Reflection of all year

As last post for this year on our blog we have to think about the ways we have learnt English the most or in the best way.

When I have a overall look at my space, I think I can say that I wouldn’t have thought that I’d write that much on it! Looking at all my writings again, I see a clear improvement during the course, specially between the second and third term.On the second term, I did a lot of misspellings because I wrote my posts too fast, I didn't check them too well. Also I had problems to link sentences sometimes. I think that's what happened for example at my text Girona (UdG), specially at the final. I think my post about The Settlers was an improvement on linking sentences.

In my oppinion, the tasks that best show my level of English are writings like the discussion or oppinion essay or the formal letter, because they show I can talk and write in a formal way besides the normal way of speaking in class. Those activities are also the ones I learnt the most with, I think, because you learn new vocabulary and the structure of that type of texts. I also find useful oral presentations and in particular the observation of our oral presentations because it makes me see my mistakes and gives me a chance to see what I have to improve.

The activities that are not so useful for me are the readings, maybe, because I think my personal reading level is already good. I enjoxed them, though. Writings like the informal letter are also something that maybe is not so useful for me. There are other that are useful, as I said before. But in general, I have learnt something with every single activity we have done.

The things I enjoyed the most are songs. They're just fun listening to and doing the activities. I also loved doing the blog, because it's some activities that have a free topic and are more comfortable to do, from home and during all the term. I would like to do them again, because they're much more fun than grammar sheets!

My oral presentation

Social Issues

My text:

Hi everyone. Today I’m going to talk about different social problems related to water. I chose that topic because I think it’s important but we don’t think much about it.
So, to get started let’s have a look at this graphic. You all know that a great part of Earth is covered by water. So people tend to think that there can’t be many problems with water because we have a lot of it. But that’s not true at all. Only 3% of water on Earth is fresh water, and out of that 3% only a third part is water we can use to drink or our habitual activities. So only approximately 0,9% of the water on Earth is the one we use. That means the water we have for drinking, washing and such is muss less than we tend to think and it’s a very limited resource.
Unfortunately, as it’s quite usual with limited natural resources, rich countries take and waste them while they leave poor countries without them. It’s the same way with water: more than one billion people of the world’s population, especially in Africa, don’t have clean water to drink. That’s a very serious problem because there are people dying of that lack of water while others waste it without even thinking about it. Looking at this map, you can see different colors. Red means at least 25% of the population of that country doesn’t have clean water.
You might ask, but what can we do about that? Of course we, the “normal people”, can’t do much about it, but politicians of wealthier countries should help those poorer countries. We can also help by not wasting our water.
Talking about wasting, rich countries don’t only waste water, they also pollute it. Big industries leave chemical products in rivers or lakes and destroy resources of clean drinking water. But also normal people pollute rivers, lakes, oceans or the ground water by throwing their trash or chemical products like water from cleaning the house into nature. People may think “What does that bit of detergent do?”, but they don’t take into account that many people do that every day, so there are great quantities of pollutants in water. It’s a great problem because we are destroying sources of clean water which are already limited, so we will have even less of this important resource.
That’s a point we can do something about: for example, we can just throw our chemicals into the washbasin. Then they get to a treatment plant were the water gets cleaned and it isn’t a problem anymore. We can also recycle our garbage so it isn’t harmful for nature. It’s a simple way of avoid not only water pollution, but also different kinds of pollution. But we should also be very careful with petrol: Do you remember that petrol plant that sunk some days ago near United States? The petrol now polluted the ocean and it will destroy the entire ecosystem there if there can’t be done anything about it.
In conclusion, I think lack of water is a serious problem which can have some simpler solutions as we may think. It isn’t by far as complicated as governs tend to say, they just don’t want to help as it seems. And with this conclusion I’ll end my oral presentation. Are there any questions?

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Here's my self-evaluation:

I used a powerpoint, which was quite visual. It was focussed on the topic and rellevant. There were some interesting graphics and it helped me remember some things, so it supports my presentation. The timing was allright, it was 5:50 minutes, so it was in the limit.
Referring to my body language, I'm looking at the audience most of the time. My gestures may have been a little poor. I occasionally read from my notes to make sure I didn't forget anything. Maybe it was a bit hard for me to keep the attention of the audience.
I have structured my ideas, maybe not in order of importance, but in a way that made my presentation easy to understand. Maybe this presentation lacked some discourse markers, but I used other linking words and pause fillers, maybe a bit too much of them.
I tried to put some interesting facts in my presentation, like that only 1% of the water on earth is the one we can use. the information I gave was quite general, but clear and easy to understand. This information I give is from a source, but I tried not to copy it 1 by 1, I wanted to keep my usual language and way of expressing and I also wanted to keep difficult vocabulary out so it's easy to understand. I looked up facts on the internet, but I tried to make sure it was correct information.
Thinking about my language, I think it was quite good, like in my other presentations. There weren't any hard words so I pronunciated everything correctly, I think. Maybe my vocabulary could have been a little more varied. I used sentence linkers, but I think sometimes I didn't use them like I wanted to, I got confused. I tried to vary my tone, but that's something difficult for me. I spoke quite fluently, only sometimes I got stuck when I forgot what I wanted to say.

For my next presentation, I think I should improve the variety of vocabulary, gesture, linking words ande sentence linkers. I should also work on keeping the attention of the audience. But I think the presentation was allright and better than my first one: I think I deserve an 8.

Eurovision

When I woke up and went to say good morning to my father the other day, he told me Lena Meyer-Landrut, the german candidate for Eurovision Song Contest, had won. At first I didn't realise what he said, but as soon as I did, I asked "Are you serious?". He just looked at me like saying "Why would I lie?", then I went away happily. Since 1982 Germany hasn't won the Song Contest and I'm happy to see that Lena won it. There were other good candidates, I'm sure, but I think Lena deserves it! I like her voice, it's kind of special. And she's so pretty!
"Oh my god, this is so crazy", she said while singing her song, Satellite, again. I like how she never got too serious. She's become a star in 4 months, but she still behaves like a normal girl, that's what I love so much about her. She's our star!

2012 - Will it be true?

The other day I was talking with my father, when he told me some things about the 2012 theory I didn't know yet. I'd like to share them with you.
My father told me that it has been confirmed that volcanic eruptions always coincide with a higher solar activity, but scientists don't make it public. I didn't know that. It seems a scientist who wanted people to know this has made it public secretly.
The second thing is that the major solar activity in thousands of years is expected on the 21st December 2012. That means that maybe there will be many volcanoes in eruption on these dates. Apart from the victims of the eruptions themselves there may be a big ash cloud that, able to cause a little "ice age". The consequences would be famine, maybe even wars for food, a drop of the temperatures.. So maybe the theory of the "end of the world" is not so ridiculous.

News - Ryanair

The article I've read talks about Ryanair. The organisation has made a change on the airports you can fly to from Barcelona and Girona. 17 of them are the same for both airports, so maybe there will be removed destinations from Girona's airport, as there are less people flying from there.
I think the aeticle is important because many people depend on the flights from Ryanair, as they're quite cheap and you can go almost everywhere. Changes on the destinations may leave people needing to look for another flight company that can take them to where they want.
The article affects us all: Maybe we won't be able to fly anymore with Ryanair from Girona to where we did before or wanted to. So we might need to search for other cheap flights. It's something we need to know so we can plan our journeys better.

Source: ARENA online (German newspaper for Empuriabrava and Castelló)

The Settlers

The Settlers is a game series for the computer that is actually some years old by now. It's a game where you play one of three folks and you are like their god. You have to order them to build a complete infrastructure, create a army and destroy your opponent's settlement.

There are 7 games in this series, but I've only played three of them. The ones I like the most are The Settlers III and The Settlers IV. They are both quite old games: The Settlers III was released in 1998 and The Settlers IV, in 2001. But there are still many people who play these two games online, and they have good reasons: it's still one of the best strategic games.

I like about the game that you have to think what to do, because your ressources aren't unlimited. You have to be careful, specially at the beginning. I also love the graphics: your settlers are 3D-modelled in a comic-like style. If you zoom out and watch, it's a lovely image seeing all of them go up and down ways and transporting materials, goods, weapons.. It's fun playing online with other people and chatting a bit, too. I love the most teammatches, when you can get help or attack a enemy cooperating, sending eachother goods, etc.

It's really fun enjoying the little working ants game The Settlers. I think you should give it a try.

Playback 2010

Now I'm going to talk about the playback the students of fourth of ESO made. It was very entertaining and I'd love to share some impressions I had.
I went on Saturday, the second day. I was there an hour before it started, so I helped a bit at cleaning and such. I was backstage when they let people in, and my bag and things were on the chair I saved for later! So I had to ask Lourdes, who was at the front door, to let me go in there and take my 4€ for the ticket.
When I was sitting on my chair next to my best friend, Ricky, and waiting for the playback to start, someone I didn't expect showed up and said hello to Ricky: it was Yasmin! She hadn't noticed me, but she seemed very happy to see me again. She sat next to us and now we were ready for the spectacle to start.
It was great too see my friends on stage: Oriol, for example. He "sang" a song I really like: Generation by Simple Plan. He also "played" guitar on many other songs. I loved to see him enjoy it.
The were many song I like: Mama Do, Predictable, the Grease song... Especially the final was also great: Quim sang We Are Golden from Mika!
In general, it was definitely worth going to see it, I loved it. If I can, I'll go to see next year's playback too!