Comment on 'summary1'

Summary of “Europe already has one foot in ‘Japanese’ deflation grave”

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in The Telegraph of October 23, 2013 analyses Europe’s debt crisis. (1)

According to Evans-Pritchard, more and more European states are suffering from the recent “trend” (2) of deflation as prices are falling and debt is increasing. Spain and Italy, for instance, are pushed into runaway debt trajectory and even Germany, renowned for having a flat inflation (3), is said to be in danger of deflation too.  Debt itself is already difficult to overcome but with deflation, the situation becomes lethal. Basically, Europe is now feared to end up in the same situation like Japan (4), sliding into a deflationary trap which will have hardly any turning back.  Nevertheless, possible solutions are proposed to try to, no matter how, break out of the impasse (5). The ECB, for instance, should do whatever it takes to keep inflation high enough to lower the risk of deflation in any vulnerable country. Another way to protect Europe from a complete deflation disaster would be the ganging up of the Club Gang (6) on Germany and forcing the country to accept inflation.

No matter which way Europe chooses to stabilise (7) deflation and debt, measures must be taken before Europe ends up in the same deflation lodge as Japan.

[200 words]

Here are my comments:

(1)    I think it would be better to change the word order in this sentence in order to make it 'easier' to read and get rid of this comma: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard analyses Europe’s debt crisis in The Telegraph of October 23, 2013.

Still, this sentence is a good start/introduction!

(2)    I think the word 'trend' is not the best choice in this sentence. Maybe you could just skip it and write something like: '…are suffering from the recent deflation as…'.

(3)    I looked up the word 'inflation' on the COCA and the most frequent collocation for it was 'low'. Therefore, I would change it to 'a low inflation'.

(4)    It is very good that you mention Japan in this context as it explains the title of the newspaper article. 

(5)    You chose a very fitting metaphor in this sentence! But shouldn’t it be 'break the impasse'?

(6)    In the text it was the 'Club Med', right?

(7)    Maybe it would sound better to write something like 'fight deflation', but I guess 'stabilise' is also correct!

In general, I think your summary is very good! What I liked most is that you used metaphors like 'to be pushed into runaway debt trajectory' or 'to break the impasse' as they help to depict the actual problem. Apart from this, the clear structure and logic of your summary helps understanding the matter. In my summary I tried to divide the main part into three smaller paragraphs which was not such a good idea. Your summary shows me that one can still write everything in one paragraph and still have a good organisation. I also liked that you referred to Japan and thus explained the title of the article very well. This is also something I will definitely do in my next summary. However, there are some words and phrases I might have written differently.

EU project: European Citizenship

Original Paragraph

European Citizenship

Everybody who is a citizen of a country in the European Union is automatically an EU citizen. As you probably know, citizenship means belonging to a community in which every citizen has certain rights and duties. Therefore, European Citizenship means belonging to the European Union. There are a number of ways to obtain EU citizenship, namely, acquisition by birth, descent, marriage or naturalisation (which means spending at least a certain amount of your life in a country legally). An EU citizenship has various advantages: A well-known advantage of EU citizenship is the right to move and reside freely within the EU, under the protection of the diplomatic and consular authorities of any EU country. In practice, this means a British person can move to Greece and work there without having to ask for permission from the local authorities. Should this expectation not be met, EU citizens can sign a petition at the European Parliament and lodge a complaint to the European Ombudsman. People with a European citizenship can also directly influence politics by either casting their voice in an EU-wide election or even standing as a candidate for the European Parliament. However, there are also disadvantages about EU citizenship: For example, the right to reside and work in another country does not necessarily mean being accepted by its people immediately and many have to face racism and prejudice every day. To make matters worse, local authorities are mostly incapable of providing social services such as housing, education and health care. While they are struggling to master this challenge, the citizens blame the immigrants for allegedly taking over their country and stealing their jobs. Some also fear the loss of their national identity and cultural heritage, which is a common cause for xenophobia. After all, being a European citizen does not only bring important rights with it, but in order to grant the European community to live together peacefully, each and every citizen has to live up to their responsibilities.

(329 words)



Final Paragraph
 
European Citizenship

Every citizen of a country in the European Union is automatically an EU citizen. There are a number of ways to obtain EU citizenship, namely, acquisition by birth, descent, marriage or naturalisation. EU citizenship has various advantages, for example, people with European citizenship can directly influence EU politics by either casting their voice in EU-wide elections or even standing as a candidate for the European Parliament. Another well-known benefit is the right to move and reside freely within the EU, under the protection of the diplomatic and consular authorities of any EU country. In practice, this means a British person can move to Greece and work there without having to ask for permission from the local authorities. However, there are also disadvantages about the right of free movement within the EU: The right to reside and work in another country does not necessarily mean being accepted by its people immediately and many immigrants have to face racism and prejudice every day. To make matters worse, more and more local residents also fear the loss of their national identity and cultural heritage, which is a common cause for xenophobia.  Being a European citizen not only entails important rights and benefits, but in order to allow the European community to live together peacefully, each and every citizen has to live up to their responsibilities.

(222 words)

My Vocab Notebook(s)

Since last year, I've been using the same method when studying vocabulary. Firstly, me and some other English students from my group divide up the new vocabulary and everyone of us looks for the best definition, synonyms, antonyms, example sentences and the German translation for two or three units, writes it in a Google spreadsheet and makes it available for everyone of us. After that, everyone can add anything important that might be helpful for the progress check. As I'm not really into learning with my PC, I always print the spreadsheets and put it in a folder.

Apart from this, I have a second vocab notebook in which I write 'mean' words I have difficulties with or other words I come across, which will not necessarily be tested in the progress check. 

(Sorry for the weird photos.. but blogger.com doesn't want me to turn them!)