I asked my 1st class students to write a short essay on “What I have learned this academic year in English: comparing my expectations with my results.” I chose some of the most meaningful writings to share here with everybody. Congratulations to my 1st class students, it has been my pleasure to spend so much time with you!
© Anny Ballardini
This was the first year for me in this school. At the other schools I was, I didn’t have good English teachers, they were not mother tongue. Because of that, I didn’t learn English very well. But I want to have a good English because I know that this is an important language.
My expectations for this year, where very high. I hoped that I would have a good teacher, who could speak a good English. Now I’m happy; my teacher speaks always English with me and with my class. I have to thank her because I’ve learned a lot. At the beginning of this academic year, I was bad at this language, but I put a lot of commitment in studying and now I can see the results.
A few days ago, some American friends of a friend came to Italy and we had a nice time together, we spoke a lot and I noticed that it wasn’t so difficult for me. I could explain many things about the history of my town and about the flowers of the botanic garden.
I was very happy, they also asked me to go to Tennessee one day, where they live.
I was surprised of my English, once I couldn’t speak one entire minute in English, without stopping. Now I can and I am very happy and proud of this. I did a good progress.
I am also very happy because I know that this school will give me a good basis in languages., so I’ll be able to travel around the world. I would like to live in the United States, so I have to learn English very well. If I continue studying as I have done this year, I will have good results and I will be able to go living in the U.S.
I can see my progress in English because when I am watching English movies or videos, I can understand the biggest part of what the actors say. I often watch the videos of an American man, who teaches how to play ukulele. Thanks to my English I can understand what to do.
Once I couldn’t understand anything.
This makes me so happy.
© SARA FERIGO
I have studied English since the 3rd elementary class and I have always loved this language. Last year I already knew a good English, but I hoped that I would become better this year.
I learned a lot of new things, especially in grammar. After this year it seems to me I have more confidence with the English grammar rules. Another thing that makes me very proud, is that I have learned a lot of interesting topics and now I can also explain them to other people.
If I compare my expectations with my results now, I have to say that I never thought that I would learn so much in just one academic year at the Marcelline School.
As soon as I arrived at this school I thought that I would study only from the book, but it was not so: we did a lot of different things like projects, a movie and some essays.
Last year I never did an essay, so I was very surprised with my results. I can also say that it helped me very much to summarize a book after reading it.
Another thing that helped me to learn a better English, was doing research, like that one about my personal inspiration. With this I had the opportunity to learn a lot of new words. We learned also a lot of things about famous people, like Frida Kahlo and Alfred Hitchkock. These where the most interesting things lessons, because I love to learn new things about foreign or famous people.
Comparing all these things with those that I learned last year, I am very proud that I have studied so many new things that I will also need in the rest of my life. I am also very happy and proud of my results. In the past I never thought that I would speak in English so easily. I know that I have to learn and to study more English to become even better, but t the moment I am proud of my English-level.
I have learned a lot of new things, and I am very happy I have chosen this school; in another school, maybe I would not learn so much.
In conclusion I am happy with my marks and I am surprised that I have learned more than what I have expected.
© ANNA COSTA
Now we are almost at the end of may, this means, that the school-year is almost over. I’m really glad to finish this, at the beginning, very hard year, and not only in English, I have reached very good results.
I must say, that at the beginning my expectations for this school and especially for the languages, that are learned here, were very high, because this is a very good school. I really like the teachers and I think that in English, compared with the beginning, my level has raised a lot.
I love the way we learn English here: from making a video of our town, to writing a text, to reading different books or doing exercises, we do really everything. I must say that it was never really hard for me to learn English or any other languages, but sometimes I asked myself :” how can I master this?” But only by learning hard, it has brought me good results. I think, that I did a big progress from the beginning of the year in English, especially in writing. Such a progress was really unexpected. This is a school with a quite high level, with very good teachers and very intelligent students. Because of this, before I joined this school, my expectations were even higher, perhaps too high. I never thought that I was going to have these good results, but I also never thought that my English level would improve that much. For example, reading a book in English, helped me a lot, also studying again the irregular verbs helped me.
I finish this year being happy, speaking better in English and having good expectations for the next year.
© Evamaria Mayr
MarcellinEspresso 