Last Week

It seems yesterday when I fist entered to the classroom and saw all my classmates but it is already the last week of the semester and I could say that this class helped me and taught me so much.

I never imagined lot of the things that we did in our class like reading about shakespeare and dickens. Also I learned about a lot from countries that have English as it official language. I liked this class because every week there were something different and you could not say for sure what were we going to do but that always kept the curiosity and the excitement.
I have been in English classes since preschool but never thought about English as a global language. This class taught me the importance of it and I am glad I know English, also I am glad I took this course because my cultural point of view has been extended.
There were so many time when we worked in teams or pairs for expositions, for presentations and that developed many skills like teamwork, patience, tolerance.

You never stop learning English and this class helped me with my speaking, reading, listening and mostly my writing. I have enjoyed the classes all through out the course and had a great new experience.

Yours sincerely,

Adriana Villarreal.

WEEK 15

CHRISTMAS CAROL

 Today in the second session of week 15 we did presentations about the book "A christmas carol" by Charles Dickens. I had heard about the movie before but I have never seen it but now I know about it.

Christmas is my favourite season and holiday of the year. I am christian and I like to celebrate the holiday when my Saviour Jesus Christ came to the world. While doing my research about how Christmas was slowly dying and how Dickens revive the christmas traditions made me sad but then happy. Sad because as you may know A Christmas Carol was published after the industrial revolution and at that time in England the social classes were very divided. So families started to loose hope and to forget about christmas because they thought it was only for rich people to celebrate. But after the publication of A Christmas Carol I am glad that the hope was revived and instead of being a holiday about the richness and lust it became again a humble holiday.

This topic made me feel very excited about Christmas and remind me that is not about the presents or the food, the tree or the lights but christmas is about Christ.

WEEK 15
AMERICAN SHORT STORIES

This week on Monday we had to do presentation about 3 American short stories, In my team we divide us the stories and I had to read the story called: "A Buddhist's Tale" by Thomas Demaria. The story takes place in a beautiful Island of Thailand.


This story was not very complicated to read but it was complicated to comprehend the plot and story. There were 3 main characters: Tommy, Chairat, and The Monk.

The part I liked the most was when Tommy was watching the waterfall and reflecting about how life is like a drop, and when we die we are all like the ocean. The character I relate the most was Tommy because when he meets the Monk he starts asking him questions that he needed to know and I think that would be me with an important person because I always want to figure my thoughts out and if I have doubts I don't like to keep it for myself.

WEEK 14

WEEK 14


This week we saw a movie called The Power of One. The movie is a South African movie with a lot of cultural messages.

When Mr. Wiersema told us that we were going to watch a South African movie I thought it was going to be very boring but it was very interesting and I really liked the movie. I could say that it is my favourite movie for the 2016.
The movie´s main character was P.K. a English boy that was raised by his English mom but also by his south african nanny. Her mom decides that he should go to school far away from them so that he could study. In the school he suffer from bulling. That part really moved my heart and I wanted to pop out in the movie and defend him and punch the bully in the face but you know, that is impossible.
As the movie goes on P.K.´s mom died, he had no love ones and start becoming very sad, depress and he said that the sad birds were always flying around him. That was till P.K. met Doc he took care of him and start to teach him all he knew and treated him like a son. Doc was German but despite the natzi movement he was against all of that and he promoted love, equality and freedom.

P.K. keeps growing and his duty as the Rain maker never dies, he becomes a boxer and uses that to help the African people. Also he starts teaching English to them and sacrifices OXFORD  and also his girlfiend for helping the African people to move on.
This movie taught me that in life we all must do sacrifices, it will hurt us or weaken us but as long as you are fighting for a right cause, it is 100% worth it.

week 13

Adriana Villarreal A00820061

Jessica Talamas A01381313

Countries and Cultures

For week 12 every team had to do a presentation about the country assigned and in this text you will read a report about what we learned about each country.

Wales

First of all we are going to talk about the country of team 6; Wales.

Wales capital city is Cardiff, a important fact that we learned was that only 21% of the welsh population can speak the native language also in Wales the flag had a lot of meaning, it has been changed; furthermore, my classmate said that he wondered if the Union Jack flag was going to change due to the separation of Wales from it. The government of wales is under a parliament and it makes laws about health, education, environment, transport and housing and other manner were in charge of the parliament. Also we learned that Wales has a unique holiday called St. Davis day in which they celebrate it with parades, festivals and food.

India

The team that presented about India taught us about the tribes that India had and it is important to know that they still have gypsies tribes. In India tourism is very important, you can visit India any time and it is assured that you will find a festival or a carnival, because of the many celebrations they have also India has the Taj Mahal, one of the 7th wonders of the world.

India has different traditional food per city because their food and seasoning is very different among all the indian cities. Mahatma Gandhi is one of the main characters and leaders of the world and he is responsible for the freedom of the Indian people from the Brits.

South Africa

South Africa is located as its name says in the south of the African Continent, it is a country with a population of 48,000,000 and it has a combination of black, white, coloured and indian people and poverty is one of their main problematics. South Africa is a democratic country and as for today their president is Jacob Zuma. The main religion in South Africa is christianity with a 68% and the following religion is 28.5% of beliefs that are based in indigenous and animist. An important thing to know is that it has 11 official languages and English is spoken for political words and in the corporate but most of the South Africans know only the basic knowledges of English. South Africa is recognise by many for being the only country that had hosted the cricket, rugby and soccer world cup also for one of the most inspirational figure in the world named Nelson Mandela.

Singapore

Talking about Singapore, we learned that this country is located in the Asian continent being the smallest state in the Southeast Asian region. It has different ethnic groups for example Chinese, Malays and Indian because of their location. This country is known because of their strange laws. One example of this kind of laws is selling or chewing gum. Another example is drink or eat in public transportation.

The team also talked about some special events that they celebrate. For example the Chingay Parade, the Thaipusam, Vesak Day, the Dragon Boat Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival, and of course New Year's Eve.

Philippines

What we learned about Philippines is that it consists of volcanic islands. It is said that Philippines has more volcanoes than towns in the complete country. Talking about history, it is known that Ferdinand Magellan was the first expedition that arrived in Philippines and claimed the islands in 1521. By 1898 Philippine was declared independent from Spain.

The Philippine culture is diverse because they have Asian, Spanish and American culture. Referring to society, it is known that they have strong family values, they pretend to be richer and they have large families.

Because of their location, fish is one of their traditional food. In special occasions, they eat pig with rice and coconut milk.

New Zealand

From this team, we learned that people that live in New Zealand are called Kiwis. This is because a Kiwi bird is able to take fencing wire and do whatever they need with it and resourcefulness apply to who they are.

The team explained that the first inhabitants of New Zealand were the Maori. The Maori culture is still a core part of New Zealand's national identity and traditions.

Auckland is the largest and most popular city in New Zealand because of their Sky tower, volcanoes and museums. They also explained the main sports that people from New Zealand practice. Their main sports are rugby, cricket, soccer, netball and basketball.

WEEK 11

There are situations that inspire us to do something very different, for example watching an add about a girl hugging her mom, might as well make you feel loved and that you will want to sing about it, or a break up could inspire you to write a song, and as we see in class a painting could inspire you to write a poem.

Also we watched a movie called "BOY" it is a New Zealand movie and it is about a boy named boy that meets his father out of the blue to find money that he had buried years ago. Boy had very high expectations about him but he comes to the reality when he gets to know him better.

We had to do a reflecting paper on the movie and I chose the topic about influences and how they affect us and make an impact on us; furthermore, it relates also with the poem-painting inspiration because the writer had an impact based on the painting.

WEEK 10

In this week we prepared our Country presentation, my team and I chose Ireland as our country, because non of the team had ever gone there and it is interesting.

For a requirement for the course we were reading the book "How English became English" and this week is the mega quiz from it. Weeks before, every team prepared a presentations about some of the pages from the book and then we shared them and also there were summaries that we could read and study for the quiz. So after studying hard I finally presented the quiz, I was expecting a tougher quiz but thanks God it was not that hard.

Also this week was the second round for the creative writing and I had to write a real history about a time when my values where challenged.