Essay about working with SLAM

Hey guys,

today you'll get to read an essay which we had to write about several question e.g. which skills we did improve while reading "Slam" or which skills still need improvement.


The novel "Slam" written by Nick Hornby has been the first book I read in English. At the beginning I've been very sceptical of reading this book and about creating a blog while reading. I thought about not being able to understand the book. I didn't know how big my vocabulary actually was and how I would get along with the book. Many people said that it isn't fun reading an English book and having to translate every second word. I was a bit worried that this would be my case.
Now I know that I shouldn't have been so sceptical because it's been really cool! The book is written in a way that is really good to understand for non-native speakers. I've always been curious how the story would go on and what would happen next! I liked writing my blog entries more and more. It's also something I've never done before, but I'm at a point where I even think about creating a blog related to another topic.
I think the last weeks working with the novel helped me in many ways. At first there's my vocabulary. I'm sure that with every book or text I'm reading, I can improve it because there are always words I don't know which enrich my vocabulary. Reading the first chapters of "Slam" there have been sentences I didn't understand right away and I had to read them twice or three times to get it. I just wasn't used to read in English. It's the same with writing. Of course we write texts or letters in our English lessons, but for me it's been something different writing these blog entries. At the end of the novel I've been able to read and write faster and there were less things I didn't understand. We analyzed a lot and the more often I did it the better and easier it was for me. The first analysis of Sam has been pretty difficult for me and it was hard finding the right adjectives to describe him, but I improved my skills on that now! I don't think that I'm perfect in reading and writing now and I think everything still needs improvement, but for now I'm "proud" of the improvement I did while reading the novel!

I don't think there's much you could improve on analyzing "Slam". Every topic we disgussed has been related to the story. Maybe we could have talked about parent's reactions to pregnancy announcements in general. I would be interested in the fact whether parents usually react like Annie or rather like Robert. All in all creating a blog has been a cool variety, even if it's been muuuch more work than preparing for a class test, but I can definitly recommend this kind of work!

You'll hear from me soon!

Maike