Pronounciation Diary 2 / Resources

I tried some of the resources from our pronounciation page and here are the ones which I got the most out of.

I am in love with Amy Walker!!! She is just amazing! I watched all her videos and I think the essence of her teachings is that in order to an accent you have to get into the mindset of the culture to which it belongs to.

Another website I find very useful is the Merriam Webster pronounciation page. Especially when you don't realize what the difference between two words is, minimal pairs are immensly helpful to identify those.

I am also very fond of BBC's pronouciation page. It gives you a short and sweet overview of all sounds existing in the English language.

Apart from that I also found Frank's explanation of how you can tell wheter you are pronouncing a letter voiced or voiceless very helpful. If something in your throat vibrates it is voiced.

The Pecha Kucha Experience

I had never heard about Petschatschka before we were introduced to this method of presenting in class.
It was certainly a challange to create a presentation according to such a strict set of rules

The Making of...

The making of process was quite a lot of fun, I enjoyed working in a team. After doing a lot of research we ended up with quite a lot of text and kept condensing until it could be spoken in 20 seconds. In this respect I liked the restrictions as it makes it easier to pluck up to courage to trim a text to its very essentials. The recording process was also quite enjoyable as Dominik owns top-notch equipment. The time restriction also has the advantage that you have to concern yourself with your speaking pace. Often people don't realize how slow or fast they speak.

The Product...

I was quite satisfied with our Pecha Kucha. I think that alternating with a partner while speaking helps you to not only stay focused but also keeps your voice time to relax and your mouth doesn't go dry as quickly. The power point served well as a timer.

Next time...

I think next time I would be much more efficient in determining the amount of words that can be spoken in 20 seconds. Maybe I would aim for a "redder thread".

Overall...

While I am sure that the Pecha Kucha method is very useful if there are quite a lot of presenters I also think that some topics will "get killed" by all the restrictions.
What I did learn from the Pecha Kucha presentations is that it is very proficient to condense the information you want to deliver as much as possible. The more you get it to the point, the more likely people are to remember what you said.

Vocabulary Notebook

Having a wide vocabulary is essential for becoming a good translator or interpreter.

In high school it was sufficient to have a little notebook and write the German word in one column and it's English "equivalent" in the opposite column.

As university student it is no longer sufficient to think of learning vocabulary as reviewing easy one to one equations. We ought to internalize words so we can use them in appropriate contexts, juggle and play with them.

My vocabulary notebook consists of for parts.
1.) definition and explanation
2.) collocations
3.) don't confuse x with y
4.) spelling and pronounciation

I know, not very creative headings but I decided to go for a "nomen est omen" stragedy.

The definition and explanation section resembles the clasic high school vocabulary notebook. Just, instead of two columns there are seven columns. The first one, well, for the word. The second for a definition. The third for a good example sentence (vocabulary.com is a true blessing concerning that). The fourth for the German "equivalent(s)". The fifth for strong collocations. The sixth for other elements of the same word family. The last for synonymes.

The collocations section contains strong collocations of words that I already now.

for example: the discussions are still only in intermediate stages

The don't confuse x with y section is all about distinguishing between two words that have some kind of connection.

Last but not least, words that I have difficulty spelling or pronouncing with, or words that are somewaht extraordinary are collected in the spelling and pronounciation sheet. The middle column is left empty which enables me to use the print off as a work sheet.

Well, that is how I divided up my vocabulary notebook.

Cheers,
Anna

before/after: deflation grave

ORIGINAL

Summary of “Europe already has one foot in ‘Japanese‘ deflation grave”

In a Telegraph article from the 10/23/2013 Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues that the harmful policies applied by the EU in tackling the Eurozone crisis lead to deflation. The current strategy is to enforce harsh austerity measures on crisis-torn countries like Greece and Spain. With no monetary stimulus to boost their economies such countries are experiencing serious deflation. This is highly dangerous because deflation will cause unrepayable runaway debts for public and private actors. In order to deal with such debts states will be forced to cut down on their spending even further, which will result in lower wages and consequently decrease the purchasing power. Private actors will be forced to run down on their liquid assets. In short, economies are going to stagnate and Europe will end up in what the author refers to as deflation grave. Ironically, the initiators of these policy errors, with Germany leading the way, will also eventually face deflation. The currently proposed solution to this problem of religiously anticipating economic growth is harshly criticized by the author. Instead he argues that Spain, France, Italy and the Med Club ought to demand that the inflation rates are increased in their national economies.

CORRECTED

Summary of “Europe already has one foot in ‘Japanese‘ deflation grave”

In a Telegraph article from the 10/23/2013 Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues that the harmful policies applied by the EU in tackling the Eurozone crisis are leading to deflation. The current strategy is to enforce harsh austerity measures on crisis-torn countries like Greece and Spain. With no monetary stimulus to boost their economies such countries are experiencing serious deflation. This is highly dangerous because deflation will cause unrepayable runaway debts for public and private actors. In order to deal with such debts, states will be forced to cut down on their spending even further, which will result in lower wages and consequently decrease the purchasing power. Private actors will be forced to run down their liquid assets. In short, economies are going to stagnate and Europe will find itself in what the author refers to as a "deflation grave". The currently proposed solution to this problem of religiously anticipating economic growth is harshly criticized by the author. A real solution would be to raise inflation rates but countries like Germany strongly oppose such measures  because they fear it will erode their savings. Ironically, this reluctance will eventually also cause Germany  face detrimental deflation. The author urges the Club Med  to put Germany under pressure and  demand that the inflation rates are increased in their national economies.

Acedmic paper in progress

To be completely honest, my paper is not going to great so far. This task appears to be a lot more difficult than I expected. Additionally, although I love my topic – Bears in the EU – it is rather hard to find interesting sources. I still haven’t decided on my thesis statement or my scope yet. I am not sure whether I want to focus on the legal aspect, the trophy trade or do a kind of snapshot of the conditions bears live in. This topic would be so much more interesting if it didn’t have to tie in with the EU. As of now I am seriously contemplating changing my topic to something like the debate about the United States of Europe.

Pronounciation Diary - Day 1

!!! I actually decided to really get into English pronounciation and dedicate a whole seperate blog to this topic: http://ohenglishwhereartthou.blogspot.co.at/ I will try to organise it better when I have written more posts.!!!

Often it is not so much what you say, but how you say it.

For example, I have got this one friend, who always manages to drag me along to his weird events just because he manages to sound so convincing. He manages to provoke action with his way of speaking.

On a larger scale this also true with accents in a foreign language. When I was studying Physics in Vienna we had one lecture which was partly in English. Of course our professors all were geniouses BUT their thick German accent just made them sound so uneducated. It really crushed their credibility. We actually came up with a name for that - the aesthetic paradox!

Yet even though our professor sounded funny, after listening to him for a while it was clear that he was an expert on his field. And since our field of expertise is languages we really really ought to get down our pronouciation! For the sake of our credibilty!

So I came up with a structured plan to help me improve my pronounciation.

Block 1 - erasing every last bit of German in my English...

Because....unlucky for us, a German accent doesn't sound charming like the French one.

v/w sound
the/ three

Block 2 - different accents

identify
imitate
Australian
British
American
after Erasmus in Dublin - Irish

Criticism on deflation article

Summary of Ambrose Evans-P. Article

In his article in Telegraph from the 23^rd of October 2013, Ambrose Evans Pritchard analyzes the deflation within Europe.

In the beginning he illustrates the European deflation by using a comparison to the Japanese one. Deflation means no economic growth which can be positive if a country is not in debt, but due to European Debt Crisis, a deflation would cause a bigger problem than assumed for Europe. Not only national debts would be impossible to pay off but also private debts would be affected badly by this.

Ambrose Evans Pritchard suggests an increase of inflation within Europe, but Germany resist against such a policy as their economy is in a good condition, for now anyway. In the long run this unsolved problem will also affect Germany’s economy. To carry out this kind of an inflation policy Club Med partners should ally against Germany and force the country to accept inflation.

Another solution could be the attempt to cut spending, which is a highly unpopular process for the population.

In brief, Europe is hoping for a miracle to occur that will solve the European deflation and will save them from falling into a deeper crisis. 

Criticism

I very much like the topic sentence, it gives you a nice and easy start into the text. 

In the second sentence I would replace "using a comparison" by simply "comparing".

I think the second sentence is a bit unclear - deflation leads to no economic growth but I don't think it is the term to describe it. There seems to be a link missing there.

The problems that can be caused by deflation are explained in a very good and understandable way. I think the author did a really good job here in making a complicated topic tangible. This also goes for the proposed solutions - so all in all I think the author did really well in breaking down a complicated issue.