Hello miss, I’m Frans Rubio and today I will speak about what this first year in this major has been for me, I will tell you some changes that I see in myself and how I think that I can improve my English learning ability.

It’s been almost 10 months since I started this major and I really notice an improvement, especially on my reading and listening skills because now can understand and recognize different accents when I listen to English speakers, which is something that was very difficult before, but now I can handle it better when I watch English videos or even when I listen to an English song for the first time. I can also comprehend English texts more easily than before, and I think it’s due to grammar class, which I love too much (I would say that is the subject that I like the most, plus I got just sevens in that class). About my pronunciation, I feel like I can modulate words better thanks to phonetic class because I can look for the pronunciation of words and I understand the phonetic symbols. I’ve also become a bit more fluent in my English thanks to the English class, which I like very much because it’s the best opportunity to show off my English and to speak out loud in front of everybody, which definitely has helped me to beat shyness since it’s like a double challenge: to speak English and to speak in front of the class.

Now that I can use my English much more, I think that a good way to improve it is to look for native speakers and just speak with them, without worrying about: “am I saying it right?” or “how can I say this?”, but of course with the purpose of learning new vocabulary and new expressions. Another essential way to improve my English understanding and vocabulary management is to immerse myself in the English, if possible reading English books or watching English movies as much as possible, which I actually do.

I’ve also changed in other ways. For instance, when someone shows some interest in the English, I try to discover more and I act as a teacher with those who want to learn, even with some classmates, or when I have a doubt I don’t think it twice to ask, I just try to clarify it and don’t let it pass. When I’m reading, I always open a dictionary in a new tab so that I can look up the words that I don’t know and I look for the translation, or synonyms when I can’t understand them. It is something that I didn’t do before.

Today I’m very different to who I was a year before.  Not only because of this major, but also because I left my parents house, because I am working, I control my life completely on my own (of course there are people who help me, but it all depends on me), I’m learning to handle my money, which has been a tough challenge, but I’ve survived.

Now that we’re close to New Year, I’ve been thinking of some resolutions for 2018, such as: taking care of my body working out and playing volleyball more often, take care of my life in a mature way. I also want to give up some addictions which are not good for my brain. That’s it because I have to be honest, and I don’t want to overwhelm myself with too many goals, so I prefer to go slow but safe.