Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Sunday, January 19, 2014
PK
How do you torture your students without having to do too much yourself?
Surprise exam? Nah, too much work correcting that.
Extra homework? Ugh, again, who on earth wants to correct that?
Forcing them to write blog posts? Hm... Sounds promising. Definitely keep that in mind for later, but it's not enough for now.
Make them give presentations? Ah, now we're getting somewhere. But simply let them present stuff? Boooooring. Let's make it worse. Somehow. If that's even possible.
Maybe a Pecha Kucha? Yes! That's it. The answer to THE question! The ultimate torture device for students. Make them present something in a way they have neither heard of before, nor know how to pronounce correctly.
That is how I imagine our teachers reached the decision of us having to give Pecha Kuchas. For those of you who have absolutely no clue what I'm talking about, good for you. But I'm not gonna explain it here, so fgi.
Did I like it? Hm... Not particularly. The presenting part itself was fine and I think the others did a wonderful job presenting it. However, the creating process was bad. Not only did we have to find a topic; no, we also had to find enough information for the six minutes 40 ahead of us. Plus, we had to time everything perfectly, find pictures and practise, practise and once again practise. Unfortunately, my PK's "we" turned into an "I" quite fast, which made the experience even more tempting and fun.
All in all, I have to admit, it was a pretty nice way to torture us. My respects. I'll keep that in mind should I ever become a teacher. So, future students of mine: be prepared. ;)
Surprise exam? Nah, too much work correcting that.
Extra homework? Ugh, again, who on earth wants to correct that?
Forcing them to write blog posts? Hm... Sounds promising. Definitely keep that in mind for later, but it's not enough for now.
Make them give presentations? Ah, now we're getting somewhere. But simply let them present stuff? Boooooring. Let's make it worse. Somehow. If that's even possible.
Maybe a Pecha Kucha? Yes! That's it. The answer to THE question! The ultimate torture device for students. Make them present something in a way they have neither heard of before, nor know how to pronounce correctly.
That is how I imagine our teachers reached the decision of us having to give Pecha Kuchas. For those of you who have absolutely no clue what I'm talking about, good for you. But I'm not gonna explain it here, so fgi.
Did I like it? Hm... Not particularly. The presenting part itself was fine and I think the others did a wonderful job presenting it. However, the creating process was bad. Not only did we have to find a topic; no, we also had to find enough information for the six minutes 40 ahead of us. Plus, we had to time everything perfectly, find pictures and practise, practise and once again practise. Unfortunately, my PK's "we" turned into an "I" quite fast, which made the experience even more tempting and fun.
All in all, I have to admit, it was a pretty nice way to torture us. My respects. I'll keep that in mind should I ever become a teacher. So, future students of mine: be prepared. ;)
The horror of vocabulary learning! (And how to fight it.)
New exam, new words to learn. Having to remember about 300 words in a couple of days because you didn't have time to do it before. Or, let's face it, because you just didn't want to think about it before. Now doesn't that just sound lovely?^^
That's the situation I, and several of my fellow students, found myself in last week. Fortunately, not everyone was as lazy and procrastinating as me. Someone actually sat down and set up a list of all these words on vocabulary.com. Now, I know her name, but I don't know her in person. However, I really want to thank her. To share the list with all of us was really a thoughtful and nice thing to do and it saved me, and I can imagine many others, quite a lot of time and trouble. THANK YOU! :)
Doing the quiz on vocabulary.com is a different, but very nice way to remember the words. I used it on my phone and was able to use ever free minute, on for instance busses or trams, to go over them. However, sometimes I found myself ruling out the unlikely meanings and simply guessing the meaning instead of actually remembering it. That's why I printed out all the words, read through them once or twice and added my own meaning. With those two things combined, I was able to remember all these words in no time. So, hurray to my brain and the girl. :)
That's the situation I, and several of my fellow students, found myself in last week. Fortunately, not everyone was as lazy and procrastinating as me. Someone actually sat down and set up a list of all these words on vocabulary.com. Now, I know her name, but I don't know her in person. However, I really want to thank her. To share the list with all of us was really a thoughtful and nice thing to do and it saved me, and I can imagine many others, quite a lot of time and trouble. THANK YOU! :)
Doing the quiz on vocabulary.com is a different, but very nice way to remember the words. I used it on my phone and was able to use ever free minute, on for instance busses or trams, to go over them. However, sometimes I found myself ruling out the unlikely meanings and simply guessing the meaning instead of actually remembering it. That's why I printed out all the words, read through them once or twice and added my own meaning. With those two things combined, I was able to remember all these words in no time. So, hurray to my brain and the girl. :)
Pronunciation 2
As I have mentioned before, part of our course is pronunciation. While doing pronunciation exercises might help you to some extent, they become tedious after a while and they are only partly effective as most of us do them alone and have no one to correct us. Luckily, I have friends and relatives in and from several English speaking countries. They have helped me a lot when it comes to improving my pronunciation. Whether it is skyping with my kiwi friend or Canadian relatives or meeting up with my American friend and talking for hours. It is always fun and really helpful as they can correct me whenever I pronounce words wrong or help me with the pronunciation of new or complicated words. With them, it doesn't really feel like learning at all. :)
Pronunciation 1
A part of our English course this semester is pronunciation. I actually quite liked it as I had done a course before at the Anglistik. It was part of my first semester there and taught by one of the native speakers working there. So we met once a week and went over the "most difficult" sounds for German native speakers. Basically s-z, t-d, th (voiced and unvoiced). We also had to pick a scene from a movie or series in English and write our own transcript. Then we had to listen to it over and over again in order to write down how the native speakers pronounced different words. At the end of the semester we had to read a text out loud and also present our transcript, sounding as much as the native speakers as we managed to. I really liked this course and I feel it has helped me quite a bit; especially when it comes to the voiced and unvoiced sound dilemma. I'll add a couple of examples of my notes and if you want to know more about the pronunciation exercises we did, feel free to ask. :)
- Zorro's sorrows were over after he had rescued Sue from the zoo.
- Just outside the village there's a very dangerous bridge. Two jeeps crashed there in January. George Churchill was driving the larger jeep. He was driving very dangerously. The other jeep went over the bridge, and two children and another passenger were badly injured.
- Dare-there, doze-those, day-they, ladder-lather, mutter-mother
- tree-three, true-through, tin-thin, tick-thick, tie-thigh
- sin-thin, sick-thick, sigh-thigh, worse-worth, face-faith, pass-path
- deaf-death, oaf-oath, roof-Ruth, reef-wreath, free-three
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