Reflection of the Course

Introduction
My motivation to improve my English language skills is very strong. That's why I decided to go to University, again in my life, this time not in my home country but in the UK. I applied to Access Course to Languages at Stevenson College. I was lucky and after interview I have got a place. Firstly I chose French and German language to study, but after first month I found it to difficult and stressful to manage with my work commitment. I was consider to give up this course. Instead I have changed it into Spanish Intensive and concentrated on one language only.It worked and I was able to manage work commitment with this highly demanding course.

Positive experience
There are tutors who always want to help you. Dieca was like my mother, always worried more about my studding than myself. Honestly, if not Dieca's constant demands towards me I could find this course to difficult for myself. She had always pictured my and my daughter future what helped in hard moments. Thank you Dieca for that! Never before in my education process I have found such passionate teacher like Alicia (Spanish). It was a great pleasure to learn Spanish. Alicia's positive energy influenced me a lot during the learning process. Evan is a great teacher, with all his love to history , he make me working very hard on my history essays. Madelaine's lessons were very important for me. I have learnt how to analyze literature texts. She thought me the literature techniques, writer's craft and how to write comparative essays. Scott's lessons were very useful for me because I could polish my English skills as writing, reading, listening and oral presentation. He has got a lot of patient for student and always gives you another chance. Thanks Scott for that!
Another positive factor is that I have got to know a lot of friends. Furthermore, I have created a facebook profile to be in touch with them and up to date with all events.

How could be improved
To improve this course I need to say that last 2 months were too busy to compare to first 2 months. Assessments should be more reasonable planned during all year of the course. More hours for History and Literature in second semester would be appreciate.
Evaluation of own performance
My own performance during this course was increasing proportionally to the months spending on writing assessments. Writing skills is my weak point and in this area I had to work a lot during this course. Not only writing essays for assessments but also writing this blogger helped me with it. Very helpful is Thesaurus Online Dictionary where I could find words’ synonyms and descriptions.

Conclusion
I have learnt how to write history essays, comparative essays, how to analyze writer's craft, how to do oral presentation and use Microsoft Power Point. I have learnt how to organised my time to be able to study and work. I have learnt a bit of Spanish and realised that to speak any foreign language takes a long time. I have to read a lot during this course , so I guess my reading skills improved a lot as well. I have learnt at least that on the education trial there are always people who show you your strong points and help to get your confidence back on track.

The last post

I don't know whether you will read this, but here is to say goodbye and good luck for the future to all of you.

Thank you for your feedback. It was honest and thoughtful and showed that most of you have really become reflective learners.

We will use your feedback to keep improving the course.

As a little curiosity, I used an interesting gadget to summarise the 26 pages of comments that your feedback came to and this is what I got as a summary. The bigger the word, then more it had been mentioned. I hope all of you IT nerds like it. (Click on the picture to make it bigger)



Anyway, all that is left is the party and then,,,,off to university!

Buena suerte a todos

Dieca