English Challenges

 Personally, I think this English class was by far my best subject during this semester. I got the chance to use my language skills a lot with the blog, and the classes really helped me learning new vocabulary. Even though I didn't got the class schedule i wanted (Wednesday instead of Thursday), I had a lot of fun, and manged to do most of my homework in time. The blog was the ideal instance where I was able to use my English skill to write about a lot of subjects and improve my English writing skills. As a confession, I have to say that it's sometimes a bit hard to acomplish the minimum word limit of each assignment, but at the end is worth it.

I think I have improved a lot in this time with each English class, specially in my vocabulary. However, I still have some problems recieving street directions in English, but I think that has something to do with my issues recieving street directions as a whole. Still, during the first English class block I learned a lot of new vocabulary but, again, I still think that there's a lot of words I don't know because I never use them, so I think I should engage in more diverse conversations so I can learn more new words and their meanings, so I never have problems speaking or text chatting with natural English speakers. Aside from that, I also have the issue about "miss-writing" words, specially when I'm writing on PC. When I chat with other people in English, I usually resort to searching said words in google in case that I misspelled it, but I think that may work as a way to me to learn how to write said word so I don't make the same mistakes again.

Finally, outside of class, I commonly use English while I write on Internet forums or Social Networks. I have accounts on multiple websites and in most of the I express myself in English, due most of the people in said sites being natural English speakers, with some exceptions. I alse use English a lot in Online Games, but not all the time. I'm looking forward to improve my English to a natural level so I can use it on a profesional ground and not just as a useless side-skill. I hope I will be able to use my English knowledge in my future job so I can give it a good use.

Changes to my Study Programme

When I first started in the University, I was quite hard to get used to the new teaching and learning format. I got actually overwhelmed by the great amount of both freedom and work, but I was able to kinda catch up with everything.

My degree's study programme during the first year is not as "heavy" as the next four years ones, but it's still pretty hard due it being most of the students first year on a university. In the few months I've spent here I have tought about some things that should be improved, both about the degree's programme and the university itself, one thing being the CFG (General Formation Study / Curso de Formación General) system, which has a great variety of curses the student can take, some of which are actually obligatory. Despite having an important number of options to choose, I think they should expand the English programme including more advanced language levels in order to give the students the chance to improve their English even further. They should also add even more variety to the sport sector of the CFG programme, including a more diverse set of sports to choose from. Regarding the workload and length of the studies, I think that it's perception depends on the student's predispositions and studying method. In my case, I don't have a well-developed studying method, so I think that is up to me to be up to the programme's difficulty. However, the University can still give assistance to the student by implementing tutorials, and I thing is a methods they should keep improving.

Regarding the University's infrastructure, I think that in during this winter they should add some heaters to the Campus buildings such as the Libraries, the classrooms and the faculties. I also think they should actualize the Campus public computers software, both in the libraries and the computer labs, wich is kinda old and makes working a bit difficult. This isn't, however, a problem that can't be solved in time, as it doesn't present a real impediment.

Lastly, about the teaching methods, I have three ideas: Improving the powerpoints used in classes so they are more usefull out of class, improving the provided asignature programme document so it includes each classes obligatory texts and, finally, that teachers would give more individual assignements instead of group assignements, as is really hard for me to get a group in time. That last one is, however, just a personal need :/ .

Summer Plans

Honestly, I'm not a very outgoing person, specially on summer. During that time I normally spend the day home, unless my family as a whole makes plans. However, now that I have a bit more of disposition to go out maybe I will be more active this summer. If not, I will most likely spend the summer home, with sporadic visits to my friends.

I've never been out of Chile in my whole life, so the first thing I would try with the right resources would be traveling out of the country. However, meeting other places inside Chile, like the North zone and it's beaches or the South and it's forests, is still appealing.If I were to travel outside of Chile, I would like to go to England, Germany, Canada or USA. On the other hand, inside of Chile, I would like to visit Chiloe or Valparaíso.

With all that free time in summer, I think I will be able to get out more and do more things. The only thing that would put a limit to my posbilities would be money. Both to travel and normal outgoing plans. We don't have enought money to travel abroad, so we usually go on camping trips instead. This trips normally take place in the middle or a few weeks near the end of the summer vacation break.

If I had money, I would take my family, or a group of friends to a trip abroad to the mentioned countries or in it's defect, to some cool places here in Chile. There I would most likely spend the days taking walks to meet the place, eating local food and try to relax.

Years ago I was too young to consider working on vacations. This year, for the first time, I have the chance to work during vacations. If I don't go anywhere far from home during summer break I will probably give a try to a part-time job in order to gather money for doing stuff.