Impromptu Speech

This last week we had our impromptu speech. Everyone had a different opinion about it. On the one hand, some of us were very nervous about this task; however, on the other hand there were some people that were very excited about it. As the class began, I felt nervous because the teacher said that he had changed some topics. The second person that passed to the front had to talk about dinosaurs. There was where I became more nervous. Then as people passed I felt more relaxed and finally it was my turn. I had to talk about hobbies, everyone said "it's an easy one" and I thought the same. I began talking very good, but for a moment I forgot how to say a word and then my nerves came back. Finally, after some seconds I continued with another sentence and then with my conclusion. I think this task was a challenge for everyone, but I think that most of us enjoyed it.

Almost Over..

This is week 15, so we are just missing this week and the next. The task for this week is to finish the Final Paper. I chose to talk about: "Cellphones: Lovely, but risky", because I think that they provide us a lot of advantages and that they are great tools for us, but we must know how to use them wisely because "everything in excess, causes damage". I think that must use these devices just for necessary tasks and not every time we are with our family and with our friends. Next week, we are going to have our impromptu speeches. I think it would be the most difficult task of the semester for me.

The Effects of Gadget Use

This week we had our problem speech. I talked with Marce about the effects of gadget use. Our main causes were innovation, marketing, novelty, and peer pressure. The future negative effects that we saw on this problem were the isolation of people from society, the tendency to confuse between the virtual and the real world, possible addictions, and physical harm. Finally, after thinking very fast because Marce likes to finish work quickly, we consider as possible solutions to expand the no-use technology places, to increment socialization in schools, and also to reduce gadget use on the new generations. It was challenge to create this speech in just two days and to practice it with a partner, because we dont have the same hours for going to school, but at the moment of saying our speech, I think that both of us enjoyed it.

Persuasive Speech

This week went very fast, because we just focused one class on preparing our persuasive speeches and the other two clases were for the oral presentations of each one. I talked about a topic that I found very interesting: "Should there exist stricter laws for endangered species?". I liked this topic because I thought that I could find a lot of information about it and I could include a recent topic on my speech, that was about the organization of Greenpeace that is currently trying to save the Arctic from the oil companies. I gave my speech on Friday, I knew all the information that I was eager to give; however, I didn't got a good grade, I got an 85 and I think it was because I talked too much and I didn't make differentiations on my voice while I was talking and it was too monotone.

First Real Exam

October 18

On Friday we had our "first real exam" on our class and it included all the topics that we had seen since the beginning of the semester. The exam was a little bit long, but easy to complete in less than 1:30 hrs. First, we had to make an attention grabber from a topic that was written on the paper, then we had to make a thesis statement on another topic that was also written on the exam. After that, it came what most of my classmates got wrong... the conditionals; however, I got them all correct. Then, the part where I suffered the most.. paraphrasing.. this exercise was hard for me, because paraphrasing includes analyzing and including all the information but with your own words, not just summarizing; nevertheless, I got the two exercises right. The last two tasks were passive voice and punctuation. Passive voice was very easy and I did it very quickly, I think it was because it was the part that I practiced the most. Finally the last exercise was punctuation, it was very easy, but I wrote the last punctuation mark wrong; however, it was my only mistake and I got a really good grade.

Debates

The last week we had out debates in teams of three, they were conformed by a moderator, a person against and a person in favor of the discussed topic. My team was Emilio and Laurette, we deceided to talk about "Charging minors as adults". This debate was pure fiction because we practiced what we were supposed to say each one, when to respond and what to question. The duration of this debate was from approximately 10 minutes, with 2 periods of time for each person to speak.

Passive Voice

Today we learned about passive voice. It was very interesting when I did the first excessive because I had just 4 correct sentences out of 10, after a good explanation from the teacher and watching 2 YouTube videos, I got everything correct and also I explained the theme to a classmate.The structure of passive voice is: a form of to be + past participle. The first task was correcting 10 new sentences in pairs and then writing a short paragraph of about 200 words including 5 sentences in passive voice. I find this type of voice very interesting for informal speeches, because I think that it is not appropriate for informative speeches.