My Vocabulary Log

In order to actually study not only new words (such as the lovely words from the Porter book :P), but also the ones I already know but only vaguely, I’ve been keeping a ‘Vocabulary Log’ for the last one and a half years. I decided back then that it would be much more useful to keep a folder rather than a notebook, simply because you can add any further information to the existing entries if you need to.

The rationale behind my organizing principle is basically really simple. Whenever I find a word or a phrase (from the course, lectures, books, etc.) I am not really familiar with, I choose to record it with the help of a style I think is the best for this entry. Personally, I do like the formal/informal tables a lot as they can be extremely useful for my writing tasks; the word/ semantic fields maps, because you can easily see all the words that belong to one topic/group; the entry on preposition usage; the pictures with the descriptions; and last but not least the idioms tables. To put it in a nutshell, all learning styles (and entries) used in my Vocabulary Log are of great use to me as they make it easier and, more importantly, less boring to study with. Depending on which aspects of the word I need or want to know, I just choose the most appropriate style to write down the item.

And because I started with this Vocabulary Log a while ago, it was not difficult at all to keep writing down words from the Porter book whenever I needed to…that is, in addition to the exercises in the book, of course. They’ve been very helpful, and especially the ones with the collocations and the synonyms. What’s more, even though I am not the biggest fan of studying vocabulary online, I have to admit that I love www.vocabulary.com! I think it’s a great site for language learners, mostly because of the clear and detailed (and sometimes hilarious) explanations, but also because of the pronunciation tool that display both accents.

So, that is practically all I’ve done, all I do to study vocabulary; and I guess I will keep it that way because it’s seems to be working out well enough for me. 

(BTW, sorry for the bad quality...it's Samsung, not iPhone, obviously! Haha)

Pecha Kucha Experience

I’ve never before heard of a presentation called “Pecha Kucha” until this semester, and I have to say, I enjoyed it a lot! I am usually extremely nervous when it comes to giving a presentation, especially when there is a native speaker in the audience. Because of this nervousness, I tend to speak really fast so that I swallow most of the words, or Iose track of what I prepared to say like when I had to give a presentation during the hot and stressful culture days last semester. However, this wasn’t the case this time (thank God!) and I felt really confident while delivering this special type of presentation. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I had more time to prepare it properly, or that I simply got to do it with my good friend Emina, which made this experience lots of fun for both of us. I was even more surprised to find out that our classmates thought the same thing! Apart from having noticed that we stupidly confused an Irish map with a Scottish one (again, really sorry about that!), most of them thought we were very fluent, self-confident and that our PowerPoint was very good and interesting as well. What can I say other than this feedback was really the icing on the cake.

From “Making of” to “the Product”

Well, after Emina and I decided to make the Irish language our topic, we met up twice (which wasn’t that much of extra work since we practically see each other every day), made an outline to see where this presentation was going, collected all the information we could find and started writing the transcript together. While doing that, we tried to make it as interesting and creative as possible, since this was the purpose of the whole Pecha Kucha thing, so we asked Fiona to record something in Irish for us, which she kindly agreed to do. After that, we agreed on dividing up the transcript in 40 sec. sessions so that it doesn’t get too boring. The PowerPoint was also done in no time, and we were left with nothing but practicing so that we don’t go over the 20 seconds per slide. This “rehearsing evening” was definitely the fun part!

After delivering the presentation, I got to just lie back and enjoy some of the other interesting Pecha Kucha’s. All in all, I was very much satisfied with our successful presentation and wouldn’t have changed anything if I could (well, expect for the Scottic map, of course ;)).

Pronunciation Diary #2

A Work in Progress

As mentioned in Part 1 of my Pronunciation Diary, I’ve been going through some blogs to look for some advice on how to really work on my pronunciation, since this is a huge area that requires a lot of time and practice. And so what better way to improve your pronunciation than by trying to actually find out where you’re doing it all wrong! I couldn’t agree more. Unless you have some idea about what exact mistakes you are making, you will not be able to work on these specific problems and keep on repeating them! Of course, you can spot them by doing some imitation exercises on YouTube, or by receiving feedback from your teachers on one of your latest presentations. However, I personally think that the best way of finding out what mistakes you tend to make is by recording yourself and giving it to a native speaker so that he/she can tell you exactly which sounds you need to work on.  

And this is exactly what I liked about the Pronunciation Diagnostic Exercise we had to do separately before Christmas break, even though I was skeptical at first. I have to admit it felt really weird recording myself and even weirder hearing it afterwards (do I really sound like that? Haha), but after getting over it and concentrating on my pronunciation, I actually heard the sounds I need to deal with and the words I need to practice more often. The feedback given was, of course, a great help for me to see that I, for instance, pronounced the words “library” and “Mediterranean” wrong.

After finding out my mistakes, I looked them up and started “youtubing” to work more on specific sounds like the “g” sound in “vegetables”. Also, as it turned out, I pronounced the word “aluminum” with a rather British accent, and I realized that I've indeed been pronouncing some words more British, probably because I've had been listening to more British teachers lately. As I cannot mix these two accents together (obviously), I looked for some videos to help me with this and stumbled upon another useful one from Rachel Smith, where she teams up with a British native speaker to explain some of the pronunciation differences between these two completely different accents. I personally think that this should be an important part of everyone’s pronunciation practice as you need to recognize these differences to avoid mixing them up and confuse people in the future. Here’s the link to the video:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIZ78RwhSPc

And here are two more channels/links I started using and will definitely keep checking out, in addition to Rachel Smith’s. I would really recommend you giving them a try:

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc2Y7xxkp5s&feature=youtu.be : Amy Walker’s “How to do an American accent”. She is simply adorable! She has a soft and pleasant voice and I like her detailed explanations and comments as she pronounces the words.
2. http://www.engvid.com/topic/pronunciation/ : “engVid’s free pronunciation lessons”. A very nice website with several native speakers going through the different sounds (v vs. w,…) and giving tips on how to understand certain expressions by breaking them down into words etc. Really helpful + witty!

After going through almost all links on the Pronunciation Practice Page, I can tell that these three are most definitely my favorite ones. Of course, this is just the beginning of this practice, and just because there are only two parts of this Pronunciation Diary, that doesn’t mean that I won’t keep working on my pronunciation afterwards. I am well aware of the fact that my accent is nowhere near as perfect; however, I wish to have a good accent by the time I finish my studies, and as I have come to realize, this can only be achieved by continuous practice and work...which I am willing to put into.

I am really looking forward to working further on my pronunciation during the semester break (that is, after surviving exam weeks) and I hope I haven’t bored you to death with this diary :)  

Pronunciation Diary #1

Well, to be perfectly honest, I haven’t really been giving my English pronunciation much thought or effort, probably because I always thought it would come in “naturally” with time, and especially after spending an extended period of time in an English-speaking country. Or maybe it doesn’t seem to be that big of an issue now, because we are always very busy with the never-ending writing tasks we have to focus on, which seem to be more important than ever. However, since good pronunciation is not only a big part of my English course this semester but also essential for people to understand me (and not make fun of me), I have decided to start working actively on my English during Christmas break, using some links from the Pronunciation Practice Page but also by reading some blogs on HOW to improve it.

Definitely American, however…

But first I would like to mention that even though I chose to sound more like an American, which I am trying to do by imitating native speakers I see on television or the Internet, I absolutely loooove British accents!! There is something about these accents that makes you melt and wanting just to be able to talk like these people. Of course, not all of them have this beautifully British accent…but check this guy out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqyi-165QR4 ; couldn’t you just listen to him all day long *sigh*? Anyways, what I am trying to say is that I would have very much loved to acquire such an accent, but I feel that it is not such a good idea to imitate British accents if you’re not a native speaker, as it will come out rather forced and “fake”.

What I have been doing so far

So, as already mentioned, pretty much all I have been doing for my pronunciation is simply imitating the way some of my favorite Americans (mostly actors/actresses and people on YouTube) speak. Also, when I come across a rather difficult word, I immediately look it up to see how it is pronounced correctly so that I don’t end up getting used to pronouncing it wrong for a longer time and not being able to “recover” from it. I have been using sites like howjsay.com, macmillandictionary.com, or sometimes just typing in the word into YouTube to actually SEE how natives pronounce it. Apart from that, I guess I can say I am quite lucky to have an American friend who lives in Vienna and who hates speaking German so that we usually end up talking a lot in English, which he enjoys, of course, as he gets to correct me.

Let’s get this started!

However, something I have definitely been lacking is practice, practice, practice! There is surely no way around it, so I might as well start now:

1. I started with practicing the voiced and unvoiced TH sounds (three/thin/teeth vs. this/these/worthy) by going to Rachel Smith’s channel and also the BBC website. This woman really knows what she is doing! Even though I were familiar with these sounds, it was fun practicing them out loud and being aware of the position of the mouth. For me, these sounds are certainly no piece of cake as you sometimes tend to pronounce them incorrectly when being nervous or talking too fast. Also, when the word is unstressed like in “What’s in THE car?” you pronounce it only with your teeth closed…I have never really paid attention to that fact; very interesting, though!
2. http://www.manythings.org/b/e/5078/ : This video on how the word “often” is pronounced was really interesting since I’ve always wondered whether to say it with “t” or not, and as it turned out: both ways are acceptable!! Unlike words like “soften” and “listen”, you can pronounce “often” with a t, but I have to say I will try to stick with the version without the “t” as it sound much more “American” to me.
3. http://www.rachelsenglish.com/videos/sound-native-speaker : I really enjoyed this video with the Ben Franklin and especially the imitation exercise. When you break it down like this, you start to get a good handle on how the words are pronounced in connection to other words. I repeated it quite often (pronounced without the “t”) until my sister told me it’s getting ridiculous…

So, that’s it for today! I have to say it’s really interesting and fun once you get started and try to find things interesting (cf. Henry:)).