Hello
everyone! Although the last few weeks were quite busy for me (exams,
assignments, presentations etc. – I guess you know what I’m talking about!), I’ve
finally found time to start working on my academic paper. Apart from my introduction
and an approximate idea what the content will be like, I had almost nothing. In
the days I tried to organize my sources – and I was more than successful!
Thanks to our university’s online library, I could easily print out the three
articles I need for my paper without having to go to the ‘real’ library and
search for hours and hours for the magazines. The articles are quite long
but easy to understand. So far, I’ve fully read two of them and excerpted the
most useful parts. Concerning my online sources, I’ve skimmed through all of
them but I still need to read them carefully in order to find out what I can
use for my paper.Reading my sources has
definitely helped me to gain a better insight into my topic and to figure out
what I can actually write about. I plan to start writing this weekend and to
write at least 400 words so that I can enjoy the Christmas holidays without
having to worry too much about my paper!
Merry
Christmas everyone! I hope you all enjoy the last few days of 2013 and find time to relax!
PRONUNCIATION
– not only a trick word when it comes to the right spelling but it’s actually
quite difficult to be good at it!
Speaking
honestly, I’ve always neglected working on my pronunciation skills. In the last
few months here at the ITAT I’ve definitely improved my grammar, learned a lot
of useful vocabulary and also my text writing abilities have (hopefully!)
improved. But pronunciation? I remember Fiona telling as over and over again
that the “v” in “village” is something totally different than the “w” in
“weather” and that “to comment” should never sound like the noun “a comment”
but apart from this my pronunciation was for me something that I thought will
“improve by itself”. Sure, if you are constantly in touch with the English
language your pronunciation automatically improves but in order to really sound
like an English native speaker, you have to go into detail and learn more about
different accents, how tricky words are pronounced the right way and what you
as an English student should definitely avoid.
And is
there a certain accent I aim for? Well, I think this question is difficult to
answer. I think both the British and the American accent sound good but as I’m
more used to listening to American accents and as it sounds more natural to me,
I will definitely aim for an American accent.After listening to some of the American accent tutorials on our
pronunciation practice page, I also searched for useful tutorials on Youtube.
Here’s what I found:
In this
video, a Canadian English teacher called Melanie explains that most Americans
don’t pronounce the “t” if it comes after an “n”… For example, the word “interview” would more sound like “innerview”. The same goes for
the “d” after an “n” like in the word “understand”. I was really impressed by this video because I
had never realized it before! I also watched a few of Melanie’s other videos
and I tried a few exercise. Of course, not everything worked out that good and
some words still sounded a bit weird when I tried to pronounce them correctly,
but in one of her videos Melanie says that it takes at least 21 days to get
used to a new speaking habit. I think this is the most important thing you have
to keep in mind when you practice your pronunciation: It will take you some
time to sound like an American/Brit but if you work hard on it and practise
every day you will be able achieve your goal!
By the way:
Melanie has her own webpage where you can learn vocabulary or read more about
different grammar chapters. (http://www.englishteachermelanie.com)
Do you
remember the disturbing “English” song Frank showed us in our class last week?
Well, here’s a similar video, with the title “Skwerl”… Have fun with it, maybe
you understand more than I did ;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4Dfa4fOEY
I hope you all have a great week and enjoy the Advent season!
