Vocabulary Notebook

My approach to mastering the Porter vocabulary is a rather traditional one, meaning I rely a lot on paper an a pen. I usually go through the chapters and seek out the words of which I don't know the exact meaning or pronunciation, then I write them down in my notebook. My next step is to look them up in the online version of the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary. I really like this dictionary because its so clearly arranged. It shows you exactly what you need to know and there are recordings of every word. After reading through the page, I copy the information relevant for me into my notebook.

Sorry for the bad quality, but my webcam won't do any better (at least I don't know how to get it to make a better picture). I hope you get the idea anyways.


I also use the vocab lists on vocabulary.com, but I prefer to work with that after studying my vocabulary notebook. On the backside of the notebook I write down words, collocation, or idiomatic expressions I encounter in books I read and which I haven't known before or particularly want to remember.

My English Pronunciation Progress

Over the past few week I have tried to improve my English pronunciation in order to make it sound more "American". To accomplish that I've done some exercises and watched a few videos from our teachers' pronunciation practice page.

I tried a few of the Merriam-Webster's Perfect Pronunciation exercises, but I think that they are not that useful. Different words and sentences are pronounced by native speakers and you are supposed to repeat them correctly, but they don't give you any tips on how the sounds are produced.

I also had a look at the videos on manythings.com. Since one of the sounds I feel I still have to work on a little is the "r" sound, I watched the videos about words containing it. These videos didn't really help me at all, because they focus on words with the endings "-er" or "-re", which I don't have any problems with. I have difficulties pronouncing double "r"s correctly, like in "horror", and none of the videos were about this type of words.

I've practiced quite a bit over the last weeks and I think that I've made considerable progress on the "v" sound that I used to pronounce more like a "w". The only thing I still have to improve now is the "rr" in the middle of words, but I can't pronounce this sound properly in other languages as well, so maybe this is an innate problem. Nevertheless, I will try to solve also my last pronunciation issues.

Pecha Kucha Presentation: Maltese Language

Before the Christmas break, my partner Anita and I did a Pecha Kucha presentation on the Maltese language. I had never heard of Pecha Kucha before this semester, so the first thing we did was to find out how such a presentation is supposed to look like.
Here's how it works: you create a presentation consisting of 20 slides. On each slide there is a picture, but you don't write any text on it like you probably would in a classic Power-Point presentation. During the presentation, each slide will be displayed for exactly 20 seconds.

We started off by looking for the pictures for our presentation. When we were done with that we began writing our text. It turned out to be quite difficult to write 20 short texts that would be about 20 seconds long when read out. We had agreed that I would narrate the slides with even numbers and Anita would do the odd ones. As soon as we were done writing we sat down with a stop watch and read our texts out aloud to check if they had the appropriate length. Needless to say, we had to make a lot of changes since most texts were either too short or way too long.

While giving our presentation, our biggest problem was - once again - the very narrow time frame. A few times we had to leave things out towards the end, because otherwise we wouldn't have been able to finish in time with the slides. Despite the huge stress factor inherent to this type of presentation, I think we did a good job. Pecha Kucha was an interesting experience, but if I had the choice I probably wouldn't use this presentation technique again. I prefer the traditional style with less time pressure.

Here's the link to our presentation:  https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rTkhdULyVZmnsERQcKOMLAwwLZYEHzJQ_EfVbSmbpFE/edit#slide=id.g17886b2dc_015

English Pronunciation

Learning the correct pronunciation is a vital part of learning a language. While I can say that I'm happy with my fluency in English there are a few pronunciation-related things I still have to work on.
When I was in the US last year, nobody actually doubted that I was an English native speaker, but they weren't so sure about where I might come from. Most people guessed either England or Canada.

In San Francisco my then-boyfriend and I went into a small shop and talked to a salesclerk. When asked where we came from, my boyfriend replied "Austria." The clerk then turned to me and said "You're not. But where are you from? England?"

A few days later an Australian, whom I met in LA, told me that I make the letter "v" sound more like a "w", which I know is something I really have to work on. I strive for an American accent, and my ultimate goal is that the next time I come to the US nobody will address me with "Canada, eh?"

In order to achieve my goal I have been taking closer looks at some English pronunciation websites. One of the videos there I found very helpful was about the difference in pronouncing "v" and "w", which helped me a great deal. I also looked at videos made by Rachel Smith, but I have to say that I didn't find her methods to be particularly helpful to me. I prefer Amy Walker's videos, because she shows you where the sound are made in your mouth and I think she explains that pretty well.

Pronunciation – V & W · engVid

Here's the link to the V&W video I mentioned above, it's from another pronunciation site I found pretty good. Enjoy!