Writing
The truth is that I forgot many things lately, but I really want to make time for English again. I think that I have two big problems in my writing: spelling and tenses. I often skip an article or misspell longer words. But I always try to screen the text and look for the mistakes. It's little worse with tenses, because it sometimes seems right to me even though it's not. So I am going through the grammar to clarify the rules for using them.
In order to write more in English, I enrolled myself to the course Online Poets' Society. We are writing one poem per week. At first, I wasn't sure if I can even write poems in English; but than I literally fell in love with it. I realized how much fun I'm enjoying while writing those poems and I consider this as the best subject I have ever had. There is alway some topic, for example 'Specific poem' - try to be as specific as you can about anything of your choice. So in the following document with my poems, there will always be the topic and the poem itself. I think that there are two poems worth reading - Public transport and New phone.
In order to write more in English, I enrolled myself to the course Online Poets' Society. We are writing one poem per week. At first, I wasn't sure if I can even write poems in English; but than I literally fell in love with it. I realized how much fun I'm enjoying while writing those poems and I consider this as the best subject I have ever had. There is alway some topic, for example 'Specific poem' - try to be as specific as you can about anything of your choice. So in the following document with my poems, there will always be the topic and the poem itself. I think that there are two poems worth reading - Public transport and New phone.
And these are two short texts I've written lately as a homework.
28.11.2014
PRJ Homework
There are my contributions to discussions and my Festival report.
PRJ Homework
There are my contributions to discussions and my Festival report.
Justification
I was supposed to write a short article about media and democracy. The truth is that these are both topics which I am almost never thinking about so it was quite hard for me to tell my opinion. But at the end it was nice to think about something different and share my thoughts with the others.
Then I was writing Music festival report where I summarized strong and weak points of an imaginary festival.
Reflection
It's obvious that I write as simply as possible. I don't use complicated phrases and words - that's how I am trying to avoid mistakes. But it doesn't mean that I am not able to express my ideas. My problem is that even though I go through the text many times, I still can't find all of the mistakes and I doubt what I wrote. So it takes me a lot of time to create something I am (at least a little bit) content with.
As I got some answers to my contributions, people understood what I wanted to say. That mean that I am able to express myself and create short articles on various topics and they're comprehensible to the others.
My report was graded with 9,5/10 points so I suppose that I was doing quite well. This was sort of formal text so I tried not to use unnecessary words and write simple and comprehensible text on the topic.
13.4.2015
I was supposed to write a short article about media and democracy. The truth is that these are both topics which I am almost never thinking about so it was quite hard for me to tell my opinion. But at the end it was nice to think about something different and share my thoughts with the others.
Then I was writing Music festival report where I summarized strong and weak points of an imaginary festival.
Reflection
It's obvious that I write as simply as possible. I don't use complicated phrases and words - that's how I am trying to avoid mistakes. But it doesn't mean that I am not able to express my ideas. My problem is that even though I go through the text many times, I still can't find all of the mistakes and I doubt what I wrote. So it takes me a lot of time to create something I am (at least a little bit) content with.
As I got some answers to my contributions, people understood what I wanted to say. That mean that I am able to express myself and create short articles on various topics and they're comprehensible to the others.
My report was graded with 9,5/10 points so I suppose that I was doing quite well. This was sort of formal text so I tried not to use unnecessary words and write simple and comprehensible text on the topic.
13.4.2015
Year 2
Discussions & Abstract
Justification
I wrote many discussion contributions during this semester. The most of them were for Practical language, then for British History, Didactics, and English for Scientists. They deal with various topics, therefore I think that it is a nice sample of my writing skills.
Reflection
I think that I write more naturally than I used to and sometimes I use more complicated sentences. The contributions show, that I can write short and understandable texts on various topics. I didn't have any problems to express my thoughts. Sometimes I don't even perceive that I'm using a foreign language. But sometimes it takes me a long time to write even a short text. At times, I have a problem to compose certain sentences well.
I wrote many discussion contributions during this semester. The most of them were for Practical language, then for British History, Didactics, and English for Scientists. They deal with various topics, therefore I think that it is a nice sample of my writing skills.
Reflection
I think that I write more naturally than I used to and sometimes I use more complicated sentences. The contributions show, that I can write short and understandable texts on various topics. I didn't have any problems to express my thoughts. Sometimes I don't even perceive that I'm using a foreign language. But sometimes it takes me a long time to write even a short text. At times, I have a problem to compose certain sentences well.
Justification + Reflection
I'd say that I gained some new vocabulary, lately. It's like this also thanks to my subject English for Scientists, which has shown me the gaps in my vocabulary and sometimes even supplied me with some new words. Anyway, I'd say that my vocabulary is slowly (really slowly) getting better. In this subject, English for Scientists, we had a final conference, where all of us had to present some problem connected to the cyanobacteria in the Brno reservoir. My presentation dealt with the current situation of cyanobacteria and the most common species of cyanobacteria in the Brno reservoir. I've posted an abstract which I've written for my presentation.
It shows that I am able to write in a more formal way. But I have to admit that I had a hard time transforming my first draft into its present form. My first draft was less professional and less formal. And even though I know that the phrase about declaring victory over cyanobacteria is also maybe not so suitable for this text, I couldn't help myself and had to keep this way.
20.12.2015
SPRING 2016
I started to think about what is my bachelor thesis going to look like when we were asked to write a few assignments to prepare ourselves to do it.
My first two assignments were Abstract and a list of references and I think that I did quite well. I have some knowledge of how to write academic papers thanks to my studies at the Faculty of Science.
My first two assignments were Abstract and a list of references and I think that I did quite well. I have some knowledge of how to write academic papers thanks to my studies at the Faculty of Science.
American History RP
I wrote quite many response papers this semester and I especially enjoyed reading and writing RPs for American History classes. I even used some of the information during my teaching practice (I was teaching Geography of North America at high school) to set some background of the presents situation. The students were really interested in those things and I realized how useful it is to connect all the knowledge I have.
Justification
I usually wrote a summary of what I read plus my opinion about it. And I think that those papers show that I can write consistently and understandably.
Reflection
I usually didn't have any big problems expressing my thoughts but sometimes I struggled with how to formulate some of the complicated ones. I was doing quite many mistakes while writing and I always need to check what I wrote later because I can't see the problems straight away. Most of my mistakes are in spelling and commas. And unfortunately, I have a new Word which corrects some of the mistakes automatically so I can't even notice what was wrong. I also skip the articles, sometimes.