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.