The End

Well, for now that is. Because studying never really ends, does it?

But this ALMS course is ending for me, and I wanted to make one last post to reflect on what I've done and learned and what my future English studies will look like.

First, let's look at the things I have done during this course. I'd say that I have kept a pretty good record on this blog on the things that I have done, such as my support groups and other miscellaneous practices I have tried out. I noticed now that I did not upload the post for my last task in the Academic Reading group, but to shortly cover it, I had to read an article of my choosing with a critical eye and then analyse it. The text I read had some interesting aspects to it as it ended up being quite political despite being a scientific article and I got good comments on my post about it on the Academic Reading Moodle page. That aside, I've reported on everything on my blog except for my study sessions with my friends and listening to the Academic Earth lessons. In addition, because I unfortunately have not yet received my reviewed essay back from my teacher, I have not been able to discuss it here on the blog – but I will upload it eventually on my essay post, hopefully sometime this week.

The reason I haven't reported back on my study sessions is because I haven't had much to say about them. They make out over half of my speaking exercises, but I haven't recorded them so how could I really even make a post out of them? But I will say that these sessions have been very useful to me and out of all the speaking exercises I've done, I'd say that they were the ones that made me speak the most. Well, that's only natural – who would've thought that actual conversations meant a lot of talking? The reason I haven't posted about listening to Academic Earth is rather similar; I've only managed to listen to a couple of lessons (approximately 3 hours) and I'm not sure how much that contributed to my learning. The lessons I listened to were about Oceanography and I did enjoy them, as they were challenging enough that I had to focus but not enough for me to feel exhausted while listening to them.

Now, did I reach my planned hour goal? Yes, yes I did indeed. And I even went over it with a couple of hours. I spent approximately 43 hours on speaking exercises (including pronunciation and study sessions with friends) and another 40 hours on writing and reading. Then, the rest of the 10 hours or so I spent on miscellaneous things, such as physical exercise and reading the news. Something that I learned during this course, was that I didn't even necessarily need to plan everything hour by hour – for me, it was enough to set a weekly goal to reach and then I'd find ways to fulfil it.

Second, the main question is: what did I learn? I have two ways to go about this. Firstly, at the beginning of this course, I had evaluated my English skills based on the CERF scale so it's only natural that here at the end, I now look back on those scores I gave myself and see if they've changed.

And well… no. No, they haven't. Or that's how I feel, at least. Now, as a disclaimer, I'm not saying this because I think that I haven't done any work when I clearly have. I just don't believe that I can make that jump from, for example, B2 to C1 in less than two months. Yes, I have improved in many aspects but to consider myself on a completely different level? Realistically speaking it's not possible. Let me give a better example of this. I believe that I have made progress the most in my reading skills, which I had scored as between B2 and C1, and I remain between these two. I do feel more confident in myself, and I think I can tackle harder texts without it feeling like a daunting, impossible task. But that is not because my vocabulary has grown significantly larger, but more because I've learned how to read better by using different techniques. To fully reach C1, I still think I need to keep growing my vocabulary – but at least now I have the better means to it.

The other way to go about this, is to simply ask myself if I've learned anything new. And to that I will say: yes and no. I've learned new techniques that I can use to ease reading and writing, but at the same time, lots of the things that I came across in the support groups and on my own were things that I'm already familiar with. So really, this course wasn't about constantly learning something new, but rather to enhance what I already knew. That shouldn't come as a surprise to me, since at this point of language learning it should be pretty clear, but this realization brings me some joy. Yes, of course there are plenty of new things I must still learn, but I've got a solid base to work of.

And now, finally, what will I do for my English learning in the future? Well, as I mentioned, I have a solid base and all the needed abilities to continue learning, so of course I also must put them to good use. It would be stupid not to, right? Luckily, much of my own studies are in English, so even if I won't take extra English courses, it will always be with me in one way or another. And since the world is becoming more and more connected by the year, and English is one of the main ways of communication, I want to make sure I become well-equipped to face any challenges in my professional and private life. My goal is to confidently write and present my bachelor's degree in English, so that is what I will be working towards next!

Thank you for this journey. Hopefully our learning truly never stops.