Paragraph on Irish culture

                                        The Story of Ireland

The most fascinating aspect of Irish culture that I learned about by watching the Story of Ireland was the violence the Irish people had to suffer during the 17th century. Throughout this period of Irish culture various forms of punishment were used on Irish people who were eager to rebel. For instance, at the end of 17th century, the English imposed harsh Penal Laws against the Irish Catholics. These new laws made it hard for them to buy land, engage in trade, receive education and even impossible to vote or get a government job. Apart from this, in rebellions, sieges and wars, the Irish people were victims of the most brutal crimes. They were flogged, hanged, forced out of their homes and their properties were often burnt. The military leader Oliver Cromwell even used to beat people in order to save his bullets. For a sensitive person like me, these facts were extremely schocking and made me think about the human strenght.

[162 words]

After we got our third piece of homework back, I was pretty satisfied with what I've done. Surprisingly, it was a great deal better than my previous tasks. I had some unneeded mistakes concerning wrong collocations and register, so as to avoid this, I will focus on that in my further learning. But on top of this, I am improving, so I need to keep up the hard work! 

My favourite monolingual print dictionary

Having looked at a number of monolingual print dictionaries in class this week, I have decided to buy the Cambridge Advanced Learner´s Dictionary. Even though it was very hard to decide which one of them I liked the most, the Cambridge Advanced Learner´s Dictionary became my favourite. It has many colorful pictures, which makes studying easier and more fun. In the middle of the book is a short grammar section, which would certainly be very helpful in my education. The last chapter offers some extra information about writing and communication skills and also, a pronunciation table. The part that I especially liked was the CD-Rom, which includes the whole paper dictionary in a handy, searchable format. I have always been a fan of modern technology and a dictionary like this would be quite useful for fulfilling my needs. Since this dictionary is perfect for me, I have decided to buy it in order to improve my English.

    

Last week we got our second piece of homerwork back. The task was to write a paragraph about our favourite monolingual print dictionary. I chose to write about the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Luckily, my paragraph was not as bad as my previous essay. However, I made a really horrible mistake. I wrote my own topic sentence, instead of using the given one. I must pay more attention on our tasks!

A letter to Fiona

Dear Fiona,

I am writing to tell you about my passion for languages, including English, and my ways of learning them. Since I was a little child, I have always been interested in different cultures, people and their language. My love for languages developed when I started to learn English. I was only four years old and learning this language represented something fun, new and interesting. I used to listen to songs, watch films or series and read books in English. I was always interested in finding the meaning of lyrics or different texts, and eventually, I learned many new words. Studying English became a routine. My English improved after my trip to Canada. Even though I was visiting my relatives and often spoke my mother language, I was able to speak with native English speakers and listen to English on a daily basis. This helped me to improve my vocabulary, learn useful phrases and communicate better. Despite this, I am not very confident about my knowledge of English grammar. For instance, I can sometimes be quite insecure when choosing the right verb tense.
I hope I will continue developing my language skills in the future, but also wish to see more of the world and experience the culture of different nations.

With kind regards,
Vanja

This was the correction of my first English piece of homework. We were supposed to write a letter to our teacher about how we see ourselves as a language learners. I was quite satisfied with my essay until I saw the correction. After that, I felt totally disappointed. I made really stupid mistakes with the word since. Few times! However, I am here to learn, so I decided to take this course more seriously and try my best. I hope next time I will have better results.