reflection paper

I major in finance. It is hard to improve our English skills because the things we learned in class is accounting, economy, and finance management. We spend much time learning professional subjects. Though it is good for us to acquire more knowledge on the field of finance, but we ignore the importance of English. English is the common language we communicate with the globe. Because of that, I want to find a way to learn English. Then I knew that there is an optional course called computer assisted learning language. The motivation that I chose this course is that I want my English skills such as listening and speaking getting better. In this course we learned some useful websites, for example, Corpus, Podcast, TED talks, My ET, and OpenCourseWare.

We learned many kinds of English websites. The website that impresses me a lot is corpus. This website changed my way of learning English. I used to look up the vocabularies through the dictionary especially bilingual dictionaries. When teacher introduced this website for us, I was amazed because I didn’t notice this kind of dictionary before. This website includes a collection of texts, spoken and written. Corpus not only can find the words I don’t know but also let me know how to use the word correctly. I can read the articles which include the words I am searching for. After knowing corpus, I can look up the vocabulary which I want to know through corpus instead of using dictionaries like Yahoo or Google.

There is another website which impressed me a lot called my ET. This website can record your voice through microphone and tell you the disadvantage about your pronunciation, pitch, rhythm, and intensity. Through my ET, you can discover your speaking problem, and improve it by practicing. It is a good way for beginner to improve their pronunciation. For me, I didn’t know there is a website which can examine my speaking problems before this class. Furthermore, I don’t think how the website can help me improve my English speaking. After knowing this website, I was astonished because it can really examine my speaking through computer. It is amazing to me because I didn’t believe that this kind of website really exists. After using my ET, I found my speaking problems which I didn’t noticed before. There is no big problem on my speaking, but I had some small mistakes which can find in my English report. There are details about my speaking such as the pronunciation of the letters, pitch, timing, and emphasis. The report shows me about my speaking mistakes and then gives suggestion which contains the comments and how to improve my mistake I made.

I have learned a lot from this course. At first, I don’t know that computer can play such a big role in my English learning. I only used the computer to look up the dictionary before. After taking this course, I can use computer to improve my English skills including listening, speaking, and reading. These websites can let my English skills become better if I continue study English by using these websites which I learned from CALL class. I will continue to improve my English skills for sure and hope I can make progress.