#107 バークリーday79 Self Assessment 〜現在の英語力の自己評価〜

英語の授業では宿題をやってこない学生が多くて、先生おかんむり。そこで、今回のエッセイのテーマは

"Self Assessment"　〜あなたの英語、今ぶっちゃけどうなのよ！？〜

宿題やってこないけど、他の授業に問題なくついていけてんの？日常生活で困っていることはないの？というのを４技能それぞれについて知りたいらしい。

個人的には今回のバークリー留学は、フィリピンで鍛えた基礎英語力をさらにネイティブレベルに近づける目的もあったので、留学も終盤のこのタイミングで提出したエッセイを今日はここに残しておこう。

Speaking

In most cases I can state my opinions, express my feelings, ask questions and explain anything, although I can not do them better than native Americans. I bought train tickets at a ticket counter, stayed at a hotel and asked many things to teachers here in America, but there has been no big problem so far. However, sometimes I chose obviously wrong words to explain something even though I know it is wrong. In other words, I have difficulty in expressing delicate nuances when explaining detailed things. This is just due to the lack of my vocabulary. More study is required.

Listening

Most of the time I understand what teachers say and their point. However, sometimes I don't understand their explanation especially when they talk about details. If I could listen to such things, I would be able to get better understanding in classes and learn more. In daily conversations, I seldom get in trouble unless the speaker talks too fast or uses too much slang. Even in such cases, I say "Say again?" or "Sorry?" only once at most in one conversation. By the way, when I am reading something, it is still difficult for me to listen to English. I want to be able to read and listen at the same time and process more information.

Reading

I think there is no major problem in terms of reading. I understood most of reading assignments. However, when there is so much difficult vocabulary in an article, I have a hard time to grasp what it says. Actually there were some articles with a lot of difficult vocabulary in the textbook we used. Therefore my next step is how to get to understand authors' points in such situations. I think I should not stop reading even if I find difficult vocabulary. All I have to do is just keep reading and try to understand summaries because I do the same thing when reading Japanese. I have to master the skill.

Writing

I am not so confident about my writing because there are few opportunities to write something in English in my daily lives so far. It still takes time for me to write long sentences. For example, it takes about 3 hours on average for essays in this class. Also, my writing might be unnatural especially to native Americans. However, I have no choice but to read and write many sentences regarding this matter. Learning useful idioms might be good help as well.

提出後にチューターから受けたレビューで学んだこととしては、

・"a ticket counter"の前の前置詞は"in"じゃなくて"at"

・過去形と現在完了の微妙なニュアンスの違いに注意

・"full of"を使いたいときは可算名詞でなければならない。"full of difficult vocabulary"は不可。

・"even if"の後は過去形じゃなくて現在形。日本語では「たとえ〜だったとしても」と、過去形で表現するので間違えやすい。

・名詞"help"は不可算名詞なので"a help"とは言わない。