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

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 23^th 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. :)

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. :)

Culture Day 2013

For our SuK 2 I visited 11 presentations, eight Irish and three American, if I remember correctly. My Irish presentations were "Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly - Irish bands from America", "Ireland's contribution to the world of video games", "Gaelic and its use in Northern Ireland", "Bloody Sunday for the GAA", "Abortion Law in Ireland - A Pro-Choice View", "The Irish Film Industry", "Titanic - The fate of the Irish aboard" and "Irish Gaelic - A dying language?". My American Presentations were "Mickey Mouse", "Oprah Winfrey" and "Comics in America".

I really liked most of them, especially the "Mickey Mouse"-, the "Comics"-, the "Irish Gaelic"- and "Titanic"-presentations as they were not only well presented but also very informative. I especially enjoyed Nora introducing herself in Irish Gaelic at the beginning of the presentation.

For my KGP I've decided to choose the following five presentations:

• Irish Gaelic - A dying language?
• Titanic - The fate of the Irish aboard
• Abortion Law in Ireland - A Pro-Choice View
• Bloody Sunday for the GAA
• The Irish Film Industry

The reason why I've chosen those five presentations is because the presenters managed to interest me in their topic and made me long to know more about their topic. I am really looking forward to getting to know the matters more - for myself and, of course, in order to pass my KGP. :)

From Mortimer to Mickey Mouse

On our Culture Day we had to watch seven Irish and three American presentations. One of my favorite presentations was the American presentation about the Mickey Mouse. I really liked this presentation as it was not only well presented but also very well organized and it gave a great overview of everything Mickey Mouse related.

It really covered everything important, beginning with the basics about Mickey Mouse, his name, job and so on and so forth; about his friends, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, and the others; about Mickey's look and its development; as well as Disney World.

I learned a lot of interesting things such as Mickey used to be called Mortimer but as Walt Disney's wife didn't like the name, he changed it. Or that Mickey used to be more of the evil kind as he thought it was funny if others get hurt. However, when Mickey Mouse got more and more popular, mothers started to complain their kids would take Mickey's behavior as a role model and started hurting other kids just like Mickey. Another really interesting fact is that Disney World, with all its four theme parks, is even larger than Graz. Also I didn't know before that Disney produced propaganda and war movies.

All in all I have to say, I really liked the presentation and am glad I watched it as it was not only fun but also very informative. Well done. :)