"If only I hadn't boarded that bus"

On Friday 5th of May we had to made a story using third conditional and with the sentence "If only I hadn't boarded that bus" at the very end. 

It was funny to make the story, I worked with Ulises and it was crazy how our story ended with a journey into the future.

Then the last activity was to read the stories of the others and it was very funny because everyone's story was crazy. I loved the creativity of my classmates. 

SAT exam

The SAT is an exam designed it by College Board. High school students take it when they want to enter in college, is separated into three sections: Critical reading, mathematics, and writing. 

We did an example of this exam, in pairs. Even thought the answers were multiple-choice I find it very complicated because I didn't know the meaning of many words, so it take more time to answer each of the questions and we even had to search the meaning of the word on Internet. 

To answer all the questions we supposed to have 25 minutes but the teacher gave us the double of time and we didn't finish anyway. 

But I think only because of that it's complicated because once you know the meaning of the concepts is easy to answer the questions, we didn't have many mistakes, of 20 questions answered we had 15 right. 

Despite that I don't think I'm ready to take a real SAT exam, I'd need to practice a lot of reading, and expand my vocabulary, And even so, the SAT had mathematics and writing to, and I don't know anything about math 😅so I'd fail anyway. 

"Jenny" Explained

Title: Jenny

Singer: Studio Killers 

She confessed her attraction to her best friend Jenny. Confessed that she was using her shirt as a pillow case, that she stole things of her, noting Jenny would miss.
She tried to explain why she used the lipstick of Jenny so often. why she never liked the new boyfriends of Jenny.  
She preferred to be her lover even if that ruined their friendship.
She hesitated if she should tell Jenny about her feelings, asked her to forget those guys and take her hand. She promised that she would follow Jenny until the end.

Freakonomics video

Here are my sentences in reported speech about the last video we saw at the lab about giving incentives to students and see if they could increase their test scores.

• The boy at the beginnig of the video was very bad at school, he spent his days in the streets and didn't worry about going well.

• In the video explained that the young students who didn't reach higschool tend to have many difficulties in their future.

• The school worried and invited him to a program they had to help their students, to encourage them to continue their studies.

• This kind of bribe was quite similar to a scholarship where they paid an amount of money periodically as long as the students maintained their high grades.

• If they kept their grades high for a period of time they were able to participate in a lottery where they could earn a great amount of money and get on a Hummer limousine with their friends.  

• The boy's mom promised him that whatever the money the school gave him she was going to double it.

Essay "Differences to find a job with a University degree"

This is the essay we did as an exam but with my mistakes corrected 

It is common to think that the more studies you have the better job you can get and that is right but not everyone wants to go to college or they can't afford it.

In both countries there are public or private universities, however, the amount of people who decide to start their studies is small. Statistics say that approximately 64% of high school students in the U.S. go for higher studies. In Mexico, the percentage is lower and a number of people who graduate are even smaller. 

Finding a job can be difficult even if you have a University degree, but there are some differences between Mexico and the U.S. It depends on the subject of your major if you get a well-paid job of course but it seems that in Mexico City, even if you have a major you don't get that dream job that you think you would have. Or you could obtain a job that isn't paid enough and you end with the same salary as a job that only requires high school degree. 

In the U.S. however, there is not that much of a problem finding a good with your degree. Besides, there are often more and more jobs that require a special subject degree but as always people think that salary is good. Just as I said before, the higher studies you have the better job you get. I found out that many people in Mexico City who had Ph.D. travel to the U.S. to get a job because in Mexico the jobs that you can get aren't that well-paid. 

It's a sad thing that in out country you don't get the support that you deserve for your effort. In Mexico, there is just a small number of people who have a Ph.D. and the majority go to the U.S. to find a job. That explains how different these two counties are. 

Reported Speech Questions

Perfect English Grammar Excercises 

This website is one of my favorites, I think that explains the subjects really easy for you to understand and has excercises that can be very usefull to practice. So I did this two excecises about reported speech questions, the first image shows 'Wh questions' and the second one 'Yes/No questions' I recommend to visit the webpage and try other excecises.  

Links:

Wh questions

Yes/No questions

Learn from your mistakes

Here are the mistakes I made in the last writing exercise we made. 

It's funny the feeling when you see your corrected exercise and then you see the obvious mistakes that you made. In my case, I don't think that my mistakes are that bad. I had a little problem with vocabulary and using words when I'm not supposed to use it.

Maybe a good way to learn how to write correctly is reading different types of texts, like novels, news, manuals, etc. And so get used to the way of writing in English. 

Online Exercises

I visit the links that Enrique gave us to try the different exercises that you can find on the web 

This are some of the exercises I did and the links to the websites 

Perfect English Grammar

Learn English Today

Grammar Bank

Learn English Feel Good

I really liked this exercises and there are so many of them, you can find exercises of every subject and in different difficulties. They can really help you on your way of learning English so I recommend dedicating at least some of your time in this websites.  

Things Non-Spanish-Speaking Latinos Are Sick of Hearing

This video was really funny to watch, and it shows how people still judge by stereotypes.

But is more common to now people who doesn’t think in that way anymore, and it's showing that different races and nationalities are getting more and more mixed. Exist the theory that one day there will not be more races anymore. 

Something that I found interesting, when I read de comments of the video, many people were complaining about Latinos who doesn’t speak Spanish, saying that it’s sad how they aren't interested besides their origin.  As a proud Mexican girl I think so as well, but I wasn’t born in USA, and we don’t know what kind of life this people had, so the only think that we can do in case that we know a Latino who was raise in USA, is respect his decision about not learning Spanish.

Link to the video 

Ken Tanaka meets a Caucasian Japanese man

I think the video is really interesting, personally, I've never met someone who looks like other race, maybe blonde guys but I don't think that in here there are that different. Still, I think that we aren't that used to meet someone who looks like a different race so is normal to be so curious about that person. 

Link to the video

Sid Efromocivh. 5 Techniques to speak any language

The video is presented by Sid Efromovich who introduce himself saying that he talks 7 languages and the purpose of the talk itself is to show us 5 techniques that he uses to learn a new language easily.

Those techniques are: 

1. Make Mistakes 

2. Scrap the Foreign Alphabet 

3. Find a Stickler 

4. Shower Conversations

5. Buddy Formula 

My Opinion 

1. Make Mistakes. 

I think Sid is a very sympathetic and nice person. When he say that we have to allow us to make mistakes I really liked that thought but is the same that my teachers said in class, I remember my Italian teacher in high school, she always was very patient with us and wait until we finished a reading or when we had to answer a question and then she correct us, but she never allow us to say "I don't know" We had always to say something it doesn't matter if we were wrong.

2. Scrap the Foreign Alphabet.

 What I understand about this technique was that we have to forget the pronunciation that we know and we speak, because all the languages are different and that is when we have problems to know or recognize some words in another language, so Sid is telling us that when we learn a new word we should see the pronunciation with terms that we know and that is going to make us easy to know correctly that word. 

3. Find a Stickler. 

I really like what Sid said about having a good relationship with your Stickler, that could be your teacher or your friend because then you don't have to be afraid to make mistakes or to be judged. And you can really enjoy learning.

4. Shower Conversations 

This technique was really funny when Sid explain it and I totally agree, I myself do it, not only in the shower but everytime that I am alone I always speak to myself in English or Italian and I think it's really useful. 

5. Buddy Formula. 

 This was an interesting technique, having a friend with whom you can speak in another language that nobody understands sounds fun. But is not that easy to find someone who can talk the specific language that you want to learn. Even so, I really liked this technique and I want to put it in practice.

The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WLHr1_EVtQ

My results on Learning Styles quest

I found this test very helpfull.😊 I think is very accurate with my results and it's interesting to know how you can study better based in the way you learn. 

 But as the page says, I think that is better if you try both ways to learn, for example with the active or reflective learners, if you are more relfective than active, just like my result, not just stay with strategies for reflectives, but to try as well the actives strategies. Try to be in the middle of the graphic. Not just stay with one profile, because I think is better for you, it will be more easier for you to learn.