Summary of "THE CRISIS OF CREDIT VISUALISED"

The task was to update my summary that I showed Henry in the office hour and do a "before and after" blog post based on it. So, here it goes.

As you will see, I made quite a few stupid mistakes in my first draft. Firstly, I did not inlcude the name of the director and the title of the video. Secondly, I sometimes used a register that was too familiar. Thus, my summary rather resembled spoken English than written English. Thirdly, I did not divide my summary into paragraphs. Fourthly, I misunderstood two bits of information. In my second draft I tried to correct all of these mistakes and write a better summary. Go see for yourself whether you think it improved or not!

Before: The video explains the 2008 credit crisis, a worldwide financial fiasco. Originally, institutions, such as insurance companies, pension, sovereign and mutual funds, lent money. Lending money allowed investors to buy Treasury Bills at the Federal Reserve Bank to grow their wealth. After 9/11 and the dot.com crash, however, interest rates were lowered to only 1%, significantly lowering the return in investments. Thus, investors stopped investing. However, banks could borrow cheaply and went crazy with leverage. At this point, Wall Street had the great idea of connecting investors to homeowners through mortgages. Homeowners’ mortgages were cut into three slices, called CDO or collateral debt obligation, which were insurable by a CDS, a credit default swap. Excessive buying of mortgages resulted in subprime mortgages – mortgages given to less responsible homeowners. Consequently, more and more people defaulted, turning the broker’s income into houses which he then put up for sale. Unfortunately, though, this resulted in a greater supply than demand. Thus, homeowners who actually could afford their payment chose to leave their house, because the value of their houses went down, but they still had to pay off their original debt. Finally, people stopped lending and borrowing money and the financial system froze. 200 WORDS, NOT INCLUDING TITLE

After:  The video "The Crisis of Credit Visualised" directed by Jonathan Jarvis explains the 2008 credit crisis, a worldwide financial fiasco. After 9/11 and the dot.com crash the US Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to only 1% to strengthen the economy, significantly lowering the return in investments. Investors thus stopped investing. Banks, however, could borrow cheaply and consequently created considerable leverage.   Then, Wall Street connected investors to homeowners through mortgages. Homeowners’ mortgages were cut into three slices (safe, okay and risky), called CDOs or Collateralized Debt Obligations. To make the safe slice even safer, it was insurable by a CDS, a Credit Default Swap. Excessive buying of mortgages eventually resulted in subprime mortgages – mortgages given to less responsible homeowners. Consequently, many people defaulted, turning the broker’s income into houses which he then put up for sale. Unfortunately, though, this resulted in a greater supply than demand. Thus, homeowners who actually could afford their payment chose to leave their house, because the value of their houses decreased, but they still had to pay off their original debt.  Finally, people stopped lending and borrowing money, causing homeowners, lenders, investment bankers and investors to go bankrupt. As a result, the financial system froze. 200 WORDS, NOT INCLUDING TITLE

Pronunciation II

Hey guys! :)

In my last post I talked about the POSE test, a tool to help non-native English speakers diagnose problems in speech and perception. The results showed that I still need to work on a few things.  Consequently, I searched for useful websites to help me improve my pronunciation. If you also struggle with minimal pairs and rhythm read on carefully, because here's what I found:

•  Minimal pairs (=pairs of words or phrases which differ in only one phonological element and have distinct meanings): Firstly, I strongly recommend you to have a look at this website. There you'll find lists to practise repeating minimal pairs such as bed/bad, man/men, ship/sheep, etc. The website is clearly structured and easy to use. All you need to do is hover your mouse over the word you wish to hear and repeat it as long as you get it right. Besides working on the pronunciation of minimal pairs, you can also refresh you memory of the International Phonetic Alphabet symbols. Personally, I had difficulty making a distinction between e and æ, as found in the minimal pairs bet/bat, pedal/paddle and shall/shall, and between s and z, as found in the minimal pairs ass/as, hiss/his, face/phase and race/rays. Secondly, I suggest you use tongue twisters to practise special sounds. I found this website where you can practise numerous rather short tongue twisters. Just a heads up - don't get frustrated if you can't do them very well at first, just keep practising and have fun! I guarantee you that you'll have fun! ;) Thirdly, practise the sounds of English by using the phonemic chart. I recommend this website to you, because it provides an interactive phonemic chart. That is to say, you won't only hear examples of the English phoneme set, but also a sample word.

• Rhythm: In order to sound more like a native speaker it is crucial to work on one's rhythm. As English is a stress-timed language (=syllables may last different amounts of time, but there is perceived to be a fairly constant amount of time (on average) between consecutive stressed syllables), it is important to maintain the flow of the language. If you want to work on your rhythm I suggest you practise reading poems or basically any English texts out aloud to get a sense of how English rhythm works. For exmaple, check out this website for improving stress as well as rhythm. There you'll find a poem read out aloud by an English native speaker. You can listen to the audio file and then repeat the text concentrating on the rhythm. You can also do imitation exercises for any accent you wish to train. If you are interested in imitation exercises for American English accent training, as I am, you might want to check out this website. The goal is to simply mimic sounds. Sounds pretty easy, but try it out yourself and you'll see that it's not always as easy as it seems.

Finally, some general advice for those who are trying to improve their pronunciation. I think it is essential to have a very specific target for improvement for each week. Wanting to improve one's pronunciation is the first step, but it takes a little more to actually change something. Just saying "my aim is to improve my pronunciation" is too general and unfocussed. You should thus try to work specifically on one aspect of your pronunciation each week. Then you'll see that soon enough people won't misunderstand you anymore, they won't ask you to repeat what you just said. Instead, they'll be delighted by your language skills and they might even consider you to be a native speaker. 

Pronunciation

So, a few weeks ago we did a pronunciation diagnostic exercise which consisted of three different tasks. The aim was to get a picture of what your English sounds like when you read an unknown text, when you read an unknown dialogue and when you describe a picture. We recorded ourselves individually during class time using a digital recorder and were then given feedback by our teacher. Guess what - apparently I did pretty well on the test! :))) I only had difficulties with one word, namely aluminum. That does not really surprise me though, because I had never heard this word before. Consequently, instead of reading out loud aluminum I mixed up the word with one I had seen before several times and resembles the word aluminum a lot, namely aluminium. Quick reminder: alumInium = BE, alUminum = AE.

However, although my test result was pretty good, I think there is still room for improvement - there always is. Thus, I have been thinking about how I can possibly improve my pronunciation and make my English sound even more English and less German. In order to reduce my "teutonicity" I developed my own strategy:

• First of all, in order to know what I still need to work on, I took the pronunciation test provided by antimoon.com. My score was 9/10. They only question I got wrong was the following one: Does of have an f sound or a v sound? Do you know the answer? If you want to check your answer, take the test. However, as this test did not really tell me what I still need to work on, I took the POSE test as well, a tool to help non-native English speakers diagnose problems in speech and perception. The results showed that I mainly need to work on distinguishing words like "men" from "men" or "pan" from "pen" (vowels).
• Secondly, I decided to watch more TED talks. I am sure that by now you have all heard about this amazing website. You can watch videos of people from all over the world - and I literally mean people from all over the world. That is to say, you'll hear different accents (USA, Great Britain, Australia, Africa, India, etc.) and different languages. So, if you are studying French, Russian or basically any other language as well, you can listen to TED talks in those languages too. Anyway, the speakers are giving presentations about a wide range of topics for five to twenty minutes. Listening to TED talks allows you to work on your listening skills, as well as on your pronunciation skills. What's more, you can improve and expand your trove of academic vocabulary and get some detailed information about basically any topic you would like to know more about (science, physics, biology, business, stress management, thinking positively...). You see - there really are only advantages to watching TED talks!

• Thirdly, I figured that the only way of knowing whether the interference of my mother tongue with the delivery of content decreases, is recording myself and analysing my pronunciation. So, in order to improve I need to practice difficult sounds until I am able to produce them correctly and consistently. Thus, I decided to look for difficult texts on the internet, read them out aloud and record myself until I was happy with the result. 
• Last but not least, I think that it is helpful to practice tongue twisters to improve your pronunciation as well as your fluency. Many interpreters use tongue twisters before interpretations to sound clearer when speaking. I found a website where you can find some of the most popular English tongue twisters. I really like the first tongue twister you can find there, because I remember practising it in school and this was not only very helpful, but also a lot of fun! :D Try reading this tongue twister out aloud as quickly as possible without making any mistakes. I guarantee you that it's not as easy as you might think.

 Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

 

 

 

That's it for today. I hope that you find some of my ideas helpful! :)

Vocabulary Learning Strategies II

In my last post about vocabulary learning strategies I provided information about how to look up, store and memorize new words and phrases effectively. I also outlined five characteristics which, according to me, define a successful language learner. In this post I am going to tell you about some further ideas I have taken from other students' posts which seem to be very helpful. Combining the information from this post with the information from my previous post about vocabulary learning strategies should allow you to improve and expand your vocabulary the most effective way possible. So, if you are still not sure how to tackle the numerous Porter words, keep on reading and you won't have to worry about passing the vocabulary part of PC2 anymore! :)

By looking at numerous vocab blog posts by other students, I have come to realize that learning vocabulary is a very personal matter and is linked to one's preferred learning style. That is to say, whereas some students stick Post-it notes on places where they pass by regularly (for instance, on a door or on the bathroom mirror) to memorize vocabulary they have a hard time remembering, others prefer to learn self-written glossaries providing additional information, such as synonyms, antonyms, frequent collocations and example sentences, and going through them until they memorize every single word. Whereas some students are thrilled about flash cards, either hand-written or digital (Anki, gFlahs+) ones, others prefer vocabulary.com, which basically provides all the information necessary to learn a new word or phrase, from definitions and synonyms to frequent collocations and numerous up-to-date example sentences. Whereas some students imagine the most absurd scenario to make the information memorable, others read newspaper articles actively with paper and pencil to hand and make note of academic words and phrases that seem to be particularly useful and try and learn them. As you can see, numerous vocabulary learning strategies exist and everyone has his or her own preferences. In order to improve and expand your vocabulary the most efficient way possible, all you need to do is find the vocabulary learning strategy that suits you best!

The best ideas I have taken from other vocab blog posts are the following ones:

• Vocabulary game: One student has created her own vocabulary game in order to improve and expand her vocabulary in a more fun way. Every now and then she invites some friends over. They then ask each other vocabulary questions. That is to say, they ask for a definition, for common phrases or collocations, etc. Whoever knows the answer is rewarded with a cookie or some chocolate. I think this is just a great idea. I have never thought of this before, but I am pretty sure I will try out this vocabulary game some time before PC2!

• Digital flashcards: Creating vocabulary lists using a flashcard program, such as Anki or gFlash+, is a time-saving way of studying new words and phrases. Most importantly, you can study your vocabulary lists wherever and whenever you want. 

 

 I have also been taking a closer look at the website http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/globalpad/openhouse/academicenglishskills/vocabulary/academic_words/. It provides information about how to learn vocabulary quickly and focuses on how to improve one's use of academic vocabulary. The website reminded me of some aspects of learning vocabulary that I completely forgot to mention in my previous post. For instance, when I study vocabulary I usually walk around as I am trying to remember new words. It seems to me that I memorize new words and phrases more easily when I move than when I sit at my desk. Moreover, I usually write new words and phrases I just cannot seem to remember in different colours. That is to say, I highlight the words and phrases I can't remember which tells me that I have to look at those words and phrases more often than at all the other unmarked words and phrases. I strongly recommend you to check out the website as well. :)

[663 words]

 

Vocabulary Learning Strategies

In times of the internet a language student might feel a bit overwhelmed because there are simply too many options for vocabulary learning to choose from. However, as an advanced learner of English, I have managed to develop some effective methods and techniques for expanding my trove of English lexical items. Some of them might be helpful for you too, so keep on reading if you are not quite sure how to improve and expand your vocabulary.

To begin with, I would like to give you an overview of my most effective strategies and tools to…

…look up new words and phrases: I have to admit that for my initial research I usually use the online dictionary of Pons whenever I encounter a word or a phrase I am not familiar with. However, in order to get a deeper understanding of the word or phrase I then turn to the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Out of all the corpora we had a look at with Ursula, COCA is definitely my favorite one. It seems to me that this corpus is very helpful for language learners, because it allows you, for instance, to sort the results in various ways, to look for all kinds of collocations, to compare words and to look for different kinds of language, for example spoken or academic language. What I like most about COCA is the fact that it provides so many example sentences. Currently, the corpus contains 450 million words of text. 

…store new words and phrases: When it comes to storing new words and phrases I might just be a little old-fashioned. I like creating glossaries either on the computer or by hand, which provide the translation of a word or phrase as well as additional information, such as synonyms, antonyms, frequent collocations and example sentences. Although this is quite time-consuming, glossaries are a great way of storing information and the process of creating a glossary allows me to memorize most of the new words and phrases right away.

Besides glossaries, I also frequently use vocabulary.com, which is the quickest and most intelligent way of improving one’s vocabulary I have encountered so far. In a few seconds it basically provides all the information necessary to learn a new word or phrase, from definitions and synonyms to frequent collocations and numerous up-to-date example sentences. What is more, you can create your own vocabulary lists and learn them in varied ways.

…memorize new words and phrases: Again, this might seem a little "old-school", but I memorize new words and phrases best when I have a printed version of a glossary or list containing all the new vocabulary and go through the words one by one. In the first round I usually go through all of the words ticking off the ones I remembered and marking all the ones I did not remember with a cross in pencil. In the second round I exclusively focus on the words with a cross next to them and I basically keep going through them until there are no crosses left, because I have erased them all and chaged them all to ticks. What really helps me to quickly memorize new words and phrases is seeing them in context. So, good example sentences are essential.

The reason I prefer learning new vocabulary from a printed version and not from my laptop is that looking up and storing new words and phrases on the laptop takes so much time that once I have finished, I am really glad I can finally turn off it off. I am also not keen on using apps for studying vocabulary, because I do not want to stare into my phone for hours and hours.

Last but not least, I would say there are five characteristics which define a successful language learner. First of all, he or she is usually an independent and eager learner, who is always keen on improving his language skills and constantly seeking new knowledge. Furthermore, he or she tries to include his or her foreign language(s) in his or her daily activities as much as possible, for example by reading foreign newspapers, watching movies or the news in the original version, listening to podcasts, chatting or skyping with friends from abroad on a regular basis. Thirdly, a good language learner works very hard at improving his or her accent in order to sound more and more like a native speaker. Finally, he or she is preferably a life-long learner, who values the regular written and spoken use of the foreign language(s). The most important characteristic a good language learner should have is a certain passion for languages in general, which will be the driving force behind his language acquisition. I try to always keep these five characteristics in mind in order to improve and expand my English vocabulary on a regular basis and not just when the next exam is getting closer and closer. 

 [824 words]

Space hotels

What will space hotels offer?
Space hotels will offer basically the same as hotels on Earth. That is to say, there will be private rooms, you'll get your meals and there might even be bars and wellness areas. However, despite the incredibly high costs, staying in a space hotel will scarcely be a five-star luxury. For example, the meals space tourists will get will be prepared on Earth and reheated in microwave ovens in space. What is more, showers will be carefully sealed affairs to prevent water from floating around the hotel's interior. Nevertheless, there will be much compensation.
Space tourists will be able to enjoy the stupendous view over the Earth and space, they will profit from new kinds of entertainment, such as specially created space sports adapted to zero gravity or even walking around in space, and - of course - they will profit from the possibility of experiencing zero gravity. Space tourists will experience zero gravity during their whole stay in a space hotel unless artificial gravity is provided which might happen at some point using rotating structures as the basis for space hotels. However, this idea still far from becoming reality. Space tourists will also be able to see 16 sunrises and sunsets a day considering that space hotels are intended to orbit around the Earth and that one orbit around the Earth takes 90 minutes.

What will space hotels look like?
Space hotels will develop over time. In the beginning space hotels will most likely look like lodges and only a few guests will be able to be accommodated. 

However, within time they will probably grow bigger in size and look more and more like the hotels we know from Earth. Thus, more guests will be able to be accommodated. Interestingly, basic accommodation in orbit was already designed in 1973. The 'Skylab' space station looked like this: 

Today various designs of possible space hotels look like this:
 

What I find really interesting is that zero gravity will allow architects to build space hotels in almost any shape, size and direction. So, I guess being an architect in the future will be really fun as architects will be able to take their creativity to the next level. Nonetheless, they will also have to come up with some pretty good ideas about how to build, for example, showers or toilets, in the weightless environment of space hotels. (Galactic Suite planned on building a spa filled with water bubbles drifting through the air instead of traditional showers.)
  
This all sounds really great, but how realistic are space hotels?
In 2007 a company from Barcelona called Galactic Suite Limited announced that they were planning on realizing the first space hotel ever in 2012. Today, two years after the originally announced opening, there is still no space hotel in realistic sight.
In 2011 Russian engineers revealed their plans to put a space hotel into orbit 200 miles above Earth by 2016. The hotel would only consist of four rooms and would house up to seven guests. I guess we will have to wait and see how that goes.  
What's for sure is that a lot of progress has been made over the last few years and that most of the technology needed to realize space hotels is available. Thus, someday someone will most likely bring tourists to space, but it may be farther off than we think. Unfortunately creating space hotels requires a lot of money, expertise and careful testing. All of these factors are significantly setting back the realization of space hotels. 

Will staying in space hotels be affordable for ordinary people?

I am sorry to disappoint you, but unless you are a millionaire or are going to win the lottery you probably won't be able to visit a space hotel any time soon. Rich people will be the privileged ones to travel to space for recreational or leisure purposes until the commercialization of space tourism because staying in space hotels will not exactly come cheaply. 
The Russian engineers who plan on realizing a space hotel by 2016 announced, for example, that space tourists will have to pay 500,000 pounds to travel on a Soyuz rocket to get to the hotel before paying another 100,000 pounds for a five-day stay. In comparison to the Galactic Suite offer which will cost you at least three million euros, the Russian offer is quite cheap.


(http://www.spacefuture.com/tourism/hotels.shtml, http://science.howstuffworks.com/hotel-orbit-earth.htm, http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/aug/27/space-hotel-rich-thrill-world)