Progress of my Academic Paper

Hey Guys!

So, how are you doing with your academic paper so far? Did you do a lot already? Any finished paragraphs? No? Well, frankly speaking I also didn't do a lot by now – I just couldn't find the time. However, I have a nice plan on how I'm gonna structure my paper and I already handed in an introduction last week. Writing the introduction really helped me putting together all the main ideas I want to deal with in the paper.

One thing I struggle a bit is finding the right sources. I had a couple of them at the beginning of the semester, when we were first told to think about our topic. Well, I should have bookmarked them, because I can't find some of the anymore. However, I think this shouldn't be too much of a problem, because I will do some more research as I'm writing the paper anyway.

What I found really useful was an exercise we did in class last week. Hendrik told us to write an elevator pitch about our topic. What's that? The idea is simply: pretend you meet someone in an elevator, you don't know when he/she will leave – all you got are some seconds or say a minute to persuade this person to read your academic paper. I found the idea really interesting, you might want to read mine...

Elevator Pitch

LGBT rights in the EU / on the Balkans

Hey! You know, you look like a very open-minded person and… well, I just wrote an academic paper about LGBT rights in the EU, also with emphasis on some Balkan countries. Did you know that Belgium, Denmark and Sweden are actually considered the most “gay friendly” countries? There’s no restriction on marrying the person you love, no matter what sex and same-sex couples can adopt children and so on. Isn’t that amazing?!

Gosh, have you read the newspaper recently? It’s unbelievable what’s goin’ on in the FYR Macedonia? There’s almost no protection for LGBT people. There’s  high violence against LGBT human rights defenders. But the worst thing of all that are those “honor killings” of gays in Turkey. Have you heard of that? No? Well, I really think you have to take a look in my paper!

Pronunciation Diary #1

Apart from dealing with EU as the main topic of this semester, we should also dedicate ourselves to start thinking about which English pronunciation each and everyone of us wants to acquire. I've been keen on doing this for a long time and thinking about this a lot, but there are two things always coming in my way: 1 to little time/energy to actually sit down and start doing something 2 can't decide on a accent

Primarily, I want to start working on a standard American English pronunciation, with a focus on the accent spoken in New York, since I totally love that city and want to spent some time there. Besides, I think the New York accent is quite distinctive to accents spoken in other parts of North America and I like to listen to it. I was pretty glad when I found Rachel's English on the Pronunciation Practice Page Frank and Hendrik put together – it's exactly what I was looking for.

Rachel Smith (I can't help thinking she looks a bit like Piper Halliwell from Charmed) does a good job with the videos she uploads and... she's from New York, yaaay! I already watched some of them and I was speaking along with her trying to imitate her accent and practice pronunciation. I can warmly recommend this page to you. The videos are really good as she explains everything with examples taken from everyday life, like doing a road trip with her friends and being filmed while driving or when she's cooking.

"Fill 'er up!"

She's also quite profound at what she does – have a look at the 'About' section if you are interest in what she's been doing.

Apart from doing exercises from Rachel's English I while also watch some Accent Tag videos to hear some other accents. We did that in class two weeks ago and it was hilarious listening to the different accents from the English speaking world. Two other accents I really like are the Scottish and Australian one. They have some very distinctive features I really like listening to. Some words are pronounced so different to the "standard version" you know that they sound like entire new words.

Well, enough for now. I will keep you up-to-date on my process in learning English pronunciation.