English year course
Log
Log
Week 41
This week I have only attended classes in English 1.
I still enjoy the grammar class very much even though I think some of it is difficult.
The part about phonetics is very interesting, but I feel that I am not able to get hold of it yet,
especially phonetic transcription.
I enjoyed the class about Shakespeare’s Sonnets very much. I can’t remember I have read any
of his Sonnets in school, but at high school we read The Merchant of Venice in the original
language. I liked the play very much, and I also have seen the movie version of Romeo and
Juliet which I also enjoyed a lot. I had heard the Sonnet sung by Brian Ferry, but I didn’t
know at that time that it was a Shakespeare Sonnet.
The comparisons of the English and Norwegian school systems were more interesting as a
lecture than it would have been just to go through the information from our book.
I also finished Kit’s Wilderness this week. I found the book very interesting and fun to read. I
never would have chosen a book like this myself, and therefore I am very glad the book was
on our literature list.
Week 42
I took a chance, since I know a lot of history, and skipped the history lesson on Monday, and
taught some classes at “Holtan ungdomsskole” instead. I must admit that I have completely
forgotten to write my log for this week. I don’t remember everything we have gone through,
but I enjoyed the session about Harry Potter. The movie is even more fun than the book and
even though I saw the movie two years ago when it was released I still enjoyed it very much. I
also enjoyed reading the book, although I had some problems with Hagrid’s language.
Week 43
I forgot to write the log this week too, but I believe I remember more of what we have been
studying. This week I only attended classes on Monday and Tuesday, mainly because I feel
that the classes about poems are a little boring and too thorough, and because I felt a little bit
unwell. I am still having trouble with phonetics, but I am getting the hang of it slowly but
surely. I am starting to know the different signs, and the difference between long and short
sounds.
Mona Midtsund
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English year course
Log
Week 44
This week I finally remembered to write in the log and since it is only Tuesday I still
remember what we did yesterday. This was the kind of session I like. David showed us how
to use film and video in the classroom. In the last part we had a translation session. This I
find very useful, since it helps to broad my vocabulary at the same time as I feel this is
something I master. The grammar lesson was fun as always, mainly because I feel I am good
at this. The lesson where we analysed the book we had read, Never far from Nowhere, was
also very interesting. It is very useful to talk about the book, and hear how other students
understand it. Some of the background lessons are not the most interesting classes I have
attended, but I don’t have any ideas to make them more interesting. I know we have to learn
this stuff, and all together, I prefer to attend a lecture with David rather than have to read it on
my own.
Week 45
I nearly forgot the log this week too. It’s Sunday and I have to try to remember what I think of
the lessons we have had this week. I therefore choose to start with the last one. The first part
about Lord of the Flies I enjoyed very much. I read the book this summer, and I have seen the
movie. This is a book of the kind I like, about human psychology. Very interesting to hear
what the other students thought about it, and what critics had said about it and the symbolic
meaning they assumed Golding had put into it. The last part on Thursday on the other hand
was not what we had expected. We thought we should learn something about Shakespeare as
a person and what he had written, not an analysis of the persons in the plays. A few of us felt
it was way above our heads, and that it was going too fast, especially in the beginning.
Grammar is fun as usual.
I find it hard to write the log every week and come up with something constructive. I feel I
just repeat myself. I enjoy most of the lessons, find some of them boring, but as long as I
don’t have any smart ideas to how it is possible to make lessons with lot of theoretical stuff
more fun, I just have to live with it.
Week 46
This week has been filled with ways of teaching English in school. We have been shown how
to use songs and rhymes to teach speech sounds, and ways of increasing vocabulary. I love to
sing, play games and work with exercises so this week I have enjoyed the lessons very much.
We have been given a lot of good ideas that we can use later, and they are easy to adjust to
any level of teaching. Grammar is still fun and I have no problem following the classes, but I
Mona Midtsund
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English year course
Log
think maybe it is going a little bit too fast for some of the other students. I know Norwegian
grammar quite well and this helps a lot, since analyzing sentences is done in the same way,
and the words mainly belong to the same word classes both in English and in Norwegian.
When it comes to transcription I still have a long way to go. I need to memorize the sounds
and some of the most common words in order to learn the phonetic sounds at a reasonable
level.
Week 47
The first class this week we were supposed to talk about Great Expectations by Charles
Dickens, but since very few of us were able to finish the book before this class we swopped
the classes and looked at, and compared several film adaptations of the novel. This lecture
gave me a lot of ideas of how to use different examples of the same movie and let the pupils
look at the different copies from different angles.
Week 48
This week we only had two days of teaching. One day in each of the courses. In English 2 we
talked about the novel Great Expectations, and after seeing a complete version of one film and
several scenes from some other copies I knew the story quite well. David had a lot of
illustrations from the novel, and we looked at them and put them in the right order according
to the story. A good teaching point, everyone could participate at some level. We had to talk a
lot and we didn’t always agree with each other, but we got a fairly correct order I think.
In English 1 we had a repetition lecture in grammar, a discussion which our teacher after my
opinion shouldn’t have got involved with, among other things because it took a lot of time and
only involved a few students. In phonetics we had a clarification of terms, repetition and
transcription. Friday Henrik and I had a meeting with Ragnhild and David concerning the
plan for the spring term, and how the teaching had been this fall. I felt that our meaning really
counted and that the teachers listened to the ideas and point of view that Henrik and I had.
Week 49
This week we finished grammar and phonetics with a test. I know it’s my own fault if I fail
this test. I could have worked harder with the stuff. But I found it very difficult to memorize
and then I lost some of the motivation I needed to work during the semester and had just five
days to learn the things I could have worked with for three months. I don’t know for certain
that I have failed and I certainly hope I have passed. I don’t want to have to take it again after
Mona Midtsund
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English year course
Log
Christmas, I don’t have the time. I am having a test in web development in February and a
project in Multimedia lab which is supposed to be finished before Easter so my spring
semester is full.
Week 50
This week we had a test in background and literature. I chose the English 2 test because I
assumed that this one would be most accurate in comparison to the one we are having in the
spring. ‘Pensum’ for the test also includes more history in English 2 which is one of my
favourite subjects. I tried to finish Great Expectations but didn’t have the time, beside all I
had to repeat. Luckily it was not a topic at the test. The Remains of the Day was, and since I
had just finished improving my assignment from earlier this fall, and had read parts of the
book again I should have been able to write an essay about the historical settings. But no, my
memory seems to be leaking like a sieve. I didn’t even notice that the title of the first chapter
is prologue July 1956, which sets the historical time of the novel pretty accurately.
Mona Midtsund
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