My experience of writing

My writing experience has been greatly enriching and varied over the years. As a child, it was easier for me to express myself through writing than face to face. During those years, I used to write in my diary, where I wrote about the usual kind of situations girls go through at that particular time of life. I kept on doing this well into my teens and I felt an incredible sense of relief. Thus, my first connection with writing was a way of expressing my feelings rather than trying to please an imaginary audience.

Throughout my adolescence I developed two different approaches to writing. Influenced by the blossom of love and romantic views, I started writing poems and short stories but I was too shy to make them known. In the fullness of that moment of awakening, I became gradually aware of the political reality in my country, democracy was coming back and it was my first contact with it. As a result, I developed a new motivations for writing: instead of expressing my feelings and desires, I started expressing my opinions. I fondly recall some secondary school teachers who contributed to my intellectual growth and introduced me to a critical way of thinking.

However, my experience of writing in English was completely different to the one I had had in Spanish. It can be frustating to write in another language if you find it difficult to put your thoughts into words. Whenever I was assigned a task by any of my Language teachers, I felt an incredible lack of freedom to express my ideas. I wanted to say many concepts but I didn't have enough vocabulary to put them on paper. I felt like water pressing to burst out of a blocked hosepipe. As my vocabulary became wider and my general knowledge of the language got better, I developed new confidence when writing.

All in all, writing has given me a better understanding of my true self and it has been a means of conveying my feelings and opinions. In spite of my negative experiences at the Teacher Training College, I must say that I've always thought that personal writing is a sort of distration, a pastime, or a therapy, and that academic writing may not be the real thing. However, I believe that, regardless of the style or layout we may give it, writing is a way of expressing ourselves, making sense of experience, recording particular moments and touching the reader's heart with our words.

Julia

SCs&AWRs WT n° 2:
https://docs2.google.com/document/edit?id=1OKypLM12hmtibTb0f8aaJHqw57JuiK4I7xU1gAF6dCY&hl=es#

Speaker's Corner

My reflections about “Speaker’s corner” activity

I must admit I did not have the opportunity to give my speech in this activity because I was absent one class and the following class Anna came and so we started something new. But in the process of writing this task I learnt that one has to be clear and to the point in order to make people understand you. I had the opportunity of working together with Romina and Jacky who were very fluent and coherent with their speeches. Even though I did not talk in front of the class I listened to my mates, some presentations were very interesting, others were funny and others were quite moving for me. I really like this sort of activities because they help us as teachers.
To my way of thinking, I need to improve my ideas in this task and work harder on the use of language because I feel mine was a bit simple.
My main objective for the next speaker´s corner activity is to improve my language and use new vocabulary. I received feedback from my peers that helped me realized of self-correct some mistakes.