Reflection_Level-II_1021

Can we imagine classes came to an end?

Not at all! Rather it’s a beginning.

How come?

Learning is a continuous process. It never comes to an end unless person stops learning. I am sure that we all are not from that category who stops learning in this competitive era. When I entered in to the class room, I saw tripod and some other stuff on table right around the corner. I imagine that something special is going to happen in today’s session.

Anxiety came to an end when session started with a game. It was again an exercise of putting thoughts and giving feedback. We did several related exercises in the past and based on experience I still feel that sometimes thought process stops emerging. Consequently we hunt for thoughts and if we didn’t get it, we repeat it again and again just like as a tape recorder. What is important is to have variety of thoughts and it’s continuous flow. Once idea gets emerged, jot down and explore it. I strongly believe that this process may become helpful to speak continuously expressing thoughts.

Similarly we did in the past an exercise of turn taking. Here I found one of the deficiencies in our group. Inspite of giving opportunity, they were not taking turn. It’s just an exercise to see how many thoughts we contribute in to the process.

As a part of self evaluation I would say that I got benefit from class. Lots of sessions with different activities bringing up new learning experience every time.

Reflection_Level-II_1017

Reading, writing, listening and speaking are the four most important skills. We came to know 5th skill as “Culture”. I surprised to learn as to how culture can be a skill? But yes…it can be.

Office-3- A funny video! When we saw Office-1, I remember that I watched it for nearly 5 to 6 times to understand words and sentences. It was too difficult to catch. Office-3 found somewhat easy-might be- because of practice.

Video was more or less on culture. We say US culture in “Office-III”. Not always it’s true abut somewhat. Drinking, free office environment, proposing someone, hugging, kissing are common there but against culture over here. This is the reason that when we see someone doing such things, we get surprised. On the contrary in their eyes we feel like as orthodox. This is somewhat about cultural difference. We are more on family oriented where as they are cultural oriented. Right from dressing to lifestyle, communication, everywhere we notice major changes.

The theme behind office-III video was to show cultural difference which is also one of the important elements to know over and above reading, writing, listening and speaking ability. If one has all the four abilities but not aware with 5th; then it may pose difficulty. Sanjay cited very good example with which I fully agree. During the course of conversation, it is observed that people in US, focus on pithy discussion rather than giving explanation like we do!

We were inquisitive to see “One Play” by different teams. Of course we’re not real artist but did best effort to present crux in an effective manner. Leaving weaknesses aside (like expressions, reading dialogues from material, minor mistakes) I would say that effort was made to use collocations, speech, language, dialogue delivery and so on. I consider drama exercise as a platform to apply whatever we learned from different exercise-right from presentation till grammar. I enjoyed this session!!!

Reflection_Level-II_1014

Communication classes-II is coming to an end and I wondered why Sanjay has not shown any movie? I was astonished when he asked to write at least 4 or 5 thoughts on the word “Legend” and jot down points if there may not be anything in the world. This was an indication about something is going to happen in the today’s session. My curiosity came to an end, when he started session with the movie “I am the legend”. It was a wonderful movie containing several learning aspects. Language was pretty understandable (leaving few sentences/words). Sometimes back I’d seen movie “The Happenings” in Fun Republic. More or less this movie resembles the same. End is altogether different - totally different than expected. In Hindi movies, hero always services, here it was not so. However his research was survived for a long. It became immortal.

Next part of the session started with pronunciation exercise. I realized that it’s easy to speak words in general but rather difficult to speak in front of an audience because they can easily catch mistakes in pronunciation. This was purely based on sound practice we did in the past. Putting more stress on word, may make language artificial. Suppressing it may indicate lack of confidence and probably lose the purpose.

Level-II_Reflection_1003

“In the Ghetto” - Ankit’s favorite word!

On beginning of the session, Sanjay asked us to jot down points on “Ghetto”. Always there are two sides of a coin. According to me, word “Ghetto” has two paradoxical meaning. On one way it’s a symbol of discipline. On the contrary, it’s a pictogram of blind followers. Both are dangerous…!

We are habituated in listening Hindi and Gujarati songs. While watching English movie, when English song comes up, we switch on channel. Reason…? We don’t like it or we don’t understand it? I would say we’ve never tried to listen carefully and essence behind it.

In the earlier sessions, we learned about bringing variety in writing. Same was after listening song; I would say we should bring variety in listening. This wisdom came after listening song “In the Ghetto”. Let’s see how long it lasts:).

When song started, frankly speaking; I couldn’t understood anything except some of the words, like: “In the Ghetto”, “And his mama cries”, Energy young man”. We heard song for second time and then a third time. Surprisingly, when I heard song for third time with the help of a paper exercise, outcome was totally different than expected. It’s really…really beautiful song but a sad story. It’s really a heart touching song. Why mama cries? Why angry young man dies? What’s happened to a child?

So what’s the take-out from the story?

Grippingly, it’s all about developing understanding and listening ability. Use of phrases, adjectives, collocations and idioms makes the sentence more and more interesting.

The second part of the exercise was all about understanding and listening ability. We have been given different cards and asked to put n a sequence of song. This can be possible only when we heard song in a proper sequence. Our group was wrong on 4 places.

Immediately after a song, session went ahead with one another game. On four sides, four cards were pasted with different messages. We have to read it and gather at the proper place as per the sentence specification by Sanjay. Game was all about word stress. Some time back we learned as to how meaning changes because of giving stress on certain words. In the second part, several members (including me) misunderstood and went in to different direction. Game is a self explanatory as to how we misunderstand message because of stress and follow wrong direction. May be; because of misinterpretation or misunderstanding.

After a long break (I would say mini vacation), next session will be more energetic as it is followed by a play incorporating concepts, we learned in different sessions. We have a team of artists and now let’s see how we play:)

Level-II_Reflection_0926

Just imagine…if you receive lots of emails every day, how you will give priority to it without reading all? Confused? Yes, me too!!!

This is what a learning process for me in a session of today. Session started with a small and intelligent game. Participants were divided in to three groups and they have been given cards of different colours. They need to read out content and explain to other members within the group. As soon as first process got over, members were shambled. Again members asked to explain content to group other members in their new team without help of card. Of course it was a bit tough task. Sill almost all has done a good job. How this could be possible? Whether every member could remember whole of the content and explained in the same manner? No!

The second part of the game started later on. Cards were again given to members with headings. As per the exercise, we need to match heading with content in respective card. Our team did a phenomenal job. We committed mistake in two cards only.

Take out from the game is to increase memory power, reading ability (called as bird’s eye) explanation power. Question may arise as to how we can do this?

Very simple…!

Just memorized some important words and based on that explain to others. Remember important words from heading, specific words and or content. We may mark underline topic if needed. This exercise can be useful even in story telling too. We need to remember that essence is more important than going through each and every word of the story. What we generally do is try to remember each and every word and consequently loose control over natural expressions. Here if we may jot down some important points and memorize then I don’t feel it may be difficult to express.

Now let me to come to my first question. When we have several emails then it may be a cumbersome process to read each and every. If we know this technique then from subject line/heading and focusing eye on some of the important words, we can justify crux of the email.

I got good feedback on writing task. Mistake I did was excessive usage of continuous tense “ing”, which should be avoided. I’ll take care in my redraft.

The third phase of the session started with long awaiting process of story telling. It’s an art. Some of us have done a phenomenal job. General feedback we got was to focus more on expression using key points, be natural and make use of gestures. It should not be as artificial which resembles like student in a school telling story to classmates in a free periodJ. I feel it as an important process which we can apply during our presentation to attract audience.

Level-II_Reflection_0923

Today was the day of result and everyone was anxious to know their score. As expected, session began with result of test taken on last Friday. That was the end of our curiosity. I did reasonably good job in vocabulary, reasoning and true & false statements. I could do better in report writing but because of shortage of time I could not do, which was reflected in my result. Major mistakes we all did were in grammar exercise. There was some sort of misunderstanding which has created disaster. Of course I should still work upon my listening skill going forward. That was the major area where I lost my marks. In report writing I should avoid using lone sentence and repetitive words (like Asia Pacific). My performance was poor in tense exercise. Exam gave some sort of wits to take care about common mistakes. I’ll take care about all such things in upcoming exercise and do effort by which same or similar mistakes may not happen again.

At middle of the session, Pragnesh and Payal have delivered presentation on “Who are you?” They have delivered theme in a wonderful way. Lesser number of slides and larger emphasize on content made session live. Self evaluation process and judgment based on drawing (one sort of exercise) made it more interesting and could easily understood thought.

At the end of the session, Payal gave an excellent performance on story telling. No one was ready to tell story after that looking to her superb performance. Sanjay has extended time duration for story telling to next session so that we can be well prepared like her. I appreciate her wonderful performance. This is what exactly expected from us. Of course she could do her hard work. Intonation was perfect and that has made story interesting.

Level-II_Reflection_0920

We had an extra session on 20th September emphasizing on phonetics. In this extra session, large emphasize was given on vowels, consonants, syllables and word stress. This was explaining about how North American ascents.

There was a good graphical presentation of a tongue showing where we should put stress to utter different vowels. We did practice of vowel 1, 6, 10 and 11 (namely “ee”, “ea”, “ah”, “oo”). English is a stress timed language and therefore vowels and consonant carries out a higher weightage. Wrong usage of sound may carry different meaning. We did practice of different vowels and made a clear distinction among four.

It is observed that we don’t care of phonetics while talking with others and therefore it creates problem while speaking with US counterpart. We should do practice and bring out improvement over a period of time. I learned as to how we should put stress on abbreviations like US natives are doing.