My experience learning english at the university

In my first month at the university (last year) I had an english exam to see wich level of english I had. With this exam I knew wich class I had to take. This class was english preintermediate, and it was a class that was required. I took this class on the second semester last year with another students from my other classes. And this year I took english pilot on the first semester. This second class was not required, just I took it because I wanted it. I took this class with 2 of my best friends as an elective class, because we need to have an elective class and 2 other kinds of classes before the end of the second semester from this year.

The first class I had, english preintermediate, was not so difficult but you needed to dedicate a lot of time to this class, because like it was required, it was more strict and we had a lot of littles exams, a lot of homeworks, and we had to read a lot of papers... I think the papers was the hardest part. In this class I learned new vocabulary, a lot, and we had on every class several conversations, and that was very very usefull... the best way of learning english is talking and practicing. I liked this class because it was funny, we played games sometimes, we saw a movie from the national geographic and at the end of the class we made a dissertation about something related to our career. On this dissertation I was soo nervous! I couldn't speak fluent, but anyway I had a good mark. This class was also very good for me because my english became better, when I was at the school I spoke english very well, but then I went to Germany and I lived there for 1 year, and I forgot everything!!. In my first months in Germany, I spoke english very well, because I didn't spoke german, so I had to speak with the germans in english. But then, when I learned a little bit of german, I mixed german with english, because there was some words that I didn't know in german, so I spoke "germanglish" for like 4 months... so then when I came back to Chile, and got into the university, when I had to speak in my english class, I always got confused.

Then this semester, I took the english pilot class. I loved this class! It was very light, funny, and with funny homeworks most of the times. I liked it because we had also this quizzes, but there was just like listening quiz, so I didn't have to study or do boring homeworks, just practicing. I think this class was very usefull, because it was more practicing, in comparison with the english pre-intermediate, so it was funnier and also better, because I think that a person learn better if he/she practices. Also I liked it, because in the class we just talked about something, with our teacher and with our classmates, and it was good for our english, and also for us, because there's always shy people, like me, and this is a very good oportunity to get better in this two ways. Also our teacher tried always to make it funny, once we made videos with funny songs and pictures and it was very great. Also once came a veterinarian from the USA I we could ask her about the career, that was very interesting.

Concluding I have now a better english, I don't get so confused with german anymore, and I speak just like I did it before going to Germany. I also learned a lot of new words, also vocabulary about related to our career. I know that if you don't want to forget a language, you must practice, so I think that I'll take the other classes that are left, because I don't want to forget my english again. And I will also practice with Patty, she speaks really good, if I wasn't her friend and if I didn't know her, I probably think that she is from the USA. And I will also see a lot of movies in english, that help very much! =)

Chanllenges in your discipline

I will write about the situation in Chile about our career. I think that regarding technology in Chile vets usually don't have enough equipment in their clinics. They just have the basic equipments for "simple" surgeries. And I think that the problem it's no that vets don't want to have more equipments or better clinics, I think that the problem it's that it will be not profitable for them to have such things because there's not many people in Chile that really cares about animal's health and people who has the money to pay for a good attention. And what I just said it's more a problem about social matters. Our society doesn't take seriously animal welfare, therefore they doesn't take seriously our job and our career. But... what can we do about that? first we have to change the way people think about animals, and then maybe they will give us the respect that we deserve.

I will give an example: a doctor ("human doctor") took his dog to the veterinarian. The dog was very depressed and one of the things that the vet did, was palpate to see if an organ was swollen. The doctor laughed for himself, he thought that this way of working was like working blindly, because the vet just could "guess" which could be the dog's problem... but what can we do about it? we should make everytime, like for humans, exams to be really sure about a pathology that our patients have, but if people doesn't care about animal's health, who will pay for such attention??. There are many people like this doctor that thinks that our career it's not important, and in Chile it's not very good recognized by the society. I'm sure that vets in Chile will do anything to help animals, but they also needs, like everyone, to make money, and the technology it's very expensive, so vets can't afford them, if they don't have a good salary, like in other countries.

Regarding education I think that's one of the biggest problem that were facing now in Chile. There are many universities that offers our career... I think there are like 30 universities, and 3 of them or maybe one more are not-private-universities, and the others are very very new private universities. And whats the problem? if there are so many vets graduating every year, there's many of them that can't find job, and also there's a lot of competition, because of the clients that you will have. In general in Chile, "rich people" cares more about animals, and they will always take their pets to the veterinarian, people with not-enough money and who really cares about animals, will think it twice. We need to decrease the amount of universities that we have at the moment, maybe the COLMEVET (colegio medico veterinario) could regulate that also with the government.

So, in my opinion, we have to promote "animal consciousness" in our country, decrease the amount of universities... therefore vets could have better salary and offer better attention with more technology, and our animals will be very grateful for that.

Cold and rain kills 600 endangered penguins

In a South African Island have perished around 600 African penguins because of a cold snap.

On this period of the year it is very usual the cold, but not the fact that there was also rain, so this combination was lethal for chicks. The age of chicks between 2 months and just a few weeks, makes them vulnerable to this conditions, because they are only covered with down feathers.

These penguins were just on this month declared endangeres species by the IUCN.

"Experts warned recently that whereas 150,000 pairs of African penguins were counted in 1956, by last year the total had plummeted to only 26,000 pairs - a loss of more than 80% in half a century.

With only 700 breeding pairs of African penguins on the island, the loss of more than half the population's chicks presents an added threat to their dwindling numbers"

I chose this new because I love penguins and also because I'm very worried about the environment, and this new it's about both things. And also it's important to me because it's in a few ways our fault, because of the contamination and all the global warming impact that it's affecting animals.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/16/penguins-die-south-africa-cold

Improving your faculty facilities

I think that our faculty needs a lot of improvements, like a new place where you can eat, or improve the cafeteria that we already have. We also need places where we can study, because our library it’s not enough for all of us. I think that these are the two things that I miss the most when I speak with another friends about our universities.

But I also would like some changes in the way of teaching in some subjects, like anatomy, I don’t like the way at all, but that’s something more subjective. I talked about anatomy with my cousin that studies medicine in our university, and in his faculty, the teachers use TVs with real videos, like presentations in english, that explains the same that the students are learning at the moment in the laboratory. There’s also a person that films all the class, and then gives to the students a copy from the video, so they can then study very easily for the test. And also they have material, in very good conditions, and for all the class… the class is also divided in groups and there are more than 3 teachers that explains the things on stablished tables and the littles groups must rotate, so they can see everything and don´t have to wait to the others groups that they finished and then keep going.

What I said about the cafeteria was because we have like just 2 menus, that you can choose in the day. So first: you don’t have many options… there always chicken and rice, or chiken and potatoes, or beans, or.. just that, all the week. Second: it’s not cheap at all, it cost a lot more than the menus in other universities… and for example the students with the sodexo tickets, cannot use them because the cafeteria that we have it’s not considered “casino” so… the prices are bigger and the students cannot buy with them real food. So.. we need a bigger cafeteria so then the goverment can considered it as “casino” and the maybe we also have more options on the menu.

And about the library, the computers are very very slow, but that’s not the main problem. The problem is that the students sometimes go there to study, but other go to do homeworks or study in groups, so they are talking all the time, and there’s not enough silence to study like it should be. So I think that we should have other place, where we can study at loud, and we can do homeworks and study in groups… that would be very nice.