The Fourth Week

We will quickly take a recap of the week and a preview of what’s to come next week.

We have to say that it has been a very productive week as it brings the current great isolation into its final stages. We have completed our reflections on our recent lives, particularly on English language learning, student life and we have also done the plan for this ‘throwback cultural journey’ which is all very meaningful to me and I know I will enjoy learning and entertaining. As most parts of life have been reviewed, suggestions for improvement have been written down. In the remaining two weeks (estimated) of isolation, we will catch up on all the things to do, say all the things we want to say, prepare a plan of action for the future and make sure that our study and exercise habits are stable.

The week went really well and we completed all our daily learning tasks on time and I did a lot of extra English learning. I do feel that there has been a lot of progress. I can tell that my fluency is much better than it was a few weeks ago, but only after about 20 hours of study. This is probably because I started with very low conditions, so the progress was great and very easy to see. However, it is going to be a very long journey and it must be harder for us to improve from 90-95% than from 60-80%. 

I remember when we first prepared for the IELTS test, the textbook said that students needed to spend 200 hours to improve one band of the IELTS test, does that mean I need to spend another 400 hours studying to get my current level of 7.0 to a full 9.0?Then I would only need to spend six months. Well, stop thinking about what you will achieve and just focus on each lesson you take, we will see the results.

We also did a weekly English high school course. As well as coding training, however we only did 1 hour out of the 5 hours planned. So we will make sure that all of our study plan goes well and we will finish it and then we will have more time to have fun. However, when I was doing my Year 7 English homework, I realised that I was giving worse answers than the boys who were ten years younger than me. I had no idea what the writer was trying to convey when he used certain techniques. Well, that’s something I always struggled with when I was learning my mother tongue back to school age. I always got high marks in maths and I was much better at English, oh well, maybe I’m not a good reader and writer at all, but we still need all the processes to train our brains for English literature, so let’s get on with it. The more we read, the better answers we will be able to give.

We also got out a bit more this week as we relaxed our restrictions. I’m sure we’ll get all our thoughts organised and clear out the to-do list in the next two weeks so we can finally see all my lovely friends next weekend and then we’ll be packing for our trip to Thailand which has been delayed for two months. After that we’ll probably relaunch all social media in a week or two, but we still have a lot to do before then, including setting up rules for using social networks.

Well, it’s time for a shower and a book until we’re sleepy enough to have a good dream.

Tommy 7 Aug 2022 (After Midnight)