[Review] 4 Weeks of IELTS Study at Gangnam, while the coronavirus is spreading.
Until last Friday I have been to an IELTS course located in Gangnam station for 4 weeks. Every weekday, I trained Reading, Listening, Writing and Speaking sections with Mock-Test. Around the second week, my company switched its form of work to remote-work. At that time, my parents advised me to quit the course for a while. However, I have continued it. Despite working from home, I went to study every evening, which was pretty scary, but It was fabulous.
Still, there were several concerns I had. ‘Is it okay for me to stroll the street and take the metros? What if I get the virus because accidentally I scratch my face with my nails or because I forget to put disinfection on my overcoat?’ Moreover, nearly 2 weeks the lectures had opened only for me since all the other students stopped coming to study.
Thanks for that, the benefit of exclusive classes was all mine. The empty space in the classroom scared me though. Besides that, I would like to point out certain merits.
1. Mental therapeutical effect
It might sound a bit weird to you, but unquestionably I loved going to the institute. In particular, in the first remote-work week, I was depressed because I couldn’t meet my team members, and I was so frightened whenever I read articles about the coronavirus. However, all the fear was gone after meeting people and communicating face to face. I was truly happy when I talked to the teacher even though I was just middle of the mock-test which is supposed to be stressful. ‘Great! Finally, I speak today!’ If I hadn’t been to an academy, I would have been blue all the time.
2. Training for logical speaking
We should be logical for the Speaking and Writing test. It must be needed to listen carefully, speak fluently, read precisely, and write logically. I had to keep in mind how to describe the sentence and paragraph reasonably. Still, Answering quickly to the unpredictable questions was difficult. In spite of that, I could figure out what is my limitation in overall my communication, not only regarding speaking in English but Korean. The lectures trained me to deliver my opinion clearly without getting off track.
On the last day, the teacher told me that I had been better at speaking than the first time. The teacher also mentioned I had the ability to use what I had learned right away.
As I attended an English class, it was good to be motivated to learn various things such as how to tell statistics, complicated sentence structures, and so on. As a UX designer, I want to speak English well so I can cross the border when listening to users. I want to have basic communication skills. The private academy is over, but I hope that I will continue my daily study tension in the future. (And, writing this is one of the tries)
Now I’m going to spend a month looking at detail that I haven’t mastered and making them mine. This was the first time I have had fun studying English. I hope it’s will be fun continuously!
