My Personal Progress
Since I enrolled in the IBIS course, I’ve noticed my speaking skills in English increase exponentially. Before starting this course I always thought of myself as someone how was fluent in the English language. I noticed student around me where way more advanced in speaking than I was.Even though I am studying English since I was 6-7 years old I didn’t had the opportunity to speak it so frequently. Now I speak with everyone in English even with the Romanian students, and every time I am confident, because I know where do I need to improve or to loosen up a bit.
I think this stimulated me to take in as much as I can during the lessons. This is because I’m still a bit insecure about speaking English in front of the class. This is my struggle actually, when i started IBIS i was afraid to speak in front of an audience, i was terrified that they will laugh or they will mock me, but that wasn't the case and in two weeks I started to love presentations, try to speak as much as I can to overcome my fear. I can tell you that i am not that scared when i stay in the front of the class.
To tell you the truth I was familliar with Idioms, but to actually learn some new ones, never crossed my mind. But i participated in a funny game in English class. The game consisted of idioms written on small pieces of paper and another piece with the meaning. Why tried to match idioms to their meaning. I can say that i got some of them wrong,and I question my English knowledge, after the course i went home and started looking again on that paper to put every idiom to the right meaning. After this exercise, my English idioms improved exponentially.When looking back on this first term I’m generally happy about the workload we had to prepare for English. It was helpful, to see someone like Mrs. Rogers put such a great effort, and to prepare with different activities just to teach us English in a active and pleasant way.
Every class in IBIS is taught in English, every assignment has to be written in English. I get confronted with English, both on and off school. I live in Daalwijk International Housing. There are many students here from different nationalities, and we all have one common ground. That’s that everybody speaks and understands English, it’s a very nice environment and also makes you learn allot of new ways to phrase a phrase.
Other English Activities and tests
This made me realise that even a minor chat with a classmate contributes to my further development through the road of the English language.
For the daily basis of course I watch YouTube, and every time I watch something even if it’s funny or serious, hilarious or dramatic I try to pay attention to every spelling every word that they say. If I don’t recognize the word immediately I press pause and search the meaning, this helped me a lot when I started to speak English frequently. Also reading articles made me obtain some knowledge about the English grammar, and the other activity.
Because our entire study is in English I get the chance to practice my speaking every single day. It has gotten to the point that, every thought, every dream, every little thing in my life I filter it through English.