How Did I Set My Goals?

Since In the beginning of this semester I set my goals and worked as hard as I could to achieve them. As I wrote in the "learner profile" in the first week of the semester that my aim is to reach an advanced level of being able to write a good scientific papers, criticize them, in addition to being a good presenter. Thanks to the activities the we have been through, from the academic content units to the seminars and the guided independent study I estimate that I reached a reasonable level of what I was planned to reach. In the following paragraphs, each component of the course would be discussed to show what each one of them add to me and where the deficiencies were.
In the academic content units, which refer mainly to the book "Thinking …show more content…
We started our term searching about the our future academic and professional interests. I wrote about the academic department that I was going to apply for, and I confess that I was not pleased with the task at that time and I felt like if it was kind of wasting of time. Nevertheless, it was a good chance to practice writing about an academic department, which was something that I have never done before. In the second seminar, our task was to present an academic concept. Presentation was one of the main skills that I mentioned in my goals in the beginning of the semester, and from looking at the two presentations that I did I found that have some improvement especially in term of the pauses and fillers. Also I felt that I was more confident in the last presentation than the first one, which resulted in less nervousness and better fluency however, fluency is still weakness in my speeches. In the third seminar, we have been taught a new skill, which is writing bibliography. This skill has exposed us to differentiate between the various types of articles and read them critically. Such an important skill has to be understood from any student who is looking for higher education. Since I am from those kind of students, I think that it was one of the best activities that we have …show more content…
I am not really sure whether I am completely ready or not, however I think as long as listen effectively and speak meaningfully, in addition to be able to read academic texts and analyze and draw a conclusion then write what I conclude then I am ready. I believe that I am now have a good mastering in those skills especially in my field. Also form the English standardized tests, I guess most of the universities decided the minimum requirement depending on studies and long experience of teaching non natives. That make me optimist even if I feel some weakness in some areas. I still have some difficulty with speaking, I feel like that I need to prepare my response before saying it, otherwise my answer would have some grammatical mistakes. In listening, I feel that I am now able to engage myself to academic meetings with a high comprehension. However, I still have a challenge of taking notes and arranging them. Over all, my speaking and listening now got improved, but they need to be practiced to preserve the level that I reached and to continue improving those two skills. In other hand, reading and writing also have been improved but the challenge that I still have is the time, and this more obvious in writing. Despite of that, my typing speed in computer has a significant increase. When I look at my research