Of notebooks and other strategies for studying vocabulary

There is probably no other field of studies where approaches and study techniques differ as much from one person to another as with learning vocabulary. While some prefer reading words and their definitions just as they would read a book, others need to have the words written down by themselves once, twice or even three times before they know how to use them correctly. I would perhaps find my method somewhere in between the aforementioned strategies. More precisely the plan I formulated for myself is the following. I compiled a notebook whereto I transferred the words I wanted to become familiar with. When it comes to verbs I always try to put another expression next to them, which was either higher or lower register in order to get an overall impression of its meaning and the context it will most likely be used in. For nouns, I tried to look up possible synonyms or if there weren’t any I helped myself out with acronyms. The same method I applied to adjectives. The corpus of contemporary English was a useful source as far as research the context in which words are often found is concerned. As far as looking for synonyms and acronyms or other words of other level of register goes the ‘Oxford Dictionary for Advanced Learners’ proved tremendously useful to me. I am glad that after some initial struggle I eventually figured out the most suitable and useful way of coping with new words. Render studying more efficient and successful is a precious gift to yourself.

The Pechakucha project- post mortem to a great experience

As already introduced in my recent blog post this year’s Pechakucha was about English neologisms in Italian and vice versa. I worked together with Flavius Leahu and we met several times in order to render the presentation as terrific as possible. Fun did not miss out on this occasion as we also had great time preparing it. This contributed to make our dialog more interesting, informative, but also funny and entertaining. The recording of the dialogue turned out to be fairly tough as we wanted to avoid mistakes of all kinds to produce a presentable audio file, free from erred pronunciation or even laughter. Therefore, it required numerous attempts until eventually we got the final version right. On presentation’s day I was slightly nervous as I hoped to perform my part as good as possible having experienced some troubles during the rehearsals when switching from Italian accent to the English sometimes from one word to another. I really had to give proof of how eloquent I could be if I had to on this occasion and to me the Pechakucha seemed the ideal stage. Another concerning aspect was acting as it was essential for the kind of texts to put on a show as if we were discussing, debating and interacting with each other. Altogether, the final outcome was really satisfactory in my opinion. I was especially pleased by the fact that the presentation was perceived positive among the enthusiastic audience. Therefore it added to my joyful sensation of having accomplished something entertaining. Reflecting on what ideas other presenters came up with and how they were presenting them I honestly have to say that was somewhat impressed by the quality work almost everyone showed. The topics were interesting and one could really discern the amount of effort that went into them. The presentations which seem so easy are often the product of diligent preparation and I am sure this was true for many of them. Apart from this I was overwhelmed by the massive creativity. I could witness all forms raging from a presentation entirely documented on video until speeches delivered enormously free and with excellent acting quality. As a conclusion I will think of the Peckachucha project as a very entertaining and informative form of presenting. I am looking forward to future presentations of this kind even if it will mean to devote many hours to the project. It is always worth the work

Europe already has one foot in ‘Japanese’ deflation grave (improved summary)

In The Telegraph of October 23, 2013 Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, analyses Europe’s debt crisis. As history has shown, deflation has the potential to cause economic disaster. If total debt grows too strong, as is the case in Western Europe, deflation becomes fatal. The ‘eurostat index’ depicts that deflation is decreasing. Prices at fall are therefore witnessed in numerous states. Similar to Japan’s crisis, the euro zone economy is threatened by high debt ratios and sustained deflation. Vicious dynamics such as the ‘denominator effect’ are observed in Italy, where debt rises faster than GDP. The same is valid for private debt, as crash diets only misguided the economy of troubled states even more. According to Mr Darvas, letting inflation grow could lead out of the deflationary spiral. Responsible for money shifting to Germany is the ECB and non counteracting member states which fear Germany would exit the euro zone. Germany too could be in danger with inflation being one possible way of improvement. The resulting rise of their wages, however, could harm Germany. Europe currently appears paralyzed and hopes for global growth to successfully fight the deflation virus.

Update on the progress of the writing project

The paper about the cultural gap across the Atlantic is going well so far, despite plenty of distractions there are the time before Christmas, be they private or rather university related, but I think this is probably true for anyone of us. I am glad I found a topic I am particularly interested in. It just makes writing so much easier. Honestly, I sometimes find it hard to collect relevant information. Over the last week, however, I discovered the benefits of e-books for me. As most of them are written in English they are of even greater value to me. You can type in specific key expressions when searching for an e-book and you will end up with one or two relevant sources. As they are available online they are easily accessible. This not only saves you time, but also gives you the chance to quickly gloss over the e-books contents in order to decide whether you will need them or not. Another difficulty is narrowing down content and including only vital information as the target word count of 1500 words may appear high, but actually isn’t if you want to make your paper as informative as possible.

blog post critique for summary part

SUMMARY OF EUROPE ALREADY HAS ONE FOOT IN “JAPANESE“ DEFLATION GRAVE Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in The Telegraph of October 23, 2013 discusses the problem of Europe’s deflation crisis. Evans-Prichard states that deflation makes debt worse and that it is extremely dangerous if debt surpasses 300% of GDP, which is currently the problem in Western Europe. Although inflation could solve this dilemma, it is an impossible approach to stop deflation because inflation is already too low and plummeted to 0.9% in the euro zone. Consequently, debt ratios are irrupting and the risk of runaway debt, which primarily affects Italy and Spain, is increasing. Italy, for example, has two options to solve the problem of runaway debt; either to pay 6.3% towards debt or accept a massive unemployment rate. Moreover, private debt is also affected by deflation and therefore even Germany is at risk. According to Evans-Pritchard, there are only two possible solutions to the problem. Either France, Italy, Spain and the Club Med advise the EBC to implement a relation policy; or Europe waits for the salvation of a global growth, which is highly unlikely to set in. As the title indicates, Europe is in a highly problematic situation which could lead to a policy crisis comparable to the one in Japan. 199 WORDS, NOT INCLUDING TITLE

The Pekakucha project

For our presentation we have come up with the following idea. We will include a person from an English speaking country and an Italian into the dialogue. These two will meet randomly and start a debate about language. More precisely, they will point out which words, expressions and phrases their languages have adopted from each other. The idea behind this concept is to give the people following our presentation an insight into the interesting topic of ‘neologism’. This term drives from ancient Greek and literally denotes ‘new word’. Neologism is a global phenomenon, as it can be found in almost every language. Undoubtedly, English, be it British or American is one of the greatest sources of neologisms for other languages and therefore will provide us with sufficient examples for our project. How neologisms actually come into being can be explained easily. A word is taken from another language and by transforming it slightly, usually by giving it characteristics such as suffixes and prefixes from the target language a new word is introduced to the language. Acquiring new vocabulary by this method is a positive development, as in my opinion it adds shades of meanings and significations to a language and therefore enables more precise descriptions of an object. These descriptions do often get way better than any other words of the original language ever could, as there are strong connotations to them when they keep their foreign sound and refer to a foreign object. I Speaking for our Pekakucha, the focus will be on the reciprocity of the English and the Italian language. So if you are interested which words apart from umbrella, scenario and villa are originally Italian and how creative Italians can get when it comes to pronunciation and creation of English words in their language then you must not miss our presentation.

What I learned from the homework

As I concerned myself with the correction of the homework ‘Dear Mr. Bower’, I could make out the main problems and weaknesses of my writing skills. Firstly, I seem to struggle with the use of tenses. In order to improve within this section I consulted the website ‘englishpage.com’ and focused on the tense exercises from there. As for me it was very useful, I can definitely recommend this page to anyone else struggling to get the use of tenses right. Another difficulty for me is the right choice of vocabulary, as I sometimes tend to use expressions which do not exactly represent what I am aiming to say or simply would not be used the way I do in everyday English. Therefore, from now on I study words with all their different meanings and as part of entire phrases to make sure I can use them appropriately. In this respect, the ‘corpus of contemporary American’ will certainly take me a long way. Not only could I see how certain words are used within single phrases, but also get an impression of where they are most likely to appear. With this strategy I hope to get rid of most of the uncertainties when it comes to the right and considered use of words.