Pronunciation Diary: Workout for your Tongue Muscles!

 (picture source: Matteo Maggiore)

You know, not too long ago, I thought my English pronunciation was quite alright. Almost good even. I was pronouncing voiced and unvoiced /th/-sounds correctly, and most of the time, I distinguished the /w/-sound and /v/-sound. So when I signed up for a pronunciation course at the Department of English Studies last summer semester, I thought it would be a piece of cake. Gaining ECTS-points the easiest way ever. Boy, was I wrong.

Quite at the beginning, we had to read out difficult texts in front of our teacher, who would then analyze our pronunciation mistakes. According to the teacher's feedback, the thing I most struggled with was voicing certain sounds. When I said "in the", my /th/ always became a barely voiced /d/, and basically all my /d/s at the end of words became /t/s. Surprisingly, even after knowing my weaknesses, I still could not pronounce these sounds correctly. Well, I could produce them individually, but not while speaking. It just didn't come out naturally. It felt like I needed to re-arrange my tongue between sounds in order to produce them, which resulted in awkward pauses between words or syllables. At this point I realized: theory only wouldn't get me anywhere. I needed to train my tongue like a muscle. It had to get used to new movements and positions.

During the pronunciation lessons, we repeated word pairs and dialogues we heard through headphones, while a computer program recorded our own voices individually. The program would then automatically repeat our recorded voices, therefore give us immediate feedback at how well we produced the sounds. This was immensely helpful, as I often concentrated on producing the sounds without paying attention to how they actually came out. However, the real work had to be done at home: by reading out (!) dialogues and word pairs, you really physically train your tongue and get used to producing the sounds in the way you should. In the end, it really paid off: I got a B on the oral exam, and I felt that my pronunciation had really greatly improved.

However, during the summer, I didn't practice talking English loudly that much anymore. When I talked English again, I was shocked at how worse my pronunciation had become after such a short period of time. I still know the theory of when to produce which sounds, but my physical ability to produce the sounds correctly the moment I needed to sadly worsened. So now I am back to reading texts out loud again and recording myself while doing it. Hopefully, I will soon be again on at least the same level I had reached before the summer break.

My impression is: mastering pronunciation is not like learning how to ride a bike. You have to consistently practice it, or you soon get out of practice.

Revisited Summary: The Crisis of Credit Visualized

The video "The Crisis of Credit Visualized" is a really helpful guide through the land of businessmen sitting on bags full of money. Unfortunately, or perhaps luckily, I know hardly anything about this world. It seems to be full of numbers and bad, bad, really bad people, so I don't want to be part of this world. But the more I learn about it in English class, the more I feel that I, or generally people not interested in this, people outside of this world, really should know more about it.

Well, but the real thing is: we had to write a summary about this video as a homework. My words above still remain true, but with almost no background information, I really had a hard time grasping the concept of this topic. However, as it turned out, that wasn't the problem when I summarized this video. The problem was that I forgot about the word count of 200, and therefore produced a summary of more than 300 words.

Version 1:

The video „The Crisis of Credit Visualized“, written and directed by Jonathan Jarvis, is designed to explain the Credit Crisis in a simple way. 

After 9/11 and the dot.com crisis, the U.S. Federal Reserve dropped interest for treasury bills to 1% to make lending money more attractive, consequently strengthening the economy. This low interest not only attracted consumers, but also bankers who could now lend money easily without losing much profit during deals. This led to a system called leverage: lending high amounts of money, make high profits and pay back loans easily.

The leverage system was also applied on the estate business. A mortgage broker would connect potential house owners to a lender who gives them a mortgage to fund the house. Because of constantly rising house prices, an investment banker sees a potential deal in this and buys numerous mortgages from the lender. This establishes a monthly flow of money, which is cut down into three parts: safe, okay and risky. This separation is called Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO). If one homeowner defaults, the money flow gets weaker, which stops the risky part to be filled. However, as long as there are enough homeowners, the safe income will still be filled, which is why it is attractive to investors. This results in more CDOs and more investors willing to buy CDOs.

If homeowners default on their mortgage, the lender receives the house ownership. As the value is covered by the default, lenders can add risk and lend sub-prime mortgages to less responsible homeowners. However, this leads to more homeowners defaulting as they cannot afford their houses, which in the long turn makes house prices plumbing. Consequently, money stops flowing through the CDOs as there are more houses than mortgages. The system freezes, as no party invests into the other anymore and investors are not able to pay back there high amounts of loans and go bankrupt.

Version 2, the shortened one:

The video “The Crisis of Credit Visualized” by Jonathan Jarvis simply explains the Credit Crisis in 2002.

After 9/11 and the dot.com crisis, the U.S. Federal Reserve dropped interest for treasury bills to 1%, which attracted bankers who could now lend money easily without losing much profit during deals. This led to a system called leverage: lending high amounts of money, make high profits and pay back loans easily.

The leverage system was also applied to the estate business. Mortgage brokers connected potential house owners to mortgage lenders. Because of constantly rising house prices, investment bankers bought numerous mortgages from the lenders to establish a monthly flow of money. If one homeowner defaults, the money flow gets weaker. However, as long as there are enough homeowners, the safe income is still established, which is why it is attractive to investors.

As the value of a house is covered when the homeowners default, lenders can lend sub-prime mortgages to less responsible homeowners. This leads to more defaults, which in the long turn makes house prices plumbing. Consequently, investors stop receiving money as there are more houses than mortgages. The system freezes and investors go bankrupt.

To be honest, I think the shorter version is missing some details (that were mentioned in the first version) that would be essential to understand the concept with no background information. However, with background information in mind, I think it can help get the overall image of this topic.

Mastering Vocabulary Learning: Routines

Before I started university, I had no system for learning vocabulary efficiently. I would usually just write down a list of words and their translation, and hope for the best to magically memorize them. This lack of a system soon turned out to be insufficient for my studies, and so I tried out several techniques to find one that helped me. Not too long ago, I finally found a method that works well for me: digital flashcards.

Prior to making flashcards, I analyze the words I need to study thoroughly: I look up explanations, synonyms, common collocations and, most importantly, example sentences. My favorite tools include Vocabulary.com and the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary, and for further collocations, I have recently started using COCA. Unfortunately, collecting all this information is very time-consuming, which is definitely a drawback. However, in the long term, I benefit from it immensely, as I really get to know the contexts the words are likely to appear in and therefore get a feeling for how to use them properly.

Based on this analysis, I put together digital flashcards in a computer program called anki. It works just like physical flashcards: you put one piece of information on one side of the card, and put its definition on its on the other side. I usually type in collocations or phrases, rather than a single word, on the front side, and use synonyms or English explanations for the flip side. For words I don’t know how to pronounce, I also insert audio files, most often taken from the online pronunciation guide Forvo.com. After having typed in my list of words and their explanations, I can start studying these cards right away.

There are several reasons why I prefer anki over other flashcard programs. Firstly, anki exists both as a computer program and as an app, and will synchronize changes and learning progress across the devices it is used on. It also lets you modify the way you review cards: you can either simply look at the answer after guessing it in your head, or force yourself to manually type in the answer and compare it to the original solution. However, what I like the most about anki is that after answering a question, you have to rate how well you actually knew the answer. Based on these ratings, the program will ask you cards you were not so sure about more often and cards you knew for sure less often. It generally restricts the number of cards you revise per session to a realistic amount, but also provides a “cram mode” for emergencies. I think all these features really make a difference as I feel I am learning more efficiently now than before I started using anki.

In my experience, what really counts when learning vocabulary is discipline. It’s the true key to success. It is crucial to start studying early enough and to do it regularly; otherwise, there is simply not enough time to get it into your long-term memory. Unfortunately, discipline is not something a computer program can provide me with, so this is one factor I still have to work on. However, if I keep my motivation up, I think I will get better in learning vocabulary, especially now that I finally have an efficient method of doing it.

What Good Bloggers Do

About one year ago, I wrote a post about my rather unsuccessful blogger-career in my first semester as an SUK-student. Although I already had some blogging experience at that time, I was a bit overwhelmed by the task of writing a blog for a wider and more public audience. Luckily, things seem to have changed and I have become a more successful blogger in the meantime. I don't hesitate to share my opinion about something anymore and I realized how much fun it is to write about your own interests and to share your thoughts and knowledge about something.

Especially the sharing of knowledge is something I really grew fond of, because the process of writing about a topic I am enthusiastic about forces me me think of the best way to convey what you want to say in a clear matter, instead of writing "GUYS, THIS IS AWESOME!" in capslock. You have to organize your thoughts and make it easy to understand (and, naturally, also interesting) for people who don't know anything about that very topic. It is not about explaining the whole topic to the audience, but to explain what is interesting or cool about it and why you are interested in it. And maybe also why it could be interesting to the readers as well.

Naturally, not every topic somebody is excited about is automatically interesting to other people as well. But if you learn something new from a post about a topic you know not much about, then the blog (or rather the author) did everything right. That's also something I think most of the Top 10 Bloggers from the last semester did right: they managed to offer clear insights into topics that were interesting to them and mostly new to us. Some of them also used catchy post titles, funny pictures or a background story to catch the readers attention. But still: the post itself must be interesting to read as well.

What I also really liked about most of the top bloggers was that they stuck to one or two main topics in their blogs. Some wrote mostly about traveling, other focused on American history. That they were so consistent with that without becoming boring was something I was really impressed by. This way, you knew almost instantly what you can expect from their blogs and also if you might be interested in their future posts. I, on the other hand, posted about things that just came to my mind with no connection to the other topics I was talking about. Don't take me wrong: this can also work absolutely fine! But I decided that I also want to stick to one or two main topics so that people get a feeling about what I might be posting about in the future.

There are also two further things I want to change about my blogging behavior: firstly, I want to post more frequently and secondly, I want to read more blogs by others SUK-students and (okay, that makes it three things) leave more comments on their posts. This way, we might inspire each other to post about certain topics and consequently will also get motivated to post more as soon as we realize that people do read our blogs. Wouldn't that be great? I think it totally would.

B.A.R.F. or: How to Feed Your Cats (and Dogs) in the Most Natural Way!

Deep inside I am a crazy cat-lady. This does not necessarily mean that I have hundreds of cats, but the well-being of my two cats is very important to me. That's why I have been reading hundreds of articles about the ideal diet for cats in order to help them having a happy and long life. 

Well, to cut a long story short: industrial food for animals is said, to contrary believe, to be really really bad. It makes a whole lot of sense if we keep the reputation of industrial food for human-beings nowadays in mind -- artificial, full of additives and unhealthy -- just that the quality of animal food is far worse. The animal food industry uses similar tricks to deceive pet owners and even the pets themselves. For example, they use include flavor and color enhancers to make the food smell and look better, just as in human food.

Although cats are carnivores (pure meat-eaters), canned cat food often contain less meat than cats need (vegetable ingredients often substitutes as meat as it is cheaper) and contain meat that is considered inedible for human-beings. So what else is left to feed then? 

The solution to all cat-ladies' problems is called B.A.R.F: Biologically Appropriate Raw Food. It basically is about feeding cats (and dogs) raw meat. With industrial food, you can never be sure what's really inside. With B.A.R.F. though, you yourself prepare the meals for your pets on the basis of what your pets really needs. Luckily, there is a lot of literature and online guides for that which are based on what animals would eat in their natural habitat. Just take a look on the most common prey of a cat: birds. It consists of feathers, skin, flesh (the part with the muscles in them), organs and processed food inside the organs. Each part of this serves an important purpose in the cat's body: the feathers and the food inside the organs help with the digestion, the skin, flesh and organs contain the fat and vital vitamins. Therefore, crazy cat-ladies buy meat and organs at the deli counter or at the butcher, and, if necessary, mix them up with vegetables which serve as a substitute for the stomach contents. Some things such as minerals or certain vitamins are substituted with oils or powders. 

All of this might sound a bit odd. Maybe because many people think that putting that much thought into the diet of animals is way out of line, especially if these pet-owners don't live healthy themselves. I think the difference between humans being able to choose what to eat and pets being dependent on the choice of their owners is crucial here. Well, there are cats who don't want to eat raw food, most likely because they are already used to industrial food. But that's okay too. At least they made their choice then, you could say. In crazy-catlady-jargon.

I'm no big expert yet and my cats still eat some industrial food inbetween. But I am convinced that this diet highly improves their life quality. Surprisingly, preparing the meat is not that disgusting as I had thought it would be: it doesn't smell bad (if it is fresh) and it feels cleaner than the mashed meat-mixture my cats usually got before. 

For those interested now, they are even workshops in Graz about this very topic. I even attended one yesterday and it was really informative and also very nice. If you are interested, don't hesitate to contact me. I'm glad if I can help!