doing was nos right.

Our homework for this second session was to read two articles that were about honestly and how being honest could be an advantage or a disadvantage. When I got into class, the teacher told that there was woing to be a short quiz. I felt that I was not ready for it but I tried really hard to remember about the movie we had seen and the articles. On the test we had to state four ways in which the articles could be related to the film. Once I started it, I saw that it was not as difficult as I had thought.

The third session, the teacher gave us the results of our test and my grade was of 100! This grade made my day and I realized that I should have more confidence in myself. One we checked our quizzes, we sat with our video teams and we made a presentation  where we had to compare the culture of two countries that spoke English as their official language. We decided to compare Jamaica and Singapore because we thought that they would have contrasting cultures; nevertheless, we discovered that they also have a lot of similarities. Once we finished gathering information, we presented our work to the rest of the class.

Week 4

Today’s class we saw the videos we had made. It was interesting to see the work of the different teams because we all had different questions and ideas to record the videos. I enjoyed evaluating the video of team 5 because they did a good job. I think that the most recurrent problem in the videos was the lack of comprehensibility because some of the videos had a noisy background.

The next class, we had the Charles Dickens web quest which was composed of questions about Charles dickens in pairs. I liked this activity because it allowed us to know more about this important writer. Brenda and I decided to make a google doc in order to be more effective and this allowed us to find out faster the information we needed.

Today we made groups of 5 and we started proposing different ideas about what we could do for the final task. Through the brain storm we did, we considered to make a painting, a video or a play but finally we decided to make a video with parts of the book. We are going to record the video at the library and we will make a representation of a discussion in class about the book and the students will be remembering what happened in the book.

Third Week

Today we talked about what is a thesis statement and how it is supposed to be arranged. I already knew that it is very important to have a thesis stamen when writing an essay because there is where you define the secondary ideas of your essay. I learned that a thesis statement can be composed of two or three ideas. After the teacher explained this, we started to practice what we had learned by writing thesis statements for different topics.

We started to see the different formal words we can use to nourish our vocabulary. Using this words, we wrote a fake letter to a university asking them for something. I decided to tell them that I was considering their school to continue my studies because I considered they offered a good quality. The problem I had while writing this letter was that I did not knew what I wanted to ask to the school. Finally I decided to ask them for information about the scholarships they had.

The next class, we joined by teams and the teacher said that the next task was to make a job interview. During this session, we sat in teams and we wrote a script to see what questions Angel, who was going to be the interviewed, was going to ask. We all helped in the creation of the script and we decided that we were going to record the next day. We met at the library and we chose a place that was silent and nice.