Week 7 - Language Learning Journal 2

In this week, I felt better than last week because I understood what should I do and write in the journal. I started by memorizing five words from the Dictionary but in this time I didn’t follow the Alphabetical order. Because I thought about how long I will spend in A’s section which means I will not have various words. However, I had a look in the dictionary and catch the words that I didn’t know before. Then I wrote them in my notebook. Afterwards, I revised the five words that I learned last week and the new words as well. I asked my sister to test my spelling. I’ve got 8 out of 10 in the spelling test and I wrote the wrong words two times to save them in my mind so, I never forget them again. Spelling test inspired me about my true potentials. I realized that I really can memorize a lot of words but I cannot keep them in my mind, especially the spelling of these words. So, I have to make a regular revision each week for all of the words that I learned.

On the other hand, I started to record my voice and I felt that it’s difficult in the first time. It’s reminded me of the IELTS speaking test which was confusing. I have chosen two topics. One is about achieving success and the second one about money problems. I have spoken for 2 minutes only as a beginning but, I still made pauses and the words are coming difficulty. Then, I made another practice and spoke about values of the person, experiences, and hobbies for 6 minutes to increase my ability to speak more. I felt that I need to speak in English daily for at least 30 minutes because I noticed that I need to improve my speaking skill in English because speaking in college only is not enough! Last weekend, I found a friend who is a native speaker. She was so kind and I was interested in speaking with her. I spent 15 minutes chatting with her. After that, I felt that I can improve my speaking skill when I talk with different people about different topics because that will increase my ability to speak without being shy.

Reading skill is taking a part of my studying time. I found out a link that benefits me with skimming skill ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/words/reading/techniques/skimming/index.shtml ). I thought that it is difficult skill. But, I had a quiz and I got 6 out 10 in it. I noticed that I can skim easily, get the main ideas very quickly and it helped me to add a few new words to my notebook, such as the meaning of apply is implementing and the meaning of big is huge. So, skimming texts helps me to have new phrases for some words that I know before. Moreover, I will keep up with skimming quizzes to be more than good. Besides, I have read a weekly newspaper which is emirates news. That helped me a lot because I felt that I’m familiar with this kind of reading.. However, I will stay in touch with every thing that I did in this week because it were pretty useful. By the way, it was an interesting week.