16. Meri, Faculty of Behavioural Sciences
Kaleidoscope reflection

Needs: I have to attend meetings and seminars in english for my work already now and most likely in the future even more so. I would therefore like to increase my vocabulary especially in professian and academic context. I would also like to be more confident english speaker in official contexts. I also need more confidence when it comes to my english writing skills, I think this is mainly due to lack of practice.. and courage:)Skills: I guess my skills in english are pretty good in general. I can easily manage informal interaction and writing e-mails etc. Like said, would like to get confidence onto occupational area of language. When concidering the CEF-grid, I would rate my skills in spoken english higher than skills in listening. I would deffinately have to practise by listening news etc.
Motivation:
I’ve always liked languages, but I’m a bit lazy in studying them. I need a practical excuse to study them, like living in specific country or having to talk that language otherwise daily. Now, being one year away from graduation, I’ve really woken up to this language-thing. I’ll soon may have to use languages at work daily. For my motivation concerning learning englisg, is essential that I can combine work and studies in someway (for example writing articles to organization’s publication in english).
Personality:
From learning styles presented, I would recognice myself being somewhere in the middle of pragmatic learner and activist. I couldn’t motivate myself to stydy “just in case” or “just for the fun of it”, but like said earlier, I’m stydying language cause or if I need it (at least at this moment of my life). I wouldn’t describe myself being shy or insecure, when it comes to speaking languages. When living abroad I’ve come to notice that only way to cope is to speak speak and speak. You can’t postpone your work or grocery shopping until the point, you’ve miraculously learned the language. I guess it’s a mentality that results mostly from experience of having to learn more than one new language. I think that I might be in a danger of stuckin where I am now, cause I’ve noticed that I can cope with the skills I have. Slight lazyness and impatience doesn’t help either. I’m afraid that if I wan’t to keep on developing my skills, I need to do lot more than just talk talk and talk. I need too get a plan. Maybe what it requires is a slight bit of determination and courage to seek myself into more challenging interactional situations.
Learning background:
I believe my intrest towards learning languages comes somewhere else than from school. I remembember having quite neutral attitude toward langue courses. I remember though liking german for example because it’s grammar was “like maths”.. and I liked maths. I guess the most crucial starting points for my language learning were my foreign penpals and then in late teens.. the english boyfriend. I did also spend one summer though in a boarding school in England as 15-year-old, but I don’t remember that as a huge learning experience. Boarding school was meant for non-english speakers, and I remember actually being quite frustrated, cause my level in english was higher than most other kids. Now that I think of it, maybe it did have some impact after all. Maybe instead of actually developing my sense of grammar and vocabulary etc. , I developed my self-confidence as a english speaker. I guess the down-side result of it could be the lack of ambition to develop myself further, and I guess that’s something to graps now.