Mona's L.E blog

     Throughout doing a quick speech practice during class the last two weeks, I’ve learnt many things, not only through presenting myself but also by being a part of the audience. The first point I learnt about being an audience and watching other people present, is that it’s hard to control the breathing points when speaking. Just like singing, I find that breathing points are important to keep everything on a nice tempo or rhythm. For example, it’s a nice time to breathe in and take maybe 2-3 seconds to do so, when changing a topic. However, when you are talking about something that requires you to talk in a continuous manner, it could break the tempo. I also find that taking moments to breathe also allows people to calm down. After seeing some people take deep breaths, I could tell their shoulders sat lower and not so stiff, giving off the impression that they were confident—one of the most important elements to a presentation. However, one thing that I notice...

So approximately two months ago, I presented about my book review on “The Book Thief”, and I finally got the courage to look back at the video today (ahahah). Starting off, there are six main points I need to reconsider and be more careful about when presenting from now on. The first point is to speak slower. Looking back at the video, I notice how fast I was talking, and no, it’s not that I didn’t notice that when presenting, I did. However, I couldn’t help myself at all and honestly, I still don’t understand why I was speaking at such a fast pace. And so I researched, and according to inc.com, a fast tone may indicate that the person is experiencing nervousness or a lack of self confidence.—Which I didn’t think I would show that kind of response because I had practiced a fair amount time and whenever I did, I was able to talk much slower. I guess the only way I can get over this is to practice until you are super confident, and to just experience presentations on a daily basis. Also,...

   In today's class, we mainly went over the "writing tools" most of us were familiar with, as we used them last year. The writing tools include seven of which help review your writing. Out of all the details Mr.Paterson talked about, I believe I need to watch out on using the word "the" as when writing I feel as though I use it a bit too often. Thus I need to make sure on the whole essay that I use no more than 100. In addition, another thing I learnt about is that windows and apple computers are different when it comes to automatically spell check your writing. Apple computers check your writing automatically even on word documents whereas Windows tends to not do that unless you change the settings. Talking about my personal experience, I use a Windows computer and I write my essays/assignments in google documents where I have access to Grammarly to correct the imperfections of my writing. Then, I will copy and paste the exact same text to the Word document wh...

   Today, Mr. Paterson introduced two main points to the class; what to do during summer break and about the presentation slide shows. The work assigned for us to do during the summer break is to watch three videos from his youtube channel.    The first video is of him presenting for 20 minutes about AAGS, and he told us we should look at it as a model for our presentation. Just by looking at the video for the first ten seconds, I noticed something that I see many professional presenters do in their presentation. It is to connect the introduction with what the audience understands or has come across, in this case about what other presenters have talked about for the last few presentations. I believe it has the effect of making the audience more interested in the presentation, as some listeners might think they would have to listen to another presenter talk about the same topic. (Something like a reassurance that the topic will differ, so the audience will pay more a...

   Today, we learned about how to write good academic book reviews, using specific websites, or youtube channels. Not to mention that the first ten minutes of the class consisted of talking about our school system during this time.    To briefly explain my opinion on the school's approach of resuming classes, I agree with Mr. Paterson, and so honestly cannot support the idea. The reason is simply that not only are the rooms small for everyone to fit in, while social distancing, the widows in the rooms are limited. Talking about the windows, people may think that because I sit right next to the window (in the assigned seatings for HR), I'm lucky. However, the truth is that the winds blow the curtains into my face, resulting in a huge distraction while I am trying to concentrate on the class. And you might be thinking, well why not just use the hooks and keep them in place? Well, although some curtains do have both the fabric (that is shaped so it can cling onto the h...

   The first chapter of the epilogue briefly explained about Liesel’s life after the bomb dropped on Himmel Street. She lived to a very old age, far away from Molching and Himmel Street. She passed away in a suburb of Sydney, and the house number was fourth-five. Like Hans, her soul sat up. In her final visions, she saw the next few things; her three children, grandchildren, husband, and the long list of lives that merged with hers. Among them, Hans, Rosa, her brother, and Rudy lit like lanterns.    The second chapter talked about where Liesel went, to be taken care of after the  bombing, and meeting Alex Steiner. She sat inside the police station, and three hours later, the mayor and his wife Isla drove her to their home. There, she would sit in the exquisite spare room, and speak and speak to herself, well into the night. She ate very little, and didn’t take a bath. She slept a lot but didn’t dream. On the day of Hans’ and Rosa’s funeral, she still hadn’t ba...

   The first chapter of part ten was about the day Himmel Street was bombed, leaving no one alive but Liesel. Although the time for this scene was still in later times, the narrator explained the scene, as "to soften the blow for later, or to better prepare  myself  for the telling." The sky was dripping, like a tap that was turned off by a child, and so hasn't quite managed to. The narrator stood outside Frau Diller's, and above, he heard the tin-can planes. Then, the bombs dropped out. The narrator says that no one would want to bomb Himmel Street, not a place named after heaven, or would they? Everyone, Rudy, Rosa, Hans, Frau Holtzapfel, Frau Diller, Tommy, all slept, and all died except for Liesel. She had been in the basement, reading through the story of her own life, checking for mistakes. Hours later when the LSE heard something beneath, they rushed to the basement of the Hubermanns. Liesel was hammering a paint can with a pencil. They dug the blocks of cemen...