An Introspection of My First Term I'm a master student studying in the UK and now it's about the end of my first term. This is the first time that I have been exposed to a complete English learning environment and it really took a while for me to get accustomed to a different teaching mode from that of my undergraduate. Although I have attended my courses for 2 months I still felt struggling when listening to the class. I think the learning outcome of my first term is definitely not satisfactory and the reason would be the slow speed of my typing, the lack of good note-taking skill and bad time management to finish all the reading before the lectures and so on. But all these factors can be summarised as poor English. I have paid too much attention to figure out what the professors and articles were talking about so I couldn't at the same time manage to take good notes and reflect on the structure and content of the essays, not to mention combining the reading well to what the professors delivered in class. Sometimes I was able to know every single word of the professors and the articles but I couldn't grab a good understanding of a long narrative or 50-page long articles as a whole. It's fairly disappointing but I have to admit it. Actually I have taken some measures to make sure I'm not fall behind too far, such as recording the lecture (with the professor's permission) and typing the recording at home and taking notes of every page of the articles and looking back again and again to form an overview. Although these methods are fairly useful by doing which I think I've got progressed, they are really time-consuming that I couldn't finish all the recordings and reading under a rather dense course timetable. Moreover, these measures are so dull and exhausting that make me feel like being drown in the river even if I tried to be self-disciplined to do them. I'm really upset by the gap between me and my classmates but I should catch up with them however enormous the effort I need to make and however harsh the way I need to go. I hope at the end of this one-year programme I can at least get a merit in every module I selected.

What's the meaning of the requirement? I'm currently looking for a foreign homestay, the profile of my ideal host says that" Ideally seeking couples, at least one guy would be great." Does this mean if we are not couple, at least one of us would be a male? And if we are two girls (friends), we are not welcomed to send an enquiry?

Please help me check this translation. Either Client or Hellen may cancel this agreement within 48 hours of written notice. 고객 또는 Hellen 는 서면 통지로부터 48 시간 이내에 본 계약를 취소할 수 있다. Did I do the right korean translation? Looking forward to your advice!

My friends and I tried translating a slogan in a bank. We thought the original English translation was weird, so we tried translating individually. Please help check our translations and mark it ( Provised 10 is perfect and you were the bank's manager). Perhaps it would be confusing without knowing the Chinese meaning, but I think you can get the overall meaning by the following translations. The original English translation in the bank: Through non this bank formal channels for purchase ono this bank allow sales of financial products caused by the risk shall be borne by the customer. Mark: The client should assume the risk by yourself from buying financial products which are not permitted by this bank through unofficial way. Helen: Potential risks are attributable to clients themselves who buy unauthorised financial products through channels not approved by our bank. Chloe: The client who purchases financial products which are not permitted selling by this bank from informal channels should bear all the consequences.

Please help me check out the grammar of this sentence "It is not necessarily these small languages that are about to disappear." This is a sentence on my textbook published by British Council. I think there is something wrong with the grammar of it. I suppose the right form would be " It is not necessary that these small languages are about to disappear." or " It is not necessarily these small languages are about to disappear." Is my opinion right?

Some confusions about "take photos“ Do you like taking photos? If somebody asks me this question, he/she wants to know:1 whether I like taking photos of others 2 whether I like taking photos of myself 3 whether I like others photographing me Which meaning is correct? Or which meanings this questions includes? Can "I like taking photos" be replaced by "I'm interested in photography?' "Do you prefer to take photos yourself or to have other people take photos?" There's no "of" before "yourself", what's the difference? Is ”I like to have other people take photos" equal to meaning 3?

My memory about communicating with a foreigner. I would like to talk about the first time I used English as a tool for communication. I have studied English for many years, but I always regard it as a compulsory subject in school curriculum, seldom do I talk with others in English. When I was in junior three, I talked with an American which changed my opinion about English. That was the day I went to visit my sister, and surprised to find there was a amazing girl with blue eyes and blonde hair in my sister's house. Her name is June, and she was homestaying in my sister's family. She said "nice to meet you" to me, and I automatically responded "nice to meet you, too." coz it's the dialogue on my textbook. But in our following conversation, I felt a spasm of awkward. I couldn't express myself fluently and precisely. God, I never chatted with a real native before! It's hard for me to adapt to her accent in the first place, which was quite different from the radio type recording in the English exercise books. Second, I worked myself hard to recall what I had learnt about the language and it's quite a time for me to organise sentences with right vocabularies and grammar. And what's worse, I forgot the prononciations of several words I knew. June found my embarrassment and she smiled friendly to me. I felt her encouragement and I tried to speak confidently although with my poor spoken English. I cannot remember what we talked about, but I clearly remember how I felt about this experience. I always got high grades in English tests before. I never realized my level of English speaking coz it's not examined. I always adored people who can fluently chat with foreigners, but I never took a step to make myself become that kind of people. I started ro recognize that the essence of English is a kind of language, used by people to communicate. This experience really imposes a profound impact on me.

Can belong be used as passive voice? When I read an original English version novel.I noticed a sentence:The room was familiar; it had been belonged to me since I was born.(Why belong can be used as passive voice?)

I'm a new user of italki and this is my first notebook. The concept of equal rights regardless of vocation,race and sex has long been advocated and valued. There are some people proposes that universities should enroll equivalent proportions of male and female students on all degree courses, which I think, is completely inapplicable. This proposal is meant to close the gender gap in terms of accessibility to university places. Despite its good ends, a draconian and rigid imposition of a 50/50 balance in selection procedure based on gender is likely to undermine but benefit gender equality. For example,a certain number of university subjects which are traditionally dominated by males,such as engineering and computer science,would be barred to a competitive male applicant since a certain number of class allotments were reserved for female students. This would therefore result in unfair competition among candidates in both sexes,which reflects gender inequality in essence. In addition,this proposal is simply unrealistic to enforce in practice.Due to the instinctive traits of each gender,some university courses tend to enjoy greater popularity among one gender than the other. For instance,those liberal art specialties(e.g.literature)would attract more female students,in this case, applications from the opposite sex would be relatively inadequate. Therefore,universities would have a limited range of choice in male applicants and find it difficult to fill those couses with equal proportions. In my opinion, The turely feasible way to ensure that men and women have equal educational opportunities towards admission to university may lies in basing the selection of college students on qualifications such as academic performance and grades achieved at school. In conclusion,having the same number of men and women on all degree couses is unfair and impractical. And what univesities are supposed to do is to concentrate on qualifications when selecting applicants.