Napalm Girl - Descriptive Text

The very first thing that catches the eye of someone observing the picture we chose, would be a young naked and barefooted girl slowly running towards the person taking the picture. She has her arms stretched away from her body, as if she was shaking them to try and alleviate unbearable pain. Her mouth is hanging wide open and her face is contorted with what might be excruciating pain or extreme anger. This girl is depicted as the centre of both the photograph and the scene displayed in the photograph. Around her there are four more children, almost all of them equally distressed, following or preceding the young girl. If you look at the position of their arms and legs, it seems like they are not walking, but running away from something which might be the cause of their distress. The five children are running along a broad and seemingly deserted road and are followed by five calm-looking soldiers, some of them armed with machine guns. The street, which runs a straight line through the picture, is surrounded by what might be a flat meadow landscape and three or more dilapidated looking houses. If you focus your eyes on the end of the road, you can spot a billowing cloud bank of smoke in the back of the picture, which might be the source of the children’s distress. The smoke cloud completely covers the sky and causes the rest of the landscape to disappear into impenetrable darkness.

Syrian refugees in Lebanon - Narrative article

The number of Syrian refugees registered in Lebanon has exceeded one million, what the UN calls a “devastating milestone” for such a small country. Now refugees, half of them children, equal a quarter of Lebanon’s population.  One of them is Mariam Ramu, mother of four children; she set herself on fire in protest of not receiving help. Mariam got critically injured. “I would rather choose to be dead, than seeing how my children and husband get killed in front of me”, she says under tears. Mariam and her family fled to Lebanon about a year ago under awful circumstances. Hunger, pain and fear, were their companions for several weeks, until they finally arrived at their destination – but life did not get better. Hundreds of people in different parts of the country have been killed due to violence. Mariam's story of frustration, humiliation and desperation mirrors that of countless other refugees.

A day in the life of a typical student

Yippee finally it’s the day – first day of spring! It is not even 8.30 in the morning but the sun is already shining brightly through my window. It’s definitely time to have breakfast on the balcony. Funny, how easy getting out of bed becomes, when you can feel that summer is coming closer. A perfect day to go for a walk in the park – but no, not yet, it’s Wednesday and university is calling. I can barely concentrate on the stuff we do in class. My mind is already having coffee at Parkhouse. After one lesson of Communication Management, and two lessons of Italian Language and Culture, I can finally meet my friends at the park. It is the first day of the year when it is warm enough to have a drink outside. For me, spring is the best season  - warm enough to sit outside without a jacket, but not too hot that you get soaked with sweat. You feel like this day could last forever, but suddenly the sun start setting, and immediately after, it starts getting cold. That’s when we realize it is not summer yet, it is only March - and it will probably get cold again.

  View from my balcony












University











                                                                                   Stadtpark

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.“