The course reflection

            My master’s study at Nazarbayev University developed me both personally and professionally. Academic courses and non-academic gatherings encouraged a lot to think critically and globally. In terms of academic improvement, I would highlight the priceless effort of the courses “English for Professional Purposes” and “English for research.” Especially, in the course “English for research” I learned to organize my writing concise and clear, trained to do successful interviews and for the first time experienced blog writing.

            The main part of this course I liked most is interactive teaching strategies of the instructor. Critical and practical approach in teaching methods helped me to understand course materials. For instance, when we practiced transition and organization issues, paraphrasing, wordiness, cohesion or clarity in pairs and group, all these were then analyzed through discussions and explanations. All the materials corresponded to the course themes and were appropriately used in all classes.

            Secondly, I practiced to conduct successful interviews and experienced the role of being an interviewee. As I had to interview school students, I understood how piloting is important in my study. Generally speaking, dealing with interviews was beneficial both for me and my partner.

Another experience that we had in this semester was blogging. Each student perceived this experiment differently. Personally, I was neutral to writing blogs because of several reasons. The first challenge that it was time consuming. As we have only one year to study, it would be better for me to concentrate on academic writing strategies. For example, this semester we were in the process of writing main parts of our thesis such as literature review, methodology or data analysis. For this reason, I would prefer writing formal assignments related and aligned with thesis work. It seems to me that blog writing is more convenient for two-year programme students or Multilingual education students. On the whole, blog writing is an exciting experiment when there is enough time.

All in all, I want to express my pure gratitude to my instructor of this course. Although I was not that active in your class, I learned a lot from your courses. I dare say that the courses as “English for Professional Purposes” and “English for research” must be continuously taught for master students.