LLJ, Fatema Ali

This week, I will talk about my experience of using the strategy that is related to developing my speaking skill which is using the teachers as a source to improve my speaking. Luckily, I didn’t search a lot to find this resource since I have already joined the speaking club in the college even without previous planning to use it in my language learning plan and after two weeks of joining this club , I realized that it will be a good idea to be integrated in my LLJ.
Actually, I chose this club and I hoped that by the end of it, I will have the ability to express my ideas calmly and without being nervous. When I first joined this club, I was so nervous as usual. Neither the teacher nor the students were familiar for me and it was the first time I deal with them. However, the teacher “Ms. Janice Munster” with her nice reception and her highly kindness made me feel relax a little bit. We started the conversation by talking about cake and candy since she brought some of them to the class to enjoy them while speaking. Then we started to talk about Lulu Hyper Market, that’s where she brought the cake. After that, we talked about malls and shopping and many other issues in the society. At first, I was silent while the other students were talking, but the teacher was asking me questions to encourage me to share with them and I was answering with no more than 3 words only. When the class ended, I felt that I gained nothing from it and the reason was my unreasonable tension.
Next Thursday, I joined the class again but with an insistence that I will control my nervous and I will speak as much as possible. When we started the conversation, I was the first student to answer the question and talk. Although I didn’t talk as I supposed to do but at least they were more than 10 words this time. I couldn’t speak too much because the other students have a lot of ideas about the discussion topics and unlike me, they were talkative but in a positive way. I tried to take a place in every topic discussion with a few words at least and I thought it was better than nothing.
This strategy didn’t work very well because I couldn’t join the club for the next two weeks since I was working in the human development and science projects. Also, I think that the time, 50 minutes a week, was not enough for me to come over my weaknesses in speaking because it was a long time between one club class and the other and I forgot most of the things until the next Thursday. I thought that this strategy would work well if I joined the club for 4 weeks besides choosing one of the other teachers to practice speaking with even if it was for 5 minutes a day.