1st Session (March 12, 2001 - May 4, 2001)

At the ELI party with some classmates of Valerie's class Sun-ja, Takako, Mow, Monica, Ping-Tsun, Shuping, Yoshiko

This was my first session as an ELI student. So, I was very nervous about my student life because of my age. At first, I was wondering about my memory which has deteriorated with age, and whether I could make friends with younger students or not. However, I have enjoyed studying English with a lot of my international friends and very kind teachers, not caring at all my age.

Listening & Speaking <5>

• Teacher: Valerie Gates
  
• Purposes: To improve my listening and speaking skills
  
• Contents: This course was on listening comprehension, fluency skills, expanding speaking and listening skills to narrow the gap between classroom conversation and understanding in the "real" world. We discussed a lot in our class and had some presentations. Also, we had a few vocabulary quizzes, and they were so useful for me. As final test, we chose one topic in these given topics: euthanasia, abortion, a specific civil liberty, and mandatory military service. I chose gender equality as a specific civil liberty and presented it. The teacher, Valerie, interviewed us one by one and reviewed us. It was a very special experience for me because it was the first time to explain this with using English.

Writing Via the Internet <5>

In our classroom with some classmates Mr. Davis (teacher), Blanca, Yin-wen, Yoshiko, Mow

• Teacher: Randall Davis
  
• Purposes: To improve writing skill through making my homepage, and conducting research and writing about it
  
• Contents: We studied so many things in this class, how to make and evaluate a homepage, the rules of English writing, the manners of writing and researching, and so on. Fortunately, using computer was not so difficult for me, but this was the first time for me to make homepage, do research, and write English so long. However, it became fun as time went on, because the teacher's explanation was very clear and very impressive as it were seeing a series of shows and the homepage can be beautiful or terrible as my efforts. Such being the case, I could finish making my homepage. Please take a look at my first homepage! [ My homepage | My research page ]

Communicative Grammar <4>

At Jeanne's class room Dae-Yun, Blanca, Yoshiko, Isao, Suh, Hun_Koo

• Teacher: Jeanne Lachowski
  
• Purposes: To study and practice using the grammar in my conversation correctly.
  
• Contents: 1. Present Perfect Progressive / 2. Past Perfect Progressive / 3. Passive voice in all tenses / 4. Phrasal verbs / 5. Conditionals / 6. Modals / 7. Direct and indirect discourse / 8. Causative verb forms / 9. Subordinate clauses
  We studied all the above, and it reminded me how little grammar I could remember. Also, I studied a lot of new grammar, but it was still hard to use it.