A summer keeping our English afloat: drawing conclusions

Summer is ending and it is therefore time to take stock. Let’s review the four areas that we marked when we finished the course: reading, listening, speaking and writing.

READING. I borrowed from the library five books tagged as a fourth level EOI. I achieved to finish four of them: Frozen pizza and other slices of life, from Antoinette Moses; The Amsterdam connection, from Sue Leather; A dangerous sky, from Michael Austen; Tales of mystery and imagination, from Edgar Allan Poe. The fifth book is Emergency Murder, from Janet McGiffin, which is the compulsory one for the first quarter, so I’m going to wait a few weeks to start reading it (in order to keeping it fresh for the January test). Meanwhile, I’ll take some Speak Up magazines because there are always interesting articles. I did a vocabulary exercise writing in a notepad all the words that I didn’t know. Whenever I can, I will publish a relation of them, which is not precisely short…

LISTENING. I think this area is my Achilles heel. This summer I bought on Wallapop all seasons in DVD from Lost —TV show— but it’s so difficult to follow the conversations. But I will not surrender. I try every day or twice watching an episode. I watched the whole show several years ago, so I know the main plot and I can follow the scenes; but their English is not easy at all. From time to time I listen to news channels like BBC or just Youtube. Definitely, documentaries and news are easier than dramatic fiction: a neutral language is used there, without colloquial or oral fast expressions. Anyway, I must go on listening stuff more and more.

SPEAKING. Until July, we had met regularly with Tim and Linden —our Australian friends— every Wednesday. They are really good and friendly guys and we enjoyed talking about different topics in English and Spanish. Moreover, I have been going every Monday to the library to the “Creative Conversation” sessions with two American guys. I spoke in English to the tourist people who were walking around the streets in the Renaixement, trying to help them with localisations, city streets, etc. And as I commented a few posts ago, I visited Berlin and I could speak to many people: German, Canadian, South-Korean, etc. I was able to use my English to start little talks.

WRITING. Well that’s the point… I wrote some posts here. Actually, it’s a good way to refresh structures and think in English. Apart from the English skills, it’s an imagination challenge. Thinking a short story, coherent, a little interesting… it’s not always easy. I wrote some historical post about the Second World War, that is a really interesting matter for me. And I wrote some narrative texts like in our EOI tests, starting with a single phrase. And I will continue doing it.

Epilogue.

In English terms this summer has been more productive than the last one:

1.- I’m happy of my achieves finishing four of five books. My speed and reading comprehension are improving.
2.- Listening is my worst area, so I need to continue doing comprehension exercicies of "ear-training" and listening to as many things I could.
3.- Our Australian pals have left :( but we will meet other English-spoken people to continue chatting and speaking.
4.- This blog will continue active as a self-obligation of writing English during the whole year and as a cool way to evaluate our progressions.


So... let's go on!