INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT - TALKING TO MYSELF

Hi!
I know, I am a prospective English teacher but still I have the fear of speaking English especially in public areas like classrooms. Specifically if I have to speak spontaneously, I feel more pressure on me. To me, the fear of making mistakes makes me so nervous that I just mumble in such a situation. So, I've made some research about this problem and I've found some tips to overcome this 'confidence' problem. There are 3 useful ( in my opinion ) tips that might help me in that issue:

1. Don't worry too much about grammar.
2. Keep a positive attitude.
3. Practice speaking English as much as possible in low-pressure situations ( e.g. talking to yourself ).

So, I took the third advice and record myself while speaking about the 'photography'. The choice of the topic is important because I've never spoken about the 'photography' although I am quite familiar with the topic in my own language. In the record, I tried to explain my interest in photography and gave some information about  my own camera.

While speaking on my own, I needed to check some vocabulary/collocations like 'portrait photography' and I needed to check the pronunciation of some words such as for 'portrait'/ˈpɔːtreɪt/.
I needed to check these things because I didn't know how to express/pronounce them in English.
Finally, talking to myself in English was a good idea because I really felt comfortable with my English. I hope it will be the same in public areas, as well.

HANSEL AND GRETEL

Hello,

This week, I told one of the most famous Grimms's tales : Hansel and Gretel. Actually it was a quite difficult task for me because there were various aspects to think about while telling a story. For example, I had to consider of my pronunciation,  my tone of voice, pitch etc. Furthermore, I had to think about different characters' voices. For example, while performing Gretel, I should speak like a naive and  an innocent child. But, while performing 'The Evil Witch',  my voice should be sharp and high. Finding appropriate background musics was the other drawback.

On the other hand, this task contributes me a lot in terms of fluency and connected speech. I learned to articulate the words/phrases according to the mood of the story. I had to practice a lot. But to be honest I am not happy with the result.

FRIENDS vs. HIMYM

Hello,
In our English Party, we had a debate about Friends and HIMYM . That was a pair work. I collaborated with Aysun Eraslan. There were a few challanges that we had to confront with before we began to do the task.  Our first challange was to find a debate topic but to be honest it was not a real challange for us. Because we had discussed this matter ( HIMYM vs Friends ) before that English Party assignment. After deciding on the topic, the other challenge came: ' What would we say about these super-popular sitcoms? ' We began to search for funny websites concerning Friends and HIMYM. We found some and then Aysun was on the F's side and I was on the HIM's side. Aysun came with a thesis that supports Friends and at each time she did this, I came up with a counter-attack. It was real fun for us. Because at the beginning our aim was to do the homework but then it turned into a real debate. One of the positive thing in this assignment was working in pair. Because, we had a lot of chance to brainstorm together and many times we supported each other when we needed help. The other good point was learning new vocabulary such as mysoginist/ic. To me there was another positive point in this debate which can be changed from person to person: I tried hard to pronounce the words correctly because there was a monitor ( Aysun ) beside me. We finished our debate mentioning about soundtrack of HIMYM.
If you want to listen the soundtrack of How I Met... Here are the 5 best songs : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZula-nGg3E