Pecha Kucha

I would like to start this post with a short description of "Pecha Kucha" for all my readers who do not know what this funny words means.

It describes a new presentation style. The basic concept is that within one "Pecha Kucha" (you say it like 'Petcha Ktcha") 20 slides are shown for 20 seconds each giving one presentation the time of six minutes and 20 seconds. 

Preparing a Pecha Kucha on the topic of Swedish as a second official language in Finland made me realize how difficult it is to actually fit the time frame of 20 seconds. 20 seconds are nothing when you speak. Together with my project partner we started out creating a general outline for our presentation first. Once that was done and we had all the necessary information on the topic we thought writing down a transcript of what we were going to say would be a piece of cake. That was where we went wrong, completely wrong. I cannot recall how many times I actually rewrote my sections because what I wanted to say was either to short or to long for the 20 seconds. In general I think the reason to that problem lies in the fact that I usually am a very happy free speaker. I hardly ever really write a transcript for what I am going to say. The next problem I had was to exactly memorize my transcript as every tiny little mistake can completely destroy the time management and ruin the PK. Still, preparing the PK taught me how to fill exact frames and how to fulfil detailed requirements, a task that will be of great use to me in future.

After having done these really detailed preparations actually holding the presentation has truly been easy. We actually practised the PK a couple of times to make sure we new approximately how fast we could speak the individual sections. After that I think our time management was pretty great. The one fact that really bugged me about our presentation was the fact that due to the strict time schedule and my fear of forgetting my text I might not have made enough eye contact with my listeners. Speaking freely without holding cards with your text to stare on prevents you from making this basic mistake. Besides this one point in my opinion the PK we delivered was really good.

My Vocabulary Notebook

I have never been the "keeping a vocab note book" kind of student, but my opinion about them changed throughout this semester. At first my thoughts were quit rebellious. I had never been fond of the idea of piling up vocab just so I can, like a machine, hammer them into my head one by one. Pretty quickly at the beginning of this semester I learned the hard way that I really had to find a way of learning massive amounts of vocab without resenting it so much. Not just in English also in Russian my former system couldn't manage the masses anymore. Because of that, partly also due to the fact that we had to, I started keeping a handwritten vocab diary where I collected vocab and additional information important to me. 

That was already a step forward since just looking the words up, and writting all this stuff down by hand did a great deal of the trick. However I did not find the ultimate perfect system until I tried gFlash+. With the help of this useful app I managed to keep up with the gigantic vocabulary lists in both languages. Everything this app needs, to help me to study my vocab everywhere I go, is a simple Google spreadsheet. Here is what my vocabulary notebook for PC2 looks like:

Unfortunately I cannot directly listen to the links I put in the spreadsheet for pronunciation. Since I already listened to the recordings twice while creating the list and the google doc gives me the opportunity to listen to them from any computer in the world, this fact is not actually hindering me. Now, at the end of semester3, I think I have found THE way for me to learn my vocab: detailed Google spreadsheets and gFlash+.

My Fair Lady

or Pronunciation Post II

Gliding, whistling and exploding through different British pronunciation videos made me feel very funny throughout the last couple of days. I had a very strange feeling that I could not quit detect until half way through “RP British Accent” – a quit good RP online lesson – I stumbled across this sentence:

“In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire hurricanes hardly ever happen.”

Finally I knew why I felt so special: I felt just like My Fair Lady. If you are as big an Audrey Hepburn fan as I am, I am sure you will recognize this sentence. For all of my fellow classmates who do not know Audrey Hepburn and are a little late with their Pronunciation practise or simply looking for an easy and funny way to do this here is my tip: Watch the musical film adaptation from George Bernard Shaw’s My Fair Lady, which was produced in 1964. In addition to a marvellous Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison you will find lots of possibilities to practise together with the main characters. Basically, this movie is about the arrogant and snobbish Professor Higgins (Rex Harrison), who is a teacher of phonetics. He strongly believes that a person’s accent determines his or her place in society. He states that he could teach any woman to speak so “properly” she could be passed off as a duchess. In order to prove his theory he selects the young flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) whose strong Cockney accent is keeping her from realizing her dream to work at a flower shop. Throughout the story he not only changes her pronunciation but also falls in love with her. But I have said enough already. See for yourself.

PS: Should you not know how to get access to this movie, write me: ailuj.seemann@gmail.com

Received Pronunciation

Having looked at several websites recommended on our pronunciation practice page, I realized that this is actually going to be a lot of fun. I always had a thing for different English accents and finally this predilection of mine is going to pay off, hopefully. So far I collect different accents like other people stamps or coins or those weird cards. With that I do not mean that I can actually pronounce and speak in different accents. No, that would be a really arrogant. What I have in mind are TV shows like “Downtown Abbey” (northern English accent maybe Yorkshire) “Hart of Dixie” (broad southern American English), listening to Maggie Smith with her fabulous Scottish accent in Harry Potter or listening to Dublin radio shows. I just love accents.

 Regarding my future pronunciation I would have to say that I definitely prefer the received pronunciation in the British English. I think it will be easier for me to do because I actually lived in Winchester, England for four months. Another reason will be all my former English teachers who encouraged us to speak British English. Having looked at the pronunciation exercises I realize it is going to be a lot of work, but I think it is worth the effort. One video that in particular was very interesting for me is where they compare the British and the American English. Her you can see that even though many people think there are not that many words that are pronounced differently it starts with easy things like garage. Still the girls did it in a funny way, and I am going to have lots of fun with all the exercises. 

I actually found this video on youtube, maybe it could help some of you too: