EU individual paragraph

Brainstorming:

• 24 languages
• known languages, such as English, German,...
• less known languages, like Maltese,...
• language families and subfamilies
• related, yet different

First Draft:

What interested me most about the EU and this week‘s topics were the different languages. Altogether, 24 different languages can be found in the EU. They range from the most commonly known languages, such as English, German or French, to languages less known or obviously related to the EU, e.g. Lithuanian or Maltese. Every language belongs to a language family and in the EU, the present language families are the Germanic, the Romance, the Slavic, the Baltic, the Celtic, the Uralic and the Afroasiatic one. Languages deriving from the same language family share certain similarities. A good example for this is the Romance language family. Some of its members are Italian, Spanish or French and therefor they sound very similar. Having one of those languages as your mother tongue makes it fairly easy to learn another language from the Romance language family. The fact that all 24 languages, as different as they might be, can exist along side each other and the EU still manages to work is one of the things why I consider this topics, languages in the EU, to be highly interesting.

Student ideas:

• topic and concluding sentence go well together
• leave out the "languages in the EU" in the concluding sentence
• therefore with an "e"

Second Draft:

What interested me most about the EU and this week's topics were the different languages. Altogether, 24 different languages can be found in the EU. They range from the most commonly known languages, such as English, German or French, to languages less known or less obviously related to the EU, e.g. Lithuanian or Maltese. Every language belongs to a language family and in the EU, the present language families are the Germanic, the Romance, the Slavic, the Baltic, the Celtic, the Uralic and the Afroasiatic one. Languages deriving from the same language family share certain similarities. A good example for this is the Romance language family. Some of its members are Italian, Spanish or French and therefore they sound very similar. Having one of those languages as your mother tongue makes it fairly easy to learn another language from the Romance language family. The fact that all 24 languages, as different as they might be, can exist along side each other and the EU still manages to work is one of the things why I consider this topic to be highly interesting.

Student feedback:

• Too many repetitions - especially language and language family

Third Draft:

What interested me most about the EU and this week's topics were the different languages. Altogether, 24 different kinds can be found in the EU. They range from the most commonly known languages, such as English, German or French, to the ones less known or less obviously related to the EU, e.g. Lithuanian or Maltese. Each language belongs to a family and in the EU, the present language families are the Germanic, the Romance, the Slavic, the Baltic, the Celtic, the Uralic and even the Afroasiatic one. Languages deriving from the same family share certain similarities. An excellent example for this is the Romance language family. Some of its members are Italian, Spanish or French and they sound very similar. Having one of those languages as your mother tongue makes it fairly easy to learn another Romance language. The fact that all 24 languages, as different as they might be, can exist along side each other and the EU still manages to work is one of the things why I consider this topic to be highly interesting.

Final Draft:

What interested me most about this week's EU topics were the different languages with their different origins as well as their similarities. Altogether, 24 different languages can be found in the EU. They range from the most commonly known languages, such as English, German or French, to lesser known ones, e.g. Lithuanian or Maltese. Each language belongs to a family and in the EU, the language families present are the Germanic, the Romance, the Slavic, the Baltic, the Celtic, the Uralic and even the Afroasiatic. Languages deriving from the same family share certain similarities. An excellent example for this is the Romance language family. Some of its members are the languages Italian, Spanish or French and they sound very similar. Having one of those languages as your mother tongue makes it fairly easy to learn another Romance language. The fact that all 24 languages, as different as they might be, can exist alongside each other with the EU still functioning is one of the reasons why I consider this topic to be highly interesting.

My 5 EU topics

After I spent the last week wracking my brain about topics I could choose for our semester project, I managed to come up with the following ones:

• Regulations concerning organ donation and transplantation in the EU:
• I'm thinking about picking this topic as I'm really into medicine and any kind of surgery. I'd be interested in looking more into the regulations concerning organs, donating and transplantations. 
• European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control:
• To be honest I have never before heard of this centre before but after having read through their website I'm really curious about it. This centre tries it's best to inform us about diseases and how we can prevent them from spreading.
• Traveling with your pets in the EU:
• This topic would interest me as I, myself, have two dogs and love to travel. This means unless I find someone to look after my dogs I'm forced to take them with me.
• Euthanasia in the EU:
• This topic, although it's not new to us, is a very provocative one. It forces us to think about some rather difficult questions: Who are we to take a life? But on the other side, who are we to force someone to live? While euthanasia is legal in some countries, it is forbidden others. This is very interesting to me but I could also see myself writing about child euthanasia, possibly during the Nazi Germany.
• Christmas traditions throughout Europe:
• Only two more months and Christmas time's back. The time when children's eyes sparkle, grown ups want to be young again and the whole world goes crazy over just one night and the morning after. And while we have our beloved "Christkind" bringing us presents, other countries have other traditions. So, I could see myself easily writing about this topic as I think it is very interesting and fitting for the coming few months.

Those are the 5 topics I finally settled on and I'd be happy writing about either of them. :)