It is anot always the motivation is on top when you have to study. I once heard someone say don't feel so much just do it. At times I can find it difficult to study, when I think the assignment is unclear, or it is a lot to read, or you are just not in the mood for actually spending time studying when you can do something else that is a lot more fun.

Like today, I started to bake bread instead of picking up The Good Research Guide and read the chapter about Ethnography. Knowing that if I don't do it today I have to do it tomorrow since the seminar is on Monday. And I also know that I have to read a 30 page article tomorrow for the same seminar, so in my study plan I divided the reading so that I wouldn't need to read everything on the same day.

At the moment we are reading about speaking in class. Students need to practice speaking but how do you de this in a fun and not intimidating way? Well, according to The Practice of English Language Teaching by Jeremy Harmer students often feel anxious when they are supposed to speak, and this is because students are often asked to speak without giving them time to prepare what they are going to say or that they have to speak in front of the entire class. Dividing the students into smaller groups and giving them some time to think about how they would say something I belive would be a valuable way of getting students to speak. I also believe that you as a teacher shouldn't interupt your students to correct them when they speak but encurage them to use the language. 

As you may know it is very common for students to work at the same time as they study. How do you make the time for it? What do you need to think about?

Planning is the most important thing inorder of havign time to both work and study. Many students need to work at the same time since they don't have enough money otherwise. I believe it is important to have a workplace where you can say no to working sometimes since you will have exams, papers to write and lectures and at least at my university you can have exams on weekends. It could be a good idea to find a workplace that is related to what you study, gaining practice is always a good idea and it will look good on your CV if you have worked with similar things. Another thing that look nice to have on your CV is volunteer work.

I actually work as a translator at the moment and I can decide if I want to take the jobs I'm offered and can plan my hours, when it suits me to work and when it doesn't as long as I hand in the work on time. Working as a translator is not a secure income since you never know how much work you will get or how much you will get paid each month. At the company I work at they pay in Euro and I can myself decide if I want to take out my pay or not. I can take out October pay in December if I feel it works better for me, which I think is really nice.

There are a lot of things happening right now in my life, there is studies, obviously, work and something a bit more exciting if everything works out. I might go to the US to study in the Spring of 2018. Yes, it seems far away but apparently you have to apply before the 1st of December so I still have one month to get everything together. I will try to explain the process of applying and things I have been thinking of and will think of during this whole process.

First, you have to decide where you want to go. This is not as easy as it sounds since you have to pick a place where you can take courses that are similar to those you are going to take at your home university at that semester in order to be able to transfer the credits. Otherwise you will have to study one term extra to make up for the term you missed. 

Second, you have to find courses and get them approved by the examinor at your university. This part would have been a lot easier if anybody knew who the hell is examinating the courses I will take but apparently nothing is every going to be easy right? So here came my first bump in the road. It was superhard to find someone who actually could answer my question "Who should I talk to?". At my university the teacher programme is not part of a faculty, which means I don't belong to a certain faculty which means that I don't have anyone who really works with students who want to go abroad and can help them. My second difficulty at this stage was also that during the semester on which I might go I'm studying history. Hurray for that I got accepted but the thing is history isn't really part of any faculty either and is kind of an inbetweener. Fourtunalty I have an amazing professor at the English faculty who is really that kind of person who takes time to find you an answer and it doesn't matter what you are asking. 

Right now in my plans I'm at the part where I look for possible courses at mainly two universities, San Francisco state university and Duluth univeristy in Minnesota. On Monday I have a meeting with the examinor of the course and hopefully I have managed to find some suitable courses.

Since I'm probably going abroad to study in the US in the Spring of 2018 I was thinking that I might tell you guys about the process of choosing where to go, applying, the hinders that might occur and how I manage to get around them. Going abroad is such a big thing today and it is a really valuable experience which many employers really value when hiring. I have already been to Oxford, England studying English for one month and it was amazing going somewhere else and see something new. 

The application process is the first thing I will tell you about. I will also write about my thoughts and feelings about the universities I have in mind and why or why not I want to go there. Furthermore, I will tell you about all the preparations and finally I will blogg about what I'm doing on my term abroad, if I get in that is. There are tests that I need to do and the application process is long and difficult since a lot of students want to go and there aren't places for everyone.

I hope you will enjoy reading about this adventure!

Last year the government announced that the autumn break should be called a reading break because the point of the break would be for the students to read. The reason behind having a "reading break" was that the students results in PISA went down and of course the government want to improve this, but not by giving more money to the schools but to give money to other companies and culture for them to have reading activities during one week while the students have their autumn break. Do you see where this is going?

Furthermore, reading during this break should be optional meaning the students themselves decides if they want to read or not. Some argue that this will lead to more splits in school where some students will benefit from these activites while others' will not. It is kind of inevidable since you give the students a choice. Of course those students who don't like to read won't read during this break while students who like to read will read, but not because there are reading activites at the library but because they like reading and do it at home all around the year and not only during this one week.

Reading is important for developing language and you learn a lot from reading, since you can see how the words are spelled, how they work together to become meaningful text and you can see the grammar that your have worked so hard with to understand in action. I wouldn't recommend a reading break I believe the students benefit more from choosing when they want to read and what they want to read. You need to show them that reading is not work or homework but that it is something pleasurable, something to enjoy.

Learning language might not be the most fun thing to do. It is difficult and at times not so fun especially when you have to study grammar but it is a necessary evil I'm afraid. In order of being able to speak a language you need vocabulary and grammar. It is the two most important things without it you will not be able to write, read or speak.

When learning a language I would not recommend starting with grammar since it is boring and the students will loose their motivation if they had any when they started. Instead you should begin with vocabulary teach your students words and use different ways of doing this. Be more creative than only using vocabulary lists. 

One exercise which might be fun for the students to do is a word map. A word map is built similarly to a mind map that is you but the subject word in the middle for example Christmas. Then the students should come up with words that are related to Christmas such as, food, snow, Christmas tree, decorations and anything else they can come up with. And you connect these with each other where possible. It is important to first show the students what they are expected to do so that the students know what success should look like. After doing one word map together give your students 2-3 words which are related in someway and ask then to try to find the connections by making word maps.

Of course you will also need to follow this up. It can be done thorugh reading comprehension, listening or writing. You will have to use a text where they can find the words that you have given them and thus you as a teacher can see if they have understood the words or not.

Well, it has been two days of the new course and we are already drowning in work. Like okey it's university but there are still limits to what we can do, we are only humans. Teachers often forget that students have a lot to do especially students at upper secondary school since they have mutliple subjects at the same time and I remember how we could have 5 tests in one week, plus papers that needed to be handed in and other homework. It's really incredible how teachers don't communicate with each other and plan their tests and bigger papers so that the students don't need to have everything at the same time.

At university it is a bit different, most of the time you only have one course at a time (we are a bit different and have atleast 2) but it's manageble. Until this new teacher of ours who believe that we have all the time in the world just because we only have 2 seminars/week. Teachers who overdo things is not really liked by the students and hey thats not their job either, but I believe that students will learn more if the teachers respect that students need time to recover to. 

Studying at university is a fulltime job and when we go home from university in the afternoon many think that yeah now you are free to do whatever you want. They don't understand that studying at university is a 24/7 job if you wan't to make it. You can maybe take the weekend off if you have studied at least 8-9 hours everyday not including seminars, lectures or group work but individual studying where you read up on everything, start planning you exam, try to find a suitable topic and so forth.

Okey I will admit it, my reading have been suffering for a while but I have started reading A Clash of Kings by George R.R Martin. It goes slow but I am getting there. Time is not something I have a lot of because of my studies but I have almost gotten half way thorugh now :D

What I love about Martin's books is the language he uses. It is old fashioned and describing. He really catches the feeling of his characters the distress of Sansa when she is cought by the Hound being up late at night. You cna really feel what the characters are feeling when you read since it is so greatly written. 

I have watched the series before reading the books and I don't think it matters that much since the books are much more detailed and the series is quite similar to the books this far at least. I belive that you should read the books also since it is an experiece in it self. When I read I picture the characters in my mind and I have a miniseries of my own in my head. The theatre of imagination in one way, I believe it is important to read and develop your own imagination and thinking outside the box in one way. To develop your understanding of a novel you need to analysie it in some way not just read it and then move on to the next book. Take a few minutes thinking about what was good with this novel and what did you actually like? It is also important to think about what you didn't like with the novel and really think about it, try to explain for yourself why you did or didn't like a particular novel. 

Thinking about these questions can help you develop your reading skills and understand novels on a completly different level. Well to really develop your reading you probably need to think about a few other things as well but starting with what you like and don't like is a good start. Then you can move on to the setting, characters and so forth and eventually get to the theme of the novels you read. 

During my practice at the school, the students started to listen to Dracula, a re-written version that suited their level of English and not the original novel. But anyway after listening to each chapter the students were supposed to answer a few questions, what they liked and didn't like, what the chapter was about, what puzzled them, summarising the chapter, think about difficult words and so forth. Most of the students only wrote yes/no answers and didn't think about why, getting them to answer the questions why was difficult and demanding but I hope they will get it eventually why it is important to think about what you read and analyse it.