Apart from . . . .

English is not our blood, but English can be our blood.

E7 is my first time in language school, so I cannot compare what it was in other level, but one thing for sure is that it is demanding, makes you organize your time, therefore it is good for us.

Listening and tutorial are my favorite subjects; I really enjoy talking with others, especially sharing your opinions, gives you different perspectives to look at things.

On the other hand, listening challenges your note-taking in certain period of time while understanding the whole text. That’s when my strategies come in, using transition, pause, etc.

CNN is one of best practices to me for years; it is fast, but to the point all the time. All I need to do just leave the TV on, and do my own thing, and the result is quite promising, I can’t understand 100% though.

It also helps increase vocabularies, when reading the caption bar.

My writing still under detention, I am going to need a different method to refine the quality of my words. To do so, novels and journals seems to be a good choice, they have beautiful words, complete structure I can learn from.

Be greatful

After 1st week, the program gets even more difficult, more specific, for one purpose, to make everyone ready for college education.

I must admit, all the routine seems boring, but they are quite useful, if Pascale and Cass didn't push us so much, we might not half as good as we are now, take my weakest part, writing for instance, with correction and comments, now I know how to better my counterarguments, with practice of course.

Listening and note taking, on week 2, we have a real exercise, it was fun and to the point, revealed our vulnerabilities, such as how to decide what statistics should be put down. We still have a lot of room for improvement, but the schedule is tight, I guess just have to make do with it on our own.

Another subject worries me is that not sure whether my presentation will fit the criteria?  Will my style too casual? Do I have to use academic language all the time? I mean no example to follow, that really makes me feel insecure. But once I heard we get to practice in class, with very short amount of time though, kind of release the stress.

The tutorial is also very helpful, everyone has their own opinions, so with cultures or social experiences, creates

With only 2 weeks left, which means we don’t have much time to spare, we must organize our time and use it wisely, or the result could be disastrous, nobody want to repeat the program till July. So let’s make the 5 weeks worthwhile.

Reflection

What a week! So much to learn, so much to do, but also so much fun, had my eyes opened, in my country, there's no such thing as tutorial in college, always teachers talking all the time.

Tutorial really makes people think, question other's opinion. Chinese student used to cram up everything they learned, so if you ask them for opinion, they can't deliver, because they been trained not think, but to Memorize. I believe after E7 everyone will have a big change. 

At the beginning of E7, I heard the pass rate is quite low, only 4 passed out of 15!

That really freaks me out. But I cannot stop; I must do my upmost to get in to Master,

Then there’s practice, endless practice, and every period last for 2 hours which is quite long compare with my country, usually 50 minutes a period, but I will get used to it eventually.

Listening, Reading, Writing, Speaking, among all four, I worry about writing the most,

That’s my weakness, in my previous IELTS, I got 5.0 at first, 5.5 at second, perhaps it’s my grammar , or my poor sentence structure makes my points confusing, that’s what I need to work on, other than that, I might also need to improve my speaking skills,

I have done many presentations in college, but I always get nervous and talk very fast, even with very few audiences, I can still talk like tornado. However, in E7, with experienced and knowledgeable teacher’s assistance, I can do it fine.

The worst part is when you go home; you got all kinds of temptations around you,

You must build up a very strong attitude toward your learning; otherwise, you can get distracted very easily.