The progress of my academic paper

I have to admit that I have not written a lot so far but I have collected a lot of useful sources and also made an outline of how I am going to structure my academic paper. I have to say that these steps have been easier than I had imagined. I was a little bit afraid that I would not find useful information for my topic or, more precisely, my concern was that there would not be academic sources that are suitable for my topic. I was really relieved, when I realized that there is actually exactly that information on the internet that I needed. One problem that I came across while looking for sources was that I did not find any academic sources for my chapter regarding Denmark and its relationship to the euro. By now, I have found some sources that could be useful for me but I am still looking for better options. So in case you come across an academic paper or something similar on this topic, I would be really thankful if you let me know (:  Regarding the structure of my paper, I enjoyed making an outline and planning how my paper should be organized. I am confident that my plan will help me a lot when I turn my bits and pieces of information into well written paragraphs. I am looking forward to doing this and hope that the choice of language won’t be too much of a challenge.  

Pronunciation diary part 1

Our task for this week was to try out some exercises from our Pronunciation Practice Page and write about our experiences with them. I, personally, enjoyed these exercises very much since I like listening to native speakers and I have always been fascinated by the different accents of British and American English. This is why I started with the pronunciation practice page “antimoon.com”. This site provides a subpage called "Choosing between American and British pronunciation" that is really helpful to decide if you want to speak British or American English. I, for my part, prefer American English and therefore I focused on the American English pronunciation exercises.

I started with the pronunciation website “Rachel’s English”. I have to say I really enjoyed her videos called “Real life” because the focus of these videos is everyday communication and they also give an insight in the American Culture. Her perfect AE pronunciation was the reason I got stuck on her page for quite some time. After that, I watched the videos from Amy Walker. I really liked her accent tutorial because she’s a likeable person and, in my opinion, she explains the way how AE pronunciation works really well. Particularly her first video about the vowel sounds was really useful for me. It’s a lot easier to pronounce a sound if know how to do it concerning mouth, teeth and tongue. I think practicing pronunciation in front of a mirror is a really good idea! Another video that appealed to me was the one about consonants and letter combination. Since a lot of German native speakers have a problem with the “th” and “f/v” sounds I had a closer look at these exercises.

To sum up, I think that the exercises from our Pronunciation Practice Page are really helpful and I am planning on improving my pronunciation, in particular my “th” and “v/f” sound, by doing a lot more of these exercises.

Comment on anonymous summary

Summary: "Europe already has one foot in 'Japanese' deflation grave"

The article “Europe already is one foot in Japanese’ deflation grave” by ‛
Ambrose-Evans-Pritchard, that was published on October 23, 2013 is about the European
Debt crisis.
At the moment the percentage of debts in the European Union is increasing. With the
exceeding debt rates, deflation is also rising. Over the past few months prices within the
EU have been falling, increasing the risk of deflation. France, Spain, Greece, Portugal
Cyprus, Slovenia, Latvia and in particular Italy for example have especially faced this
problem.
One of the reasons for the problem the EU is currently facing has its origin in politics.
Evans-Pritchard argues that because of poor policy, like imposing high taxes on the wrong
countries and giving too much money to countries, as Germany, the specter of deflation
rises.
The author states that one possible solution for this problem would be, if European
countries like Spain, France and Italy started to work together, putting through a reflation
policy that would stop the inflation fall.

My feedback:
First of all I have to say that it really impressed me that the author managed to compose a summary of 165 words mentioning the main ideas of the original text. In my opinion the summary is well written and clearly describes the complicated topic.
However, although it was impressing that the author did not need more words he did not fulfill the task because we were asked to write a summary of 200 +/- 5 words.
I like the topic sentence but unfortunately the author got the title wrong: "Europe already HAS one foot in 'Japanese' deflation grave"
One thing that I personally don't really like is that the author mentions a lot of countries in the first paragraph. I think one or two would have been enough as examples.
Apart from that I really liked the summary because it manages to give an insight in the difficult topic of the original text and expresses it in a way that is easier to understand.

EU group paragraph

The European Council

The European Council plays an important role in setting a general political direction for the European Union. This institution, which meets at least four times a year, is composed of the Heads of State or Government of the Member States, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the President of the European Commission and the President of the European Council. The President of the European Council, currently Herman Van Rompuy, is elected for two and a half years and can be re-elected once. He is responsible for coordinating the work of the European Council and ensures that decisions are put into practice. The decisions are made by consensus: a concept or an idea has to be accepted by every voter or by the qualified majority depending on the nature of the treaty. In some cases decisions are reached by unanimity, which means that every Head of State or Government needs to agree.  If someone does not approve, the change cannot come into force. Although the European Council is not a legislative body, thus not allowed to pass laws, it is still very important since it sets priorities and debates sensitive issues.

EU individual paragraph

Brainstorming

Happened mainly in class while discussing in groups: content of the text, understandable, cohesive without linking words, headings, register, long sentences, "but" and "so" at beginning of sentence

Original paragraph

When I read the text “What the EU is for” the first time I found it rather impressing and well structured. The author did not need any linking words to connect one sentence with another and the usage of different headings for each paragraph made it easy to follow.  The choice of register also appealed to me, since the Author used beautiful but easily understandable language. “For want of a better word” and “reluctant to be disadvantaged” are expressions which caught my eye. However, after reading the text again more carefully there were also some negative aspects. The quite frequent use of the conjunctions “but” and “so” at the beginning of a sentence do not really agree with the rather high register used in the rest of the text.  The usage of very long sentences had better been avoided, since in English, it is better to write shorter sentences as it is linguistically more beautiful and easier for the reader to follow the text. Apart from the slightly inconsequent use of register, the text “What the EU is for” is, in my opinion, well written and really informative.

Feedback summary 1 (Topic Sentence, Register)

My classmates thought that my topic sentence and concluding sentence go well with each other and that they are referring to the same statement. They did also agree with the register but they advised me to find another adjective instead of "beautiful" in order to describe the language.

Feedback summary 2 (coherence, cohesion, vocab)

Overall, my colleagues agreed that my paragraph was cohesive and coherent. Nevertheless, they gave me some helpful advice how to improve it. They pointed out, that in my text are a lot of "the" and that I could leave some of them out. In addition to this, the thought that I should change the sentence abouth the negative aspects and make it clear that this is just my opinion.

Final paragraph

When I read the text "What the EU is for" the first time I found it rather impressing and well structured. The author did not use many linking words to connect one sentence with another. The different headings for each paragraph made it easy to follow. The choice of register also appealed to me, since the author used sophisticated but understandable language. "For want of a better word" and "reluctant to be disadvantaged" are expressions which caught my eye. However, after reading the text again more carefully there were also some aspects I did not agree with. The quite frequent use of the conjunctions "but" and "so" at the beginning of a sentence are not appropriate for the high register used in the rest of the text. The usage of very long sentences had better been avoided, since in English, it is advisable to write shorter sentences as it is linguistically more aesthetic and easier for the reader to follow. Apart from the slightly inconsequent use of register, the text "What the EU is for" is, in my opinion, well written and really informative.


Second final paragraph

When I read the text "What the EU is for" the first time I found it rather impressive and well structured. The author did not need many linking words to connect one sentence to the next and the different headings for each paragraph made it easy to follow. The choice of register also appealed to me, since the author used sophisticated but understandable language. "For want of a better word" and "reluctant to be disadvantaged" are expressions which particularly caught my eye. However, after reading the text again more carefully, there were also some aspects I did not agree with. The quite frequent use of the conjunctions "but" and "so" at the beginning of a sentence are not appropriate for the high register used in the rest of the text. The use of very long sentences should have been avoided since in English it is advisable to write shorter sentences as it is linguistically more competent and easier for the reader to follow. Apart from the slightly inconsistent use of register, the text "What the EU is for" is, in my opinion, well written and highly informative.

My top five

Welcome to my blog for this semester! My first post is going to be about my choice of 5 EU-related topics. Our task was to decide on 5 topics which are in some way related to the EU and explain why we think they are interesting. This should help us to decide on one topic we want to write our SUK3 paper about. Since the EU is a very complex topic I think this is a great idea and will help us to find one aspect of the EU we are really interested in.

These are my top five:

Currencies of the EU

When we talked about what the first thing is that comes to mind when you think about the EU, a lot of people said the euro and as a reason that it is the currency of the EU. But that is not exactly true, is it? The euro is the principal currency since it is adopted by 17 EU members as their common currency but there are 12 other currencies within the EU. However, all of the remaining states have to adopt the euro too once they meet the criteria to do so. Except for the United Kingdom and Denmark, which have a de facto permission to keep their currencies. And that is where it is getting interesting. Why are the UK and Denmark allowed to keep their own currencies and what is the advantage of it?

The Erasmus Program

This is probably a topic all of us are interested in since a lot of us are planning on spending a semester abroad. Thanks to the Erasmus program it is less complicated to study abroad since you do not have to pay fees to the foreign university and you even receive financial aid. For these and a lot more reasons I would like to find out more about Erasmus, its history and how it is working exactly.

Schengen Treaty and Schengen Area

This is also one topic we came across while talking in class. I think it is a really interesting topic because probably all of us have already heard about the Schengen Treaty but only a few really know what it is about. It is the same with the states that signed the treaty and are therefore members of the Schengen Area. When I think about the EU member states I am not exactly sure which ones are in the Schengen Area. That is why I am interested in finding out more about the Schengen Treaty and its members.

The EU youth conference

A friend told me about this topic and I instantly thought that it is really interesting and that I would like to know more about it. I have heard about it before but I never concerned myself with it. That is why I choose it as one of my topics. The idea of teenagers between the age of 15 and 28 who are attending at a meeting once a year and discussing serious issues about the youth in the EU really appeals to me. I think it would be fascinating to get deeper into this topic.

EU Nobel Peace Prize

In 2012 the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This was a sensation within the EU countries. But what were the reasons that the EU was honored with it? It goes without saying that the EU plays an important role for the long period of peace but why exactly is the EU that important? I am sure that a lot of research would be necessary to really understand what the EU achieved to earn the Nobel Peace Prize but it would certainly pay off.

Culture days (:

Hey guys (:

On our culture days I went to see even more than the ten presentations we were asked to see and I've to say that it was really interesting and I learned a lot of new things about the culture of Ireland and America. The three American culture presentations I listened to were about three very different topics but I liked all of them: the presentations "Comic books and superheroes", "Two Heroines of American Aviation: Amelia Earheart and Bessie Coleman" and "Huricane Preparedness" were all well prepared and well presented topics.

As much as I liked the American presentations - the Irish ones appealed even more to me. I listened to the presentations "Languages of Irish Travellers", "This is Friz!", "Witchcraft of Ireland", "Abortion Law in Ireland - A Pro-Choice View", "The history of ISL", "Hill of Tara - Historical and spiritual at the same time", "Poetry in Irish schools", "Hero or Enemy? How the World sees Bobby Sands", "The Integration of Islam in Ireland", "Homophobic Bullying in Irish schools", "The St. Magdalene Laundries in Ireland". When I say that I liked all of them I really mean that because they had all interesting aspects and I learned things I hadn't known before. One thing I really liked was to see how different the topics were presented and how well everyone hid their nervousness. Let's admit it - we were all really nervous ;)

Altough I liked all of the presentations about Ireland I managed to decide on the five which I liked most and chose these five for my KGP:

My first topic is "Homophobic Bullying in Irish schools" because I liked Shirin's presentations and I'm generally interested in this topic because I think every kind of bullying is awful and to tyrannise someone because of his or her sexual orientation is gruesome and abhorrent. This is why I chose this presentations because I think it is important to talk about topics like that.

The second presentation is "The St. Magdalene Laundries in Ireland". At first, I didn't think that this was a topic I would choose but Theresa's presentation awoke my interest. The topic was touching and the injustice which happened to these women didn't leave me cold.

"Hero or Enemy? How the world sees Bobby Sands" is the next topic I decided to choose. The main reason is because we already heard about Bobby Sands in the CLI's and I found it that interesting that I wanted to choose him myself for my culture presentation. In addition to that, I liked the way Alex organised her presentation.

The fourth topic that really appealed to me was "Witchcraft of Ireland". Sabrina's way of presenting really appealed to me and the topic is also very interesting and exciting. When she told me the idea of choosing this topic it was immediately clear that I would choose it for my KGP.

Last but not least, the last topic I decided on was "Abortion Law in Ireland - A Pro-Choice View". I wasn't able to see the presentation on the culture day but Andrina told me a lot about her topic and therefore I am sure that I've all the details I've to know about. This topic is probably one that interesets every woman and it is always a current topic and which is worth knowing about.

These are the topics I chose for my KGP and whichever I'll have to talk about I'm sure if there are any problems it won't be because of the topics I chose since I'm looking forward to learning them ;)