Pronunciation Diary blog 3

The feedback, that our teachers gave us concerning our Pecha Kucha presentations, is, in my opinion, a valuable opportunity that helps us students a lot to improve our pronunciation. Not only did they recommend us to check out the right pronunciation of various words, but also which sounds we should particularly focus on. According to the feedback, I should, apart from some words, improve my “v” and “f” sounds. Therefore, I have done the exercises that are shown in a video on the website http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/pronunciation/mp4/con_voiced_5.mp4. What I liked about it were the two perspectives used in the video that show the form of the lips while a sound is produced. I think that this makes it easier to study the proper pronunciation of certain sounds, especially the “v”. Apart from training specific sounds, I also looked up the proper pronunciation of the words which I mispronounced during the Pecha Kucha presentation. I used the website memidex.com because it provides not only American pronunciation of words, but also of British ones. At the moment, I’m looking up the pronunciation of tons of Porter words which could be relevant for our oral exam. I hope that I will be able to pass and  to show improvements which I have made concerning my pronunciation in the course of the semester.

Pronunciation Diary blog 2

In order to improve my pronunciation, I have been doing exercises on some of the websites which are listed on Frank’s week-by-week.  As I wanted to know if I can at least pronounce basic English words correctly, I did a pronunciation test on the website antimoon.com. I was quite satisfied when I got 9 points out of ten.

When I had a look on some of the other pronunciation websites that are listed on the week-by-week, I came across a video of a guy called Garret Jameson who explains how to do a British accent. As I personally have chosen to focus on the British accent, I found this video quite helpful even though it lasts only about three minutes. Garret explains which sounds need to be pronounced resulting in a British accent. I repeated the words and sample sentences which he recommended to practise, like “Are there more birds”. He explains this in order to get a certain accent, it is important to practise the isolate specific sounds of an accent and that is what I’ve been trying to focus on. Therefore, I studied the examples that are listed on the website shiporsheep. I like it because it provides always two words and their pronunciation which you can listen to. In this way, it is possible to compare the various specific sounds, like the “a” or “u”.

I’m still trying to find other websites that could help me to improve my pronunciation, but my aim until the end of this semester is to dispose of a pronunciation that is at least similar to the British one. 

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. 

Description of my vocabulary notebook and system for improving my vocabulary

When I started studying the Porter vocabulary for the first Progress Check, I found it extremely annoying to look at the computer screen for hours as the vocabulary.com website only existed on the internet. Generally, I’m the type of person who takes down everything on a sheet of paper because I can’t really study from computer screens.  That’s why I decided to write the words and their definition down. It cost me an enormous amount of time but it helped me personally to study the Porter words better. 

Now that there is already the second Progress Check getting closer, I have developed almost a perfect strategy to study the Porter vocabulary. As we have to study five units for the next PC, I elaborated one unit on a day which I think is a doable pensum. In this way, it took me five days to study the five Porter units.

I followed the same clear strategy every day: Firstly, I did the exercises in the Porter book. Secondly I highlighted the words which were new to me and the ones which were given (meaning the ones which we have to fill in the gaps or chose as the correct answer). Thirdly, I created for each unit a vocabulary list on the vocabulary.com website. This was quite simple because I only had to type in the words I needed and then dragged them to my list. Fourthly and lastly, I created vocabulary lists for each unit in a Microsoft Word document, which cost me most of the time of all those steps already mentioned. I simply copied all the words, their definitions and sample sentences into a spreadsheet in a Word document. 

While working on the creation of the vocabulary lists, I think I already learned a great deal about the vocabulary and their definitions. I can recommend this strategy of mine to everybody who is tired of staring at computer screens.  (Of course, the computer screen can’t be completely be avoided as one first has to create the vocabulary lists on the computer, but once having printed them, studying the vocabulary is a lot more convenient. ;) )

In this way, I don’t really have a vocabulary notebook, but a vocabulary folder where I keep all the sheets printed with numerous vocabulary lists and also the ones I wrote down for the first PC.  When I revise the words which I ‘ve already learned and I don’t remember some of them anymore, I highlight them and keep revising them until I know their definition.

( Generally, I can say that I have been trying to improve my vocabulary by taking down words and expressions which occur in the English courses and are new to me.)

Studying and elaborating the Porter words is always a big amount of work. I hope that I will pass the second Progress Check and will be rewarded for my effort.

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.

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]

Comment on how Academic Paper is going so far

I have already done some research on the internet and found several websites that might be interesting for my academic paper. The only thing that worries me a bit is the fact that I have chosen so many subtopics for my paper so that I'm afraid I might not be able to cover them all. I hope that I still will be able to manage to do it as I don't want to give up my paper topic (Sikhs in Britain). I find it really interesting and I absolutely want to write about it. Apart from the websites, I also found two books that might be interesting for my paper. The only problem is that it would take too long to order them so I'm trying to somehow get online versions of them. I have also started to write the introduction but I think it's very difficult to stick to academic English. This is actually the most challenging thing about writing the academic paper. Despite all these small hurdles, I hope that I still be able to finally hand in a well-written academic paper.

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.