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.“

"Illegal Love" in Europe

“Why do people come to Europe if there is no fortune here?” asks Sister Fa, a Senegalese musician who moved to Berlin a few years ago. This seems to be an important question for many of those who immigrate to Europe as their new life is not always what they expect it to be.   

Whatever their reasons might be, many of them find love in their new home.  There is an abundance of stories of African immigrants who fell in love with Europeans, got married and had children with them. Even though they have a family here, there is no guarantee that they can stay forever. The dream of a life in safety often ends up in so called “detention centres”, where immigrants are held against their will and have to wait for the deportation to their home countries. Among the captives in a Dutch prison-like detention facility there is one man who has been living in the Netherlands for ten years, is married to a Dutch woman and has a son with her. None of these facts seem to impress the Dutch authorities or to persuade them to extend his visa. His family is not even allowed to come to visit him. The despair is obvious: “I’d be better off dead than staying in this prison any longer.” No wonder if you consider the circumstances he is living in. The detainees are treated like criminals and sometimes even physically abused. Is this the Europe they were dreaming of?

Now back to Sister Fa and her life in Germany. She met a German guy in Senegal who did research on African music. They fell in love, got married and moved to Berlin where they are living a happy life with their son. Sister Fa is very content with her decision to come to Europe but not everybody is that lucky. Take her friend Bea for example. She came to Europe with her family but after a fight with the wife of her dad, he took away her documents so she had to get married or have a child in order to stay. Now she has a little girl but nobody supports her except for Sister Fa. Another friend of them came to Germany on a student visa but since he failed his exams, his visa expired. Now he has to go back to Africa, even though he was already planning to marry his German girlfriend.

Obviously, many of their situations are difficult but most of them try to think positively and won’t give up their fight for a better life in Europe.