Link to Feedback on essay about Bosnia

Here is the link of the feedback Monika Maric gave us for our essay about Bosnia and the EU:

Feedback of Bosnia

Link to post about Bosnia

Monika Toma uploaded the new version of the paper about Why Bosnia should join the EU on her blog. Here is the link:

Why should Bosnia join the EU

Reflection on the Pecha Kucha experience

When I reflect my very first Pecha Kucha presentation about Irish Gaelic, I have to admit that I am quite satisfied with it. There were certainly some mistakes that shouldn’t have occurred, but we could all turn a blind eye on them ;).

Monika Toma was my partner for the PK presentation. Working with her was actually very relaxing and easy as we have already held many presentations together so far. At the beginning of the preparations for our PK, each one of us collected information on her own and put it in a Google Doc. When the time had come to create an outline, we met and discussed about the information we had found up to that point. We both agreed on the scope of our presentation and so we could eliminate unnecessary facts. We didn’t want to bore our audience with dates. We decided to focus on the importance of the language and we wanted to answer the question why Gaelic actually did become one of the official working languages of the EU. Since the Pecha Kucha presentations were supposed to be entertaining, Monika and asked Fiona whether she could read out a short text in Irish for a short clip. She immediately agreed on that idea and so we filmed her with my camera. This was the fun part of the preparations. The most complicated part was to create a cohesive, well-written text and divide it into 20 seconds for each slide. We had some difficulties with that as some paragraphs were too short and others too long. But in the end we managed to resolve this problem. Picking out appropriate pictures for the Power Point was not complicated at all.

When the day of our presentation came, we met before in order to rehearse again. Apart from the fact that we had put the Scottisch map instead of the Irish on our PP, the presentation was quite good. At some points we were not always in parallel with our slides.

From my first Pecha Kucha, I have learnt that revising pictures properly is very important. I haven’t actually realised that we’ve used a Scottisch map which is quite embarrassing. In addition to that, we should have rehearsed more often. For my next Pecha Kucha I will surely try to not make the same mistakes again. But all in all, pretty much everybody was impressed by Fiona’s Irish.

I am convinced that Pecha Kucha is a very good way of giving a presentation. People are really thinking about the content of their presentations and do not bore the audience with complicated facts. This awareness enormously increases the quality of presentations and I myself was very enthusiastic and impressed by other Pecha Kuchas. They were all very creative and involved the participation of the audience. I really liked the Pecha Kucha about “Esperanto”. In such a short time, namely six minutes and 40 seconds, a completely new topic was presented to me very well. It left an effect on me which is what all presentations should do.

Vocabulary Notebook

For the second PC I actually took the necessary time to study the Porter vocabulary properly. Since I am not capable of coping with stress and I knew how many words were waiting for me to write down, I got down to work during Christmas break. Previous experiences have shown that the writing down of unfamiliar words makes me remember them much better and therefore I wrote down every single word, its explanation, synonyms and some example sentences too. I worked with three online dictionaries at the same time, namely the Longman Dictionary, Vocabulary.com and Thesaurus.com. In the end I had more than 20 sheets to go through again. This time I developed a method for studying vocabulary efficiently. I took the sheets of one unit, went through them and tried to remember as much as I could. The next day I revised them again. When I was not really sure about one word of the list, I put the sheet with that word on a specific place in my apartment. Of course, I also put the sheets with the vocabulary I could remember on a different place. Each time I would pass by these places, I took a sheet out and revised it. My method was to combine studying vocabulary with my daily life. It helped my mind to actually assign unfamiliar words a certain place in my apartment. To be honest, I have never memorised such a great range of vocabulary that quickly before. My method turned out to be very successful and I will definitely return to it again. Even if it is a very time consuming way to study vocabulary, the effect is undoubtedly worth it!

Pronunciation Diary (second post)

The feedback on my recording has helped me enormously to realise where my pronunciation problems lie. To be honest, I have never payed enough attention to it as I have always considered my pronunciation to be good. This, apparently, is not the case and there are a great deal of problems in my pronunciation I have to work on - and I am willing to do so!

1.) The first problem I have to tackle is the th sound. Up until now I have always pronounced the th in the article “the” and other words like “they” as a “d”.

Everyone was praising Rachel’s English channel on Youtube to be very helpful. I agree with that! However, when I was searching for other videos, I came across with Dave Sconda. In my opinion, he gives a much clearer explanation of the difference between the voiced and unvoiced th sounds. Maybe this sounds embarrassing to you but I have actually never been aware of the fact that there is a difference! What a shame!

Personally, I had difficulties to notice the difference between the th sounds in Rachel’s pronunciation. Dave, on the other hand, pronounces it clearly and also mentions the way English learners fail to pronounce them. Both of them read out sentences which contain these sounds. In order to practice them, I read them out aloud too. After some time (and it became very ridiculous ^^) I could actually discern the difference in my pronunciation! The only problem I am facing now is that I am too concentrated on pronouncing both th sounds correctly which is why sentences don’t really roll off my tongue - I guess I have to practice the natural flow now!

Here is the link to Dave Sconda (Does he remind you of Max Medina from the Gilmore Girls too?). He is quite popular on Youtube given the fact that he has over five Million viewers.

Dave - TH sounds

2.) Another problematic sound is the W and the V. Thanks to the help of a very amiable Canadian woman called Roonie, I will use a certain technique when I read out these letters. 

Roonie - V and W

If you want to pronounce the W correctly, just pretend to give somebody a kiss. Stick out your teeth like a Bieber and the correct pronunciation of the V will come out naturally. It is as simple as that. I have practiced this method on two words, veil and whale. In case I ever meet one of the greatest designer Vivienne Westwood, I can proudly shout out her name!

The feedback and all the useful links have helped me realise which sounds are problematic concerning my pronunciation. It is important to be more accurate and attentive when reading out a text. It is really not difficult at all!

Pronunciation Diary (first post)

When we learn a new language, we shouldn't underestimate the value of a good pronunciation. It's quite pointless to study vocabulary by heart without even trying to pronounce them correctly. In my opinion, it is a very crucial part of learning a language as native English speakers might not understand you if you don't pronounce particular words correctly.

This problem can be demonstrated clearly with an example:

The word "wound" can have two different meanings, depending on its pronunciation.

As a noun it is pronounced like this: wo͞ond --> Click on it!
However, the verb sounds like this: wæʊnd

If you are interested in the way I pronounce it, just click on the words below:
wo͞ond
wæʊnd

These words are written the same way, but are pronounced differently. Words like these are called homonyms.

The opposite, words which are  pronounced the same way, but are spelled differently, are called homophones.

Example: flour and flower Look at this picture for more homophones. Isn't that interesting?

Homonyms and homophones are very interesting linguistic phenomena (quite a tough word) and demonstrate clearly what it means to have good pronunciation skills.

Each time I come across with an unknown vocabulary, I try to pronounce it correctly and in order to make sure I’ve done a good job, I check the correct pronunciation on the Internet. In most cases I do pronounce it correctly, but sometimes I just don't get it right. I plan to work on the pronunciation of words I am already familiar with.

How my paper is going so far

Concerning my paper, the biggest difficulty I face is research. When I type "political cartoons" into Google Scholar, I only find short abstracts and have no access to any document. It is really frustrating because I need a basis of information as a source for my topic. I do not plan to simply describe the political cartoons I have chosen to deal with;I want to use arguments and valid reasons why certain aspects are important for caricature. The library at the ITAT seems to have no books dealing with this topic as well.  Anyway, I have to search the Internet properly grabing any useful arguments I come across wirh. I want to approach my topic in an academic way and present it interestingly for my readers.