Vocabulary Learning Strategies #2 and Pronunciation Diary#2

Hello my fellow sufferers!
I think we all got a loooot to study at the moment and that the stress is almost unbearable but I hope you are all doing well in your exams! Good luck with all the exams and papers to hand in- all of us can use a little portion of luck right now therefore I’m sending you all the motivation and luck I can think of ;-)

I had my oral exam with Frank today and I did okay which is not that bad but also not excellent..it’s okay. In the end he told me that he thinks I did have the words somewhere in my mind but I would need to really master them.  He is definitely right! I was a little angry at myself because one of my medium words was “switch” and besides the primary meaning of switch as in a light switch this word has a second meaning. It can also refer to a stick- which I knew but couldn’t recall at this very moment. This proves Frank’s theory that I do know the words passively but in the moment I need them I’m struggling a little.

So what am I going to do in order to stick the words to mind forever?
One option would be to get tested on vocabulary by Frank every week because I will never ever forget the meaning of the words I did not know during the exam (which was just one word by the way..and I did know it somewhere in mind as well). But that’s not really doable so I have to come up with another plan.

1)      I’m not going to wait until there is an exam to improve my knowledge of vocabulary and learn new words- I am looking up new words in a dictionary all the time but I’m not checking for strong collocations or different meanings- just the primary meaning I need in this very moment. So I’ll change that from now on!

2)      I will look at other blogposts for similar apps to gFlash because at first I was very excited about it and thought this app would help me a lot. Unfortunately, it turned out that in fact I didn’t like it very much. I thought it was too complicated and time-consuming!

3)      My third attempt is easy- I will stick to the vocabulary learning strategies that I explained in my first post because they have been working for me- also this time. The only problem was that I just didn’t start early enough. So…..

4)      Number four- come up with a schedule! Just saying “I’ll learn 5 new words a day from now on” does not really to de trick for me (maybe because I somehow forget that I said that..). So I did some research and found a really cool website where you can create your own schedule (http://schedulebuilder.org/schedule). I will use it to plan my vocabulary studying.
From now on I will think of studying vocab like taking a compulsory class. I will print the schedule and hang it up on my wall right beside my UNI schedule. Of course I could also just include it into the schedule in UGO but I think studying vocab deserves its own schedule ;-).
I really think that planning my studying better will help me master my words for the next exam!

Pronunciation

Regarding my pronuncation Frank told me that it wasn't too bad either but i still should improve it- especially the "v"- sound.
I asked my friend (the English major who takes all the fancy pronunciation classes) to lend me her notes. Here's what i got:

I did not have time to practice these sounds yet but i will! And I think this explanation will help me with that.

Additionally, I also looked at our Pronunciation Practice Page again and looked for all the videos that explain the problematic v-sound and also looked for some new videos which you can find here:

I really like Jon and his explanation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzHIi8fOnTw


Additional videos where the v and also the w and f sounds are explained

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mELVWr-jlxY

http://www.engvid.com/pronunciation-v-w/



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpB2oQDwhS8

Pronunciation Diary

 

 

Pronunciation Diary – Part 1

Right after I had finished the pronunciation diagnostic test I knew I had mispronounced the word Aluminum. I was right! Getting back the feedback from Frank I wasn’t really shocked I got that word wrong. I was quite taken aback that I misread the price, though. To be perfectly honest I feel a little ashamed because I never thought I could make mistakes in such a basic thing as reading prices.  
So here’s what I did to never let these sort of mistake happen ever again:

First I simply googled: ‘Reading prices in American English’.
Here’s what came up for reading prices correctly:

For example:

$4.59

four dollars (and) fifty-nine cents four / fifty nine

(long way) (short way)

On this site you can check your knowledge of reading prices: http://www.passporttoenglish.com/Beginning-English/Lesson10/Vocabulary.html

I am sure you know the website www.howjsayit.com I think this site is particulary helpful and a fast way to check how something is pronounced correctly. While still sitting in Frank's class I opened the site to check the correct pronunciation for Aluminum-which is stressed this way: Aluminum.

The next thing I did was to go to our Pronunciation Practice Page and had a look at the Common Problems sections. I watched the videos and found some of them really helpful and the one with the Canadian Teacher who explains the W and V sound especially amusing :-).
I also liked Dave Scondas video but after watching it with headphones two times and repeating all the excercises my brother finally asked me what the hell it was I was doing with my mouth and my tongue?! :-)
But as you know when you watched the video: Don't be shy to reeeally show your tongue!

I hope I will have time to watch more of Rachel's videos on http://www.rachelsenglish.com/.
I would really like it if I could get rid of my accent in the near future.

Another thing that's helping me with my pronunciation is that I have a dear friend who is an English major and has to take a lot of pronunciation courses so she got a lot of exercises and tipps for me. We try to practice together because we both don't like the feeling of sitting alone in a room repeating words in front of a computer.

Updated Summary

This blogpost is going to be about the process of updating my summary of THE CRISIS OF CREDIT VISUALIZED. First I’ll show you my original version including Henry’s corrections and after that you can read the updated summary. At the end I’ll explain my mistakes and the process of correcting them.

Here’s the before version of my summary of THE CRISIS OF CREDIT VISUALIZED.

And here the (hopefully) improved version

The video The Crisis of Credit Visualized directed by Jonathan Jarvis visualizes the incipience of the credit crisis in the 2000’s. After the dot.com crash and 9/11 the US Federal Reserve lowered their interest rates to maintain the country’s stability, forcing investors to look for alternatives to invest. However, banks delightedly borrowed money and surpluses allowing them to carry out profitable deals which gained the attention of investors.

 Consequently, Wall Street bankers connected homeowners with mortgages to the investors through buying their mortgages from the lender. Bankers resold them to investors in forms of CDOs which are divided into the AAA, the BBB and the unrated tranche. Investment bankers sold these tranches to investors, bankers and hedge funds as long as money from homeowners paying their mortgages was streaming in.

Seeking more money, bankers introduced sub-prime mortgages which were approved for families less reliable and not being able to set a down payment. This caused numerous homeowners to default on their mortgages, leading to the investment bankers acquiring their houses. The houses dropped in value causing an increasing number of families to leave their homes and the incoming stream of money to stop.

Resulting, investors stopped buying CDO tranches thus bankers were no longer able to pay back their credits. Subsequently, the entire financial system was frozen and homeowners, lenders, investment bankers and investors went bankrupt.

 

Well, as you can see I made various mistakes in my summary including some really unnecessary ones. As the proofreading mistakes such as “increasingly number of” are concerned I’m pretty mad at myself because even after reading it 5 times I never caught that mistake. Next time I will definitely apply the new proofreading strategy Henry told me about during the office hour which is following: You look at your old English texts searching for commonly made mistakes and write them down. If you particularly have problems with, let’s say adverbs, you proofread your finished text just for adverbs and then repeat that again by looking for correct use of tenses for example.
My summary was also too long which forced me to condense or delete several unnecessary words and sentences.  I found it especially difficult to condense the sentences but still keep the important parts in it.
I highlighted the corrected mistakes and I hope the updated summary is of higher quality now.

Vocabulary learning strategies

I have several ways of memorizing new vocabulary. I don't always do it exactly the same way and I think that’s a good thing.

First of all, before I actually start studying I try to put all the words and phrases into some kind of glossary. I try to remember all the words I picked up in class, while reading a book or articles. Of course, I can't remember all of them so I collect them in a vocabulary notebook and later on write all of them down into my glossary.

I add phrases, collocations and an English definition to my glossary as I’m studying. Why not do that before studying, you may ask. Well, I simply remember the vocabulary a lot easier by doing that and the memory is still fresh when writing a progress check. If I did all that right away as I was typing the new words into my glossary, I would simply read through my list later on and would probably only keep a third of it in my head.

To get additional information about the words, I search some online dictionaries such as pons.eu, the Oxford learner’s dictionary or the Macmillan dictionary for the definition and Just the Word for collocations and phrases that go with that word. By the time I have finished my glossary I usually know a lot of the new words quite well.

This is a glossary I produced for my academic research paper which is about the bombing of Knittelfeld in WWII. This glossary contains useful vocabulary I found in some articles during the research of my topic.

In addition to the glossary and vocabulary.com I try to make studying fun, so what do I do?
I invite some friends over (mostly English students) and we play a vocabulary game. Everyone asks a vocabulary question (English definition, common phrases, collocations etc.) and for every right answer you get something (most of the time it’s cookies or chocolate). In the end the one with the most cookies wins. It sounds like a silly game but it’s incredibly simple and funny at the same time! Not only are you eager to win the game, but it actually is a great way to remember vocabulary because everyone has a different approach to study vocab and sometimes you can learn a thing or two from the others.

What I believe can be very helpful and will definitely try out for the first progress check are these flash card apps. I never used flash cards before because I thought it would take me too much time to make them but with apps like gFlash or anki I won’t lose any time and can study wherever I want. I have already downloaded gFlash and I’m thrilled about it!

I also like to study with the help of vocabulary.com. What I think is especially useful is creating my own vocabulary lists. I can even copy and paste a whole article into it and pick the difficult vocabulary to put on the list. It depends on the number of words but it can take quite some time to study a longer list because the same questions pop up over and over again. This helps a lot to really memorize the new word but can get a little boring. It also helps a little that you can unlock achievements like 10 in a row or a perfect row. I like the fact that the questions are not always the same type. Some include a sentence where a word is missing, 4 pictures from which you have to choose the best one or a simple ‘What does … mean?’ question.

By changing my study strategies from time to time and using different tools I have the variety I need to keep it interesting. If I’m not careful I might even start liking studying vocab.J

Culture Presentations-part 2

As you know we have to blog about the culture presentations we saw last week and I really enjoyed listening to them-everyone did a great job.  Even though I’m not going to take the KGP I’ve chosen 5 topics I would like to be tested on if I took the exam. 

Here are my thoughts to the 11 presentations I went to see.

The USA culture topics:

San Francisco and the Bay Area : Marina did a great job with her presentation and I really enjoyed listening to her. Her PowerPoint was quite impressive and I loved the pictures!

Two more for Mount Rushmore:  I thought that Katharina really knew what she was talking about and made an effort on her prezi. 

The Danger of Society Threat Groups in American Prisons: Wow- Livia made an already good topic even more interesting. I saw some documentaries about this brotherhood so I had some background information about that and I have to say Livia really nailed it! =)

Southern Hospitality: I had to see this presentation just because of Julia. I knew beforehand that she would do an amazing job and I was right! I just loved the way she presented herself and the topic.

Monty Roberts: Although I’m not very much into horses (actually I’m a little bit afraid of them) I think this method of training horses is pretty amazing. Melanie was very calm during her presentation and you felt that she actually believes what she was saying.

America as a nation of narcissism: What a great topic! I loved what Maria did with it. I really enjoyed listening to it and I would have liked to here more about it.

Sacagawea: I liked the topic very much and Bianca researched it very well. We worked together on our CLI project last semester which was “Louisiana Purchase” so I thought it was great to see her presenting this topic.

The Navajo Code Talkers: Puh! What an amazing presentation!! For me Laura’s performance was the best of all I had seen. I liked that she pronounced some of the Navajo words. Very interesting topic+great PowerPoint+ amazing presenter= Awesome presentation!

The Ireland topics:

Newgrange: When I was in Ireland a few years ago we wanted to visit this place but unfortunately we didn’t so I decided to see the presentation and I wasn’t disappointed. Now I want to see it even more.

Irish Dance: I very much liked this topic and on my trip to Ireland we actually had a little Irish Dance class and it was so much fun. The presentation itself was okay. Not one of the best but it was hard because everyone before did such a great job.

Psychiatry in Ireland: I loved this presentation. Diana really knew how to get everyone’s attention. It was one of my favorite presentations this day because she completely amazed me with her performance.

The 5 presentations I would choose if I took the KGP are: Southern Hospitality, The danger of Society Threat Groups in American Prisons, Navajo Code Talkers, America as a nation of narcissism and Monty Roberts.