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