About achieving goals in the University abroad.
Now, I have stayed in California for one month and I just finished my midterm exams. Many dues, homework, readings, activities and classes are the consists of my life in UCSB. What about my goal? I think I made a little bit progression on my English skills.
The most important way that help me to learn more about English is the lectures and the homework from the professors. One of my class is named Geog 3B, which needs students to do a lot of readings and homework so that we can comprehend what exact our professor are talking about. At first, I felt really confused about many words show on the power point and the books. That produces a lot of obstacles on my understanding about geography. In order to learn well on this class, I start to rewrite the notes on the power point on my notebooks, and then I would underline some words or sentences that I don’t know and translate it on Mandarin and write down the Chinese meaning near the words and sentences. As a result, my reading on Geog3B become much more fluent and some special definitions seem easy for me to comprehend. What’s more is about the rough draft essay that we just submitted. That’s my first time to write a essay with that length. It felt horrible for me and took me long time to read other articles, go to CLAS and arrange the structure of my own essay. The process of writing the essay is tired, but I learn more on it. I know how to brainstorm before I write it and my classmate also gives me some great suggestions and corrections on my essay. This is a kind of improvement on my writing skill.
However, I still have some deficiencies on chatting with foreigners. I have made a lot of friendships with others but most of them are Chinese, so it is hard for me to say English in my daily life. During weekends or some holidays, I used to hang out with some Chinese friends. If I stay in my dormitory, my two classmates are also Chinese. So although I am living in an English talking environment, my chance to practice my pronunciation is rare. The only chance to speak English is when I use Uber or Lyft, I may have some conversations with the driver and my RA, who is an American, would like to chat with us in English.
From October to November, I’ve learned a lot but that’s not enough. I need to pay more attention on get on well with some native students in order to know their lives and improve my speaking techniques. Good luck to myself!
