#8 Reflection

This semester I took this class because I want to obtain more about English learning from online resources. Through this class, I knew what things I can use to help me. I used to study for vocabulary words and write examination questions to help me prepare for TOEIC. But now, I have many English resources from computer. Looking back at what I have learned from this course, I had absorbed some knowledge about computers applied in the field of language learning as follows: blog; listening like TED, Esl-lab, All Ears English, Live ABC; the news like CNN, BBC, Time for kids, The New Yorkers, Six news resources; MOOCs like edx, coursera, MIT Open Course Ware, speaking like My ET, some comics, games, useful tools and so on. Among them, comics and games don’t interest me, but the most influential to me was TED and blog.

Through TED Talk, I got many different professional knowledge also inspired me to think. Some speeches are meaningful, take this video as an example: Fragile Power. Probably described, the speaker Brene Brown was born to be a very demanding person. She has done a one-year study to find the reasons behind people’s fears and shame. Also wants to find out the fragile factors of these people and help people solve these psychological problems. She pointed out that are caused by one reason. That is the fear of losing the "link" between people, the most important thing in life: Love and belonging. When we are afraid that the side is not good enough is discovered, others will feel that they are no longer worthy of being linked. This represents fragility. We should not resist the occurrence of fragility and try to erase it. Instead, we should embrace fragility and accept its existence. Do you know? you are not perfect, even if you experienced contradictions and struggles in this world, but you deserve to love and belong. This was rewards for me from this speech.

Another one which helps me so much was the blog. Because I didn’t know this website before I took this course, through this blog, I can type my thoughts, share what I learned in the class, put some links which I interested in and design my blog’s layout. I will continue to type something on my blog, its content will include my moods, outfit of the day, photos, hand-made gifts, pictures with drawing, and so on. The blog had an actuating force to make me keep recording the things, so I thought through this way will help me to write for a long time.

Before I chose this lesson, I didn’t know computer can assist me in language learning so much, but during this time, these online resources have broadened my horizons. By the way, I want to recommend one website: VoiceTube, its listening and vocabularies also help me a lot. So, I put its link on my blog as well. If I want to learn English that I just enter my blog and click them. This is not only convenient but also easy of handling. Thanks for teacher and CALL, I benefited a lot.

In the future, I will change my behaviors. I already plan to test for TOEIC again. Because I want to get a higher score. So, in this summer vacation, I will go to ESL-Lab website for listening practice, write the examination questions every day. If I have some problems, then I will also enter these websites which teacher provides. Finally, finding the methods suitable for us is important. I hope I will acquire some accomplishments after I put this study plan into practice.