Natsuki Ikushima's Blog

In this week I had two exams, writing essay and listening. 

Firstly, I’ll write about writing exam. I’ve taught academic writing skills through this pre-sessional course and there are a lot of strategies.  In this  exam, we receive text beforehand, and we can prepare for it, for example, paraphrasing, summarising and understanding the text. Last time, I couldn’t prepare well so I tried to spend more time to it.  So I could understand the contents better than  before, but there was still a problem. During the exam, I spent much time to think structure and write introduction, and I couldn’t spare time to write main body and conclusion. Also I didn’t have time pay attention to write sentences accurately, so I think there are many mistakes.  I thought that I need to get time management skill. To get this skill, I have to experience a lot of writing essay and practice more. In the next opportunity to write essay, I’ll mind these things and write better essay than this time.

Secondly, I’ll talk about listening exam.

In this exam , we have to watch the video first, and during listening, we take some notes, then we answer the question using our notes. So I think this test is required not only listening skill, but also making-note skill. In the bigening, I tried to write down everything that I heard and wrote down the copy of the slide so I concentrared on writing words and missed important things. I realized that this kind of things are not helpful for taking notes.  So this time, I tried to write examples and main point. I could note examples, however, I couldn’t write important things. I think that it is because I didn’t understand the presentation well. So from now on, I’ll try to understand what speaker said first, and next,  I’ll pay attention to the phrases such as “it is important~”. In addition, I’ll try to spare my time to watch TED as practice for listening.

Finally, I have reading and speaking exam next week. Last reading exam, I thought it was not so difficult but the score was not good. It may because of misunderstanding some words of question. There were many words that I didn’t  know in both of text and question. If the word is in the text, I can guess the meaning from the context, but it is in the question, it lead to 

In this week, we learned about presentation skills such as opening sentences and phrases that how to link the content.  Acctually, I have not experienced  because I think there are less oppotunities to presentate something to others in Japan. So these lectures seemed to be really new to me.

We practiced in group, and our topic was about the traditional UK foods. I searched these contents, especially about the british pubs, in library. However there are great deal of books, so I confused what book I need.  In addition, I troubled in making slide because I’m not used to and the way of citation is totally different from Japanese style. After that, we presentated toward classmates. However I felt very nervous, so I  couldn’t presentate well. I was looking my script for a long time, my voice was sounds no confident and I thought it difficult for listener to understand my speech. 

Through this experience, I thought I need to get three skills to make my presentation better. First thing  is knowing how to use library effectively. Next, getting the ability of the way of correct citation. Finally, the skill what I presentate with confident and tell audiences easily. To get these skills, I need to preparete more carefuly and practice a lot. If I had the chance to presentate in near future, I hope I would do it with these skills.

I’m taking 5 weeks presessional in York st John university and I am taught a lot of academic skills in my class.

We had a practice of lintening exam in this week.  Before the practice, we listened the presentation and took a note, after that we ansewr the question.  It was difficult for me to make a good note because I don’t have a skill how to listen and write a note effectively. So I couldn’t answer some questions.

I recognise that I tried to take note everything and use the speaker’s word but I need to choose the important points and write it with my own word. I think I need to more practice to get used to select the main points of the presentaition. I hope that next time, I will do it better then this time.

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