Entry #6 Breaking Down

I realized that my English is better than the beginning. I made great progress on listening comprehension, accent, fluency and accuracy.

Listening comprehension

Now is easier for me to understand the people from my internship than the beginning of it, because the English accent became more familiar for me. Sometimes, when I didn’t understand perfectly what they were asking me (because some words were unknown for me) I asked them to explain to me the meaning of the unknown word.  Also, they’re few times where I know exactly what they want me to do, but there’s one word that I forget and when they tell me what that word means I’m like: Yeah, I know the word, but I don’t know why I forgot it! The strategies that help me to well understand are:  Repetition, ask for clarification, guessing and constantly searching for meaning.

Accent

I think that my Spanish accent doesn’t changed a lot, but I learned how to pronounce better the words and for giving an example there’s a little anecdote from last week:  During an activity, one of the children ran away from the classroom to the hall, when Adam asked to me were the children was I said: -He’s in the hall- then he putted a funny face, because of the way I pronounced hall it sounded like hell. After he explained to me the pronunciation mistake I made, I was so embarrassed. To improve my accent, sometimes, when I’m alone at home, I try to have a conversation with myself so I can listen to my accent and correct it.

Fluency

Without any doubt, I’m more fluent in English, but I still have progress to do. I stared to have a low inhibition and being more confident. I’m able to talk about many subjects such the things I have done during the day, feelings, what I want to do in the future, give directions and instructions while some subjects like politic or car stuffs are difficult for me to talk about.

New words, expressions or structures

Showing off:  Judy explained to the children why showing off can be a bad way to have attention.  She said that because some children like to say the answer or talk when it’s not their turn.