Review

ESP Vocabulary Tests

It improved my vocabulary but this was a bit hard job, because I had to learn every definition by heart and it took more time. It is hard to say if tests were easy or hard. There were some tests when I looked at the test paper and suddenly forgot everything that knew.

Writing Summaries

I think that my summaries are well written. It wasn’t very hard to write them and it was good experience especially to learn how to write a sentence not copying it or quoting, but in own words and transform informal text to formal. I agree that I do some grammatical mistakes, but in my opinion more important is to understand about what I am writing than some misspelled words.

Feldman’s Online Exercises (Multiple Choice, Filling in blanks)

This task was one of the easiest for me. I liked to do it. This was good experience to check how good I understand text and how much I remember from it. Comparing results with colleagues sometimes showed where I should pay more attention, what I missed.

Online Listening in Class

I found it very interesting. Here I performed very well and liked to find out if sentences were true or false. Texts were easy to understand and sometimes funny.

Traditional listening to cassetes (in class)

Sometimes it was hard to understand what people were talking because speakers talked very fast or not clear, also in native language. After some this type listenings I found easier to understand words they are saying.

power point presentations

This task at first sight seemed to be very easy, but when I started making slides I realized that is quite hard to decide which information is necessary to be written and which I can just mention. Also it was a bit hard to talk in front of all grout, because I have not very good speaking skills.

speaking inpromptu

All comments, opinions sharing, question making is just participating in class activities. It was naturally done so I can’t say that it was hard or easy. Maybe just there: to create a question in English appropriately, because I first of all think about a question in Lithuanian.

short talks (raedy-made talks)

In my opinion this task has 4 stages:

• searching information for given theme
• sorting the most important or interesting facts
• comparing information to understandable text
• practicing

Sometimes is hard to talk if I am not sure that I can do it well, or afraid of misspelling some words, or my speech can be understand not as I want.

Summary: The Mystery of Memory

Many things, like numbers, names are recalled for a few seconds. Information which is not lost goes to long – term memory where lasts very long time, almost for ever.

To remember something people must recover things from long – term memory to “working memory” which is declarative and procedural. Procedural memory is more stable than declarative. Many people have eidetic (photographic) memory. This memory they have from childhood. Children to age 8 remember things by photographic memory.It is the best way to remember things and this ability decreases when person grows older.

The human brain contains billions of cells and up to 100 000 connections. This makes possibility to answer the question how memories are made. With a new memory new pattern of   connection is made and stored in new memory like a scene in a videotape.

When individual tries to remember something he tries to vary some strategies by which missing information can be retrieved.

The biggest mystery to scientists is to understand how different brain regions and processes give coherent conscious experience. 

Summary: Time in a Bottle

In America 40 per cent students now are classified as heavy drinkers. It is noticed that students turned to age 21 start to use alcohol. There is tendency - alcohol use begins in college environment.

According to researcher Clayton Neighbors and his colleagues, students who drink think that this behavior will be approved by friends or peers, they will be rated as more adult, more independent, and in some cases approved even by parents. Researchers noticed that students who had pressure by their friends to drink do it less.

Students start drinking when they want to skip their problems and one of the reasons is thinking that alcohol can help to turn their negative emotions and problems to positive ones. There are students who drink for fun, or just because other people expect them to do this.

Excessive drinking is the biggest problem among college students. One of the ways to stop this is to give a message to students to change their point of view.

Short talk: Prof. Richard Wiseman's Surname Experiment

The Luck Factor describes how lucky people have much broader social networks than others, and how this increases the likelihood of them experiencing lucky encounters.

Prof. Richard Wiseman's experiment named "Surname- experiment" was based upon the idea briefly mentioned by American journalist Malcolm Gladwell in his book. Gladwell carried out an informal study in which he presented people with a list of surnames and asked them to indicate if they know people with that surname.

Prof. Richard Wiseman used this idea as a basis for a questionnaire that could quantify the relationship between luck and social connectivity.

First of all people were asked to classify as lucky, unlucky or neutral they are. Then they were presented with a list of 15 common British surnames and asked to indicate at least one name to each surname.

The results showed the huge relationship between luck and social connectivity. Almost 50 per cent of lucky people ticked 8 or more names to surnames.

Short talk: Psychology of Internet

With the advance of computers and online networks, especially Internet, new dimension of human experience is rapidly opening up. The experience created by computers and computer networks in many ways can be understood as psychological “space” or “place”. Then users power up their computers, launch programs, write e-mails or doing something like that, they feel, consciously or unconsciously, that they are entering “place” or “space” filled with a wide array of meanings and purposes. Also browsing can be described as “traveling” or “going someplace”.

On the even deeper psychological level users often describe how their computer is an extension of their minds and personality, a space that reflects their tastes, attitudes and interests. When users read e-mails, newsgroup or chat messages some people feel as if their mind is merged or blended with that of the other.

Internet is wide open for all sorts of fantasies. People use this psychological space to simply went or act out their fantasies, frustrations, anxieties and desires that fuel those fantasies.

Summary: You Are How You Wait: Queue Psychology

Queuing began during World War I and passed all over the world. Since then common kinds of lines in Europe were called "multi - server" queues, but later lots of companies switched over to "snake - line" queues. In comparison between them, better is "multi - server" queue.

According to Jacob Horwik, thinking about how long one has to wait in queue makes time go more slower. It was timed and results showed that people thought that they were waiting up to 30 percent longer than it really was.

This experiment can also be used to mislead people. That's why some companies started doing treats like parking airplanes on the other side of terminal. This stopped complains.

One of things that people don't take kindly is queue jumping. In all sorts of lines people better will wait longer if there's no "queue jumpers".

My Future Profession

Hey, it's my first entery here. I was told to write this, and for real I'm not sure what would be the best to write about my future... And...  I'm not sure why exactly psychology. It was not something for what I was dreaming about or interested for a long time. It came itself from childhood I think. Like "Why parents are talking to me like that?", or that - "Why friends are doing things, which are not accepted for me?", "How does everything works in our heads?" and so on...

For now on I like my studies, but I'm still not sure what will be in future, which branch of Psychology I'll choose and so on. But if everything will be all right, I have plans to study abroad. And then maybe stay to live and work there.

So, as You can see, it's really hard to say something now, when everything is new for me...