History of photography- narrative text

My little history of photography- original version While I am hanging on the wall, the museum guide enters the hall with the fifth visitors’ group this day and begins to tell the history of photography. I always find it funny to listen to him because it should actually be me, the Daguerreotype of Louis Daguerre himself, telling it as I am a witness of the complete development. If I had to narrate the history, I would begin with my creation in 1844 when Louis Daguerre developed an effective method of photography. What the museum guide never often forgets to mention, but I consider as important,is the fact that creating pictures like me used to be an extremely difficult process.  When my fellow images and I were brought into being, we had to go through an extremely long exposure of iodized silver plates to light. The end products were unique and very expensive. However, our invention paved the way for a rapid development. While I am thinking back of the good old days of my creation and the following success of the tiny little pictures called miniatures in the 1840s, the museum guide carries on telling the visitors’ group about early photography. In those days, people did not dare to look back at the camera because they were afraid that the images of themselves could look back at them. The tourist group and the guide then move on to a wall where there are numerous pictures hanging on it. He points at the first one and explains that these kind of pictures, namely retouched negatives, were seen as the “revenge for art” because the aim had been to create more beautiful pictures. “In the following years”, narrates the tourist guide, ”early photography went through several developments, such as the period of studio photography, were pictures with absurd props in their background were taken or the introduction of the mezzoprint process, where pictures were reproduced.” He forgets to add that through this new technique the prestige or the “halo”, a circle of light on the picture created through the long exposure time, disappeared. After 1880, photographers tried to recreate this unique effect through faster lenses by suppressing darkness but they were not successful. The museum guide then says that several years later the photographer Eugène Atget started focusing on inconsiderable objects and set the basis for Surrealism. Thereafter, he and the visitors leave the hall and I wonder, as always, why he never mentions the most important fact that photography has been and will always remain a close connection of science and art.

[424 words]

Brief summary of peer feedback

According to my fellow students the content of my text was good because I included many historical facts of the history of photography but the text itself was too long. They advised me to shorten it down. Apart from that, I had made several expression and grammatical mistakes and some sentences were too long. My fellow students recommended rewriting all of this. In general, they liked my text and could also identify most of the elements of story grammar in it.

My little history of photography- final version

While I am hanging on the wall, the museum guide enters the hall with the fifth visitors’ group today and begins to tell the history of photography. I always find it funny to listen to him because it should actually be me, the Daguerreotype of Louis Daguerre himself, telling it as I am a witness of the early days of photography. If I had to narrate the history, I would start with my creation in 1844 when Louis Daguerre developed an effective method of photography. What the museum guide never mentions is the fact that creating pictures like me used to be an extremely difficult process.  When I was brought into being, I had to go through an extremely long exposure of iodized silver plates to light. As end product, I was very expensive. Also, my invention paved the way for a rapid development. While I am thinking back to the time after my creation and the success of the tiny little pictures called miniatures, the museum guide carries on telling about early photography. People did not dare to look at the camera at that time, fearing that the images of themselves could stare back at them. The tourist group and the guide then move on to a wall were numerous pictures are exhibited. He points at the first one, which is a retouched negative, and explains that these kind of pictures were seen as the “revenge for art” because the aim had been to create more beautiful pictures. “In the following years”, narrates the tourist guide, ”early photography developed to studio photography, were pictures with absurd props in the background were taken. Then the introduction of the mezzotint process, which enabled the reproduction of pictures, followed.” He forgets to add that through this new technique the prestige or the “halo”, a circle of light on the picture created through the long exposure time, disappeared. After 1880, photographers tried to recreate this unique effect through faster lenses by suppressing darkness but they were not successful. The museum guide then says that several years later the photographer Eugène Atget started focusing on inconsiderable objects and set the basis for Surrealism. Thereafter, he and the visitors leave the hall and I wonder, as always, why he never mentions the most important fact that photography has been and will always remain a close connection between science and art.

[395 words]

Reflection on the Pecha Kucha experience

As I had never heard of it before, I was at the beginning a bit doubtful about the Pecha Kucha presentation. After having done some research, I then wrongly thought that this sort of presentation wouldn't be too difficult to create or to give and underestimated the effort completely.

When my teammate Diana and I started collecting information on our topic (the Austrian Armed Forces), we first of all found out that the website of the Austrian Armed Forces was written in an extremely bad English. This was quite shocking. Due to this reason, we had to rewrite most the information which we wanted to use.  

What I liked most about preparing the presentation was the interviewing-part. We spoke to two people which worked in different work spaces for the Austrian Armed Forces. In this way, we had two diverse views concerning our topic which I thought was quite interesting. However, it cost us a lot of time to translate both interviews into English because both interviewed persons spoke German.

Once having collected all relevant information, I then found it extremely difficult to create the tape script for our presentation. To be honest, it was quite nerve wracking to adapt it to each slide. Especially during our first attempts, the tape script was always longer than the required 20 seconds per slide. It took us a lot of time to elaborate the final version of our tape script but when we were done, Diana and I were quite satisfied.

When it came to studying the tape script and preparing to give the presentation, I again underestimated the effort. I had never imagined that it would be that much difficult to figure out the right speech speed so that each slide perfectly matched to what I was saying. In order to be well prepared, Diana and I practiced together for an entire evening.

I was extremely nervous when it was our turn to give the presentation in class. The beginning of it went entirely as planned but then Diana suddenly spoke longer than expected for a slide. At first, I was about to panic, but then I somehow managed to keep calm and carry on with the presentation. I simply condensed my part of the tape script a bit which I had actually planned to say. I think that (hopefully) nobody noticed this small mistake during our presentation. The rest of it went again as planned.

To sum up, I am quite satisfied with our Pecha Kucha presentation.  If somebody asked me what I would do differently the next time, I would say that I would start preparing much earlier. I learned from this experience that this sort of presentation shouldn't be underestimated. The feedback, that our teachers gave us concerning our pronunciation, was, in my opinion, the best part. It’s a valuable opportunity that helps us students a lot to improve our pronunciation. 

Original summary

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in The Telegraph of October 23, 2013 analyses Europe’s debt crisis.

According to Evans-Pritchard, more and more European states are suffering from the recent “trend” of deflation as prices are falling and debt is increasing. Spain and Italy, for instance, are pushed into runaway debt trajectory and even Germany, renowned for having a flat inflation, is said to be in danger of deflation too.  Debt itself is already difficult to overcome but with deflation, the situation becomes lethal. Basically, Europe is now feared to end up in the same situation like Japan, sliding into a deflationary trap which will have hardly any turning back.  Nevertheless, possible solutions are proposed to try to, no matter how, break out of the impasse. The ECB, for instance, should do whatever it takes to keep inflation high enough to lower the risk of deflation in any vulnerable country. Another way to protect Europe from a complete deflation disaster would be the ganging up of the Club Gang on Germany and forcing the country to accept inflation.

No matter which way Europe chooses to stabilise deflation and debt, measures must be taken before Europe ends up in the same deflation lodge as Japan.

Corrected version

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in The Telegraph of October 23, 2013 analyses Europe’s debt crisis.

According to Evans-Pritchard, increasing numbers of European states are suffering from deflation as prices are falling and debt is increasing. Spain and Italy, for instance, are being pushed into runaway debt trajectory and even Germany, renowned for having flat inflation, is said to be in danger of deflation too.  Debt itself is already difficult to overcome, but with deflation, the situation becomes lethal. Europe now fears a situation like Japan, sliding into a deflationary trap which will be hard to escape. 

Nevertheless, possible solutions are proposed to try to break the impasse. The ECB, for instance, should do whatever it takes to keep inflation high enough to lower the risk of deflation in any vulnerable country. Another way to protect Europe from a complete deflation disaster would be the uniting of the Club Gang against Germany and forcing the country to accept inflation.

No matter which way Europe chooses to stabilise deflation and debt, measures must be taken before Europe ends up in the same deflation lodge as Japan. 

Pronunciation diary blog 1

As pronunciation is one of the major topics of this years SUK3 English course, students were asked to do tasks and exercises in order to improve their pronunciation by the end of this semester. I personally have gone through some of the websites that are listed on the Pronunciation Practice Page and found some very useful ones. The first one, which I liked a lot, is called "antimoon.com". Not only is this site helpful for the improvement of pronunciation, but also for making the decision of choosing either American or British English a lot easier. Especially the recordings, which can be listened to at the subpage "Choosing between American and British pronunciation", can help you to compare both accents. After having listened to them, I decided for British accent.

Apart from "antimoon.com", I also visited a website called "hojsay.com". I think that although it seems a bit boring, the site itself is actually quite useful when you want to look  up certain words and their pronunciation.
While surfing through various other websites, I learnt that the ones offering videos are probably the best ones to make progress as you can hear the words and wordings and also the motion of lips while producing them. It makes their imitation and repetition easier. For me,this is the best way to study  pronunciation rather than just having words written down and their pronunciation in phonetics spelling. What I'm trying to say is that exercise is very important to improve and correct your pronunciation.

I personally think that I should have a closer look at the articulation of "f" and "v". Even though I think that I know how to pronounce them correctly, I often do not pay enough attention on these two phonems when i speak rapidly. This is one aspect which I want to focus on during this semester. The second one is the famous "th", which is, especially for German native speakers, particularly difficult to pronounce. I have already started to practice these phonems by using a website called "learnersdictionary.com" and I think it is quite useful.

To sum up, my aim for this semester is not only to succeed with the right pronunciation of those three phonems mentioned above, but also to improve my pronunciation in general by trying to drop the German accent as much as possible while speaking English.

Feedback on anonymous summary

I am going to give some feedback on the following summary called “Summary- Euro Crisis”:

The financial condition of Europe is getting worse and worse, claims Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in an article he wrote about the Euro Crisis in The Telegraph. Europe is already standing with one foot in the grave concerning economy due to policy errors and massive debt rise within European states. In Italy and Spain for example, the debt already became too large and led to extremely dangerous runaway debt – and therefore became impossible to pay back.
This an illustrational example of how dangerous deflation can become once you lose control over a country’s financial balance. One solution mentioned in the article would be to prevent deflation by causing inflation. However, countries with better economic conditions like Germany are not affected by the crisis yet and therefore not willing to renounce the benefit they are deriving from the deflation. Clearly, they do not realize the magnitude of the problem and that they eventually will be affected by the crisis too. Consequently, debt is rising steadily and if we do not combat the crisis, one day all European countries will have to face serious consequences and it will be difficult to break the vicious cycle.  [200 words]

In general, I think that the author mentioned all important arguments of the source text but there are a few points which I would change.  The first sentence seemed to me like a direct speech but the quotation marks are missing. If the author wanted to express indirect speech, he or she should have used simple past tense. I also didn’t like the expression “debt became too large”. Apart from that I noticed some missing commas. Even if the author of this summary did insert all the important information of the original article, I think that he or she didn’t succeed in linking the sentences. While reading it, I had the impression that various information was forced to fit together. This is actually what we were told not to do while writing a summary.  What I like about the summary is the fact that it consists of exactly 200 words which, I think, is difficult to produce. 

EU Project: The European Economic Area

The European Economic Area

The European Economic Area (EEA) is an agreement which was set up in January 1994 to create a fair internal market. The agreement unites 27 EU Member Countries with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) states, namely Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Under this contract, these EFTA countries have been enabled to participate in the EU’s internal market, which has led to a growing industrial sector within Europe. All members of the EEA and the EU are granted the same four freedoms: free movement of goods, persons, services and capital. Consumer protection, company law and social policy are also covered as well as cooperation on several issues such as research and technological development, education, tourism, etc. The EEA agreement guarantees equal rights and obligations within the single market for citizens and economic operators. However, its regulations do not affect the primary sector, such as agriculture and fishing because the focus of the European Economic Area mainly lies on the industrial sector. In conclusion, the EEA has become one of today’s leading economic powers in the world, especially due to its excellent cooperation within the member countries. 

[185 words]

Africans in Europe: The Most Risky Jobs

(Group 8: Anita Bhatti, Ella Fedorchuk, Victoria Nikitina)

More and more Africans these days leave their homes for Europe. There are various reasons why they are forced to set off and seek their fortune overseas: from the dire poverty to a vain desire to grow rich. Very often migrants travel to Italy, Spain and other European countries in order to earn money to start a new life and to support their families back home in Africa. The worshipped Europe is one of the most popular destinations for Africans to migrate to as they associate the continent with numerous possibilities to earn money and live a prosperous life. African parents often persuade their children to go abroad as they are absolutely dependent on their sons and daughters and emigration for them seems to be the only chance to turn over a new leaf.

Beguedo, for example, which is a town located in the countryside of Burkina Faso, has changed a lot due to the earnings of Africans working in Europe and sending money to their relatives back home. The revenues have led to the building of several houses and to an improvement of equipment in hospitals. Beguedo has a population of 20 thousand people but an enormous number of five thousand inhabitants lives and works abroad. Apart from supporting their families in Africa, they have done even more: an Association of Beguedo Migrants in Italy spares no effort to provide a proper medical care for their countrymen. It is obvious that all these facts make parents proud of their successful children.

There is no doubt that more and more Africans leave their homeland in search for a better life in Europe. Unfortunately, most of them are not aware of the fact that Europe has also many hidden traps in store for them and that only migrating to it does not necessarily mean that they will start leading a great life. They are not aware of all the risky jobs in Europe.

Drug selling

Lots of African migrants in Europe state that they are forced to do ‘illegal’ jobs. In fact, no one really imposes the selling of drugs upon them. In most cases, it is their own choice. Many Africans also admit that they have been trying to find a ‘good’ job for several months without success. Such drug sellers often do not even think of other opportunities to earn money as, to a certain degree, this is a rather easy way. On the one hand, they earn a lot in a short period of time, on the other, they lead a life in fear and could be arrested for their illegal job. However, most of the African migrants prefer keep on working than going back home and confessing failure.

Prostitution

Not only African men, but also African women come to Europe in search for a better life and wealth. While trying to find a good job offer, they instead often end up in prostitution. From that very moment, it is not about money but about losing their dignity. In many cases, women are brought to Europe by their family members but they do not realize that those relatives only want to destroy their lives. Once being involved in prostitution, they are promised to get papers and a normal job as soon as they have paid a certain amount of money. What the prostitutes are not aware of at the beginning is that they have to keep on paying sums of money without a way out of this vicious circle.  Those who try to escape from prostitution are threatened that their families will be harmed. They seem to be trapped forever.

To sum up, it can be said that no matter what kind of risky jobs African migrants have in Europe, nothing is worth losing your dignity and entire life just because you are afraid of failure!

EU individual paragraph

Original paragraph

At first glance, the text “What the EU is for” seemed to be well structured to me by only looking at it. The author into paragraphs by using different headings for each of them to give a clue what each section of the text was going to be about. Not only this good structure, but also the good connection of sentences to their previous ones enabled to follow the text easily. I personally also liked the usage of various good expressions, like, for instance, “a recently forged special relationship”. “In want of a better word” was another phrase that I hadn’t come across so far but I am now definitely going to use it myself in future. The only two things in the text that I found less impressive were the usage of the conjunctions “but” and “so” at the beginning of a sentence and the verbal repetitions that the author used twice in successive sentences. Apart from these two negative points, I think that “What the EU is for” is a well-written text and I enjoyed reading it.

Feedback summary 1 (Topic sentence, register)

All in all, my group mates thought that my paragraph is well-written and that its register was also appropriate. They only noticed two things that I should change: According to them, my first sentence is not really an introduction sentence and rewriting it would be a good idea. Apart from that, I should not use "like, for instance" but simply leave out the "like".

New version

At first glance, I found the text “What the EU is for” well-structured without having even read it. The author divided it into paragraphs by using different headings for each of them to give a clue what each section of the text was going to be about. Not only this good structure, but also the good connection of sentences to their previous ones enabled to follow the text easily. I personally also liked the usage of various good expressions, for instance, “a recently forged special relationship”. “In want of a better word” was another phrase that I hadn’t come across so far but I am now definitely going to use it myself in future. The only two things in the text that I found less impressive were the usage of the conjunctions “but” and “so” at the beginning of a sentence and the verbal repetitions that the author used twice in successive sentences. Apart from these two negative points, I think that “What the EU is for” is a well-written text and I enjoyed reading it.

Feedback summary 2 (cohesion, coherence)

When my group mates read my paragraph for the second time in search of cohesion and coherence mistakes, they did not find any. They liked the content of my text and also found that the sentences were well-linked.

Final version

At first glance, I found the text “What the EU is for” well-structured without having even read it. The author divided it into paragraphs by using different headings for each of them to give a clue what each section of the text was going to be about. Not only this excellent structure, but also the good connection of sentences to their previous ones enabled to follow the text easily. I personally also liked the usage of various good expressions, for instance, “a recently forged special relationship”. “In want of a better word” was another phrase that I hadn’t come across so far but I am now definitely going to use it myself in future. The only two things in the text that I found less impressive were the usage of the conjunctions “but” and “so” at the beginning of a sentence and the verbal repetitions that the author used twice in successive sentences. Apart from these two negative points, I think that “What the EU is for” is a well-written text and I enjoyed reading it.

Final version 2: 

At first glance, I found the text “What the EU is for” well-structured. The author divided it into paragraphs and used different headings for each of them which indicates the readers what each section of the text was going to be about. Not only this excellent structure, but also the perfect cohesion between sentences enabled the readers to follow the text easily. I personally also liked the usage of various good expressions, for instance, “a recently forged special relationship”. “In want of a better word” was another phrase that I had not come across before but I am now definitely going to use it in future. The only two things in the text that I found less impressive were the usage of the conjunctions “but” and “so” at the beginning of a sentence and a number of verbs that the author used more than once in successive sentences. Apart from these two negative points, I think that “What the EU is for” is a well-written text and I enjoyed reading it.