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?