The last post for English course

Hello Bloggers

This is the last post of the English course, and we have to talk about English.

In my experience, learning English at university is very different to learn English at school, because in my School my teachers used to focus in the grammatical area, and a little in the reading, but not too much in writing, speaking and listening. So as you can see, the learning at university is more focus in the practical area, more speaking, more writing.

The use of the blogs is a good tool to practise the writing, specially when we choose the theme that we want to speak because we could write and write many hours about this.

I think I need to improve more in listening, because I have problems to hear in my own mother language, and is more difficult in other; and speaking because I can't speak fluently, and pronounce well all the words. Also, I need to know more words and more vocabulary because sometimes I don't know what is the meaning of some word, or I can't explain something because I forgot a word or I don't know how do you say the word in English. That is bad, and I know that the best way to improve, is practising, but I don't have a person to talk in English, so sometimes I speak with myself in English, just like a game.

Really, outside the class I use English every day, specially in my music, although I have a too many songs in other languages, English is the most used. Now I'm taking song lessons, and the teacher asks us to sing songs in English. Also, I remove the subtitles in Spanish of the movies and change to English to practise the listening.  At University, in some subject is obligatory read books in English, and they aren't usually short lecture, so it takes more time to read in English than in Spanish, but I know that with these books, you can know more words related to your career. Last time, I've bought some books written in English about some theme that I like (crime, fantasy, etc) to read in the summer, so I'm anxious and expect to the summer vacation because I'll spend my free time reading books.

Goodbye Folks

Anthropology programme in Universidad de Chile

Hi folks!

This time I'm going to write about the changes I would like to make to my study programme.

As I told in older post, I'm studying anthropology and this is my second year, and I'm ending the last semester of the  'Basic Cycle'. My career has a formal duration of 5 years, but really it takes 7 years to end, including thesis and practice, very long.

Curriculum map in physical Anthropology 

In this Basic Cycle, you study 4 semester with 'general' subjects and formation, but really of 24 subjects,  2 are related to Physical Anthropology, 4 to Archaeology, and the rest with Social Anthropology, and I think that is not fair. So, since the beginning of the career, we have problems because there are three mention and the basic cycle only prepare for social mention, and I think this situation must be change.

Then we have to decide what mention we want to specialize. I like the mention of physical Anthropology and Archaeology, so I hope someday have the two mention.

 In this career you make your own path and you decide what study, but to have a good job, is necessary make a many scientific papers, because if you don't publish, you are not a good anthropologist, and that is sad.

In technology.. ufff... is terrible. The technology is very old, the most new is a Scanning Electron Microscope (the jewel of the faculty) but is more useful for student of science, not in Anthropology. The classroom are not enough big for the student (there are 60 persons is classroom for 30), laboratories haven't the capacity for student (with 4 persons, is full), when the weather is hot, we haven't air conditioning, in FACSO there are air vent but in class you can't ear to the teacher because it has a terrible sound. These things I would like to change.

In Teaching Methods.. I think it could be better, because we need more practice class, for example, more fieldwork, more laboratories (to prepare for Archaeology and Physical Anthropology), and not spend the majority of the time in lectures. I think with practice we learn more and we can remember more things.

That is all about my career.

Have a nice weekend