To start with, I do not
like to write these things. I am sure that I will never be
objective but I will try it this time. So, reading. I can read and
understand almost every text I find because I can easily think up what
the words I do not know mean. But when it comes to answering some questions
in tests I often do not know what is wanted from me. I remember classes
of literature at my grammar school and almost every time when my teacher asked
me 'What the author wanted to say? '
my response was different from the 'correct answer'. I think I was just
looking at it from a different point of view which no one or sometimes few
classmates understood. Now, when I see any reading in my test, I do
it as a last exercise because it is always a lottery for me. :D But I believe
I will get better! After some classes of critical reading and analyzing literary texts this semester I can say I got better and I am really happy about it. I found myself enjoying poems and analyzing them which bothered me before. I think this helped me to move to a higher level of reading literacy. Next one - listening. I do
not have any problems with listening comprehension if it is not very fast speech so I cannot recognize
words. When I received the email that I succeded in entrance exams at
Masaryk University, I was wondering if I will be able to understand
teachers at the Department of English, but after approximately one week I calmed
down. They are very kind and try to speak in the way we can understand them and
if we do not, they have no problem to say it once more or in another way. Another one to write about is speaking. Speaking is my biggest problem because
I am not a very communicative person when I am surrounded by people I do not
know or I am in stress or tired or whatever, I can come up with many runarounds. I am always afraid of an oral examination where
it looks like I cannot speak well and correctly. Even in the third
semester after many oral exams, I cannot find the clue to get rid of getting
the jitters. But, fortunately, when I am teaching kids I am not afraid of speaking and that is more important than no to be scared during exams, everybody is nervous then. I also think after the second year at Uni I am better at speaking spontaneously and I do not have to prepare the exact things I will say (f.e. during presentations). The last one is writing. I have never had a problem with
writing. At grammar school, I was among the best writers in the English
language. I can write in English even better than in my native language. The
only one problem is a lack of vocabulary and sometimes I am confused about
grammar - this sentence I wrote at the end of the first year and now, at the end of the second year, I am confused about grammar more than ever. Irony? Yes, but it is caused by the amount of information and depth of grammatical analysis which we are supposed to learn this (second) year. But I know I can do it and I will.
In the end, I want to say that I will try my best to get better - like everybody (hopefully) does.
