I’ve been trying to find a suitable article for course but found the task quite hard because I’ve already read the most of the articles I find about my field from different databases. During my  BA-work I tried databases for many and many times usually not knowing the correct words to find new stuff. Instead I normally found new interesting article from resources of the article or book which I was at the time reading. Same problem lies here again: I can’t imagine the new suitable words to find new interesting articles.

I have become to think that that might be because I’m trying to find article about exactly same thing I’m studying which means relating conversation analysis with performance studies. Maybe if I try some other way to come to same place… In my BA-work I studied news sequence and how that is created firstly to the play and after that to the performance. So if I start from more far away not trying to relate these things yet because that haven’t really happened before very much. That means I’m going to find something about news sequence or some other sequence – some other kind of telling for example? Or I try to find something that includes only theatre studies something about theatres language? I’m already trying to understand more deeply the sequence organization itself in my independent work, reading Schegloff’s Sequence Organization in Interaction.

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Same time I’ve been trying to find interesting material I’ve watched Endeavour, Inspector Lewis and Father Ted with Finnish or English or without subtitles. I’ve found that I can concentrate to the vision if I don’t have subtitles in Finnish. If they’re in Finnish I watch almost only them and try to understand the story through them and I watch the exact vision only now and then. Lately I have also sometimes noticed if the translation isn’t correct – but mostly that is done by my companion.

With English subtitles I follow all three the vision, the subtitles and the voice. I also notice if there is something said that isn’t mentioned in the subtitles. With English subtitles I’ve also began (during the English course) to repeat new or interesting words I hear and see. Of course there usually is many jokes or happenings I don’t notice because I don’t understand but I’m developing.

Some series I’ve tried to follow without any kind of subtitles but if all the speakers aren’t familiar for me it becomes now and then hard to follow the story even if vision is helping. Still it has been so far quite easy to follow speaking in ted.com also without subtitles. I suppose I concentrate to telling different way while watching those videos.

This kind of things so far, let’s hope I’ll find suitable article!

I have played lots and lots of Free Rice but forgot to get to know what new words mean although I now almost know what are synonyms to those words. I also loaded quizlet app, but havne’t yet played it very much because I think there isn’t yet enough new words in it. But I hope I’ll soon remember give it a new try.

I also watched a new video from ted.com (link below).

Barnett tells there about his book which adds to child’s world a new level. He tells about times when he has told stories which child has wanted to be truth and that how child wants that story to be true although the child also knows that it isn’t the truth. Meaning that child hopes s/he will find another door to Narnia or that s/he really can call to whale when s/he wants.

After the video I began to think my childhoods favourite books  and bookseries and those really did had their secret doors in them. After I read Eoin Colfers Artemis Fowls I began to see elves all over the places (in real heat over the grill), understood where and why they hide from humans and have of course felt their presence after that behind me. After Harry Potters it was okay for me that I wasn’t accepted to Hogwarts but still I have hoped I would see someone doing magic or rather remember it because I know that there exists spells to wipe your memory.

I have thought this quite a lot and now I’m hoping I can help another children to find same kind of books or stories that make them feel that there is a bit more in our reality.

Here it begins … again.

This is now my second time starting up this English course learning blog because I happened to delete the first one. I assume that this will be easier after things get settled. Or at least I hope I’ll learn the tricks of blogging during this autumn…

Well as I said this blog will be learning blog, mainly metacognitional. I’ll write about my watchings, doings, readings and listenings, what have I learned, understood or thought and the aim is to develop as English writer and feel more easy with it.

What I have done with English lately is that I have watched films in English (mostly with English subtitles) and read coursebooks. My main subject is Finnish language and speciality in conversation analysis of which there is literature both in English and in Finnish, but my BA demanded me get to know mostly with stuff in English. I’ve also read academic texts about literature and theatre studies. That’s briefly my latest background and now I will move to course contents.

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Last week I watched from ted.com video which is one of the most popular in the site, Amy Cuddy’s  Your body language shapes who you are. Cuddy begins with basics about how body language truly is part of the conversation and how people recognize certain gestures and poses loaded with certain meanings. Then she moves to the research she had done and revealed that already a two-minute confident posing increases our testosterone levels and makes us feel and seem more powerful. Finally she told two stories how one can feel that s/he isn’t part of certain society but can become one by faking so long s/he begins to feel to be part of it. For motto of the video becomes “Fake it until you become it!”

I hadn’t really thought how position really matters, of course I try to keep up good posture but that it has an influence to our hormones was partly news for me. All the same I felt quite relieved when I heard you can pretend to powerful or smart or feeling part of the group and that way also at least become it. I think it really can help posing for example in the toilet before job interview and feeling confident already when going in instead of bad-posture-sitting and reading your notes again and again.