Narrative article homework

Paul, the young doctor with black hair and ice blue eyes quickly follows a nurse in her 40s through the wide corridors of Saint Peter’s University Hospital in London. The typical smell of disinfectant is in the air. They stop in front of the delivery room’s swing doors through which you can see hospital staff working hectically. Cecilia, the nurse, informs him in brief about the patient whom he should help. “Sophie, a 20 year old woman, came earlier today because of severe back pain. She was sent home with painkillers because the doctor who examined her could not find anything. He thought that she was suffering from menstrual cramps. Now she is back, I did an ultrasound and found out that she is pregnant. The baby will be here any minute.” Paul listens to the nurse in disbelief but knows that there is no time to lose. He pushes against the heavy doors and hears Sophie screaming because of labour pains.

PSA: After-death-avatar

Pecha Kucha

“Pecha what?“, this was my first thought when my classmates told me about this special form of presenting a topic. I could not come to class when Hendrik explained what PK (I love this abbreviation J) is and therefore it took me some days to find out that it is just an “ordinary” PowerPoint presentation. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed because I thought that Pecha Kucha needs a specific program. However, when I could not find a download link, I started to realize that PK needs no additional program.

Together with my presentation partner Sandra, I decided on the topic “Globish”. I had never heard of Globish before but what we found on the Internet sounded interesting.

After some discussions, we agreed not to do an ordinary presentation – for example we decided not to start with something like: “Hello and welcome to our presentation. Today we would like to tell you something about….” This was too boring for us. We thought that that a special presentation format deserves a special style of presenting.

We agreed on a dialogue, something like a discussion, to inform our audience as well as entertain them.
It was good fun to write the text but the best part of our PK presentation was when we had to choose pictures for our slides.

Unlike “normal” presentations, where you just tell your audience everything you know about the topic, we could not use a cheat sheet. Who uses cards in a conversation? “Hello, how are you?” “Hmm…, wait… ah…good, thank you!” Would be funny – but a bit awkward.

So we had to learn our text by heart, which was not really difficult and I have to admit that I enjoyed it J. The trickiest part was to time our dialogue so that we speak exactly 20 seconds per slide. Fortunately we had the genius idea to create a timer which ran backwards from 20 to zero. This little graphic was really helpful.

Although we had no plan at the beginning, and were not quite sure if we could manage this project, the presentation went really well and I think we both enjoyed it. This was one of the most funny presentations I ever did. Thanks to Sandra who was a great project partner!

Vocabulary Notebook

Hey!

It’s me againJ. When I was still in High school, I had an ordinary technique for studying vocabulary. I wrote the German word on the left, the English equivalent on the right side, then covered one side and tried to remember the translation of the words.

At university I realised that this system won’t work because our English teachers expected from the definition of the word and an example sentence to show that we know how to use it. At this time I discovered the website www.vocabulary.com and fell in love with itJ. After each PC I improved my studying technique a bit until I found the perfect method for me.

At first, I create a new vocabulary list and type in all of the words. Then I look at the Cambridge online dictionary for definitions. I do not use the definitions from vocabulary.com because they are often too long and too complicated for me and I find it difficult to remember them. When I have found a definition, I look for a “good” example sentence. The best example sentences are those where something exciting happens, e.g. when someone gets murdered or dies. This sounds brutal, I know, but I can comfort you: I am not violent or aggressive person. It is just easier to remember a word when you have a clear picture in your mind. My example sentence for the word “precipitate” was: “Susan’s death precipitated a family crisis.” This sentence is more powerful than the one I found in an online dictionary: “An invasion would certainly precipitate a political crisis.” 

If I have to learn 200 or more words, I need sentences that create strong and vivid pictures.

Sometimes the example sentences are not strong enough. If I cannot remember a word after I have revised it five or six times, I cut it out and put it in a plastic bowl. Here you can see a picture: (didn't work :(

I then pull the words out separately, repeat the words a few times in my head and think up an aide-memoire. Most of them are really stupid – but very helpful. My favourite aide-memoire this time was for the word “discern”, which means to see or recognize something. 

I imagined a person who is playing Frisbee with a disc (discern). Suddenly the disc gets stuck in a wall of fog and the person cannot see it anymore. This little story made it easy for me to remember the example sentence: “I could not discern the ... [ship, car, dog... à whatever] through the fog.

What do you think about my technique? Funny, stupid, weird??

Pronunciation diary 2.0

This is the second part of my pronunciation diary. Luckily the oral exam is over and I survived itJ. I would like to explain you my strategies for improving and practising my pronunciation skills.

Firstly, I took a closer look at Hendrik’s feedback from the pronunciation exercises we recorded in class and listened to the audio file again. I noticed that I often swallowed the last letter of a word – especially the “d” and “t” and that I mispronounced the words “that”, “this”, “there” – I said something like “det”, “dis”, “der”...
I found this BBC video (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/sounds/con_voiced_6.shtml) which really helped me to improve the sound ð – the sound you need for words like “that”, “there”...
The “BBC woman”, I do not know her name J, explains how to produce this specific sound and gives some examples. Surprisingly, I could hear a difference to my recording after I practised the sound a few times.

Another video I found on the website was about the differences between the voiced consonant “v” and the voiceless “f”. I was not aware that theses sounds are also tricky for me. Before I watched the BBC video I pronounced “v” and “f” the same in the middle of a word. For example the two words “believe” and “belief” sounded completely the same when I pronounced them because I did not think about it. “V” and “f” are still tricky for me and I need to work on them.

I also tried to look up the pronunciation of words I read in books. Normally, if I read a word and do not know how to pronounce it I just think “yeah, whatever” and continue reading. The last few weeks I typed most of the words into an online dictionary and listened to the pronunciation.

The moral of the story is that the exam is over, but the pronunciation practise is not J.

Pronunciation Diary 1

Hey guys!

Our task this week was to look at various websites in order to improve our pronunciation skills. I really liked this task because I am very interested in how people from different countries pronounce words differently. I know that it is really important for me to work on my pronunciation skills because my English accent is not as good as it should be because often it sounds too German to me. For this reason I started to listen more carefully to my tandem partner (who is from Australia) and to pay attention how she pronounces certain words. I always try to repeat the words I would have pronounced differently (=wrong  in 95% of all cases).

The pronunciation websites were really helpful. I started with Rachel’s English page for American English. She divided her videos into the categories “sounds” and “pronunciation”. I watched some videos of the “sound” category and was pretty amazed. Did you know that there are three different “uh” sounds in English? I never thought of this before but Rachel explains the sounds very well and gives examples as well as “instructions” on how to pronounce them correctly. She took pictures of every word she pronounced so that it is easier for language learners to copy them. I also looked at some of her “words of the week” videos where she takes a close look on one single word. The best videos on her website are those where she does not only focus on pronunciation but also on culture. One of her videos is about Rachel’s Halloween party where you can see some of her guests talking to each other and can listen to native conversation.

Than I watched some videos by “VideoJug” on YouTube where Gareth Jameson explains how to do different accents such as Irish, Cockney, Australian, American or British. The best video was the one called “How to lose your native accent”. As I wrote above  I am very interested in losing my German accent while speaking English. Gareth recommends listening to native speakers and trying to emulate them. He states that losing your native accent is hard work because you have to work on every single sound. He also explains that rhythm is very important.  In American English there is no difference in pronunciation between the “t” and “d” sound. Although Gareth’s Australian accent is really cute my tandem partner’s one is “better” (sounds more natural).

To sum up, my aim this semester is to work on my pronunciation skills and to try to get rid of my accent.

Porter book game

Hey guys!

Last Thursday we had so much fun in class because of an awesome but simple game :). The instructiosn: Everyone had to cut a piece of paper into eight pieces and write a number on it (from one to eight). Then we looked for an unfamiliar word in the porter book, wrote a sentence with this word on the first page and passed it to our neighbor. He/She had to draw our sentence and pass it on. The next one drew what his/her neighbor had written and so on... It was (of course) not allowed to cheat and have a look what the other person had written/drawn. 
After eight rounds we looked through the texts and read them out.

I proudly present the "bleak house story". Have fun!

What I learned

Dear Mr. Bower,

My name is Katrin Wiesinger and I am from Spannberg in Lower Austria. My mother tongue is German, I study English and Austrian Sign Language and my Matrikel number is 1210373. As you can see from my Matrikel number, I started university in 2012. My teachers last year were Melissa Kercher in SUK1 and Fiona Begley in SUK2. My grades in SUK1 and 2 were not outstanding but I will do my best to improve them this year. In SUK1 I had a D and in SUK2 I was really happy to achieve a C.

As my grades were not the best, I knew that I had to work really hard for the FDE oral exam. I studied hard and finally got a one in all three languages, which was amazing for me. The FDE oral exam grades was my highest point in the first year. Unfortunately, I also had some low points. The low points were all the progress checks last year. Before the exams, I studied at home and did my best to prepare myself but I often failed or got a D. After the exam I was often frustrated and did not want to continue but then I motivated myself again and started studying for the next one. Frustration and disappointment but also hope and ambition marked my first year in English.

Although I was often frustrated, I think it would have been worse if I had not been to New Zealand in 2012. After I had finished school in June, I did an internship for six weeks at a school in Nelson. Living in an English-speaking country and working at a school helped me improve my English and become more self-confident in terms of talking to native speakers.

During my internship the teachers showed me some great resources to practice and improve my English. I am still using these sources. They recommended that I should listen to the BBC podcasts “Six Minutes English” and “The English We Speak”. A teacher even lend me one of her favourite books “Twenties Girl” by Sophie Kinsella. I loved it so much that I immediately bought another book written  by her in a New Zealand book store. I am still ordering her books and enjoy reading them.

In New Zealand I also started watching series and shows in English. My host mother was (and I presume still is) a huge fan of “The Big Bang Theory”. I had not heard of this series before but loved it from the beginning. During the summer, I watched four or five seasons – in English - because I hate the dubbed version. I also spent my summer reading various English books I bought online. Some of them were really interesting and the two books I liked most were “Me before you” by Jojo Moyes and “Tricks of the mind” by Derren Brown. (No paragraph!!) The second one, in particular, was great practice for  my English because it contained many, to me, unknown words. I learned and read about homeopathy, different placebo effects, faith healing and mind reading. While reading Browns book, I found out that he also produces TV shows and went on watching them on YouTube.

YouTube is a great source for watching online tutorials on English grammar but my favourite EFL website  is www.quickanddirtytips.com. I have bookmarked this website because Mignon Fogarty, the author of it, explains grammar, punctuation and vocabulary in a fun way. I use her website to inform myself and to study for exams because many of her tips are listed in the major No-No’s. To avoid these major No-No’s I bought an interesting book I really like and can definitely recommend. “Forbetter your English” by Eric T. Hansen. The author mentions all the typical mistakes German English learners tend to make. He also points out how important a monolingual dictionary is for language learners. My personal favourite is dictionary.cambridge.org.

I found out that he also produces TV shows and went on watching them on YouTube.

YouTube is a great source for watching online tutorials on English grammar but my favourite EFL website  is www.quickanddirtytips.com. I have bookmarked this website because Mignon Fogarty, the creator of it, explains grammar, punctuation and vocabulary in a fun way. I use her website to inform myself and to study for exams because many of her tips are listed in the major No-No’s. To avoid these major No-No’s I bought an interesting book I really like and can definitely recommend. “Forbetter your English” by Eric T. Hansen. The author mentions all the typical mistakes German English learners tend to make. He also points out how important a monolingual dictionary is for language learners. My personal favourite is dictionary.cambridge.org.

With the online dictionary, Eric T Hansens book, quickanddirtytips.com, the BBC podcasts and everything I learned in year 1, I think I am ready for a new and hopefully successful semester.

Yours sincerely,

Katrin Wiesinger

Comment:

When I wrote this homework I did my best to avoid common mistakes and major No-No’s. When I handed the letter in I thought that it was okay (not perfect – but okay and without tremendous mistakes). After I looked through the corrected version and the suggestions, I know now that my text wasn’t as good as I thought it would be. I had three major No-No’s in my text – they were all in one (!!!) paragraph (I am really embarrassed to admit this to you but it is true). And, what’s even worse: I was not aware that they were in there (If I had known it, I would have correct the mistakes). So, the most important thing I learned from this homework is, that I should proof-read my homework more seriously, that I should scan my next texts for major No-No’s (because they are not acceptable) and that I should look up everything (words, phrases) I am not a 100 per cent sure about.