FINAL (END OF ESP COURSE) SELF - ASSESSMENT

WRITING:

Summaries

Summary writing was one of the hardest tasks for me. When you read the text and then try to analyze what should be written, what kind of information is important it is quite easy, but the hardest part is when you begin write and try not to copy sentences. For it was hard, because I hardly can found another words to explain meaning of that sentence. Another problem in my summaries was grammar and vocabulary mistakes. I think it is because I try to write without any dictionaries. Just do it in way like it would be on exam.

Good news is that I finally understood what kind of information is important, how to summarize 2 or more texts into one that was quite hard to do in the beginning.

SPEAKING:

Short talks

This task was quite easy. I enjoyed searching information while preparing for short talks because almost all information I found was useful and interesting. I learned some new things, facts and also could express myself and show my own point of view. I haven’t any fear to speak no matter if I have just some fact or plenty of information.

Impromptu

In my opinion it was easiest task ever. All that I needed is to think some seconds about given theme and say what I think, share my opinion. I enjoyed this task so much. But sometimes it was quite difficult to say something because I had no idea what to say what was not said by colleagues.

PPP

Task which takes a lot of time for preparation. This semester I performed much better here. One of the reasons was time; I had it enough to find required and interesting information, to do slides and to practice my speech before deadline. Also theme I had was interesting for me so I enjoyed making presentation.

I found one minus in this task – I was nervous all of the time while I was talking in front of others. It was not because I have fear of scene, but because thoughts haw to perform well, pronounce all words correct and try not to be boring.

LISTENING:

Online materials

Online materials were easier than listening to the cassettes. Despite fast talking it was easy to understand what people are talking about and fill in the gaps.

Cassettes

This kind of listening was harder because of two things. Firstly, speakers talk very fast, sometimes is quite hard to understand them. Secondary, there were noises in background of the recording. They made this listening task harder.

Filling the gaps here were funny – word which must be filled in were said very fast, sometimes unclear.

ESP VOCABULARY:

Formal tests in class

Stressful task especially when it was changed. No matter if I spend hours learning or not the results were the same. So I stopped preparing for the tests and spent just a little of time for them and my results were better than spending hours, reading all modules, making online tests. I think this test are not useful they just waste students time, make them feel stressed, and I can say from my own experience that only thing you do during the class, you think just about the test and all tasks you do in class stop being useful.

Class tests online

I really haven’t understood why we did them? Where is the point? Ok, maybe just to spend that 5 or 10 minutes of the class for nothing. They aren’t useful, they not make any sense for me, and I haven’t seen the difference between moodle tasks and this task.

Moodle tests

I think it is one of the methods to raise your mark. It is not very difficult when you do it with a course book. It requires just for more attention and reading. I’m a bit disappointed about filling in the gaps part. There are some words which are different and doesn’t mach with the book. But a good side of this task is to test own knowledge or just to practice to remember some things. Also this task is exciting when you do it the last day till the deadline.  

Summary: Stress 2

There are many psychological or physiological factors which may cause heart attacks and heart diseases. One of the reasons why people suffer or even die from diseases related with heart is stress.

After a strong earthquake in Los Angeles, the number of deaths from heart attacks was increasingly growing among people who survived the catastrophe. According to the research, a major number of deaths was caused by stress developed when earthquake occurred.

Some research was done to find out which factors cause heart attacks. Participants who had indications of heart attacks and diseases and those who were treated from heart attacks and diseases had to fill in questionnaires related to their life experience. According to the research, the main reason for heart attacks is stress and childhood problems such as violence and abuse. Smoking, high blood pressure, cholesterol also cause the risk of heart attack in later life.

Stress has a positive side - activities which cause eustress prevent from common stress and reduce heart attack risk.

Smoking and eating habits, happy childhood, eustressial activities are crucial in individual’s life. Having positive view can help living longer life and have healthier heart. 




According to R. Feldman's "Understanding Psychology" 9th edition, p.495.

Summary: Stress

Every person can experience stressful situations in lifetime and feel stress in various situations. For every person stress is different but coping with it is almost the same. People use some kind of techniques that can be helpful but as people are different the ways of coping with stress are varying.

Techniques of reducing stress are common and uncommon. Common techniques are going for a walk, listening to the music, laying in bed or on the beach and listening or watching waves, music listening. These ways do not require much energy or thinking. They are more relied on time. Uncommon techniques are cooking, domestic tasks, gardening, writing, various sports and yoga. These kinds of relaxing require more energy. Activities replace bad minds and a person thinks only about a current task.

All techniques are useful and help to cope with stress but the most important thing is a person. Individual choice and personality type can help to find the most relaxing activity and reduce stress by makeup pleasant activities.



According to handout.

Short talk: Happy and Unhappy Countries

For the past decade social scientists and pollsters have given hundreds of thousands questionnaires for people around the globe to find out which country is happiest.

Denmark:

• happiest place on Earth
• life expectancy:
• 81,2 for women
• 77,05 for men
• they pay the highest taxes, but government cover all health and education charges, spends more on children and elders.
• people love their life, enjoy jobs.
• people have nice things, but shopping is not priority.
• the happier country is the more trustful people are.
• 92 % belong for social clubs.

Lithuania:

• 63rd place in ranking of happiest countries.
• people have quite poor self-esteem
• maybe money could bring happiness

Zimbabwe:

• last in ranking
• life expectancy:
• 34 for women
• 37 for men
• reasons can be:
• lack of education
• illnesses
• pressure of another countries because of money and goods which can be found in Zimbabwe

Money can not make people to be happy. When people will start changing their  attitudes, when they will start think about others as about themselves, then something they could change.

Short talk: Stress test

Overall score: Measure overall emotional well - being.

• 2,96 in range 1-5.
• higher score is well adjusted.
• my score indicates that I am severally stressed and benefit from intensive help [especially if score is over 2,99]

Quality of life score: Measure how happy or satisfied person is in his life including over-all self-esteem, health, friends and family, work, school.

• 2,8 in range 1-5.
• extremely stressed

Symptom distress score: Symptoms of depression, anxiety, hostility.

• 2,67 in range 1-5
• extremely stressed

Level of functioning: How well person is able to get along in the community.

• 3,5 in range 1-5.
• very stressed.

Stress level is similar to those who benefited from psychological care.

Test: http://stresstest.net/

Short talk: Personality test

Tests in English:
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp
http://kisa.ca/personality/

• Type of personality: ENFP

• According to Jung And Briggs Myers Test:
• extroverted 1%
• intuitive 12%
• feeling 75%
• perceiving 44%
• According to second test:
• extroverted 57% - introverted 43% 
• intuitive 68% - sensing 32% 
• feeling 75% - thinking 25% 
• perceiving 59% - judging 41% 

•  Only 5 per cent of people have this type of personality.
• Some years ago I did test which was similar to Jung's Myers test, but in Lithuanian. Results showed the same  type of personality - ENFP.
• This type of people can influence others, because they have huge conditioning to other people. This kind of people tries to be authentic and to act spontaneous.
• Bad side:  this type of people see themselves as not original enough and thinks that are too much spontaneous. This causes downgrade in their self - respect.

Short talk: Conflicts

• Conflict is an opposition of people, forces and other entities.

• Types of conflicts:
• Inter personal [between some people]
• Intergroup [between groups of people]
• Intra-personal [conflict that occur inside person]
• Approach - approach [when person have choice between 2 attractive stimuli]
• Avoidance - avoidance [when person have choice between negative stimuli, and chooses the best of that bad]
• Avoidance - approach [the most popular conflict. Occur when one tendency is more powerful, but it can decrease with time].

• Conflict solving:
• Identify conflict
• Be aware of aggressive responses and their consequences
• Face up than avoid conflict
• Respect yourself and other
• Accept and understand cultural differences. Different cultures think different, have another values and beliefs.
• Be aware of subjectivity. This makes hard to reach empathy and go to the compromises.

Short talk: Psychology of Creativity

• Creativity  - process of generating novel ideas and is a basic force for all inventions.
• Creativity process involves seeing new relations between concepts and things and determine unique solutions to problems.
• Marked by traits of originality, nonconformity, high levels of knowledge.
• Psychologists have tried to explain creativity with many theories. They included behavioristic, psychoanalytical, social and personality theories of creativity.
• Creativity is related with mental disorders, some kinds of schizophrenia and other mental disorders.

Summary: Giving Entire Cultures a Personality Test

People in nature are different and have different personalities. They can quite easy detect is person which they know introvert or extravert, and there are people who see some traits and differences between groups. Of course, the negative side of seeing traits is that they can become stereotypes.

Researchers administrated the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NOE-PI-R), test that can distinguish if stereotypes of cross-cultural differences are real or it is just invalidity. Test can be used in 50 different cultures and it measures national character of cultures. Test includes short questionnaire which helps to indicate typical personality characteristic of group member. Research involved thousands of people and results of group members personality profiles were averaged and comprised to help researchers to determine which beliefs about national character matched.

Results showed two things. First of all it showed that people from particular cultures can summarize their national character - how they see themselves as a culture. Second thing is that national characters do not match with actual personality profiles of people in that cultures, it means that national character do not generalize personality characteristics, it is cultures views at themselves.

Summary: English Language Invasion

French and Chinese languages are affected by English language invasion. This happens because of English language popularity and its sign of internationality. In this case Chinese language suffers from variety of English abbreviations and other words which are catchy and easily slip into language. In France, where since 1997 about 40 per cent of documents at the European Commission was first written in French now left just 11 per cent.

Language prevention starts with making it obligatory and translating English words into native language. In France have been introduced the “Toubon” law which makes French language obligatory in schools, workplaces, government publications. Moreover there are special government called on groups which have to put a stop for Anglicism.

China solves the same problem in another way. First of all China allowed up to 20 foreign films to be screened and banned websites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube. The second step is that China presented an idea which will ban publications from using English names, places, companies. All of these would have to be translated into Chinese.

English language popularity is caused by Western brands proliferation, huge availability of television shows where program is in English language and also huge number of students who want to study English. In France one of the reasons is suitability to national cohesion. Simplified English takes first place here in promoting international business oligarchy, opinions that another language invasion is a global phenomenon and it is a normal sign of cultural assimilation.

English language popularity leads label that it is the universal language and there are groups promoting domination of English in countries. Invasion of English is also caused by such factors like loopholes in law which was created to protect language, obsession making society international and not steaming the real situation that national language use is falling.

Both countries are trying to protect their language by planning to find more effective methods. Their authorities say that this cannot continue in the silence and society should respect their language and pay more attention.

References:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7441934/Chinese-language-damaged-by-invasion-of-English-words.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/6952462/English-invasion-threatens-French-language-more-than-Nazis-did.html

Short talk: Multiple Intelligences [main points]

My test results :)

Points:

1. What is multiple intelligences test?
2. Scores
3. Agreee/ disagree
4. Conclusion

• Gardner's test in which are 8 different types of intelligence.

• I have highest scores in Musical smart and Nature smart. I can play guitar, piano, violin, sax quite good, my score in this type of intelligence is 25. Also I love nature, there I can relax, feel myself comfortable, here my score is 21.
• Lowest score I have in Linguistic (word smart). Here my score is only 11. It shows that I can't express myself in words very well.
• I have the same score in Logical, Intrapersonal, visual/spatial intelligences. It's 14. Logical intelligence means numbers art  in another words, intrapersonal  - myself smart, visual - picture smart.

• I agree with results about Music, Nature and Word smart and disagree about Interpersonal intelligence 'cause there score is 18,  and I  think that I  know myself better than others. Also I disagree with results about Body smart - I don't like sports and things like that, I don't think that I can express myself with my body as well. And Picture smart - I like to paint, my skills there are also good.

• It's really hard for me to express myself  in words, it's hard for me to explain something that I know or simply to say something what I am thinking about. 

Test: http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks3/ict/multiple_int/index.htm