Link - Group Paragraph

You can find our post about "The Year of..." on David's blog!

http://daweiss.blogspot.co.at/2014/01/group-paragraph.html

Sweden and its possible, yet unlikely, entrance in the eurozone

Here is the link to our essay about Sweden and the eurozone:

http://daweiss.blogspot.co.at/2014/01/essay-versions-textkompetenz.html

Pronunciation Diary 2

In order to pass the oral pronunciation exam I had to improve a few things. First I had to work on the V-sound. To improve the difference between V and W I watched Amy Walker’s video How to do an American Accent. At the end of Part 2 she focuses on V and W. I really recommend her tutorials. She explains really well and it is easy to understand. I watched all of her videos, and repeated after her. The one called 21 accents is very funny. Amy is introducing herself in 21 different accents from all over the world. I posted the link below. 

To work on specific words I used memidex.com. This is a website where you can type in a word you do not know how to pronounce. I had troubles to say spiral, alternative and aluminum (while reading it out, I noticed that I said it the British English way). I also mixed up easel and aisle.

For me as a non-native speaker, it is sometimes really hard to hear the difference between the way I said a word and the way you would say it correctly. I often had to listen to a word several times in order to hear what I said wrong. That’s another thing I would like to improve during the next semester.

How to study vocabulary!

When it comes to vocabulary, I can tell you that it is not my favorite part of studying English. Back in High School it was not a big problem for me, because you only had to know the translation for a word – but here at university it is something different if you have to KNOW a word. Knowing a word means to know everything about it, definition, synonyms, antonyms, collocations etc. Because of that it can happen that you only have two words on one page in your vocabulary notebook. But nevertheless, I found a way to make vocabulary learning fun – vocabulary.com. It is a great way to go through the words, without even have the feeling that you are studying. I wish I had known this website a few years ago. If I don’t know a word I write it down in my handwritten vocabulary notebook (very old-fashioned) and revise it later.

Pronunciation Diary 1

This semester we focus on pronunciation. First we had to decide if we want to speak with an American accent or with a British accent. Since I worked in the States as an aupair, the decision was not really hard for me - American English sounds more natural to me, probably because my ears are used to it. After almost two years living in California, my host family told me that my pronunciation improved a lot. Other American people noticed an accent but did not think it was German - probably because the “German German” accent they are used to is different than my “Austrian German” accent.

 I have to admit that my pronunciation got worse since I am back in Austria, obviously, because I stopped speaking English every day. One way to improve my pronunciation is to read books out loud, or sometimes I watch movies and repeat phrases. I can only do that when my roommates are not here, because otherwise they think something is wrong with me ;) 

A few weeks ago I started to use Antimoon. It is a great source to improve your pronunciation. The tips they provide are really helpful, and they tell you about the importance of pronunciation. I want to finish up with a quote I found on an Antimoon subpage:

“English pronunciation is unpredictable. If you don’t put effort into English pronunciation, you will make mistakes, and mistakes can turn into bad habits. The longer you ignore pronunciation, the more bad habits you will form. So don’t put it off.“