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.

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.