The Challenge

As you might already know, part of my final English exam will be about pronunciation. I have started putting together a glossary with all the words we have to study and, of course, their pronunciation. As you can see, I am using the IPA symbols that I talked about in my last post.

Sometimes, I was quite surprised by how much the pronunciation differed from what I thought! English is really an unpredictable language when it comes to pronunciation. As if to prove this assumption, a few days later I found out about a poem called "The Chaos".

There are many archaic words in it, which of course I didn't know how to pronounce, but suddenly I also realized how unsure I am about some words I have seen before and thought I knew!  My plan for the next few days is to work my way through this poem, learn some new (or rather old?) words and be surprised by the unpredictability of English pronunciation.

Isn't it wonderful to study a language that is so irregular? New surprises are awaiting you every day! :-)

Dearest creature in creation, 

Study English pronunciation. 

I will teach you in my verse 

Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse. 

I will keep you, Suzy, busy, 

Make your head with heat grow dizzy. 

Tear in eye, your dress will tear. 

So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard, 

Dies and diet, lord and word, 

Sword and sward, retain and Britain. 

(Mind the latter, how it's written.) 

Now I surely will not plague you 

With such words as plaque and ague. 

But be careful how you speak: 

Say break and steak, but bleak and streak; 

Cloven, oven, how and low, 

Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery, 

Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore, 

Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles, 

Exiles, similes, and reviles; 

Scholar, vicar, and cigar, 

Solar, mica, war and far; 

One, anemone, Balmoral, 

Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel; 

Gertrude, German, wind and mind, 

Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet, 

Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet. 

Blood and flood are not like food, 

Nor is mould like should and would. 

Viscous, viscount, load and broad, 

Toward, to forward, to reward. 

And your pronunciation's OK 

When you correctly say croquet, 

Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve, 

Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour 

And enamour rhyme with hammer. 

River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb, 

Doll and roll and some and home. 

Stranger does not rhyme with anger, 

Neither does devour with clangour. 

Souls but foul, haunt but aunt, 

Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant, 

Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger, 

And then singer, ginger, linger, 

Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge, 

Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very, 

Nor does fury sound like bury. 

Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth. 

Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath. 

Though the differences seem little, 

We say actual but victual. 

Refer does not rhyme with deafer. 

Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer. 

Mint, pint, senate and sedate; 

Dull, bull, and George ate late. 

Scenic, Arabic, Pacific, 

Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven, 

Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven. 

We say hallowed, but allowed, 

People, leopard, towed, but vowed. 

Mark the differences, moreover, 

Between mover, cover, clover; 

Leeches, breeches, wise, precise, 

Chalice, but police and lice; 

Camel, constable, unstable, 

Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal, 

Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal. 

Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair, 

Senator, spectator, mayor. 

Tour, but our and succour, four. 

Gas, alas, and Arkansas. 

Sea, idea, Korea, area, 

Psalm, Maria, but malaria. 

Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean. 

Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian, 

Dandelion and battalion. 

Sally with ally, yea, ye, 

Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key. 

Say aver, but ever, fever, 

Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver. 

Heron, granary, canary. 

Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface. 

Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass. 

Large, but target, gin, give, verging, 

Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging. 

Ear, but earn and wear and tear 

Do not rhyme with here but ere. 

Seven is right, but so is even, 

Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen, 

Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk, 

Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche! 

Is a paling stout and spikey? 

Won't it make you lose your wits, 

Writing groats and saying grits? 

It's a dark abyss or tunnel: 

Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale, 

Islington and Isle of Wight, 

Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough -- 

Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough? 

Hiccough has the sound of cup. 

My advice is to give up!!! 

 

IPA

IPA? Isn't that what the Simpsons' grandpa is shouting in the movie when he becomes mad and has visions in the middle of a mass?

Not quite...although in a way "IIIIIPAAAAA" has become my mantra for improving my English pronunciation.

IPA stands for International Phonetic Alphabet. It is supposed to represent the sounds of spoken language in a way that is more accurate than the roughly 25 letters we use in the Latin alphabet. You might have seen those funny signs in online dictionaries, and you might have noticed that some look like normal letters or are very similar. That is because IPA is based on the Latin alphabet, but like I mentioned, it adds more "shades" to it.

I decided to learn the IPA some years ago, mainly because I was bored, I think, and only now have I realised how helpful it can be. For our final exam, we have to study a list with hundreds of words, and of course I did not know how to pronounce all of them. I can listen to their pronunciation in an online dictionary, but maybe I also want to study "offline", away from the Internet and its distractions (don't tell me you've never "just wanted to check this and that social network real quick" and then ended up staying on the page for an hour). For studying "offline" it is helpful to know the IPA because I can add the transcription to my glossary and print it. Another advantage is that IPA is relatively abstract and universal. It is supposed to represent the "ideal" pronunciation of the word and is free from a particular speaker's accent (though, of course, different transcriptions are sometimes necessary for BrE and AmE).

There are probably hundreds of different IPA symbols, but if you only use them to study English vocabulary and pronunciation, it is enough to recognise 44 of them. Here is an interactive chart giving you an overview of what these 44 sounds are.

I also found a website with example sentences to each of the 44 sounds and audio files of a British speaker reading these sentences. The sentences do not always make a lot of sense and sometimes resemble tongue twisters, but they are fun to repeat! Unfortunatley, I found the site on my phone and took a very bad screenshot that cut off the IPA symbols. Now I cannot find the website anymore, but here are the 44 sentences: 

On the other hand, why not make it a quiz in which you have to recognise the IPA symbol that goes with each sentence?

I recorded myself reading all 44 sentences and listened to it afterwards. I picked the sentences I was not yet happy with, wrote them on colourful sheets of paper, underlined the problem sounds and added some cute drawings. Then I put them on a magnetic board in my flat so that I will look at them and repeat them every day. I'm planning to record another audio file after a few weeks and compare it with the first one to see if and how I improved.

I know that forcing yourself to listen to your own voice recordings is a difficult step, but as Emma Watson says in this interview: "How do you expect to get better if you don't watch your performances?"

Connections, connections everywhere

Connections are important, not only on the job market ;-), but also when you're studying vocabulary. Your head really is a lot like a sieve, and the new words are grains of sugar poured through it. When you read through new words for the first time, almost all of them (= all the grains of sugar) except for a few lucky ones will fall through the sieve that is your memory. In order to make them stay in your sieve, or your memory, you have to collect the sugar and pour it through the sieve many, many times. In other words, it is essential to start studying early enough and repeat the words many, many times. But that is not enough: You also have to find connections. Between the new words and words you already know, books you've read, pictures you've seen...anything, really. When several words or grains of sugar "connect", they form a lump that won't fall through the sieve anymore, no matter how hard you shake. What is annoying the kitchen, is very useful when studying vocabulary!

I'm not going to talk about finding collocations or example sentences here. They are already part of my vocab learning strategy and you can read about them in my other vocabulary post. So which other connections are there?

Word family

By "word family", I mean all the words that are "related" because they share a common root. An example could be "compulsion, compulsive, compulsory". But be careful! Sometimes words that seem very similar can have very different meanings. I can help you to try and pack all of these words into one sentence (even better if it is a funny one!) to show their different meanings. Here is one example from my glossary:

"Having a commodious (spacious) house with a commode (a thing that looks like a chair but is a toilet) is a valuable commodity (quality)."

Pictures

I'm sure we all know the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words". Sometimes it's enough when it's worth one. For example, while I was creating the glossary, I was looking for words that are "related" to atom, and I found the word "atomizer". The description I found was: "a device that changes a liquid into small drops by forcing it out through a very small hole" (Cambridge Learner's Dictionary). Sounds very technical, doesn't it? I decided to do a Google picture search, and voilà, an atomizer is actually this simple object: 

Another example, and a question for you: Why do you think there is this picture of the Avengers in my glossary?

Answer: because I like the Avengers? Also, but mainly to remember the meaning of the word "assemble"! :-)

I hope my additional vocab learning strategies inspired you. If you have anything to add, or any more suggestions, feel free to leave a comment!

Summary writing: before and after

It may seem that I'm a bit lazy this year because I'm not blogging on a regular basis (unless once a month is a "regular basis"). In fact, I had a lot to do for university and I was quite productive. For example, I wrote some beautiful summaries of texts and videos that I have to present now. 

This is supposed to be a "Before and After" comparison, but I will spare you the joy of reading all of my summaries twice because most of the changes are simple and short. I will just write the changes in Italics and do the comparison afterwards.

Text No.1: Great Profits during the Great War

In their article “Great profits during the Great War”, published in the Guardian on 28 October 2013, Elizabeth Bruton and Graeme Gooday discuss whether innovators during the First World War acted only out of patriotism or whether they did so with a view to profiting from warfare.

Following the German example, Great Britain ceased to send scientists to the front and started to invest in research early in the First World War by establishing the DSIR, the Department of Scientific Industrial Research. Without this co-operation between state and industry, the war could not have continued for four years. Some companies such as the Marconi Company seemed to offer their services voluntarily, without requesting payment: a seemingly patriotic and altruistic act. However, Bruton and Gooday point out that the Marconi Company was richly rewarded after the war, when a Royal Commission acknowledged numerous wartime innovations. The Marconi Company received even more money by accusing the state of patent infringement. On the other hand, less crucial innovations such as Fuller’s interception-proof phone were only poorly rewarded.

Bruton and Gooday conclude by implying that certain companies, however altruistic their motives seemed at first, might have taken advantage of warfare in order to make a profit.

In this summary, the exact source was missing. It was also too short, so I decided to add the piece about sending scientists to the front in order to get exactly 200 words.

Text No.2: Why we should give everyone a basic income

During his TED talk in Maastricht, Rutger Bregman presents the concept of basic income as a means to eradicate poverty and solve the welfare mess.

Basic income is a universal monthly grant for everyone, regardless of their social status. The idea is that states could combat poverty and save billions currently spent on welfare by replacing these services with basic income. Experiments, conducted mainly in the Southern hemisphere but also among the homeless in London, have proven the effectiveness of a basic income. However, there are three main points of criticism. The major concern are the costs, but Bregman sees basic income as an investment in the future. By combatting poverty effectively, the state will eventually save billions. Secondly, critics bevlieve that with a guaranteed monthly income, many would stop working. However, Bregman's argument is that the majority of people wants to contribute to society. Thirdly, the idea of basic income may resemble a utopia, something that is too big to be realised, but in fact, it was almost implemented in the USA under Nixon.

Bregman encourages his audience to read more on the topic. He believes that with enough patience and ambition, the idea of basic income can become reality.

The problem here was that I had written "millions", making it seem like I wanted to downplay the positive effects of a basic income.

Text No.3 (hold on, we're almost done!): The Crisis of Credit Visualized

The video "The Crisis of Credit Visualized" by Jonathan Jarvis explains the underlying causes and possible future impacts on the 2008 Credit Crisis.

When the Federal Reserve Bank stopped paying high interest rates after 9/11 and the dot.com crash in order to encourage spending, investors were seeking new possibilities for investing money. Lenders such as banks, who profit from low interest rates, start to connect investors with homeowners. Investors can profit from buying packs of martgages ranging from safe to risky. Due to a high demand for mortgages, eventually the conditions for receiving a mortgage are neglected and so-called subprime mortgages are given to unreliable homeowners. When a homeowner defaults, the lender receives the house and tries to sell it. This poses no problem until too many homeowners default. With too much supply and no demand, houses lose their value and house prices fall. Even solvent homeowners choose to leave their house since their mortgage is higher than the actual value of the house. Investors are not interested in acquiring unprofitable mortgages, leaving the lender with valueless mortgages and houses.

In a financial system where no one is interested in buying and selling mortgages or borrowing and lending money, a standstill is imminent.

Here I removed the explanation of what the Credit Crisis is and inserted more information on why there were low interest rates.

To sum up, I did not have to change a lot about my summaries. I have to pay attention to name the source and I should make sure to condense my sentences enough so that I don't have to leave out any information just because I'm over the word count.

Out of sight, out of mind? Vocab learning Strategies

I am sure everyone knows the dreadful days before vocabulary tests, when we try to memorise lists of words and their translations, but every time we repeat them it feels like we have never heard these words before. If our brain is made for learning, why is it so time-consuming to remember new vocabulary? The main reason for this is that our brain only remembers what it finds important. Whatever happens more than once or appears in a specific context is more likely to be remembered. We can use these strategies to our advantage when it comes to learning vocabulary.

This year, we are using a book from David Porter to become familiar with vocabulary typically used in academic writing. The main advantage of this book is that it collects a great deal of useful vocabulary on just a few pages. Instead of providing a list of words without context, the book consists of different types of exercises. They show you how the new words are used in a context and sometimes the exercises even provide you with synoyms or collocations that can later be studied as one chunk.

However, it is important not to be fooled by the feeling of accomplishment you get once you have completed the exercises. Filling out the exercises was just the first part of a long remembering process. The main disadvantage of using the Porter book could be that you neglect certain words or phrases because they seemed clear in that specific exercise, even though you would not recognise them in another context. There is a big difference between deducing the meaning of a word from its context and truly knowing a word. Knowing a word also includes knowledge about the correct pronunciation, possible collocations and the correct use in different contexts - often a word can have more than one meaning and can therefore occur in different contexts. The lack of information about other possible meanings of a word is another disadvantage of working only with the Porter book.

For whoever wants to know new words, the Porter book can provide a useful starting point, but it is definitely not enough to work with the book alone. I personally enjoy studying anything clearly structured, so I found last year's glossary very helpful. That is why I decided to create my own glossary again this year. Typing the words into a spreadsheet is the first step of my learning process because I need to pay attention to their spelling. However, this year's glossary will need to be an improved and more extensive version compared to last year's. Studying just a collection of words with their respective definitions and example sentences will not be enough to get me through this semester anymore.

Since we will have an oral exam at the end of the semester, we will have to know how to pronounce the new words correctly. For this reason I look up every word in at least two different monolingual dictionaries, e.g. the Cambridge Learner's Dictionary or MacMillan, and listen to their pronunciation. Whenever the pronunciation differs from what I thought, I add the phonetic transcription to my glossary or underline the stressed syllable.

I also try to add synoyms or antonyms of the new words. Sometimes they can be found in the Porter book exercises. Unfortunately, a list will all the synonyms and antonyms would be too long to study successfully in a short time and we also have to consider that most "synonyms" are actually only near synonyms. So for now, I only see them as a possibility to give me a better idea of the meaning of a word.

This year we also talked about corpora. They are useful for finding collocations and example sentences. I like "Just the Word" because it is simple to use, but unfortunately it does not contain all of the academic writing words and the site crashes often. Another site I use to find collocations is GLOWBE, the Corpus of Global Web Based English. This corpus allows you to search for specific types of collocations, e.g. only nouns, and it lets you compare different varieties of English. Sometimes, certain collocations are more common or have a unique meaning in one variety. Since we have to aim for one variety of English, this corpus can help us sound more natural by using typical collocations for our chosen standard, while remaining congnisant of other standards.

Once I have more or less finished my glossary, the actual study process begins. I am a fan of the flashcard system that makes you repeat words that you haven't remembered on a regular basis, but I prefer collecting my words on a digital spreadsheet rather than on paper cards. However, instead of using a programme for creating online flashcards, I am trying to find a way to incorporate the idea of flashcards into my Google Docs glossary.

When I am studying, i can hide certain colums of my spreadsheet, for example the pronunciation or the example sentences in order to test myself and see whether I would be able to pronounce the word correctly or come up with an appropriate sentence including the word. Whenever I have problems with a word, I highlight that row in red. The next time I study, I look specifically at the rows in red. If I know the solution this time, I highlight the row in yellow, and the third time I give a correct answer I highlight it in green. Naturally, after a while I also repeat the words in not highlighted columns. Ideally, eventually none of the rows will be highlighted anymore.

I hope I could give you some ideas on how to study a great deal of vocabulary effectively. Most importantly, however, is to use what you have learned in as many situations as possible. This is obviously more difficult with vocabulary for academic writing, but we will have the chance to prove what we have learned in our academic paper later this semester.

Mindmap

This is the mindmap I produced from the Robinson Crusoe text we had to read at home last week. I am sure it could be improved or made more compact, but I still need to practice.

I never used mind maps before because I found it more confusing to produce a mind map than to simply write down key words, but I am starting to like them!

Mind the Gap!

This warning will be familiar to anyone who has used the London Underground, the oldest underground railway in the world. However, since its opening in 1863 the network has changed almost completely. The first passengers were transported in steam-powered trains instead of the electric trains we know today. This meant that tunnels had to be close to the surface and have many openings for the steam to escape. Bit by bit, the old steam trains were replaced by electricity-powered trains, more and deeper tunnels were built and lines were extended far into the suburbs of London.

The constant network changes also meant that many stations were closed, relocated or used for different purposes. During the Second World War, for example, some stations served as air raid shelters during bomb attacks. An underground branch leading to a station called Aldwych in Westminster was closed and used to store precious items from the British Museum.

Even though it is called “Underground”, only 45% of all the rails are actually underground. If you want to visit the deepest point of the Underground, go to Hampstead, which runs down to more than 58 metres – nothing for people suffering from claustrophobia! Another useless fact: Smoking on the tube was allowed until 1987, when a fire broke out due to a discarded match in King’s Cross station, killing 31 people. 

 

The next time you feel like complaining about cramped carriages or slow connections, think about the beginnings of the “Tube” and be thankful for non-smoking regulations, lifts and carriages more modern than this “padded cell” without windows: