Pronunciation Diary - Part 2

In order to find out where our weakness lies when reading an unknown text, we did a Pronouncing Diagnostic Exercise. The exercise consisted out of reading a tex aloud for about 30 seconds, while being recorded. Our teachers then listened to these recordings and gave us some feedback on our pronunciation, intonation, sounds that we had trouble with and voicing. 

In the following lines I am going to write about the feedback I got and what I did in order to improve my pronunciation. 

Feedback 

As I already knew I have got problems in pronouncing the “z in “zero“. I pronounce it as an “s”, rather than a “z”. My “t” and “d” sounds at the end of a word are also often difficult to distinguish and sometimes almost silent. I also have some work to do in order to be able to distinguish different sounds involving the letter “a”, like in can, bath, saw, for example. 

As you can see I still have a long way to go, before my pronunciation is perfect (if that ever happens). 

Practice, practice, practice!

www.missiontolearn.com

In order to improve my pronunciation I had a look at the following website: 

http://www.rachelsenglish.com/videos/s-pronounced-z

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFezTa9SGuU

http://www.speakmethod.com/sandzsounds.html

I consulted the following websites to get more information on the “d” and “t” sound:

http://www.grammar.cl/english/pronunciation-ed.htm

http://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/-ed.htm

http://www.multimedia-english.com/videos/different-pronunciations-for-t-examples--3825

http://www.elementalenglish.com/past-tense-verb-pronunciation-t-d-id/

How to pronounce the letter “a” in a correct way I found on this website: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPP9BcuVklI

I also looked at different websites in order to get a better understanding of American English. I particularly found this one useful, because you really get the chance to practice your pronunciation: 

http://pronuncian.com/

Pronunciation Diary :)

Hey there! 

To begin with, I would like to ask a question: why is pronunciation so important? 

Many people think that pronunciation is not actually that important if your grammar and vocabulary in general is good. Wrong. Pronunciation is the key to a successful communication. Done right, it enables you to understand the person you are talking to without any problems. This fact is also more than important for becoming a good interpreter. Who is going to enjoy listening to an interpreter whose accent is much worse than Arny‘s? 

How good does the pronunciation have to be? 

For my part, I am a perfectionist (which is undoubtedly not the right way to start off the day), so I want to speak like an American, not like an Austrian that tries to talk like an American. However, I think in general it is not important if you do not sound exactly like a native. You should have a good, more or less neutrally pronounced English. That means that you should not pronounce a Spanish r instead of an English one, for example. 

How can you improve your pronunciation? 

• One of the best ways to improve your pronunciation is undoubtedly talking to natives. This means, get a tandempartner! There are so many Americans in Graz if you just start searching for them. First of all you will have the chance to generally improve your English (grammar, vocab, expression) and secondly you learn so much just by listening how they pronounce a word. In addition to that you also see what they do with their lips when they pronounce a word. Babies only learn by imitating their parents, for example. Why shouldn‘t that be possible for us too? Imitate, imitate, imitate! :)
• Now that we did pronunciation exercises in class and most of you know what you still have to work on, you can also ask one of your fellow students to help you. As we don‘t all have the same problems, this is also very helpful in improving your pronunciation. 
• I would also recommend watching TV shows or series. That's how you also learn how the words should sound. Even if you don‘t directly speak while watching them your brain is capable of memorizing the sound and after some time it automatically reproduces them. 
• Vocabulary.com and dictionary.reference.com are also good measures to improve your pronunciation. You can listen to the words, dictionary.reference.com also shows you where exactly the word is stressed and where the difference lies between pronouncing the verb and the noun. 

What have I done so far to improve my pronunciation? 

I love speaking English. That is why I try to talk as often as possible to my friends from the States. I also learn by imitating people and as stated before, I think that is one of the best ways to improve pronunciation. I also watch series and TV shows, which can be as well considered as learning by imitating. Vocabulary.com and dictionary.reference.com always help me to find out how to pronounce a word correctly and, again, as you can listen to how it is pronounced correctly, you learn by imitating. I am really a fan of learning by imitating (as you might have noticed), because if i hear a word once, it usually stays in my mind and I immediately memorize it. 

Hey guys!

Here is the link to the revised version of our group essay :

http://andrina-suk.blogspot.co.at/2013/12/group-essay-eu-russia-relationship.html?m=1

The European Council

Original version: 

The European Council

The European Council, one of the several institutions of the European Union, plays an important role when it comes to setting a general political direction. It became an official body of the European Union in 2009 when the Treaty of Lisbon came into force. As the EU is often confronted with difficulties which cannot be solved by the individual member states, the heads of state or government of every EU country meet and decide on a general political direction as well as on the EU’s priorities. The decisions are made by consensus. This means that a concept or an idea has to be accepted by every voter or by the qualified majority depending on the nature of the treaty. In addition, the Commission President, the European Council President and the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy take part, but they are not allowed to vote. The meetings take place twice every 6 months usually in Brussels. However, the president Herman van Rompuy, can convene a special meeting if needed.

[172]

Revised version:

The European Council

The European Council, one of several institutions of the European Union, plays an important role when it comes to setting a general political direction. This institution is composed of the Heads of State or Government of the Member States, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and the President of the European Commission, who is elected for a term of two and a half years and can be re-elected once. The European Council, which meets at least four times a year, focuses on setting the general political direction of the European Union, sets priorities and debates sensitive issues. The decisions are made by consensus. This means that a concept or an idea has to be accepted by every voter or by a qualified majority depending on the nature of the treaty. Although the European Council is not a legislative body, thus not allowed to pass laws, it is still the cornerstone of the European Union, setting all of its directions.

[165]

paper news :)

http://penmasters.net/

Hey folks!

Just writing to let you know that my paper is going well. As you have probably heard before, the title of my paper is "Erasmus – or the never ending story of recognizing your courses". I think it is pretty interesting and affects especially students studying at the Department of Applied Translation Studies in Graz, because it would be important for us to go abroad in order to improve our foreign language skills. 

As I have been an exchange student  myself I know the difficulties that can emerge during an semester abroad. This is also the reason why I have not really had problems structuring my paper. Due to the fact that I know exactly how I am going to structure my paper, the personal experience I have on this field and that I found enough useful sources, in my opinion,  the job of writing the paper itself, it is to say the writing process itself does not appear to be that hard any more. 

As far as my progress is concerned I have already written half of the first version of my paper. I would not hand it in yet, of course, but I think that I will have finished my paper by Christmas. 

Elevator pitch...

After we did this little elevator pitch in class today, I thought maybe I could also advertise my paper by writing a blog post about it ;) 

Actually the topic of my paper affects all of you in a way. At least the ones that are planning to do an erasmus semester abroad . It’s about the never ending story of recognizing erasmus courses. I am sure that most of you have heard about that problem before. 

Every year more than 230 000 students take part in the Erasmus program. This education and training program enables students to study at a partner university in the European Union for a period of 3-12 months. Its goal is to promote lifelong learning and to encourage mobility within the EU. A great opportunity for students to improve their language skills as well as to gain valuable experience and to broaden their horizons. Participating in the Erasmus program, however, does not always bring the success and the results the students hoped for. Many people do not take into account that studying abroad also has its disadvantages, the greatest being the problem of recognizing absolved courses. Why do home university often not recognize courses taken at the host university and how can students prevent that from happening? The aim of this paper, that is based on personal experience is to investigate these question in order to illustrate the problems of studying abroad and to show what can be done to try to solve them. 

http://www.eng.notre-europe.eu

“The debt deflation theory” by professor Irving Fisher would take EU authorities far in the battle against rising debt. As the American Revolution has shown, deflation is an underestimated danger with the potential to lead to economic disaster. If total debt grows too high, as happens in Western Europe, deflation gets mortal. The eurostat index depicts that deflation has dropped. The tendency of falling prices is seen in many countries. Similar to Japan’s crisis, the eurozone economy is in endangered by high debt ratios and sustained deflation. Zsolt Darvas from the Brussels think tank Bruegel equates deflation with bleakness. He accuses the European approach of the debt crisis and mentions the dilemma of states being pushed to “internal devaluations”. Vicious dynamics such as the “denominator effect” are witnessed in countries like Italy, where debt rises faster than GDP. The same is true for private debt, where with crash diets for erred states, economic self destruction was only enhanced. For Mr Darvas, let inflation elevate means escaping from the deflationary spiral. Responsible for money shifting to Germany is the ECB and non counteracting member states which fear Germany would leave the eurozone. Europe hope for global growth to fight the deflation virus.

Comments: 

This summary undoubtedly contains the most important information from the text "Europe already has one foot in ‘Japanese’ deflation grave", nevertheless in my opinion it is too detailed. A five-year-old would not really get what is written here. Maybe because the author of the summary uses many expressions that have also been used in the original text. 

Furthermore the beginning of the summary is too abrupt, not showing information regarding the author as well as when and where the article was published. By reading the first line "The debt deflation theory by professor Irving Fisher..." one gets the impression that this is the name of the original text and Mr. Fisher is its author. In addition the following historic facts do not have to be necessarily mentioned in this summary. 

In regard to coherence the text is missing some linking words. In the middle of the text the author of the summary speaks of "internal devaluations" for example, and in the next sentence he uses the term "denominator effect" without linking these two sentences. Another aspect why the text sometimes appears to be incoherent could be the fact that it is not divided into paragraphs, it is to say it is not really structured.