Lecture
YU-Hung Kuo
that is why we can use mind maps to help us to take notes effectively.
Taiwan BA Culture Heritage Conservation 10 weeks PSEAD MA Product Design
I am pround that I attended this 10-week pre-sessional course,it not only prepared me for my main cours e,but also allowed me to experience UK life.
Target Introduce My name is Kuo Yu Hung, I am a student of product design. I did not achieve the IELTS’s score required for UCA, so, I had to join this course. But thinking about this course more, studying on the pre-sessional course not only improved my English skills, but also familiarized me with the educational environment in England. There are some parts of the course, which are different from studying in my country, especially, ‘lectures’.
Discuss
The important thing about lectures is that the lecturers can teach a lot of students in the same classroom, at the same time. In additional, different lecturers have different styles of delivery, for example, Mary-Lou, who was a lecturer on the course, talked about creativity. I think that the reason why she chose this kind of materials is that most of the students here belong to design areas and we need something to inspire our creative ideas. In order to ensure students participate and focus on the lecture, our tutors asked us to take notes by ‘mind mapping’, I think that some complicated words can be replaced by simple images,
I learned a lot from this course through a variety of different methods of learning, and I also believe that the things we learned can help us to our main course. I hope I can keep learning and be inspired with new ideas to add to my creativity. For me, I am in a new environment and I should experience it as well as possible.
Trip
Tokuda Kanako Japan BA Interior Design MA Design 5 weeks PSEAD
For example, in Brighton, I saw a lot of famous furniture in Brighton Museum!I was so pleased I shared each opinion with my friends through the trip!And I felt I could learn to English as well while discussing!
When I was at university, I learned many things that related to space, interior, and furnituredesign. And after finishing my BA, I decided I would like to study furniture design and installation design at MA level. So I chose to study ‘MA Design’.
Future
Anyway, I’m living in the UK. It means I can learn art and design because there are many chances to absorb knowledge and have new experiences and will influence my design work.In the future, I would like to work in the UK as designer. This course has been a great experience and opportunity for me.
Background My major is ‘Interior Design’! When I was at university, I learned many things that related to space, interior, and furniture design.And after finishing my BA, I decided I would like to study furniture design and installation design at MA level. So I chose to study ‘MA Design’.‘Trip to Brighton’ and ‘Trip to London’ were part of the PSEAD projects.The purpose of the trips to Brighton and London were to seek out things related to art and design especially related to our main courses. In these towns, there were many museum and shop related to my major.
‘Trip hammer’ by Richard Serra in Tate Modern
Classic furniture collection in Brighton museum It was quite exciting to see the sculptures in Tate Modern, London.The sculpture, ‘Trip hammer’, by Richard Serra was quite interesting for me, His work inspired me.I have seen this work on the Internet, But seeing it directly was much more attractive than just seeing some images.I hope it will be inspiration for me in the future.
Entrance hall in Tate Modern
Documentation
Tami Ishida Japan BA Glass 10 weeks PSEAD MA Glass
PSEAD course will be useful for my main course and my future career as an artist!
Discuss
In PSEAD 10 week course, I learnt a lot of skills that I need for my main course. The skills were not only academic skills such as writing or reading but also how to organize my imagination and ideas such as mind mapping, experiments and documentation. In my case, particularly experiments and documentation were very important skills that can organize and show my ideas and process of my work. I had experience as a freelance glass artist in my country, but I have lacked these skills. Therefore, these skills enabled me to show my ideas in the form of visual information. In many cases, showing information in this way is very effective as it can be understood easily and it is more interesting visually. Therefore, these skills will be useful for my main course, MA Glass, and my future career as an artist.
In addition, the London trip inspired me. I visited several markets in London to see contemporary crafts. In Spitalfields Market, I could see some crafts made by local people. The atmosphere of the marketplace was really lively and friendly, and crowded. In this place, people can communicate face-to-face and negotiate with artist about their work. Artist can also advertise directly to customer. In that case, documentation about the work would be useful to show the process and explain the idea. Therefore, I was really impressed with the energetic atmosphere in this market and the opportunity to communicate between people and artists.
Finally This summer, I leaned and experience a lot through this PSEAD course, and I believe that they will help me to improve in my future.
Mapping
Saki Yokota Japan BA Industrial Design 10 weeks PSEAD MA Product Design
To study here was a precious opportunity for me to learn about the education system and lifestyle in the UK. Making new friends pushes me further to learn English, because I want to communicate with them!
I learned ‘mapping’ in the first week of the 10 week Pre-sessional English and Design course. Mapping, or mind mapping, is a creative way to make ideas visible by writing key words on the paper. The importance of mapping is that it is not enumerations of short sentences. Mapping is applied to creative design processes too. Mind mapping is effective for product designers to solve the problems and to make decisions in working processes. I think it is important for designers to grasp their own opinions and positions. To draw a mind map makes my idea clear, and it leads me to the direction that I should go ahead through. In my experience, product designers have to grasp all necessary conditions of products when they start to design.
I felt improving my mapping skills profits me in my career as a product designer. When you explain something to other people, explanation by simple images and keywords is easier to understand than by mouth and long sentences. Mind map is an effective way to communicate my ideas to others. Moreover I found that there are beautiful maps like art works. I was impressed by them. I have not learned mapping skills to develop my ideas enough yet. But I am interested in mapping itself. My goal is not only developing skills to produce functional maps but also making beautiful maps.
Mapping of 30 years of my favorite things. During this course, I wrote mind maps five times to explore my interests about product design. I can choose key words, but I am not able to connect these words together through their relations. My map was still only putting keywords, and it needed to become more effective and creative. After I rewrote it again, I found that the map and my brain became clear and more specific. I think mapping is a useful tool to know my potential interests and where they can lead me.
Cinema
Meng Wang
China BA Accessory Design 10 weeks PSEAD MA Contemporary Jewellery Design
But during this course it helped create purpose to films and helped inspire ideas. For example, the films: ‘The Great Gatsby’ and ‘CoCo Chanel’ are different films but they introduced me to a certain era of fashion.
10 weeks pre-sessional course is very funny and interesting, and it very important in my future study.
Films can bring people colourful scenes, visual spectacle, real emotion and inspire ideas. Through films we can understand things like peoples lifestyle and clothing style. Music is also used to show different emotions. It was a very interesting and usefully part of the course. In the past, when I watched films in the cinema I did not ask questions and think about the context of the film or how it relates to my main course, I just appreciated the story and image and did not look deeply into theses things.
In the films women’s style of dress changed from formal and proper to free and spirited. The actresses in the films wore cloche hats, art deco jewellery, beaded headbands, had bobbed hair, and held long stem cigarette holder. Their fashion style represented their social status. The transitional shoes become freer with low-heeled shoes. It is interesting that the bob cut and the cloche hat, are still very popular in contemporary fashion, this made me consider how design and social life are connected due to film.
From this course, I discovered that the flapper style challenged and redefined women’s roles and was an important turning point in history. I know some students did not like this film and thought it was very boring and slept in the cinema. However I enjoyed the films and felt that through the films’ music and picture, you could feel emotions, like danger, happiness and sadness, and it inspired my idea of design. At last, I want to say that I enjoyed the films, and you will find more fun things to do in the cinema!
Sketchbook
Yu-Wen Chen Taiwan BA Product Design 10 weeks PSEAD MA Product Design
'Sketchbook changed my life', I started to use my hand to record my life.
While studying on the ten week Presessional English for Art and Design course, l learned many things. l am going to talk about one of the key points that affected my vision, awareness and visual impression.
The most interesting part of the course was the sketchbook; this was used for creative expression. During classes, lectures and trips everyone was using their sketchbooks, we were sketching, sticking photos and making mind maps. Most of the pages in my sketchbook do not have any words on them. This is a very new experience to me, before l used to use the sketchbook for my main course in university; l had never used the sketchbook like now for every day life.
“Sketchbook changed my life� I started to use my hand to record my life, it has helped me see things l did not notice before. Now I can use this to look at people's work. Before I looked at things using my eyes, I did not think what the designer and artist want to produce. It is interesting to notice that when I photograph and draw the same thing the sketch and photo show different feelings to people. On the other hand, in the begging when I started to draw in the sketchbook I thought it was a waste of time.
Nowadays, mobile phones are very convenient; you can use them to take photos without any other tool. But, I found the problem was, you see something beautiful, so you take a photo, but a few days later when you see the photo again the feelings you felt at the time have been lost. A photo will not retain the feelings in the same way as a hand sketch.
Presentation
Ling Bao China BA Art Design 10 weeks PSEAD MA Ceramic Arts
The PSEAD not only improved our English language skills, but also helped us prepare in every way for our main courses.
Discuss Background Before I came to UCA, I choose to take part in the 10 week Pre-Sessional English language course. At the time, I just wanted to use these ten weeks to improve my ability to live and study better in the UK. When I took the course I found it was different to what I expected. At first, Teachers taught us different methods of learning, and we had a varied programme, such as trips, group discussions, use of sketchbooks, drawing mind-maps, presentations, tutorials, lectures etc. Through these we found ways to improve our English language and learning skills.
From the different things we did on the course I liked presentations the most. We had five minutes for each of our presentations to share our experiences. We spoke about what we felt was interesting during our journeys and at the end of the presentation the group asked questions. At last, each group chose a student to present in front of all the other groups. It not only improved our spoken English ability but also improved our power of expression, many students in the beginning were unable to present and read directly from their notebooks, but after a lot of practice they began to improve their speaking skills. I think this is very useful for us in the future.
Future I believe in the future I will still use the experience from this course to help me learn. I hope after the ten weeks, we can look forward to our main courses. I like pottery, so I hope I can use the knowledge that I learned in UCA to enhance my design of ceramics. I also hope the one year I will spend in UCA is unforgettable.
TED Talk
Zhan Shiyu
China BA Process and Identification of Jewelry 10 weeks PSEAD MA Contemporary Jewellery Design
Listening skills are the most essential part of what I learnt from TED.
Background I received my bachelor degree after my graduation in June 2013. In the past 4 years I spent most of my time studying jewellery design. And worked as a designer from 2012 to 2013.
TED Lectures Showed me a different learning system. ‘I'm not a smart man, but I work hard’, It has given me a new insight and I know more about different cultures, Practiced my listening skills: the TED Talks are available so you can listen a few times or whenever you want. I will study my main course in Rochester. In Farnham, I experienced many things from this short program about the UK lifestyle and education. The most meaningful aspect of the pre-sessional English course is independent learning, which is a method and philosophy of education that a student acquires knowledge by his or her own efforts and develops the ability for inquiry and critical evaluation. This approach also gave me the opportunity to collect information by researching. I have improved my research and time management skills. And we had study time for group discussion, so I have learned not only how to learn independently, but also learned how to complete a task with peers.
Finally I am very happy to have studied on the pre-sessional English course. Thank you to all the teachers and students.
Reflective Writing
Mengyan Chen China BA Industrial Design 5 weeks PSEAD MA Product Design
How wonderful the PSEAD course was! New life , new friends,useful classes and exciting trips. Everyday here is challenging and creatung fun.
Introduce
In essence, the PSEAD is an English course, so it was inevitable that we had writing work such as essays and reflective writing. Because whether we can successfully finish our college course depends on it. Because I come from a country that has a totally different education system, I knew nothing about how to write an essay or reflective writing relate to my subject. Thankfully, PSEAD offered me an opportunity to improve my writing.
Discuss
Through exercises, I realized writing helps me to think deeper and organize my thoughts logically. For example, in the second week,
it said that I hadn’t written a comparative essay and that my essay was descriptive. After a discussion with my tutor, I rethought my essay and tried to figure out what had made me go wrong. Then I came up with the answer that I didn’t clarify what I wanted to argue about and how to write it down in a logical way. To be honest, that had been taught in the class, but I didn’t write notes in details. As a result, I learnt that part of academic writing the hard way. Moreover, I was too lazy. I started to write my essay in the last few days. Therefore, I was not able to think deeper and write carefully. That experience taught me that I should put down some key notes in order, to remind myself what I am going to write before I start to write. Although my essay was not very good, I have learnt to think more logical. I feel like information and thoughts in my head are no longer in chaos and have been organized through careful thought.
Target
As what I have mentioned above, PSEAD course not only improved our writing skills, but also improved our information management skills. Though I really don’t like writing, I am happy with what I have achieved in the course. In the near future, I will be careful about clarifying my main topic and organizing every paragraph logically in my writing. Hopefully, I can develop my thought in a more creative way and get a good mark in writing.
Essay
Yuqing Zhang
I wrote an essay comparing 3 chairs in several aspects, however, in my tutor’s feedback, In a word, bibliography is a quite an important part of essays, thought it is difficult for me.
China 5 weeks PSEAD BA Jewellery Design
‘Essay’ means we need to write our ideas objectively and analyse the advantages and disadvantages in 3rd person.
Summary
Bibliography I have learnt about how to write a bibliography in Harvard style. This is a special, and useful, list at the back of our essay. It was the first time for me to use it and it caused me a lot of trouble when I was writing. I always needed to record the webpage and the books’ pages and this interrupted my train of thought. However, I learnt that by using this it would show other people where my proof came from. Essays need to be written objectively and make judgements about the advantages and disadvantage of something. Therefore, the more references I use, the more it helps me to prove my ideas so that others believe my arguments.
Quotations Besides referencing, I needed to use quotations to analyse the advantages and disadvantages objectively in essay writing. It was a little difficult for me, because of my unclear key points and caused my essay to be confusing. When I used quotations, I needed to write ‘……’, which meant I borrowed arguments from books, websites, articles, etc.. However, in my view, all of these arguments should link with your opinion.
Essays are one of the most important parts in education. Apart from using referencing, to produce a great essay we need to plan first, this will help us decide the areas we want to research. After that, we must check our typing, structure and grammar carefully for mistakes. It would be silly to lose marks on these things!
Idea Sketch
Taisei Mishima Japan BA Environment Science 5 weeks PSEAD BA Product Design
Discuss I have learnt a lot of things in the PSEAD course, in particular, this course taught me how to use a sketchbook. This skill will help me learn product design efficiently in UCA because it is the most basic and essential skill for product designer. There are two main reasons why it is important.
"I think that the PSEAD course is one of the greatest courses in the UK."
Target In the future, I would like to design products which people use for a long time, 50 years or 100 years. Moreover, I want to solve various problems with the power of design Finally, I will take over my father’s job which is the maker of baby goods. This is because I respect his job and want to design a wide range of products including baby goods.
Introduce My name is Taisei Mishima, and I will be progressing on to product design in UCA. Actually, I have wanted to study making products since I was a child. In particular, I am interested in sustainable design and biomimetic which imitates animal forms or functions. That is why I studied Environmental Science in Canada before I came to the UK. After I left the university in Canada, I worked as a Japanese maker in order to get experience and earn money to study abroad.
Firstly, every product is based on drawing in the sketchbook. In other words, initial ideas of product design are produced from the sketchbook. Secondly, I can develop these ideas by using a sketchbook. For example, first of all, I research products and draw prototypes in the sketchbook, and then analyse them. After that, I modify the part that does not work or need improvement. Through the sketchbook, I can do this process smoothly.