Straining every nerve - American Accent Training

Heeey guys! :-)
I hope you're all doing well considering how many exams we're having this month. This is the very last week of this semester, guys, so let's keep up and get it over with.

Since the title of this blogpost is called "American Accent Training" you're probably expecting some of my strategies on how to improve my American pronunciation. If you want to know my general approach to a better pronunciation, feel free to read through my first blog post on pronunciation.

I must admit I am very late with this blogpost. The reason why is simply because I haven't found a third source on American Accent Training which I could recommend. I mean, there were many useful links which provided a handful of exercises and stuff, but none of them really got me hanging on. But after having tried out Rachel's and Amy Walker's English tutorials, I finally found a third source which I found worth sharing with you.

1. Rachel's English

Rachel clearly is a professional when it comes to (teaching) pronunciation. What I really like about her YouTube channel is that she has very specific topics, like "the TH Consonants" or "Contractions". She even has a few videos about Homophones.
As I mentioned in my first blog post about pronunciation, I really like doing Minimal Pairs, because it's not only a very effective but also a funny way to deal with pronunciation. And Rachel even has a playlist containing five videos about minimal pairs. I loooove these.
Another thing I like about her very professional videos is that the IPA sounds are displayed on the screen while she's pronouncing them. Also, the words she is talking about are displayed, so you can read them and repeat after her. The repeating is a very essential part of the pronunciation training. How are you going to improve your pronunciation without trying it out yourself? So that's why I like it a lot that she always pauses after a word so you can repeat it. Another advantage of such video tutorials is that you see how a native - in this case Rachel - moves her mouth. She (and Amy Walker as well) also explains which muscle movement is necessary for a certain sound. So far, I have benefited a loot from her tutorials.

2. Amy Walker

To be honest, I was a bit sceptical in the first place. Amy Walker seemed to me like a very friendly, but almost too friendly person. She smiles as if - well I don't know, but definitely too much, as it it was a fake smile. Anyways, I watched her tutorials since it is my goal to acquire an American accent. This is the link to her tutorials, by the way. Although I wasn't sure if she is the right person to teach me pronunciation (because of her exaggerated smile which I initally almost couldn't stand), I must say I really enjoyed it and I think she is doing a good job when explaining the differences between two siminar sounds. What I really like about her tutorials is that she provides a worksheet. I like having a sheet of paper right next to me so I can take notes if necessary. Her example words and sentences are really good, and there are many words which I use every day but have never really paid attention to their correct pronunciation.

She also has a video where she speaks 21 different accents. That's a really funny one, alhough I must say that the German accent is not 100% authentic. It's a good effort, though.

3. "Simple English Videos"

So the third source I want to share with you is different from the ones I was talking above. "Different" as in a bit unusual, but really funny. I like these kind of funny videos because if you find something amusing then it's more likely that you remember them.

 If I remember correctly, we watched one of the "Simple English Videos" in SUK I. I think it was this video we watched. But let me show you another one, of which you can see a screenshot on the right. He is American and the woman is British, and that's what makes their videos interesting. And yes, that's Rachel sitting inbetween the two.
What I like about their videos is that they provide a pronunciation, both an American and a British one. They do not explain the pronunciation in detail like Rachel or Amy would, but they tell you the meanings of a set of words which sound very similar or are even homophones. In the video you can see on the screenshot, they focus on the words fall, fell, fallen, feel and felt. They mention collocations and try to explain in a very humorous way what the words mean and how you use them. So, their videos are not telling you how to pronounce them according to the IPA - that's rather Rachel's and Amy's job - but they show you the differences between these similar words.
As I said, the videos are really amusing. And I think that's really important, because we as language learners study like crazy, and sometimes studying all day becomes really tedious. Am I right? But when watching the "Simple English Videos",  studying becomes definitely more funny, more interesting and more varied - at least for me. Give it a try, guys, it's brilliant!

- - -

That's it. I really hope you enjoyed the read. Two days to go and then we've finally mastered the 3rd semester. Since this is going to be the last post this semester, I'd like to say a few words about it.

I think we (English students) all agree that the 3rd semester was not exactly a walk in the park. We all struggled hard and did the best we could. And even though, our grades were not always the best. Teachers kept on telling us "you can do better" meaning that you should work harder. But what if I you simply can't do more because you have a second foreign laguage and you have seminaries and tutorials to attend. And yeah, there are about three papers to hand in by the end of semester; almost forgot to mention them. So sometimes a student just can't do more and simply needs a break. And here it is. So I think we can be proud of ourselves to have survived this constant struggle and we should enjoy the semester break to the fullest. So I wish everyone of you a relaxing and looong semester break. Have fun. Go crazy. Or do whatever you always do. And I'm looking forward already to seeing you next semester. ¡Adiós, amigos!

Sparing no effort to survive the Exam

Hey guys.
Welcome to my second blogpost on strategies how to improve my vocab and survive PC2. I've been reading a handful of blogposts of fellow classmates and I decided to try out a new dictionary. Also, I am going to tell you how I will master studying the words of the Porter book. So first of all: the new dictionary.

New Dictionary

The Collins Dictionary

So far, I have been using the dictionaries of Merriam Webster and Cambridge a lot as well as the vocabulary.com website. Now that I've tried out a few more online dictionaries, I'd like to share one with you that I found very helpful.
The Collins Dictionary allows you to decide whether you want to look up a word in a British or in an American dictionary. It provides a very short, but useful explanation of a word. I like this because sometimes, when a dictionary provides too many explanations, it gets even more complicated than it already is. Right next to the explanation, there are strong collocations provided, which also comes in very handy. If you are interested in the origins of the word, you can see those beneath the definitions. The Collins dictionary also shows synonyms and a direct link to the website's thesaurus. In addition to that, they offer translations in various languages. In some cases, it is helpful to not only look up a word in a monolingual, but also in a bilingual dictionary. Aaand what's the icing on the cake is that you can also see example sentences, very similar to the ones on vocabulary.com.
I highly recommend the Collins Dictionary as it has proven itself as very useful to me.

The two most important strategies how to study the Porter words

1. Repetition is the key

Vocabulary.com App

Using the vocabulary.com app was actually not a suggestion from a colleague, but from one of my English teachers. At first, I wasn't sure if I want to spend two euros on an application I will probably either not like or not use - or even both. I know that two euros is not a lot of money. But considering it is exactly the same like the website vocabulary.com, two euros are actually a lot. Why buying an app for my mobile phone while I can use the website for free?
In the end, I decided to download the app and just give it a try. And guess what. I LOVE IT <3
The app provides the exact same information squeezed on a mobile phone screen. I use it whenever I am on the bus, on the train or even when I am doing a shift as a paramedic, waiting for a call. I'm sure my colleagues think I am a total nerd studying vocabulary during a night shift. If only they knew that a lot of nights look the same in a Translation student's life. Sorry, I am going off on a tangent...
So about the disadvantages of this app. I'd like to mention two: First, the costs of course. Not everyone is willing to pay for an app since almost every app we use is free. And second, sometimes the speaker-button where you can listen to the word's pronunciation is not always working. But I don't know if this is the app's fault or it's just my crappy phone. Do you have any experiences with the app?

Anki App

When I first installed the Anki software on my laptop a few months ago, it didn't exactly work well. I think there was some kind of a bug so I couldn't use it properly. After reading through some blogposts of my student colleagues, I felt like installing and trying it again. They all said that it works perfectly and that they benefit from using it, so I downloaded the mobile app AnkiDroid Flashcards. And it worked! Woohooo. So that's how I became an Anki user. Why I benefit from using it?
I like that the app gives you the possibility to choose on your own what you want to put on the back of a flashcard. I am saying put because you can either write a definition, a translation, add an image or even an audio file. So you could add a voice note where you yourself pronounce the word - correctly of course.

What I do most of the time, however, is adding an English definition including synonyms and collocations. That's what helps me the most to learn a word. In rare cases, I also add a German translation.

Sooo, I recommend this app as well as the vocabulary.com app. The good thing about Anki is that it's free and you can either use the mobile app or the software.  In general, I'd say that using a mobile app to learn vocabulary is very practical. You can do it wherever and whenever you want: on the bus, on the train or, like I do, even during night shifts.

2. A spoonful at a time

Another important thing when it comes to mastering such a huge amount of words is to study the words in pieces - to somehow classify or cateogrize them. It's up to you how you like to classify them. I don't have a particular way of classifying them, but I study the Porter words unit per unit. Not bearing in mind how many words need to be learned in total helps a lot not to go bonkers. What is more is that it's a good feeling to complete a unit and be able to say that you've just learned a bundle of new words.

Also, I make use of the vocabulary sheets at the end of every unit. Not only do I highlight words I don't know, but also write them and their meaning down. I also add collocations and synonyms in order to remember the words more easily. On the second photo you can see the vocabulary sheet of the fourth unit. Let's take the word "sphere" as an example. I wrote "closed surface of round shape" and "area/sector/field" as short explanations and added "social sphere" as a collocation. Of course, this way of writing down vocab is not everyone's cup of tea. For me, however, it works quite well.

Thaat's it. I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post. You'll hear from me very soon as I still need to write a second post on pronunciation ;-) CU!

Summary of the Credit Crisis - Before and After

Helloo guys.

This blog post is going to be a bit different than my preceding ones. We, my fellow students and myself, were asked by one of our English teachers to blog about a summary we recently wrote. There is a first version of the summary and a corrected one. I marked the mistakes corrected by my teacher in different colors. I hope it doesn't look too confusing. If so, feel free to ask questions any time. Here we gooo.

First Version

 

The video The Crisis of Credit Visualized covers the origins of 2008’s credit crisis and its impact on the economy. The crisis is defined as a “worldwide financial fiasco” which caused the credit market to freeze in 2008.

A homeowner mortgages their house, i.e. they borrow money and pay back a monthly mortgage payment. This payment is received from investors who are seeking for investments where they can make more money. Investors borrow money in order to amplify potential gains. This is called leverage. The investor can choose between risky and safe mortgages. Safe mortgages have a low rate of return, while risky ones have a higher one.  This is called a collateralized debt obligation. In order to make safe mortgages even safer, banks insure the mortgages with a fee called the credit default swap.

When a homeowner defaults, the house comes into the lender’s possession. The lender then gives the house to less solvent people or sells it again. Putting more houses on sale creates more supply than demand. Consequently, housing prices fall. The investors invest in worthless houses and cannot pay back their loans. This leads to a frozen credit market where no one buys or sells anymore.

Author is missing
Not only does it cover its origins, but explains the crisis as a whole
It's not really a definition
Too wordy
Preposition
Wordy - use an adjective that describes "investments"
Wordy - there is a shorter way to say this
Wrong word
Delete
Focus a bit more on sub-prime mortgages
Tense

 

Corrected Version

The video The Crisis of Credit Visualized by Jonathan Jarvis explains the 2008’s credit crisis and its impact on the economy. The crisis is called a “worldwide financial fiasco” which caused the credit market to freeze in 2008.

When a house is mortgaged, its homeowner pays back a monthly mortgage payment. The investors receiving these payments can choose between mortgages of a lower or higher rate of return. This is called a collateralized debt obligation. In order to make low-return mortgages safer for investors, the mortgages are insured with a fee called the credit default swap.

When a homeowner defaults, the house comes into the lender’s possession. Normally, the lender sells it to another responsible homeowner. These are called prime mortgages. What occurred ahead of the credit crisis, however, was the divestment of mortgages to less solvent people, not requiring down payments or a proof of income. These are called sub-prime mortgages. If more sub-prime mortgages default, more houses are on sale. The abundant supply of houses causes their prices to fall. The investors invest in worthless houses and cannot pay back their loans, which they need to do to amplify potential gains. This lead to 2008’s frozen credit market.