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]

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.

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.

MY TOP 5 EU- RELATED TOPICS

This is my first blog this semester and it’s going to be about the top 5 EU-related topics that I can imagine writing an assignment about in our SUK3 class. We were told to not choose the ones that cover too many different fields because it would be difficult to write about them with a word limit of “only” 1500 words. So, after having done a little bit of research, here are my top 5 EU-related topics:

My first and most favourite topic would be about Indian migrants in and moving to the EU. As my parents originally come from India and I therefore have an Indian background, it would be really interesting to learn how the Indian migrants come to the EU, why they choose to live there and the problems they (have to) face.  

Languages, maybe in relationship with different cultures, within the European Union would also be an attractive topic for me to deal with. I would do research on their benefits, for example, in how far it is useful to study languages nowadays within the EU and maybe I would also come across information that this is not such a good idea.

As my third choice, I have listed the data protection in the EU as it is a very controversial topic and concerns us more than anything else in today’s world. Perhaps, it is somehow possible to also touch on the subject of Facebook.  For me, this topic sounds extremely promising.

The EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection Policy and the enlargement of the European Union from 1973 to 2010 are my fourth and fifth favourite topics.

No matter which topic I choose, I really hope that I will select one where I have sufficient sources to look things up and one that interests me even after having spent a lot of time working on it. Apart from that, I also look forward to a good grade for the finished assignment! ;)