I wish I could read more, I wish I could write reviews for each of newly read books but I can't.
I have an ambitious plan until the end of the summer; however, as days pass by I observe the state of my current success and realize that if I make only 1/2 of it, it will already be a blast.
Well, hereby I put up my less ambitious plan for the following weeks. I still think that once I say it publicly I will have to correspond to what I have committed myself to.
500 pages of BrE books
1000 pages of Russian Classics
I'll leave the rest of plans for my private life because I want to complete smaller tasks first and then go on with bigger things. Up to the moment I have only 65 pages of BrE literature and 2 of Russian (Leskov's short story, but I will switch to sb else maybe Platonov).
This is it for today. καληνύχτα, dear friends.
P.S. I'm trying to acquire the basics of the Greek language before I leave for my Comenius teaching practice for half a year and I must say that I totally don't get it. The letters just blow my mind and I can't even understand how they read their alphabetic letters. I have no idea how it goes but it definitely will be an adventure.
P.S.S. Other languages are slowly dying in my memory going down to passive knowledge as I'm having too much rest with fun on the beach and just fooling around. This also concerns even my mother tongue, I can't put words together, it takes me ages to find the right one or make it a natural flow of speech. Too much rest is harmful for your active knowledge!
Yes, I could have done better at Thursday's Spanish exam. Obviously.
I was prepared to answer on Tuesday but after oral part was delayed till Thursday and I didn't have time to make extra preparation and I went to face the reality without any additional help for my nervous system. Thus, after making a presentation on Italian variety of English at 8:30 I packed my things and went straight to oral exam. Having prepared all the topics a few days before I was more than sure I knew everything and once I open the book and skim through the texts, my visual memory will recall everything. Of course for my audio memory, I uploaded some Bien Querida's songs to my player and was listening to them on my way to exam's destination.
For pronunciation I was speaking silently to myself, playing just small nonsense dialogues in my mind. But can you imagine how shocked I was when I finally came to the place, opened the book (having the notion of 10 minutes' time), looked at the texts with the descriptions of appearances: alto-bajo, delgado-gordo, los ojos marrones, azules.. stared at the letters for 3 minutes AND realized I COULDN'T MAKE ANY SENSE OF WHAT I WAS LOOKING AT?
that was a strange feeling, but poquito a poco (step by step) I managed to regain control of language and passed the exam with flying colours. Of course it was not perfect and definitely not the way I am used to deal with oral exams because I think live speech is much more important than written since it's a more crucial skill once you're in the target country. So usually I prepare more diligently for oral exams. But this time it turned out quite impossible.
Naturally, I thought what could be my problem of 'staring stupidly' at the students' book and I understood that it was just a problem of 'switching' from one language to another (English-Italian, Spanish). Just the same as on your keyboard; to change language you should use a combination of buttons. But when you're about to speak your brain has to use its own 'combination', which might take some time and make you feel 'out of control' for a couple of minutes.
Once an exam was over for one guy in my group, he said that it was obvious we should have to practise such things more and it should be even done on a weekly basis because this way we'll become used to this language in our heads/brains.What can I say? I totally agree. He's damn right.
My French this week was quite fine and I was even surprised to have opened my mouth and hear myself speaking with quite a rapid tempo and not peeping into notebook with the pre-written text. Why surprised? I wasn't up to practice for a long time - just passive listener and didn't even get to numerous hometasks. In addition, you didn't hear my groupmates speak their French, because you'd be definitely embarrassed to open your mouth afterwards and would have even quit the course after the first two lessons. But I didn't, I preferred to torture myself but not give the French up because even passive listening makes your brain alert in the language. Apparently, this was the result. For Thursday, I was tired and I couldn't make two words sound together in a natural way. Indeed, this was funny because I said that in circus I'd prefer the profession of conférencier because I could make perfect presentations but once I had to speak in group I lost my thoughts and it was je voudrais travailler comme une conférenciere parce que... eeee. je suis... eee. trés creative.. et je parle...eee... trés rapidement.
This was so funny. I'm smiling at me. Will have to study more and rest too, which is quite impossible to mix. Ok. one of the things will suffer. rest or work? we'll see. :)
I am also being torn into pieces by the fact that I know a professor from Finland (with quite a personality as papers state) is heading his way to my university to teach a crash-course on Arabic. In terms of timetable it's a disaster and will never fit into my crazy life (by the end of May). But my heart is bleeding at mere thought that I will miss this opportunity especially when considering my latest visit and admiration of Turkey and unstoppable desire to travel further to discover the Middle East and Africa.
But, unfortunately, sometimes we have to make choices...
Hope I won't cry too long and thanks to my second half who managed to bring the reality home for me. Otherwise, I'd have been overworked and overstressed, BUT having basic knowledge of Arabic.
I still hope I'll make up for it somehow sometime.
Since I was 'kicked out' of realities of social life due to my sickness, accordingly, I wasn't able to deal with the languages (or is it just an excuse?). Namely, with Spanish and French. When I went to my Spanish class last week, I didn't have a clue what the people were talking about, BUT I was fascinated by the way my brain worked in 'picking up' the words that I knew from conversations. Almost the same thing happened with French. However, it was much more complicated because I take it at higher level, which is near to B.1 (Spanish is only approaching A.2).
The thing I wanted to say was that once I decided to write an assignment in Spanish (Mi famosa favorita), I started from the very beginning and installed a spanish keyboard on my computer.
Then it started...all these gorgeous ¡exclamation! and ¿question marks?, ç, é, ê and è that I finally learnt to type, ñ and Ñ. Mamma mia. I never switch to any other language since then and greet my friends in Spanish. Why are the letters so beautiful and why there are no alternatives in English?
P.S. It is also a crazy fact that having never studied Danish but taken courses of German and learning English I found myself to be totally able to understand all the written things during my time in Copenhagen.
P.S. I've been through pretty a significant amount of 'real' English practice which is totally good. But now I'm going to write my last assignment on language assessment techniques. Wish me luck!
Well... I started thinking about my concern about real oral practice and concluded that I had mislead myself with an assumption that I'd been out of language for so long. I was surprised to find out that the last time I spoke English was during one cultural evening in the beginning of December. Why was I surprised? Because it turns out that you can lose some of your oral language skills even after such a short period of time. The way languages work is just crazy. You cannot miss a single day without developing your speaking skills even in the language the level of which you regard as 'fluent'.
What was also important that having chosen to write three essays on pragmatics in Russian I didn't expect it would be so much complicated. Why? Yes, my mother-tongue is Russian BUT after graduating from school I haven't written a single official essay in this language. All the essays, exams, theses were taught to be written with appropriate styles, forms, following a number of rules, BUT the language was English. Thus, having submitted my exam questions, I understood that I had no idea of what 'official' Russian is. What made me sad even more was that at times I made very ridiculous mistakes and didn't feel ashamed of it. :) To conclude, I think in no case this should become an ordinary practice. Thus, in order to keep my written mother tongue at least grammatically correct, I'll have to continue posting to my another blog. In order to get used to proper language and enrich it, I'll go to library and pick a good read. It's better be something classical. Finally, written language will be developed through direct training of my productive skills and 'richness' is going to be achieved by indeliberate training by using my visual memory. That's all my language worries at the moment. I hope that the situation will be improved as soon as possible.
How come do I study to become a teacher of English and haven't had real, face-to-face oral practice of the English language for such a long time (4-5 months)? I must note here that it's a very long time for any oral language to die in your head. Yes, chats on skype and ungrammatical messages (which I fully enjoy) on facebook don't count. I was giving a thought and found the only possible solution at the moment. And it's to go and have a party with international students. To be honest, I'm not a party-animal but I think I've deserved this rest after writing three essays on pragmatics.
So! Let the party begin! And my English wake up and start blooming again!
