Conversation class 16/12/2008

Today's class was about some different topics. I did two hours of class as the teacher is leaving tomorrow and I couldn't do tomorrow's class. In the first hour we were two students but the other girl had to leave for the second hour, so I was alone for the rest of the class. We started talking about an exercise in a book about how would we live if we decided to opt out of the society. The questions were about where would we leave, how would we eat and organize, if we would have companions and so on. After that we talked about pets and Andrea told us that last year she had a duck and a chicken in her flat in the States, so we asked about them and she told us some interesting things about the duck's intelligence. After that we talked about sharing flats and how we live with our flatmantes. She wasn't particularly happy with her mates and she is going to move from her apartment because she feels unconfortable now. I explained that I was very happy with my mates and everything was going well in my flat.

In linguistical terms I am solving the problem of the common words and my fluency is improving fast. There's a lot of room for improvement now but I think that I am in the good path. My vocabulary is getting better as well as I am remembering some old vocabulary that I had forgotten in these lapse of using English. The thing is that, as I said in the last post in the blog, I am determined to reserver the last hours of the CAL to work on the problems I've been identifying.


Today's vocabulary:

Hut -> Wooden shelter

Wellfare payment -> When someone is homeless or poor and the state pays him

Validate a ticket -> When you put your ticket so the machine lets you out of the station

Dogpound -> The place where abandoned dogs are kept


Time Spent: 2:30h

Conversation class 11/12/2008

This time it was only an hour of class, as usual. We were four students in the class. I think that this year the conversation classes are really working, a lot of people meets there.

Andrea showed us a video from Youtube about that man that has become pregnant, Thomas Beattie. This time we could keep the class focused in that topic and we talked about the ethical and moral problems that these news can create. I think that it was an interesting talk, because we had some different opinions. For example, I explained that I didn't think that, in terms of being pregnant, Thomas is a man (because he is a transexual), so it all is just a media strategy to create some show. But when we talked about transexuals and how should we consider them I think that if they think they're men, we should consider them men. It's just that biologically Thomas isn't a man.

I really found confortable in this class. Everythin was coming to my mind fast and I didn't had those vocabulary problems that I had the last day. I don't know if it was because of the topic that we were talking about or because of the two hour class of the day before but it was really interesting. I also learnt some interesting vocabulary, but not because I couldn't say it. It was things that Andrea said and I couldn't understand:

Unwind -> Relax
Harassment -> Acoso (I don't know how to define it in English)
Pro choice / Pro life -> both sides of the abortion debate. Pro choice say that the women should decide what they have to do and pro life think the contrary.
Nature v Nurture -> We are born like we are or we become like we are?

I think that it was the best class since I started and the improvements are remarkable, although I sometimes can have a bad day, like the day before.


Time Spent: 1:30H

Conversation class 10/12/2008

I was in the conversation class during two hours, instead of the normal hour, because I had to miss the conversation class the Thursday before. During both hours we were three students plus Andrea, so it was interesting because we could share our opinions and discuss with some different ideas.

Andres brought us some situation exercises where we had to talk about how would we react when some strange and complicated situations happen. As an example:

We have a friend that is stealing money from his public job. Someone informs me, the publisher of an important newspaper, about that and I have to decide if I am going to publish it or not.

Of course, you can talk about a wide variety of things during two hours so we talked about travelling and, of course, food. Andrea told us that she is going to travel across Europe with a thing called Couch Surfing. It is a network in the Internet where you can offer a couch, or a bed, or whatever for free to travellers around the world. Then you can stay in they're couches for free. We talked about Interrail and visiting cities too.

During the class I felt a bit unconfortable sometimes. I have said it before, but sometimes I have problems with "easy" words. I think that I should try to read or listen to the news or something similar. This could help me to keep the common words fresh in my mind, as well as improving my vocabulary. I suppose that it depends on the subject because the day after I felt much more confortable. I think that the last hours of the CAL I will try to work in the weaknesses I am seeing through the conversation classes.

Vocabulary:

squeaky clean -> morally clean, disney image

toll booth -> place where you pay in the motorways



Time Spent: 2:30h

Conversation class (or not) 3/12/08

I don't know why Andrea wasn't in the CAL today so I couldn't have a conversation class. But, as I really can't afford to waste CAL hours I decided to work on my vocabulary for the amount of time that I should have spent in the class. To do this, I picked up the Catalonia Today (I really believe that its format shouldn't have been changed, really sad) of the 20th of November and I read it carefully. I also got a dictionary and started to look for the words. In general, I had no problems but the opinion articles were a bit hard. I have written down the words I couldn't understand and its meaning as well as a pair of things I wasn't able to find. If you could help me with them I would be grateful.

Ubiquitous: present anywhere
Burden: to create a problem or serious responsibility to someone
To Dither: To be unable to make a decision about something
Thuggish: behaving in a violent way
ruthless: willing to make other people suffer so that you can achieve your aims
bereft of something: lacking something that you need
cropper: to faig or get into trouble
chasm: a very big difference between two things
dusk: the period of time at the end of the day just before it becomes dark
ruffle feathers: to make someone feel worried or annoyed
backlash: a strong, negative and often angry reaction to something that has happened
bleak: without any reasons to feel happy or hopeful

The two expressions I couldn't find were:

Slacks that hold a crease
Sheaf-loads (when talking about where Franco killed Republicans)

Time Spent: 1:30h