In this page, I will describe activities that we do during our English lessons in M1 Physics in Grenoble.

The first lesson was on the 14th of January 2008. It wasn’t a real lesson because our teacher was ill and she left us on computers. We had to do some exercises on a specific software in order to work on specific topics. In particular, three topics were suggested: Reading, Writing and Vocabulary. During this session, I worked on the topic which is named Reading. It teaches us how to sum up quickly a text, and how to pick out key words thanks to a fast reading. These exercises help us to make topic sentences and to understand a text more easily.

The second lesson was on the 21st on January 2008. At the beginning of this lesson, we were divided into groups. Each group had to choose a subject of discussion, to take a poll and to make statistics. There were four groups and so four discussion subjects.

• The first subject was the practice of sport among students. This study showed that many students do sport, and moreover many different sports were mentionned, like football, tennis, climbing, swimming, basket ball, ski, rugby, judo, badminton… Also a lot of us watch sport on T.V., but only a few of us have ever been to see a match or a competition. It brought to light that the things and feelings that students enjoy in sport are plentiful. Among many others, we could saw respect, fairplay, fighting and team spirit…
• The second subject dealt with addictions, in particular about smoking and drinking alcohol. In our English lesson group, the two ratios were nearly the same, but the values which were similar were the number of non-smokers and the number of students who have already drink alcohol… To conclude, they said that all the students who were here agree with the new legislation about no smoking in public place.
• The third subject was about movies. The number of students who go to cinema was higher than the number of students who stay at home or rent a DVD. But the last movie which was been seen, was seen nearly in the same ratio at the cinema and at home, and within a short time, like one or two months. Finally, they talked about the kinds of movie that students see. And there was a wide range of types of movies, like Science Fiction, Thriller, Action, Comedy.
• The fourth and last subject, which was mine, was on the different ways that students had taken to do their studies and to become what they want. In majority, it was obsious for students to choose physics because they wanted to understand the world, they still want it of course. Afterwards, we interested in the reasons why they came in Grenoble. There were three mains reasons : the most logical was some of us ever lived in or near this city, the second, understandable too, was that Grenoble has a great University with a good quality of teaching, and the last reason was the proximity of moutains… But in first approximation we could think it is incompatible with a good work at University… There is a little paradox!   Futhermore, we learnt that some students have already been in an other country to study but they weren’t the majority. In the last part of our poll, we saw that there are nearly as many students as projects of future studies and curriculum.

During the same week of this lesson, I have been on the computers in the English lab, to do the second part we have to do. I chose the topic named Writing. The purpose of this section was to learn how to organize and write an essay. The keynote was the scientific studies on animals to develop medicines. There was an overview in this section of the essential steps of an essay writing: analysing the title, deciding on a structure, planning the essay, separating main points and supporting points, and linking ideas. Thanks to these steps, it’s easier to write a constructed essay. It trains us to write essays according to different points of vue, once for a cause, and once against. To succeed in these exercises, we have to use link words to link things in time or in pecking order and importance. With all these advice, we can write an essay with method and efficiency.

The third lesson was on the 28th of January 2008. This lesson consisted in watching a documentary on the life of a great physicist named Feynman. We had to take notes about this report previewing. This report was very interesting and although I didn’t understood all the sentences in this documentary, and even though I didn’t know very well this man, I realized the main steps in Feynman’s career. There was a lot of information in this documentary, as much about his man’s life, as about his Physicist’s life. I enjoyed watching this documentary, because I have been able to work my oral comprehension, and futhermore it dealt with a topic in relation with my studies. The movie ended, we made groups to compare our main points and notes. After that, the teacher asked question about this, and I have been able to see that I had understood the main points correctly and that my comprehension wasn’t so bad, even if sometimes I thought I was confused…To finish the lesson, we did some exercises about idioms and collocations thanks to synonyms and expressions given.

The fourth lesson was on the 4th of February 2008. It was at the beginning of this lesson that our teacher submit us to change the courselog initially planned to this blog. We tried to activate our own blog and began to understand how this website works.

The fifth lesson was on the 11th of February 2008. During this lesson, we saw a web conference about RSS which is considered as a tool for lifelong learning, or a classroom communications tool. It was said it offers more content, more control, and also in less time. Many traditionnal media have created RSS feeds, and most weblogs have built in RSS feeds. The conclusion of the conference is that RSS is a quick start guide for educators. To finish the lesson, some students continued to train managing their blog with the teacher, and the other part, like me, saw the end of the report about Mr Feynman which was still very interesting.

We didn’t have an English lesson on the 18th of February 2008 because it was holidays!!

The sixth lesson was on the 25th of February 2008. Once again, we made groups at the beginning of the lesson. The teacher gave out us some articles, which were different for each group. We had to read the article to make a summary and a short oral presentation to the other students. There were four articles.

• The first article was about maving parts in Ultra High Vacuum, which are experimented in a vacuum chamber, and required an open position. To develop it, researchers consider some parameters, electronics and space. They were for example the use of motors.
• The second article dealt with thin films and their qualities and vacuum. The aim of this research is to avoid deposition of impurities on these films. To succeed in doing it, Science needs an accurate control of pressure because the parameters that they have to control and modify depend on the pressure, like the size of the material or the speed.
• The third article was about the medical application of the new process of the production and deposition of nanoparticules. It work thanks to vacuums too. The new things are the control of density, porosity and adhesion of coating. This process don’t generate heat at the substrate. This process is developed in order to be applied in Medicine, for example in cleaning of medical instruments, coating of medical implants, and the development of nanoparticules used such as makers. They conclued saying this process embodies the future of Medicine.
• The fourth and last article, which was mine, dealt with the versatile polymers. There are several kind of polymer films with a high number of applications. They have known a great growth in popularity in people spirit. They are made thanks to a process named R2R (roll-to-roll) which consist in roll up thin sheets of polymer by coating, patterning and embossing. The main applications are in the solar cell technology thanks to the growth of interest for this new energy, the fabrication of oxygen and moisture barrier, and also the fabrication of flexible displays which could replace paper. Polymers are hugely versatile and we will have to appreciate the range of options that they offer, because these possibilities are still unknown.

The seventh lesson was on the 3rd of March 2008. We began this lesson by guessing agreement between sentences given on a paper, and definition given verbally by the teacher. The sentences looked like common expressions, feelings or behaviour, such as happy, nervous, to make a mistake or revel accidentaly a secret. After this exercise, we talked about the difference between a magazine and a journal. The first is written by journalists through articles, to be read by the general public, that is to say by ‘the man in the street’.Whereas a journal is writen by scientists. They publish or submit papers to be read by specialists. Afterwards, we did exercises about the order of typical elements included in an abstract. The teacher gave us out some abstracts and papers, and we had to locate in them different defined parts. These parts were background information, the principal activity or the purpose of the study and its scope, information about the methodology used in the study, and a statement of conclusion or recommendation. To finish the lesson, we had a discussion about the status and the progress of our blogs…

During the same week of this lesson, I have been on the computers in the English lab, to do the last part we have to do. The topic of the exercises was named Vocabulary. These exercises help us to guess unknown words in a text, thanks to different methods. The first method was to use the context and the remainder words of the sentences or further in the text. The second method was to ignore unknown words and to see if we understand well the meaning of a text. Afterwards, it gave reflections about how to use a dictionnary. The questions were Which dictionnary? When? Which size? It opposed for example a bilingual and a monolingual dictionnary. The first helps us more efficiently to find simply words but we won’t progress quickly, and the second helps us to work harder to understand the meaning of words but it’s probably inadequate to a progressive learning. It opposed too a learner’s and a native’s dictionnary, also a big and a small, new and old, and to use it often or sometimes. In other words, it helps us to choose the best way to look for unknown words thanks to the good utilisation of the adequate dictionnary. Then, we did an exercise consisted in learning words in families like conclude, conclusion, conclusive… It’s a good method to make the difference between them, and at the same time, we learn quickly many different words. To close this session, it gave us some advice in order to learn new words, such as a summary of exercises we did, like to have a vocab notebook learning words actively, to record new vocabulary in the way that best helps us learn it, to target number of words to learn everyday, to learn words in families, to be aware of what ‘knowing’ a word means (for a given word, to decide whether we need to know, spelling, meaning, pronouciation, alternative meaning), and reading extensively and actively in English.

The eighth lesson was on the 10th of March 2008. The first exercise consisted in taking notes from a text about carbon dioxide and technologies to recycle this. The notes had to be arranged in boxes linked by arrows. The aim was to organize our notes simply and quickly. The text was about a new reactor that could rearrange carbon dioxide and water in order to synthesise liquid hydrocarbon fuels such as methanol or petrol. However, we read too that there was a competition between different technologies to tackle to earth warming, like to bury CO2, chemists catalytics approach, electrolytic splitting and the creation of renewable energy in the LARE (Los Alamos Renewable Energy). The best thermodynamics and kinetics’ are showed by the CR5 (Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator), but an other process is studied by researchers, the S2P (Sunshine to Petrol) from which device’s chemical reactions are efficient enough to make it a worthwhile way of producing liquid fuels from CO2. After that, we had a little discussion with an other about global warming and pollution. Finally, we talked each other about native English and non-English. We could go out earlier because we had to come back on the next day to see posters which were made by other students.

So the next day, the other students had to present their posters and explain it to everyone who came to ask them questions about it. In order to motivate the students and give them energy and vitamins, there were biscuits and fruit juices. There were a lot of posters, and the majority of them were very interesting about a wide range of subjects. I can’t bring back all of them, but I will tell you about some of them. One poster was about movie projector. Thanks to a little demo, the different part of the mecanism, like optics, mecanics… were very simply to understand. An other one was about gamma rays burnst. The Physics of this poster was very specific and so used specific vocabulary which not easy to understand quickly, but this astrophysics theme was very interesting. As I said before, I would be so long if I give details about all of them, but many subjects were adressed. These subjects were sometimes as interesting as improbable like how recognize roe eggs and addled eggs. We saw as well posters about the diatonic harmonica, the photovoltaics mecanism, how to make polymers and their application, the study of the vibration of an acoustic membrane, the transport of nano-particules by fluids, the scan tunneling microscopy, clonning, borealis auroras, cars drived by satellites, tactile displays, the acoustic perception, the greenhouse effect, and I have forgotten some of them! So we learnt a lot of things and we practised English at the same time.