Showing posts with label WS13. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WS13. Show all posts
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
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
A critique of an anonymous summary!
The article “Europe already has one foot in ‘Japanese’ deflation grave” written by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and published on 23th of October 2013 in The Telegraph is about Europe’s debt crisis. The author addresses the issue of setting policies erroneously and this causing debt to rise significantly. He warns of ending up like Japan’s economy due to disastrous policy management.
Debt in Europe is on the increase and becoming a serious threat to the European economy. In addition, deflation exacerbates debt. Evans-Pritchard names Italy and Spain as perfect illustrations for this debt dilemma. He states the risk of runaway debt in Italy, which leads to massive unemployment or a pay of 6.3% towards debt. According to the author, even Germany is at risk because public as well as private debt is affected. In his point of view, politicians and their irresponsible policy-making are to blame for the situation all Europeans face today.
Evans-Pritchard proposes two possible solutions. One way to approach the problem could be that Club Med gang up on Germany and tell Germany to implement a relation policy. The other solution would be to wait for the economy to recover by itself. Obviously, the latter option is quite irresponsible.
This is the summary I happened to choose. The first thing I noticed it that there are commas missing in the first sentence. I would but them before "written by Ambrose and after "The Telegraph" as this part does not change the meaning of the main sentence but is merely an addition to it. Another thing I noticed was that in the last paragraph I would write "the members of Club Med gang up" as I think it is important to mention that all the members themselves need to make the decision of standing up against Germany. The last sentence should be taken out completely as it sounds like a personal opinion which should not be included in a summary. However, if it is Evans-Pritchard's opinion then it is fine but that information should be included as well. Other than those few things I like the summary and I am impressed by the vocabulary as I would probably never have come up with words like erroneously. Well done. :)
Debt in Europe is on the increase and becoming a serious threat to the European economy. In addition, deflation exacerbates debt. Evans-Pritchard names Italy and Spain as perfect illustrations for this debt dilemma. He states the risk of runaway debt in Italy, which leads to massive unemployment or a pay of 6.3% towards debt. According to the author, even Germany is at risk because public as well as private debt is affected. In his point of view, politicians and their irresponsible policy-making are to blame for the situation all Europeans face today.
Evans-Pritchard proposes two possible solutions. One way to approach the problem could be that Club Med gang up on Germany and tell Germany to implement a relation policy. The other solution would be to wait for the economy to recover by itself. Obviously, the latter option is quite irresponsible.
This is the summary I happened to choose. The first thing I noticed it that there are commas missing in the first sentence. I would but them before "written by Ambrose and after "The Telegraph" as this part does not change the meaning of the main sentence but is merely an addition to it. Another thing I noticed was that in the last paragraph I would write "the members of Club Med gang up" as I think it is important to mention that all the members themselves need to make the decision of standing up against Germany. The last sentence should be taken out completely as it sounds like a personal opinion which should not be included in a summary. However, if it is Evans-Pritchard's opinion then it is fine but that information should be included as well. Other than those few things I like the summary and I am impressed by the vocabulary as I would probably never have come up with words like erroneously. Well done. :)
Sunday, October 13, 2013
EU individual paragraph
Brainstorming:
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:
Student feedback:
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.
- 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.
Friday, October 11, 2013
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.
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