Reflection of the English Course

I had good times since the beginning of this course, which is the last course for English section that I won't see anymore while I keep completing my studies. I learned the same grammar that I previously saw in the last quarter, but with different articles. All partners were respectful, they provided opinions, help others with grammar difficulties, the professor kept a sense of humor and kept the class dynamic and active through practice, and activities.
The challenge I have faced was when I need to do a blog about out-of-class contributions, which was very repetitive for all blogs and for me it was silly to say the same thing over and over for each blog, but I overcame it by trying to do daily activities that weren't the same, thus that, when the blog assignment came up, I would write it with no brainstorming. The rest of the materials seen on class were manageable and easy to do.

Summary of Units

Units 9 and 10 were an excellent part of this English course because they show cool topics that are helpful for daily speaking and communicating with English speakers.

 In unit 9 we learned about collocations and prepositions which is essential for speaking with co-workers about tasks, routines and even express a feeling from a story or quotes. There was also phrasal expressions that I found interesting to use in my language when I try to express certainty or uncertainty; for certainty I could use: indisputable, without a doubt, irrefutable, undeniably, or unquestionably; on the other hand, for uncertainty I could use not 100 percent certain, questionable, debatable and  not clear-cut.

There is a cool article with some phrasal words that is interesting to spend time on and I found it entertaining, the title of this article is "Now you see it" and it talks about a man who stole a famous painting called The Scream in 1994 in a museum in Norway. The funny part is that when the robber got caught up, he told the judge that he did it for the love of art.
Finally on this unit, the unreal past grammar which is important to understand what the article or speaker is referring in terms of the situation, time is stating.

In unit 10, there were more useful phrases for daily speaking and on par with Unit 9, grammar points that are useful, such as the use of modals and uses of would.
The use of modals is an active grammar which provides a lot of different methods to speak or write for certain occasions. The use of will is for predictions, might to talk about possibility, must or can't for obligations, can for permissions, (be) supposed to to talk about what you have to do according to rules or regulations, (be) bound to for future prediction of certainty, (be) likely to for probability and last ought to, need to  for  obligation, duty, or necessity.

Another interesting point from this unit was the "strong feelings" vocabulary and that reminded me when I tried to speak like a bit complex, but I couldn't say it, and thanks to this vocabulary from this unit I through some practice, I won't forget to use.

Finally, an interesting article called The House on Mango Street, which is a story that talks about how a girl went through her life living with her family renting houses, which is tough and thanks God for everything, I've never experienced that, and I'm conscious that working hard can make me live in a full-paid house that comes from my pocket.

These units are great and I think I'll review them when I need to.

What if someone asked you to participate in a reality T.V. show

I don´t know if that is going to happen to me, and to get to that level I must be a successful person, an artist, businessman or someone who got a talent that draws the attention of the media.

If I´m asked to participate in a reality show, I would be positive to assist but before I have to agree with the interviewer to practice seriously the questions I would be asked, otherwise I wouldn´t even knock the door of the spot.

Before getting to the show, I must be prepared, mentally, dress sharp, practice my physical look to people as well as my attitude/emotions. Once I assist to the spot for the show (after I have practiced of about two weeks the questions), I would feel confident and comfortable because I will know how to act, talk and show my talent in the field I succeeded in and be as entertaining as possible, so that I won´t bore the audience or think roughly about me (although I wouldn´t care what people think), after the show I might get dinner or lunch, (depending on what time the activity starts),  take selfies with people who would approach me in case they want one and make contacts to take advantage of them.

After the day of the interview, I would check myself out online on media news website to see my performance on the show and learn what I could have done better and lastly the comments of the users which at the end matter a little, so I can improve those mistakes and be a full expert on showing off myself on a TV show.

Tickets 101

 

Tickets 101

It's an B2B and B2C business that offers online ticketing service for final consumers and also it partners with companies who would have the interest to be partners and share profits of sales.

Business Operation Management:

• The user visits the site and see tickets and deals that our partners offer.
• The user search and choose what ticket events are on demand.
• The user can choose the amount of tickets to purchase.
• The user buy the tickets and choose payments options
• The user receives bill confirmation of the tickets bought and can print it at home or show at the staff center.

 

Benefits:

• Users can download the App for free
• Secure payments of the tickets
• Fast purchase and avoid long lines at the tickets center.

Opportunities to make money
 

• People can tickets their events, so user keeps 90% of commissions and 10% for us.

 

Relative clauses

Hopefully I have a great understanding of what relative clauses is all about. I have used educational websites that teach this grammar topic, afterwards I went to the practical section from those websites manage it. Now it´s my turn to explain it clearly what it is about.

Relative clauses are used to give additional information about something without starting another sentence. When combining sentences using relative clauses, my text becomes more fluent and I can avoid repeating common words that I have already used.

Common pronouns that are used in relative clauses are: who, which, whose, where, whom, that.

Relative are divided into two attributes:

• Defining relative clauses

This attributes are used to give additional information defining a general term or expression.


Examples:

1. Do you know the guy who is talking to my friend?
2. There are cool machines that do the job for us.

• Non Defining relative clauses

These are used to add extra information and can be deleted without changing the meaning of the sentence

Examples:

1. This guy whom I met yesterday, is very cool.
2. The plane that flew near the mountains was big.

Out of class contributions

Last week I read interesting articles on CNBC and from all of them one drew my attention, it was  about the inventions that could change the world and that reminded me about what I have read about two weeks ago on the book. I couldn't find the information on the web about future inventions that the book talked about but I found out very funny, like the one survey recently named the toilet as the greatest invention ever and the bicycle. That was on the past but now the future is what innovators must think what they could do to improve the humans life. Hopefully there are great inventions that have been created and benefit a lot to people whose disability can't be restored naturally.

Here is a video I made about it that talks about the top 10 inventions that innovators and entrepreneurs  have created for the good of humanity;  this is what I do on my own to improve my knowledge and skills of speaking. I hope you like it and share to everyone.

Click here to see

How I spend my time

Time is valuable nowadays due to the competitiveness that the society faces around the, and I can feel the pressure how the education in this country is fast that I can't even have time to review except at midnight, when I feel tired and bored.

My time is being spent at the university, where I stay for three hours in a class and hear the teacher talk about how things should be done.

Other thing that I do is to push my projects up and I roughly spend five hours doing them, and the reason is because the trend moves to the technology and innovation and that's something I have to manage well.

I consider my time as a marathon now, for some people that would be boring and I know that but I keep motivated and energetic; thinking that this effort of learning, making stuff on my own, would lead to an easier life.

One thing that I need to change is to stop wasting time when it comes to thinking something different that is not related to what I am doing and doing things right away instead of playing the guessing game, time is very valuable.

Finally, the things that I do are for my own good and that is going to be one time in my life, besides doing projects on my own, I need to balance my lifestyle, such as going out and running, walking, talking with "friends" and watching / listening to video music; and I know that there are things that I want to have, but I need to do something I have never done before to get what I want to have, but I need to do something in education and practice a lot to manage it.

Future probability

Future probability grammar is common to read in financial sites such as Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg and Market Watch. This grammar is used to talk about what probabilities the future is going to bring.

This topic can be tricky a little but I managed it by reading these sites mentioned above and that gives me strengths on my English skills.

Normally the modals verbs of this grammar are will, could, may, and might.

Exist phrases that make the grammar more interesting such as will almost, likely to happen, unlikely to happen and impossible.

Example:

• It is likely that the bull market will come next month.
• There will a reverse trend on this stock anytime soon.

Nobody knows what the future is going to bring but it's fun to predict what will could happen. In some cases, if a person has enough information of a study it is doing, then it can make a prediction, otherwise I would consider it a guessing game.

Out of class contributions

The articles I read last week on website news was interesting, which give me strengths to toughen my English up. The content that appeared on those articles were topics that I have reviewed on class and these are future probability and future forms. Normally this is what I do to entertained myself and keep in touch of what is going on abroad, reading articles and news on the internet.

On financial sites such as Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg and Market Watch tend to use future probability grammar, specially when it comes to talk about the stock market industry and this unit helped me to understand better of what financial analyst says in an article or video about its predictions of a stock or industries sectors.

Phrases with participles and gerunds

Phrases with participles and gerunds are very common in many blogs on the internet and for beginners who is learning English is sometimes tricky to understand. I come down to these sites to challenge myself and understand what the writer is saying.
First let me breakdown what participles and gerunds mean:

Participles is a verb that is used to modify a noun, noun phrase and even verbs and verbs phrases.

Gerunds is a noun that is made by a verb and adding to it an "ing". For example, the gerund form of the verb write is "writing", run is "running" and so on.

When it comes to phrases with these active grammar, they are mixed with past tenses such as past continuous, past simple and past perfect; present tenses such as present simple, perfect and continuous.

Mixing these actives grammar, they end up being called past participles, present participles.

Past participles acts as an adjective and present participle gives background information.

Example of phrases past participle:

Get established, Desperately attempting, impressed, having been...

Examples of phrases present participle:

After hitting, growing up, on being, when telling...

I deal a lot to make sentences with these sample of phrases in order to manage these grammar segment and be fluid on reading blogs or sites that normally use these things and for sure with the help of learning English websites, it becomes fun and attractive to go back and forth to get it and move on the next article.

My contributions to learn English outside of class

The past two weeks, I've reviewed a content to keep it fresh while I improve my English skills. In my free times, I read the news from many English websites such as CNBC, The guardian and ABC news. My favorite topics are finance and I like to read what is happening in the industries sector such as retails, technology and pharmaceuticals.

One source I would like to include on this blog is a topic that is helpful and that's past tenses. There are 4 types of past tenses:

• Simple past which is used for past finished actions.
• Past continuous which is used for actions in progress when something else happened.
• Past perfect which is used for actions completed before other events
• And past perfect continuous for actions that are already in progress before the main events happened.

This resource helped me to understand the writing from those websites mentioned above and they use a lot past tenses because the information can't be in present tenses, like if a journalist interviewed the CEO of the company, s/he would write for his/her followers the info about what the CEO has said.

Normally I like to read these sites and I have a better understanding since studying the past tenses.

Places I have visited

There´s still a lot of places I want to visit before I'm gone, specially in Europe, Middle East and South America. Although South America is not as exotic as Europe, I would give it a try though, just to make sure my ego is in peace. I have visited three places so far, those are: Panama City, Managua, Nicaragua, and New York U.S.A.

New York City is considerably mind-blowing due to the lifestyle and unlimited fun everywhere. Ice skating has been my favorite hobby and walking everywhere without fear of getting robbed as I currently live in Costa Rica.

New York City is a Cosmopolitan city where there´s everything, it is considered to be the microcosm of the world, you would hear a lot of different languages, see all types of restaurants and nightlife.

I recommend tourists to learn basic English, get a map or cell phone with GPS system, so you can keep on track where you are going, this is because the city is big and somehow you can get easily lost if you don't recognize the streets,  and get some information about hotels, transportation and the cost of living when you want to stay for a while.

Prepositions, tricky grammar to learn as non-native speaker

Preposition has been one of the tricky and a little difficult to handle due to the similarity or assuming that is making sense, even though somehow there are words that might sound strange but it is correct.

Native English speakers do not care if I speak a statement that contain prepositions and I said it wrong, but it is important for me as a English learner to use it properly and natural as if I were in a interview and I need to talk professionally. The solution to handle better the preposition content is to read articles that are not like kind of education, such as news, blogs and listen the U.S. media channels such as Discovery, Fox news, ABC, etc. The written content helps me to read and identify prepositions that I reviewed whether in a book or on the web that I often visit and understand what it is talking about and on TV is easy because my listening skills for now is good but sometimes I get tricked myself of not hearing something that I'm not familiar with.

I will keep to continue reading and listening, thus I will have been talking fluently in the future well and that opens new doors to communicate better with other social segment.

What I do on my own to learn English

A language can be easy to learn no matter how young or old a person or even me would be. It's a matter to be dedicated, motivated and practice a lot this skill. In my case, I usually like to read a lot of articles, specially in the finance sector, where I do critical thinking of words that I do not know or see before and try to figure out the meaning before I jump to the dictionary. Writing is my favorite hobby and that speed up my learning curve to be better in English.

There are phrases from the book that is useful to practice and the reason I like it is because most native English speakers use it for their daily habit with friends, co-workers and neighbors, so it is a good advantage for me to pick those words up and write them whether in a piece of sheet just to memorize it and get it sticked on my brain.

Another useful topic is the perfect forms, which basically teach the good way to talk in present, past and future perfect and this source helped me to understand better what native English speakers are talking about. Learning perfect forms can be tricky only when someone is beginner, but once you practice, write, analyze and listen them, you would catch up and get the content sticked in the brain.