Pascal's LLB

1/15/2012

Advice to next year's students

Hello bloggers,

During the first period on the university, I have had many experiences. I shared my progress in English on my blog, during the lessons at the university and outside school with my international students.
First i hope that you all enjoyed reading my blog and learned from it as much as I did.

My advice to next year's students is that if you really want to achieve something, no matter what it is, you can do it. for example when I look at myself, you can see that it wasn't logical that i choose an English spoken study, because my English was bad. Of course it is a risk, but I haven't had any doubts about my study choice.

Of course you don't have to underestimate the study, because it is a lot of work and you have to speak English, but if you think you like this study i would advice that you just have to try it.

To advice you about any language what so ever, with practice you can improve you skills. Just talk to people in that language and don't be afraid of making mistakes because you can only Learn from it. Think that it is very important that you choose a study which you like and that your happy with it.
These factors have motivated me to improve my skills and that i liked this study was obvious, otherwise I wasn't writing this advice.

To conclude my advice, if you want to achieve a certain goal you can do it.

Regards,

Pascal

1/03/2012

Learn English?

why you don't have a look to other students of my class, which also made a Language Learning history and find out how they learned English and what there experiences are.

Have a look at:
joepbreurkens.blogspot.com
floorvasse.blogspot.com
http://llbfm.blogspot.com/
http://rick-languagelearning.blogspot.com/
nikolay-ellb.blogspot.com
http://hebaalix.blogspot.com/

I found it very interesting to also read the Language Learning Blog of other people.
Also learned a lot of their stories and experiences.

12/26/2011

Graded presentation

During our English 1 course we had to give presentations, which were graded. We had to give them in pairs, so I and Joep decided to do it together.
We chose Audio wire for our project, we had to give them advice about their bad website and tell them what they needed to improve.

Still can't put my powerpoint presentations on this blog, think i'm not technical enough. But when you're interested just comment, and i will send it to you.

Grade: I first wasn't really positive about what my grade was going to be, because i was really nervous and thought that everyone had seen it also it was already a few months ago when i had given my last presentation which made me more nervous. Thank god this wasn't right, because the teacher gave me a 7,3 which made me very, very happy.

Also the reflection which the other students made about our presentation were mostly positive.
Like 'Meryl' said: A nice presentation and you explained the points well.
also when you look to my grade you can see that is was sufficient.
Of course they also gave improvements about our presentation but they can help for the next time when i have to give an presentation.

12/21/2011

Video

Was Just surfing the web and found this funny video about Learning English pronunciation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvpikUEIaLI

again i'm not very experienced with computers so here is just the link of the video.

Hope you enjoy, I did.

12/18/2011

Practice, practice and practice

To improve our English we keep on practicing with writing assignments and presentations.
we had to write a memo-report which is being graded, It's about Leatty which runs a project in Shanghai who has a lot of problems, and i have to advice what they should do to save the project. I will give you feedback on it when i know the grade and the teacher has given her feedback.

Memo report

To: CEO of Leatty.

From: Managers of Shanghai works.

Date: 12 December 2011.

Subject: Devise strategy to rescue the project.

Introduction

On 12 December, the managers of Shanghai works and managers of Leatty discussed how they have to devise the strategy to rescue the building project. We urgently need to improve the strategy, involving the bad communication which causes delays and complains of both companies. We have agreed on the following plan to rescue the project.

Information exchange and coordination tasks

We propose an videoconference at 8.00 am Toronto time on Monday, Wednesday and Friday so that both companies can talk to each other on the best time for both, this makes it easier to exchange information and to coordinate the tasks to both parties. Furthermore they can react quicker in case of emergency and a ‘blackboard’ will be introduced which is accessible for all the employees.

Communication, morale and work practice

We advise that the employees should get more to finish their job, which improves the quality of the end-product. Moreover the morale can be improved with extrinsic rewards and the so called ‘get together’, which can be trips with employees to create more understanding to each other. Furthermore with these points we hope to create a strong culture among the employees by both companies.

Atmosphere

Finally, it is important to improve a good atmosphere during the project by both companies. Both companies should ensure jobs to their employees, which creates a good feeling among the employees. Which lead to better work performance and a better atmosphere between the employees.

Conclusion and recommendations

All managers suggest that implementing these recommendations is the best solution costly and might cause some reorganisation. After thorough research and discussion, we firmly believe that improving the information exchange and coordination of tasks are core for improving the company’s project.

We look forward to your reaction and hope we have the opportunity to present you a more detailed action plan for this urgent issue.

Pascal Corée

Manager of Shanghai works

12/11/2011

Language Learning History

Hello,

To make my blog a little more personal, I wrote an essay on the language learning history of my life so far. I will talk about the things that I have learned so far and what my experiences with English are, and there are some experiences which I rather forget, but I will also talk about the things that I expect to learn at the university and already learned.

I started to learn English when I was around 8 or 9 years old. It was at the primary school in Zwolle, the Netherlands, they started with really basic things and it wasn’t useful because most of the things they teach, I already knew. Probably I learned that words and sentences from the television and from the traveling in foreign countries with my parents . So it was a begin, but a rather limited one.

At the secondary school it changed, we had to learn English on a different level. First of all they started with learning the grammar of English which I found very hard. We had to make an small exam once every 2 months, this were exams were you only had to learn translations from both English-Dutch and Dutch-English. This made it very easy to get a good grade, because you only had to study these words. But this was only the first year.

After the first year they started to focus more and more on the grammar of English, but unfortunately we had another teacher than previous year. His way of learning me English was totally different than previous year. He started that we only were allowed to speak English during the lessons, so when you had a question you first had to think how you could translate it into English. I found this was a very good way to learn English better and to improve my vocabulary. I was wondering why we didn’t do it previous year during lessons, but we had to keep going on. Of course we had to write letters and started giving presentations during the years, so my vocabulary was still improving. Still had some problems with English grammar and decided to get some extra lessons in English after school. This helped, but after a while I found out that my reading skills weren’t so good.

Eventually I reached my final year of the secondary school and I hoped I should graduate and already saw myself walking at the university. After a lot of nerves the told me, I had failed in graduating the secondary school. Disappointing as it was, couldn’t change anything more, because I didn’t had a resit I just failed. After they showed me my results it appeared that I failed because of my English exam, which I made horrible.
So just study one extra year to pass English.

One year later..

After the failure of last year this year I graduate, unfortunately not with a good grade for English but because my other grades were better and I passed. After this negative experience with English, I was thinking. Apparently my English wasn’t so good, even after one year extra I hadn’t passed my English exam with a good grade. However I was able to go to the university. A lot of people didn’t understood my choice of my study, because my English was worse and I choose a study which is given in English.
I made my choice because I thought when I talked English every day and learn in English always, that It should be a matter of time for my English was good enough.

My expectations before I came to university was that I should give presentations, learn and speak English for the total length of my study. My expectations where correct. Is turned out that it was just what I expected. I learned a lot of all my presentations and writing assignments I had to make during the lessons. Still the formal English and Academic English is still difficult but I’m don’t worry about it, because I think I’m capable of learning it.

So this are my experiences with English both positive and negative ones but from both I learned something.
but when I have to give advice to next-year students I would so just practice a lot, not only with speaking English but also with writing and reading. When you level of English is already at a higher level when you start at the university it would probably be a lot easier to pass all courses.

So thank you for reading and I hope you learned something from it.

12/01/2011

Treasure Trove presentation

To practice our presenting skills everyone gave a presentation about presenting.
We had to choose one of the different subjects given by the teacher. we were able to choose from these different subjects:

I gave my presentation about:'Become a dynamic presenter'. It was only a short presentation but because you had to present about presenting you learned a lot about it. Also the presentation of the other people in the class gave a lot of information about how you should to present and what not to do while presenting.

This presentation was useful for the presentations we should give in the future.

If you want to see the powerpoint presentation from my presentation just mail me (pascalcoree@hotmail.com) and i will send it, this because i couldn't get the presentation on my Blog.

Thank you for you attention.