study

This semester has almost finished, and I am not sure if I can pass this level. Certainly, I hope I can go to next level successful. Today is the last day we have classes; however, I don’t realize that we will face the final exam tomorrow for a long time. The time passed so fast for me, and I have been Canada for one year. In this year, I learn lots of things which I never know before, such as living by myself, cooking and buying food. Everything has to be done by myself and I am surprised that I enjoy my life like that. I will go back China on Dec.22 to Jan.5. It is not a very long time, but I have to go because there are many reasons let me do; however, I don't want to show my reasons here.(although many people have already knew it....-_0|||) Haha~~

stay well

I met with Susan on Sunday afternoon in the Student Center to discuss something about paraphrasing and summarizing. Susan came from a small town which is near Calgary, and her sister was my classmate before; as a result, Susan and I also become friends. I found that I did not know how to paraphrase and summarize, so I wanted to know how to do that well in our writing. I thought that the local students might know how to do it because they must be practiced for many times when they were young. During the discussion, she showed me some paragraphs in the article as examples, which is from her book, and told me how to write. She told me that the best way to paraphrase and summarize is to use the different grammar structure and different words which has the same meaning as the words that you want to instead of. It is the same as what our writing book said. Also, the good way to paraphrase and summarize is practicing. If practice more, you will be more familiar with it, and you will know how to write it. After the meeting, I felt I studied a lot about paraphrasing and summarizing. I knew them more clearly than before. Now, the most important thing for me is to practice more and more about it. Finally, I feel that communicating with a native speaker is a good way to study more things about academic English.

In EAP

I talked with my friends Becky and Megan in their apartment, which located in the upstairs of my apartment, for an hour and a half about the knowledge we have learned from EAP program. All of us agreed that what we have learned is useful in our future in university. However, there were some problems. Although we heard fluent English from other students and native speakers, it was difficult to recognize which words are academic vocabularies and which word is slang. As a result, we had to pay more attention to avoid using informal words when doing writing assignments. Also, we still met another serious problem in the process of learning grammar, which was some definition and information in the textbook were too general. For example, when we need to tell about the structures and the usages of phrases, the simple introduction caused puzzles to us because sometimes we could not distinguish which part of a complex sentence should be a phrase. Therefore, I had to point out the subjects and objects and find how they were used. While discussing the varied sentence structures in the book, I found that it was a process of recombining my knowledge about this part of grammar. After this speaking experience, I believe that all of us benefited from exchanging learning experiences. For me, I have learned how to express my opinions in English much better than before. I need this kind of activity to get more practice and build more confidence. It also helps me find out my defects, and then, I will find solutions to correct them.

In Subway

I have already worked in Subway for almost one year. During the working time, I should listen to customers and talk with them. We often only talked about what they wanted to buy; however, when I sometimes met some customers who were very interesting and friendly, I might talk some other things with them. For example, we talked about what faculty we were in or interesting things. Actually, most time, I just listened to the conversation that they were talking about in order to practice my listening. In my working place, I always talked with my colleagues. Although some of them always scared me in order to have fun, they were not out of spite and they are all funny guys. I felt I improved my listening when I listened to their conversations. Even though I still couldn’t understand all of conversations when they speak so fast, I could understand half of them. That’s a large step for me.

During these days, my friends and I were preparing furniture for our new home. We wanted to buy some second-hand furniture such as the bookcase, sofa and so on. We found an organization which helped international students to find the free furniture. The old man from the organization was very kind and helped us a lot. He never requested us for the requital. We talked about the styles of furniture. Someone from the church helped us deliver the furniture. At first, I didn’t know the academic words of some furniture and hardware. After that, I learned many words and uses about furniture such as mattresses, frames, and nails. I had a good chance to practice my speaking with other local people.