Pronunciation diary - Nr 2

Hello guys :)

Just kidding. Here is the real post:

When it comes to pronunciation there is not only a huge difference between an English native speaker and an English learner but also between native speakers from different areas. The prime example for this is the difference between British and American English that is not only evident in certain expression but (what a surprise) also in pronunciation.

To be honest, I’ve always been fascinated by the American accents (probably because I watch so many American TV shows). So if you’re like me wondering what actually makes an American accent sound American, here are some videos I came across that give quite a good insight.

What I really like about these videos is that they explain every step slowly so you can follow it easily and talk along as well.

Of course there are many more interesting videos about this topic, especially on the Youtube Channel Rachel’s English. So if you want to improve your English pronunciation and acquire an American accent you should definitely check them out.

I’m definitely going to use them to improve my pronunciation and to sound more American.

If you’re not quite sure what exactly is the difference between an American and a British accent, here is a video that will clear things up.

Before I'll finish this post, I want to wish you all Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays :)

Pronunciation diary - the first

Well, today I’d like to talk about something that is essential when learning a language. No, I’m not going to write another post about vocabulary (I think I have tackled that topic sufficiently) neither am I talking about grammar although both of them are essential in order to master a language. The aspect I am talking about is pronunciation.

What good is it to know a wide range of vocabulary and different grammar structures if you cannot communicate what you want to say in a comprehensible way?

I recently got feedback on my pronunciation from my English teacher. Overall my pronunciation is okay. There are just a few little mistakes that I make and that I still need to improve. For example, I was not able to say the price $27.69 correctly. By now I know that the correct ways to say it are twenty-seven dollars and sixty-nine cents and twenty-seven sixty-nine if it is clear what currency you are talking about.

Another problem that I have is to pronounce the v-sound (like many other German native speakers have as well). Somehow I just never manage to pronounce it voiced when it is supposed to. So currently that’s what I’m working on in order to improve my pronunciation. One way to do so is with the help of the following video.

It is made by a Canadian teacher who is explaining the correct pronunciation with good examples in a humorous way. So if you have the same problem give this video a try.

How to improve your vocabulary - The sequel

One of my last blog posts was about how to improve your vocabulary and which strategies I use to expand my range of vocabulary.

Now that some time has passed by and I have read a few of my fellow student’s post about this topic I’ve come to the conclusion that I can learn a lot from their strategies. I have to admit that I am honestly impressed by their approach to studying vocabulary and I am certainly going to adapt a few of their strategies.

There was one idea that I encountered various times and that I found especially useful – to write down new words that you come across while reading for example a book and to keep it all in one place. To be honest, I used to be too lazy to actually pull through this idea but I’m definitely going to change that now. I came across a lot of other interesting notions as well but the one that I regard as the most important one is to keep trying to improve your language skills constantly by using them as much as possible.

I just wanted to mention that in addition to adapting these new strategies I still will stick to most of my own strategies to study vocabulary because I am already used to them and they have proven to work more or less efficiently. For example, I will continue using vocabulary.com because I really like that both the definition and example sentences of a word are presented in an appealing way.

Anyway, that’s all I can think of about the topic of studying vocabulary right now, so I’m going to end this post here.

Oh one last thing, if you were wondering about the blog posts of my fellow students that inspired me to change my study habits here are the links to them in no particular order:

http://aneladgamishere.blogspot.co.at/2014/12/how-to-improve-my-vocabulary.html

http://vbaklan-suk.blogspot.co.at/2014/11/every-language-learner-has-to-go.html

http://marli25.blogspot.co.at/2014/11/what-i-am-doing-to-improve-my-vocabulary_28.html

If you have time, read them, they are really worth it ;)

Mind map of "The economics of Robinson Crusoe"

Here are two mind maps I made of a text explaining simple economics with the example of Robinson Crusoe.

The first one is my first attempt and is a little more elaborated.

The second one, however, is reduced to the key points only.

Just in case you were wondering, I created these mind maps using a free software called xmind which I like a lot and I would recommend using it to any of you who like creating mind maps as much as I do.

Summary correction: Credit Crisis

Hi everyone!

Today I'm gonna present you a before and after of a summary of a video by Jonathan Jarvis about the Credit Crisis that I wrote.

Here is my first version (teacher's corrections included):

(Sorry for the bad quality - the camera of my smartphone sucks :/)

and now my second, corrected version:

First of all, I forgot to mention the source of information which is a rather crucial mistake. Then most of my mistakes are simply careless ones that I could have easily avoided if I had proofread my homework. Another thing that I still have problems with is register, especially formal register. Somehow I always end up using rather informal words and expressions, so I need to get a feeling for more formal ones.

Anyway, these are the things that I still need to work on to improve my homework and writing in general.

How I'm improving my vocabulary

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog.

Since university started a few weeks ago and our English classes are already in full swing, I’m back writing my blog posts. Speaking of English classes, I want to talk a little bit about how to improve your vocabulary since it is always good to have a broad range of words at hand.

One of my favorite "tools of the vocabulary learning trade" is a website called vocabulary.com. I really like to use it because it's an easy and fun way to practice "aquaintances", words you aren’t that familiar with yet but want to become comfortable using in more than one context. If you have a lot of words that you want to practice or need to learn for a test, you can create your very own vocabulary list.

Another one of my favorite websites is called thesaurus.com. I’ve come to the point where I nearly use it on a daily basis. I like it because it helps me spice up my writing with more sophisticated words or at least synonyms to keep my language varied. However, the most important thing to bear in mind is to check the synonym in a learners dictionary. In this way you can make sure that you understand its meaning correctly and find out how to use it appropriately.

When it comes to studying new vocabulary one of the most important steps is knowing how to use it appropriately, in which contexts. In order to find out how a word functions in a sentence, corpora can be of great help. Now you might think, what are these corpora and how can something with such a strange name be of any use. Well, basically a corpus is an electronic collection of texts used to show certain patterns in a language such as collocations. Two good examples of corpora that I am looking into are the Corpus of Contemporary American English - http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ - and Sketch Engine for Language Learning - http://skell.sketchengine.co.uk/run.cgi/skell. From what I've seen so far, both seem very useful but I have to admit that I prefer Sketch Engine because I think that it is easier to use and navigate through. Also there is no need to sign up for it unlike for the Contemporary American English corpus where you have to register after 10-15 querries.

In order to advance my range of vocabulary I read as much English literature as possible. I am lucky in this respect because I really love reading. To be honest, books have become one of my main hobbies. However, I tend to read lighter literature rather than more demanding articles and texts so I will need to change my habits to balance out the lack of formal language and the vocabulary that goes with it.

My favorite but probably least effective attempt to broaden my vocab is to watch the original versions of TV shows I like a lot. This is really helping to build up a base of good expressions and words and to develop a feel for how English works, but if you really want to learn more complicated words there are certainly better ways to do so such as reading articles found in respected newspapers.

Anyway, that's all I can think of right now. I hope I could help one or two of you guys out by sharing my approach to boosting my vocabulary and taking it to the next level.

Culture Days

Hello everybody! Since we had our culture days on Monday 16^th and Tuesday 17^th where every student had to hold a presentation about a topic of American or Irish Culture and attend at least 10 other presentations as well as share our experience on our blogs that’s what I’m going to do right now. Of these 10 presentations I mentioned above we had to choose 7 American topics and 3 Irish topics.
 
So here are the ones that I attended:
 

Irish presentations: (actually I even managed to watch four of them though I was afraid at first that I couldn’t manage to go to the three assigned one due to my tight schedule)

 
Polar Opposites: To be honest I didn’t really have any idea what this topic was about until I watched the presentation and I simply chose it because it fitted perfectly in my schedule. However, it really turned out to be very interesting and Katrina really did a great job explaining everything.
 
Irish Intelligence at its peak: I chose this topic because I wanted to know a little bit more about Ireland’s secret service which is quite fascinating. I surely learned a lot of new facts that I didn’t know before.
 
The Fenian Brotherhood and their raids on Canada: This subject surely captured my attention and I was quite surprised since I didn’t know that the Irish had such a huge influence on Canada. Theresa really managed to break down the most important ideas in a very understandable way.

Monica Loughman – Ballet in Ireland: I especially liked this presentation because it was so different from all the other tackled topics. Though, I myself never really was interested in ballet, I found the presentation very intriguing and Anja really did a great job bringing across her topic.
 

American presentations: (I watched 10 American presentations in total and if I had had more time I would have probably attended even more ;) )
 
Same-sex marriage: I really was looking forward to this presentation because I wanted to know what Miriam has to say about it. I already knew that the situation for couples of the same sex who want to get married is worse than here in Austria but I didn’t know that conservative states such as Alabama don’t even accept already married couples.

Two Famous American Women Poets: To be honest, I never heard of neither Emily Dickinson nor Maya Angelou before. Nonetheless, I knew from the start that I wanted to attend this presentation, not only because Magdalena is my best friend but also because I wanted to know a little bit more about these two women poets. And I was not disappointed. Both women were truly fascinating personalities. What I liked best about the presentation was the reading of the poems.
 
Massacre at Virginia Tech: The reason I chose to watch this topic is because it is also connected to my own topic, America’s Gun Culture. Though, I’ve already heard a lot about shootings in America since they are all over the news, it still shocks me to hear the full extent of them nonetheless. Anyway, in my opinion Barbara really did well especially explaining the real reasons for similar shootings – mental illnesses not media violence or violent video games.
 
Flappers: Before attending this presentation I looked the expression “Flappers” up on google because it didn’t mean anything to me. When I found out that it’s about women in the 20s breaking out of conventions I was immediately interested. What I really liked about the delivery was that Julia showed up in the complete costume and explained everything thoroughly.
 
The Smurfs are real: To be honest I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this presentation and really was surprised that it’s about a disease. What I really liked is that Jasmin didn’t make an all-serious presentation, on the contrary she managed to keep it funny from the beginning to the end.
 
The role of religion in the US education system: Religion has always been a controversial topic especially when mixed with education. I found it shocking to hear that people actually take their children out of school just because they don’t believe in science and evolution. Overall, it was a very interesting presentation even though Vid talked a little too fast but that was simply nervousness (which I can fully understand, I was extremely nervous myself)

The US-Mexican Border Woes: I already heard about the US-Mexican border being very restricted and well guarded but I simply couldn’t imagine that it was so extreme. Especially learning all the different measure that are taken to prevent Mexicans from entering the US was horrifying. In my opinion Judith managed to present all the different aspects of this topic in a very compelling and understandable way.

 
CIA – Project MKUltra: At first, I had no idea that this topic is dealing with mind control and I was stunned since I thought similar things only happen in science fiction movies. All the facts that David informed us about were both interesting and eye-opening. All in all, I think he did a great job explaining this little known topic.

Women for women – The will to lead: I really was looking forward to hearing more about this topic since it is very up-to-date and deals with a problem women are facing all over the world. What really shocked me is that the situation for women in America is even worse than I expected it to be. The only consoling fact is that women such as Michelle Obama and Sheryl Sandberg are trying to improve the situation by showing that women can be in leading positions too. In my opinion the presentation Sabrina gave was intriguing and mind-blowing.

F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Great Gatsby: I was anticipating this presentation since I already watched the movie and wanted to know a little bit more about the book and its writer as well. I was definitely not disappointed and I think that Verena did an amazing job presenting this topic.


Since I also have to select 5 topics out of the American presentations that I want to be tested on the KGP, I’ll present my choice here in no particular order:

1. Women for women – The will to lead
2. The role of religion in the US education system
3. Flappers
4. US-Mexican Border Woes
5. CIA – Project MKUltra

I hope the range of my chosen topics is wide enough.