Final lesson!

I didn't even realize it was the last lesson before it came up during that Thursday. But here we are, after all the tasks and lessons we have had. There has been much to do at times, so it felt weird to suddenly have the end of the course. I have really liked the lectures since they have been different every time and I have enjoyed the discussions.

This final lesson was about posters. I was really happy with mine, already last week I found it all done. We had kind of an art exhibition when we placed our posters up on a wall and looked at each others posters. The discussions were not that productive but writing some comments on every poster was actually fun. There were all kinds of posters in various sizes, colors and most of all the topics were different. Some had glued some piece of information on a big piece of paper, some had printed out a smaller poster like me. There were posters about Hitler, meditation, the grotesque and so on. They were al nice to look at but my favorite was one about buddhism (nice pictures and layout), one about the Hitler myth (nice arrows and clear structure) and last but not least one about the grotesque (fun layout and interesting topic). I was happy with the comments my poster received, and the negative respons I got had to do with the font, which I actually agree with. I was focused on what to write and how it looked like, not how it would be seen from a distance. Although the printing of the poster didn't go all well I was happy with the project and it was more fun than I first thought. In the beginning I couldn't picture my poster at all and didn't understand how I would get it done, but once I started it turned out well. Even though I didn't understand the requirements of the size, I still don't get how I could have printed a A2 poster, I was happy how everything turned out.

The final lesson ended really fast and we had a good time. Before I knew it the time was up and we wouldn't have the lectures anymore. It is still hard to understand since the time has flied by unbelievably fast, but I guess I should get used to the feeling of my second year in university coming to an end and a whole summer to look forward to.

-Anni

Last lesson in April - 26.4

This was the last lesson before the very last lesson of the course, so there was not much left. We had still our posters and essays to finish. This was actually a really nice lesson with some discussions in groups, a class presentation and an exercise with a short story.

First of all we heard a presentation by Santeri, who talked about stand-up comedy and his favourite of them all. The presentation was nice as usual and the Prezi was clear. The topic was fun since we have had quite many presentations about Finnish grammar or language or history. This was a presentation focused on hobbies and it worked. The video was fun to watch although it was animated and not even by the artist himself, just a fan. The animation was good, I don't deny that, but maybe it would have felt more authentic to see the artist himself.

Next we got our essays back, the second draft, that we gave in last lesson with some ideas and thoughts written at the end of the essay. I really liked the idea of writing some thoughts and handing it in, just so we would get it back. It is nice to get some response to my own writing and especially when we don't get that in our courses in literature. I wrote about some doubts I had and questions around my phrasing. This lesson we could just sit and read through the answers the teacher gave us and ask some more questions. This kind of process really helps the writing and gives us a feeling of control.

Next we were supposed to talk about our posters "and how they are developing". I had actually pretty much finished mine since I worked on it for about two hours on a Tuesday and my aim was to finish it. My only problem when making the poster was the printing and the size - one library I visited had A3 papers but no color-printing. I then turned to Aleksandria where there were no A3 paper, but surely there was a color-printing mahcine. Just my luck. I found out that one was allowed to print in bigger size than A4, but only if you buy the paper yourself. Then I went through two bookshops before I found a A3 in Stockmann. During the class my poster got some nice comments, but just one I was afraid of: "The size could be bigger". After some failures I decided to just print in A3 and add one sentence. So my poster was pretty much done the first time. This lesson we didn't focus on posters more than this, the last lesson would concentrate on them much more.

The last thing before the time was 13:45 was for us to read a short story "The God's Script" by an author named Borges. This was one of my favourite exercises since it was about literature and the opinions we had about the story. I thought that we were supposed to talk in groups, so I didn't write as much about the story that I could have. In general the exercise was nice and I wonder if we are going to get some comments about the things we wrote and what the comments are based on. After this it was time to go home and say hi to my roomies cat.

19.4 - Discussions, drafts and Dracula

For this lecture we did various stuff from discussions about essays and Hitler to exercises. We talked with the people sitting in the same table about our essays, which we were supposed to make a second draft for this week. We were not supposed to talk about the subject, just the process. For me it wasn't that hard to start the essay but to write some main points is a bit harder. Somehow I know what I want to write about but to write down the actual main points is a bit harder.
The essay is still under progress, though :)

So my subject was about the novel Dracula and after a few drafts it still feels interesting. I am happy with choosing Dracula as an subject since it is closely connected to my studies (Dracula isn't really nordic literature..), I found it kinda as an accident and the academic article I have for the essay is interesting (David Seed: The Narrative Method of Dracula).

I'm going to use Dracula in another task too: we are supposed to make some posters for the next lesson. I have not been sure about the whole task, since the poster we have been looking at has not inspired me that much. It felt messy and I had a hard time imagine what my own poster would look like. What would the subject be? Luckily we were made clear that we could do a poster based on our essay. This helped me a lot since I have pretty much all the information I need to build a poster, I was just not sure how it would be structured. How does a poster about a novel look like?

The last group discussions was one big theme this lesson. Since there were only two people having the discussions we were divided into two groups with approximately 6 persons per group. This means the groups were bigger than before and it was interesting to see whether the discussion would be different. Our group talked about Hitler and the myth around him. One of the questions was whether the same kind of propaganda could happen nowadays or not. The large group came with different kind of aspects. We talked about the media and ways to communicate and whether is it easier to form radical groups today. This led into a debate around reclusive people and loneliness as a cause to radical actions. which led to a discussion about the school-shooters that we unfortunately have had here in Finland. Somehow the discussion ended with destiny and different aspects on that. I was a bit confused with the new topic, but the topics before were interesting.

What else? We did some exercises during the lesson and they were actually fun to do, especially "Looking at the bright side"which I did with Santeri. At the end of the lesson we were reminded about the posters, which would be an challenge.

Some conclusions and reflections

It is May now and that is something I have a hard time to believe. The time has just flied by this Spring and soon it's the end of all my courses. I have been happy with my English course, even though there have been times with much work. The group discussion I held went well, my essay is okay, I'm pretty happy with my poster, the Prezi-presentation was fun and overall I think I've been active in discussions we have had in small groups. I've talked to many new people and I have always looked forward to these lectures.

In my spare time I don't speak English everday. The English I hear is when I watch movies or series, I have subtitles in English when I watch movies and series I usually watch without. Almost all the movies and series I watch are spoken in English, just to be clear. When reading novels I read in three different languages: Finnish, Swedish and English. Novels in English I don't read as much as in the other languages, but every now and then. I enjoy reading in English and don't find it that hard. Although I must confess: I don't read classics in English, especially the ones written in old English style. Albert Camus novel The Outsider is a novel I've read in English, but the language was clear, the novel wasn't that long and I read it in Finnish a bit before. When I was Inter-railing last summer with my boyfriend we stopped by a bookshop in almost every state we were in. We bought some of the cheap classics in soft-cover, usually by the "Penguin Classics". I read The Secret Garden and my boyfriend read The Prince by Machiavelli. So now when I think about it I have read some classics, but I could do that more. Especially novels like Dracula, which are long and not written in Modern English.

How about spoken English then? I sometimes talk a few sentences in English with my roomies, when telling a joke or something. So I can almost everyday see the impact of English language at home, even though we mostly speak Swedish. It's not pure Swedish, though. One of my roomies spends most of his days in front of the computer, watching different videos and series in English. So he can be really fluent in English at times. I myself am pretty comfortable in speaking in English and how my pronunciation sounds like, although when I'm nervous I stumble up on some words. But my problem is my vocabulary, which is not that wide (This last sentence contains two words that I had to look up). I can see some changes and expansions with my vocabulary the last months, but it is not that big of a change.

In overall English is an important language to me. Besides my closest languages - Finnish and Swedish - I use English often than other languages and that is why I want to work on it. I have another blog I try to write only in English and nowadays I only watch movies with English subtitles. Atleast I try, since there are some movies where I can only choose as a subtitle one of the nordic languages. Why is it like that?

The Finnish horror movie "Sauna" by A-J Annila

A week ago I was visiting the small but cozy movie theater Orion and watched a Finnish movie released in 2008 – Sauna. During the movie I felt excited, fascinated, scared, breathless, confused. In other words I just stared at the screen and forgot the candy I had in my lap. Just like I should do during awesome movies.

The movie Sauna is located in Finland at the end of a long war between Russia and Sweden, in 1595, when a new border is needed. Two brothers are in this project – Knut and Erik – and they find a desolated Sauna in the middle of a shockingly quiet swamp. They stay at the nearest village, the existence and meaning of which remains a mystery to the viewer until the end of the movie.

It is interesting to ponder about the brothers – Knut is an academic young man who feels a huge guilt when he shuts a girl into a cellar and later finds out that his brother didn’t let her out. Erik is the older one who has been so long near the brutalities of the war that he can kill easily and violence is a inseparable side of him. Even though he is accustomed to death he carries within him a number – 73. At least until he lefts the girl in the cellar, then it’s 74.

Personally I was impressed by the usage of Finnish deserted areas and fields in the movie and how well they suit the horror theme. Especially the sauna itself gave chills, already when I was watching the trailer. It was interesting to see how the mythology around the sauna is used in this movie. In the old days there was belief that the sauna was a place to wash your sins away – like the brothers wish and in the end can not avoid.

In this text I have used the original name Sauna, since the translated name – Evil Rising - is not good at all. It does not describe the movie in a mysterious way like Sauna does since it is a movie with unexplainable things and psychological issues. The name Sauna raises questions and so does the mysterious events – and the movie does not answer them. Still it is an amazing movie and just the kind of horror I want to watch. Sauna does not explain itself and it doesn’t need to, since the horror is in the minds of people and it continues to live out there.

First lesson in April - discussions

After the Easter holiday we were back at the university and our English course. The Easter week went well, mostly it was about meeting relatives and not doing much at all at home. You would think that you had time for some homework and late assignments, but no. The time just flied by and before I knew it was Wednesday afternoon and I had an essay in literature to hand in, a draft about Dracula for the English course to be ready and a group discussion I should prepare. Luckily I finished almost each one of them in time.

It was my turn to have a group discussion in English. During the course I had been a bit worried about that, since I've never really had those. And in normal group discussions I can be a part of the discussion, but not the loudest one in the group. And now I were supposed to lead the conversation? I chose a topic close to my main subject, literature. Someone close to my suggested to have a discussion about a book, but the problem is that everyone should have read it. I thought it would be nice to talk about a current event and after some surfing on the internet I found an article about slow reading (think about slow food) and another named "Young people read a lot less" in The Boston Globe on boston.com. I chose to talk about youngsters reading less, since it was a shorter article and an easier subject.

I think I was well prepared for the discussion with my article, my questions, the list of words and so on. I didn't feel that nervous until the point I started the discussion. On the whole everything went well. We talked about reading among youngsters through many different questions. How well is the article showing us the true situation? Can the American results (presented in the article) be compared to the results in Finland or Europe? What kind of reading are we talking about here (anything, even newspapers? Classics?)? And so on. I was surprised how much the discussion went on by itself: the questions I thought I would ask were answered even before I asked them. It was nice to just go with the discussion, but when the silence came I was startled for a moment. I had to read through my questions and figure out what we hadn't already talked about. But as I said it went well, and hopefully the group members thought so too. It was an interesting thing to try and I was happy with my performance.

After the break we shared our group discussions in new, small groups. Afterwards we started to talk about our drafts of the essays we are supposed to finish soon. We shared our subjects and discussed about our writing process. My personal main subject is literature and my topic for the essay is about Dracula - the narrative method of the vampire classic we all are familiar with. My writing process is about thinking of some main points to discuss in the essay, then to start with the actual essay and next I will expand the ideas and points. Finally I will expand some more and then go through the details and make it all work together. Personally I try to take a subject near my interests, if possible, or deal a question through a novel I personally like, therefore I hope I have more to say about the topic. This can not surely be done in every subject, but at least in literature. One girl in my group told us she has issues with starting an essay. I understand this, I have had the same. But I thought about this a while and felt that I have not that kind of issues when writing about literature: I usually start with mentioning the novel I'm going to present and then bring up the issue or question I'm going to deal in the essay.

I guess that is it for now. For next Thursday we are supposed to hand in our second draft of the essay, so I better start :)

Sleep well!

Lesson 29.3 - academic articles and essays

For this weeks lesson we were supposed to find an article connected to a subject we wanted to write an essay about. I also finished the night before an essay about last weeks Prezi-presentation, which I were supposed to write due to an earlier lesson I missed.

It feels a bit exciting to write an essay about a subject connected to our studies. We can choose anything in our field and write about it in English, which I'm not all used to. The essay isn't that long, so I don't need to worry too much about it. That is why the length is an influence on my eagerness, too.

However, I must confess: I had some difficulties finding the article. I wasn't sure how I would get it to Moodle, since all of my articles I got from my courses was in paper-form. I decided to use Nelli (http://www.nelliportaali.fi/V). In my studies I have somewhat become familiar with Nelli, although all results don't have a link to the whole article. I started with searching for a subject about nordic literature, but I didn't find that much in English. So I decided to look through different writers and books I knew about and that I knew were researched. I tried searching words and names like "Ian McEwan", "Camus", "The Outsider", "Jane Eyre", "Stieg Larsson", "popular literature" and so on. At last I tried with Dracula and found some good articles.

During the lesson we started preparing for our essays by reading through the articles we chose. I found out that my article was actually a book review and way too short for any use. I immediately started looking for a new article on Nelli and found one I'm really happy with: "The Narrative Method of Dracula" by David Seed. It is a 14 pages long article which I'll use writing my essay. I don't feel at all nervous about the essay, I feel it is going to be useful to write an real essay in English about my own subject. Reading the article was not that hard, there were some words I didn't recognize but I don't except myself to understand every single word of an academic article.

It was nice to prepare for the essay during the lesson, I found myself concentrating much better than home. Afterwards it feels easier to continue with the draft and the real essay. For next lesson, after the Easter holiday, we are supposed to be ready with our draft for the essay and we will have some group discussions. I am one of the discussion leaders, and hopefully I will get some inspiration for a topic everyone in the group will be interested in. I have never been a discussion leader to a small group, so I am both excited and nervous.

About the past weeks and Prezi

Here is some thoughts and updates about the lessons the past few weeks. I'm not that sure how many lessons there has been, due to illness and trips to Norway.

Anyhow, the subject of the last lessons has been Prezi. What's that?

"Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software that opens up a new world between whiteboards and slides. The zoomable canvas makes it fun to explore ideas and the connections between them. The result: visually captivating presentations that lead your audience down a path of discovery."

We were supposed to make a Prezi-presentation in groups. I found myself in a group called "Linguistics" and so the thoughts about the presentation surrounded that subject. We thought about the way kids learn languages and such, until we came up with a subject I were happy to do a presentation about: how English influences the Finnish language. After a week our group of two expanded to four and we had even more ideas. After some meetings with the group (a Saturday and a Tuesday) we had our presentation all done, without any much stress.

I took care of the everyday examples - what are examples of words in Finnish that are in English or influenced by English? I read some articles both in Finnish and English and also took some inspiration from a course in Norway I attended just a week before the presentation! There we discussed about languages and also how English affects many nordic languages, and whether it is an issue or not. Turns out it's a bigger issue in Finland than in Sweden, and that Norway has just the same problem. We were told that many nordic youngsters think they are actually better at English then in their own native language! As our lecturer, Bodil Aurstad (http://dsn.dk/om-os/medarbejdere/bodil-aurstad) pointed out, youngsters today ARE better in English than ever before, but not as good as they think. Wonder why?

Anyways, that's what our presentation was about. Some of my examples I used were "grape" (today called greippi even on the labels of soda bottles), "printer" (printteri), "mail" (meili, sounds just the same to us in Finland) and last but not least I presented some sentences which are clearly influenced by English. One is by the famous Mika Häkkinen : "Kun sä oot nopeempi kuin muut, sä voitat" which means "When you're faster than the others, you win". There are actually youngsters that have been influenced by this and uses this frequently; I was shocked to hear that. For me it's obvious not to use it, it would feel weird. Even though it's perfectly normal to me in English. It was fun to see how clear this is to me while there are many occasions that I have compounded Finnish/Swedish and English.

The process making the presentation was nice and at the end we all learned to use Prezi, although some problems in the beginning. I learned to like Prezi really much, and will probably do my coming class presentation as a Prezi-presentation.

I want to thank my group for the great job and fun meetings we had doing the presentation, I did enjoy the time. Even though it all felt unsure in the beginning everything turned out really good.

-Anni

Norway in five days

Last week I was on a trip to Oslo, Norway. A vacation? Not officially, but it sure felt like it.

Thanks to my friend (a real inspiration to me sometimes) we were on a course in Norway for five days. We were 14 students, all women, who travelled with our Norwegian teacher to join some lectures and have a good time. This was actually my first time in Norway, the land known for skiing and its hills. We travelled there a Monday at 5 a.m, after two hours of sleep. We arrived after one hour of taxi-driving to a beautiful conference-hotel called Voksenåsen. The view was amazing and the hotel was really nice.

Every day (except Wednesday) we attended lectures which were in different ways connected to Norway: the languages here, the folk-tales and their heritage, everyday life and finally the movie-industry in Norway. I felt the lectures and discussions were interesting, even though many of them were connected to the studies in linguistics. Most members of the group are in the field of linguistics and pedagogy, except me and my friend.

Tuesday afternoon we met a Norwegian author and talked about her novels. This program was closest connected to my own studies in literature, and I was really excited. The author had her own way to talk to us compared to the other lecturers. She discussed with us in such a personal way and with obvious consideration. In general they were all good, I enjoyed every single one.

Wednesday was a typical "tourist-day", we were driven around in Oslo in a bus, with a tourist guide. We visited the Ski-museum, the Viking-museum and looked at some ski-jumping places. The tourist-trip didn't feel that special, I'm not a fan of those things. But at least I know Oslo a bit better.

Officially the trip was a course in Norwegian. Our whole group could talk Swedish and we were almost perfectly understood and we learned to hear Norwegian around us. During the lectures we discussed about the languages in the nordic countries (how they are linked and what similarities there are) and the Norwegian culture and myths. It was all interesting, no matter if the subject was about languages and their politics or movies in Norway.

What else? The hotel was awesome, with plates of fruit available for everyone and coffee machines all over the place. The hotel surely deserved the four stars. It was such an opportunity being a part of this course and being able to stay at the awesome hotel with the interesting conferences, the view and our beautiful room. The whole course was greatly organized and I am happy that I was a part of this trip.

Movie review: Jarmusch: Down by law & Coffee and Cigarettes

Original text in my other blog: http://nayene.wordpress.com/

For the past weeks I’ve watched a few movies that I would like to share with you. Down by law from 1986 is the first movie that introduced me to the great director Jim Jarmusch. His simple, minimalized shots are strong and mostly, they are enough. I still wonder how Jarmusch with such small details is able to show me something that I’m still so excited to talk about.

Jim Jarmusch: Down by law (1986) and Coffee and Cigarettes (2004)

Down by law is a story about three men that meet in a Louisana prison. There’s Jack, a small-time pimp that got set up, Zack the unemployed DJ that was caught driving a stolen car, and a strong-willed Italian tourist called Bob. Like Tim Holmes describes:

“Though they are unabashed lowlifes, Zack and Jack have been incarcerated for crimes they didn’t commit, while Roberto, hardly the criminal type, has accidentally killed a man in a brawl.”

I remember the shot in Down by law where the three men lean against the jaildoor and Zack, believeing he and Jack are the true bad guys, asks with an ironic tone: “so, Bob, what did you do?”. Bob answers absent-minded: “Killed a man”. The two other men get uncomfortable and don’t know what to say.
Terrific.

Jarmusch is not about the story itself. The story in his movies doesn’t need to be complicated, what makes his movies great is the way he builds up such great profiles of the characters and his talentful shots. Somebody told me:

“It’s just amazing how Jarmusch can make a film where every shot is like an artistic picture, like a painting I would like to have on the wall.”

What I remember most from Down by law is the great black and white shots, the funny, realistic moments and especially the last picture in the film. In the beginning of Jacks’ and Zacks’ friendship they try either to provoke or avoid each other. But in the last shot, when they have escaped jail and are literaly going different roads, they have an unspoken friendship left hanging in the air. After all they’ve been through, it’s understandable. This last, realistic shot doesn’t feel like a made-up happy ending, it feels like one of the moments in life that makes it special.

I think Jarmuschs movies and short films are unique since he doesn’t follow a certain script, it’s more about spontanity. What Jarmusch emphasizes is playing with dialogues and to just see what happens. I think it’s a great talent to make short films so consistent even though they’re not throughly planned. Jarmusch did this in his eleven short films in Coffee and cigarettes.

One important source for Jarmuschs spontaneous moments is an italian actor named Roberto Benigni; when he met and joined Jarmuschs movies Benignis English wasn’t that strong. What’s better then let him act an Italian tourist (Bob) in Down by law?
In the first episode of Coffee and Cigarettes ever made Benigni plays himself. In the episode Benigni and Steven Wright are silently drinking their coffees with shaking hands (stating the need and addiction for coffee). Suddenly Benigni asks Wright:
“Do you know my mother?”
Wright stumbles for a moment and answers:
“Do I know your mother? I don’t think so.”
“Oh, very good.”
And they return to drinking and smoking.
Jarmusch explains:

“And after the take, Roberto said: “I am so sorry. I forget all English…. Suddenly I can’t think anything to say except ‘Do you know my mother.’” So things like that happen, and I like to leave those in.”

And so this random comment is in the clip and makes everything in the episode even more unique, random and fun.

The first episode of Coffee and Cigarettes was shot shortly after Down by law in 1986. Not much is needed in either of the films. Both are in black and white, in every episode just a few people are in front of the camera, discussing something or just sitting. In Coffee and Cigarettes the only thing combining every episode is – surprise – coffee and cigarettes. In every episode they discuss that drinking coffee and smoking is such a bad habit. Still, all the people in the film either drink coffee and smoke or has done it in the past.

One of my favourite episodes in Coffee and Cigarettes is ”Somewhere in California”. In this episode the legendary musicians Iggy Pop and Tom Waits “smoke cigarettes to celebrate that they quit smoking, drink some coffee and make awkward conversation.” The film was made in 1993, it’s 12 minutes long and gave Jarmusch the Short Film Palme d’Or atthe Cannes Film Festival. In this episode Iggy Pop has arranged a meeting with Tom and he is excited, but their conversation just doesn’t get past the awkward part. Their attempts end either in a silent moment or a misunderstanding. Their most successfull discussion is about quitting smoking and celebrating it – by smoking:

“The beauty of quitting is, now that I’ve quit, I can have one, ’cause I’ve quit.”

(Tom Waits)

And I must add, the awesome music that is played in Down by law is by Tom Waits, “Jockey full of bourbon”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54YhQZN5Uq8&feature=related

The shot where the three men lean against the jaildoor inDown by law can be seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHboNFi_zPU

From THE JIM JARMUSCH RESOURCE PAGE:
http://www.jim-jarmusch.net/

“In his book, “The Art of the Short Fiction Film: A Shot by Shot Study of Nine Modern Classics”, Richard Raskin devotes chapter 2 to a close reading of “Coffee and Cigarettes”, which is available online as a pdf file here:
http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/excerpts/0-7864-1183-X.Chapter2.pdf”

Down by law (1986)
Starring Tom Waits, Roberto Benigni, John Lurie

Coffee and cigarettes (2004)
Starring Roberto Benigni, Steven Wright, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Renée French, Alex Descas, Cate Blanchett, Meg & Jack White, Alfred Molina, Steve Coogan, Bill Murray and so on.

Time just flies by: Lesson three.

As we knew we were going to talk about the video we watched last time, the one presenting metaphors. We were supposed to write down what we remembered and then to underline words or sentences we weren't happy with in our texts. And then to discuss in our own groups, which was nice as always. In our group we had different memories about the video. I understood that I remember the funny examples and things I recognized from before. The lecturer in the video talked about Elvis Presley, "The king of metaphors", and showed some examples from Presley's songs. I remember the lecturer talking about Presley since it was a surprise to me; why would there be things told about Presley in a video about metaphors?

The definition for metaphor that I remember from the video is the easy definition: "giving a name for something else". Example: X = Y.

After these discussions we started, to my surprise, the group discussions. We were shuffled as groups (it's nice to talk to new people but then again I like the group I'm used to) and we had a group leader presenting a subject. In my group the topic was mandatory Swedish (pakkoruotsi), which is an issue that has been in the media for a while. In the group I represented someone who has always went to a swedish-speaking school, so I've never really chosen whether to study the language or not. In the group we talked about the opportunities you have when you know Swedish, how much each of us has used the language and so on. It was interesting to talk about this topic even though I've heard about the question a lot.

After the class I had a really good feeling. I was happy talking in English about different subjects and felt more secure than the first lecture. I stumbled up on some words but mainly it went well and I was happy with my performance. The happy feeling actually made my rest of the day really good so it was a great day on the whole :)

Good night!

Lesson number two.

Last Thursday we had our second lesson in English. The teacher started the lecture by asking me and Helmi show our blogs to everyone. On the big screen. But it was fun, although I had just started mine and I hadn't had time to write here that much. But still looking forward to write in this blog :)

And the theme of the second lecture? Mistakes. Not the easiest topic. The teachers asked us to discuss in small groups about the mistakes we remember from school regarding our English and how traumatic these mistakes were. In our group we talked about traumas we've had and for all of us the most 'traumatic' mistake, if you want to call it that, was about oral presentations. The ones where you are alone standing in front of the whole class and try talking in English, which isn't very fluent for any of us. When you're not the most comfortable in front of a whole class and on the top of that you're supposed to talk in a language you're not totally fluent in. Not the best combination. Although I don't remember having any bad response I was always nervous for those lessons and presentations. We discussed in our group about the feeling when you get caught up on some words and you have a hard time to continue.

The teacher asks us later what we think about our mistakes - were they positive or negative? My thoughts are the following: positive if you want to try harder next time and you feel that you learned something and you know what to do next so that you'll get better and not to make the mistake again. Negative, if one's self confidence gets worse and you don't feel secure when next time having an oral presentation or whenever you made your mistake. Whether the mistake is positive or negative depends much on one self and the situation around the mistake, that's what I believe.

Our teacher points out that there are different kinds of mistakes: the ones you don't know about and those you can correct straight away.

At the end of our lecture we watch a video (with English subtitles that I see right before the video ends) about metaphors that is really interesting to watch. Apparently we are going to talk about it the next lecture, which is tomorrow. Until then!

- Anni

Lesson one!

Here we go. This is my first time writing in my new blog, which is related to my English course in the university. I believe my writing and spelling is going to change during the course, but I don't know how yet. We'll see! This feels exciting and I'm pretty inspired to do this. It's nice to have an opportunity to write you reflection journal in a blog, it feels more relaxed then our other option.

We had our first lesson last week. The group seems nice, the teacher inspiring and the assignments interesting. I just hope I'll manage to do every task required, it was a bit confusing what we are actually supposed to do and is the course worth 3 or 5 points?

Anyway, as a whole I enjoyed the first lesson. It was nice to start it with simpler tasks, so we get used to use English with each other. We were supposed to be in smaller groups and tell each other what we study and why. It was nice just to chat with the others, who are so different in talking this language. Some talk with no stress and very clear, others are really insecure. I'm somewhere in between, I'm not scared to talk but not totally secure either. I can't wait to talk some more and see how I become better. Hopefully I do.

- Anni