Irish culture

The most fascinating aspect of Irish culture that I learned about by watching the Story of Ireland was that by the end of the 19th century, during the Battle of Colenso, the minority of Irish people committed to breaking the link with the British was vastly outnumbered by the Irish people still loyal to the crown. This loyalty is fascinating in consideration of what has happened in this century. The Irish people suffered under the Great Famine. The cause of the Great Famine was a disease called potato blight which destroyed the potato crop, the only food available to the majority of the people at the time. The government refused to help the starving people. The bill of Home Rule was defeated by the government. Under Home Rule Ireland would have stayed in the Empire, but it would have been ruled from a parliament dominated by nationalists located in Dublin, not London. For me, the Battle of Colenso shows that even though the Irish had a rough 19th century, with the failure of the government to help during the Great Famine and the defeated Home Rule, most of them were still loyal to the Act of Union between Ireland and Great Britain. 

Above you could read my paragraph about Irish culture. I learned many different things about Irish culture and Irish history by watching "The Story of Ireland". In addition I did a little research to get a deeper understanding. Based on this knowledge I wrote the paragraph. All in all I am satisfied with the result of my homework but I definitly have to keep working on punctuation as well as expressions. 

Differences between Russian and English

Studying English and studying Russian, my second language, are different in a number of significant ways. The main difference between them is the alphabet. Whereas the alphabet in English is the same as in my mother tongue, German, the alphabet in Russian not only has different letters, it also contains letters which are used for pronunciation purposes. The purpose of pronunciation is to make a letter sound either silent or loud. the sounds make it difficult for beginners to be able to pronounce and spell the words correctly. The words in English are easier to pronounce because the sounds and the letters are more familiar. Besides the pronunciation, also the declination of a word is different in these two languages. There is no declination of a word in the English language. Only the verbs in the present tense change, for example, he goes or I go. Russian is completely opposite because every word needs to be changed to the right form. Not only words but also names need to be conjugated. The difference in declination as well as in the alphabet and the pronunciation makes both languages interesting for me. These are the reason why I study English and Russian.

I wrote this paragraph for the first progress check. I have to admit the version above is already the corrected version. In the original version I mixed up vocabulary. In other words I used words which do not even exist in the English language. These were really unnecessary mistakes. Besides the vocabulary, I used the wrong register. My paragraph was sometimes written in a very low register, for instance, I wrote kind of what is inappropriate for such a paragraph. Punctuation is also something I definitely need to work on to reduce my mistakes and get a better grade. I, however, have to say that I am satisfied with my work for the writing task in the first progress check. I now know that I have to work on vocabulary, register and punctuation to improve my writing skills.

Cultural competence

A couple of days ago I read about cultural competence in a newspaper. I think the topic is very

interesting and is in my opinion very important due to the fact that the demographics of society have been changed by globalization and have made the world seem smaller than ever before. In the past people just did not know a lot about other people, other cultures or the business of others. Off shoring, outsourcing and other business developments have broke down the wall between the different cultures. Now leaders are facing the challenge of handling cultural differences. That is one reason why people in big companies now need cultural competence.

 

Cultural competence is the ability to interact with people of all cultures, languages, classes, races, ethnic backgrounds and religions. People who have cultural competence have the knowledge of different cultures and different worldviews. With the ability of cultural competence you can understand and communicate with people across the world, while avoiding stereotypes. For example, a person who works in an international company should have cultural competence so that this person can recognize the strengths and weaknesses that exist in all cultures.

 

Leaders of global companies need cultural competence to improve their business in other countries. The interaction of different people from different cultures is very helpful to develop new markets and other products. Furthermore cultural competence is important for recognizing that some products need to be a little bit different to the same product in other countries. For example a coke from Coca Cola is a lot sweeter in the US than in Europe because the Europeans are not used to the extreme sweet taste.

 

How can cultural competence be acquired? There are different courses about other cultures and other languages you can take. Different courses are very important to better understand the world view of other people. You can also just travel to learn and understand more about other cultures and other lifestyles. Furthermore, through other people you can improve or acquire cultural competence. These people can tell you things about their own experiences.

 

Cultural competence is very important in our society and in our business lives. Cultural competence refers to the ability to recognize cultural differences in order to achieve desired performance results. This ability describes a specific skill that is increasingly required of successful employees, managers, leaders and organizations.

Austrian Ski trends

By looking through the window the only thing I can see is the bad, rainy weather. The weather in some other parts of Austria is different. In fact, I would see snowflakes falling in front of the window. This made me think about the upcoming winter. Winter is definitely my favorite season of the year in Austria. In Austria the landscapes are beautiful when they are covered in snow. You can walk around in the snow as well as build a snow man. Furthermore, I love snowball fights. Besides all these things, my favorite winter activity is to go snowboarding. I definitely love to go down the snow slopes on my board with speed.

 

A couple of weeks ago we talked about the Austria ski industry as well as the ski areas in my German

class. Austria has many skiing places. These places are now suffering from the fact that less people ski lift are ridiculously high and are still rising every year. The high prices are justified by the lift companies due to the maintenance costs containing the lifts as well as the snow cat to prepare the slopes for the ski and snowboard fans. Not only are the skiing areas in Austria suffering from the downtrend of business, but also the ski producers in Austria. The ski producers have problems competing with international competitors due to the high production cost and the shrinking willingness of people to buy skis. Most of the people today are borrowing the skis. The benefits therefore of borrowing skis are that you can always have new skis and you do not need any service on them every now and then.

 

Well, I am still a fan of having my own snowboard. Therefore I am going to help the Austrian snowboard industry and put a new snowboard on my Christmas wish list.

Guardian Angel

I am not quite sure if you have ever thought about a guardian angel. A guardian angel is an angel assigned to protect and guide a particular person. In my opinion everyone has a guardian angel, with no exceptions.

Today I got in a car accident. The accident occurred on a highway where there was heavy traffic. The traffic was one reason for it why the accident happened in first place. I was on my way to visit my aunt because it was her birthday. Since the sky was dark, the lights from the other cars were bright and annoying. I stopped at a crossing on the highway. Besides that another car stopped right behind me. The driver of a third car didn’t see us or was not focusing on the street. The consequence was that he recognized us too late. He had an excellent reaction and passed me on my left side. His car fell in a field. The good thing about the whole story is that nobody got hurt. Furthermore the cars are all in proper condition.

I think I had at least one guardian angel with me when the accident occurred. The feeling that someone was watching over me and trying to protect me when the accident occurred makes me again more believe more in guardian angels.

Guardian angels are not just in our mind. Often we give someone a guardian angel as a gift. There are made in different shapes as well as different colors and from products materials, but the thought behind this present will always be the same – that the person who receives the gift will be safe and protected.

St. Martin's Day

Who is Saint Martin? Saint Martin of Tours is one of the most revered European catholic saints. This catholic saint was born in 316 A.D. in Hungary. Almost every child knows the legend of Saint Martin. The legend is that he saved a homeless person from freezing to death by giving him half of his cloak, which he cut in two with his sword. 

 I went to the St. Martin’s Day celebration on November 11th with my little nephew. My little nephew is going to turn two in December. He is a charming little boy. I definitely love to spend time with him. He is a little bit too young for creating his own candle-lit lantern for St. Martin’s Day, therefore my cousin let him borrow his lit-candle light since he was not using it. The candle-lit lantern was made from colorful transparent paper. Normally the children build the candle-lit lanterns before November 11th. In the evening of St. Martin’s Day there is a candle-lit lantern procession, which are most of the time organized by the local kindergarten. The local kindergarten in my town did a really great job preparing an amazing evening. The evening started with the lantern procession during which all the kids carried their self-made, lighted lanterns and sang many wonderful traditional songs dedicated to St. Martin. The songs were really good and my little nephew loved listening to the songs, singing along with the kids, and watching the procession. The kids did a really great job. At the end of the procession was a buffet with sweet pastries and roasted goose, which is a traditionally served. The roasted goose is traditional on St. Martin’s Day because when Saint Martin did not want to become Bishop therefore he hid near some geese. The people searching for him heard the loudly cackling geese and found Saint Martin and ordained him Bishop of Tours.

 

 

Cambridge Dictionary

Having looked at a number of monolingual print dictionaries in class this week, I have decided to buy the Cambridge Advanced Dictionary. For me as a language learner it is important that a monolingual print dictionary has a section with basic grammar rules as well as useful information for improving my writing. I have found these things in the Cambridge Advanced Dictionary. The dictionary also provides the phonetic transcript of a word which can be very helpful to get the pronunciation of a new word right. To learn a new word, further information such as the usage and explanation of the word as well as synonyms and antonyms is needed. There are also common mistakes mentioned; for example, many people mix up the words lend and borrow. All these can be easily found in the Cambridge Advanced Dictionary due to the clear structure of the dictionary. The Cambridge Advanced Dictionary of English really got my attention because it has everything a dictionary should have, in my opinion. That is the reason why I decided to buy this monolingual dictionary.

Dinner in the dark!

Friends of mine and I had a dinner together last week. The dinner was special and can not be compared with anything I have done in my life before. For my last birthday I got this dinner in the dark as a birthday present from my friends. I have to say this is one of the best presents I got in my whole life. The dinner was organized by the charity for the blind in Graz. The reason for such events is that they want to shape the awareness of the concerns of blind and visually impaired people. Therefore the waiters were blind and the dinner took place in a dark room.

I was surprised how hard it is to get along in the darkness at the beginning. But after a while my eyes got used to the darkness and also my mind. For me it was a new experience to make conversations without seeing the expression on the face of the person you talk to. The main challenge I thought would be to eat. But I was surprised how well  it worked out. We were not informed about the menu that made the whole dinner more interesting. My friends and I were discussing about the things on our plates. It was really hard to figure out what we were actually eating. During the dinner we all got kind of used to the darkness and as time passed by we got better in eating and drinking.

In my opinion the waiters were just amazing. The name of our waitress was Moni. She did a great job during the dinner and helped us with everything. After the dinner we had a chance to talk to her about her being blind. Moni is blind since she was 24 years old. She knew that she would be blind one day since she was a little girl. I think it is remarkable how she lives her life. Moni has a wonderful husband and a lovely child and she is glad that she is able to do a lot of dailylife things by her own like groceries shopping.

This experience was incredible and I recommend to you guys to try the same one day. Everyone of us knows that there are people how are not so lucky to see but we never put ourselves in such a position. Therefore this dinner is perfect to get to understand blind people better.

MISTAKES - Learning for Life

I don't even know where to start. I am really upset about myself. Probably the best thing to start with is to tell the story from the beginning on.

In my English class we had the pleasure to write a letter to Fiona (our English teacher) about everyone's individual type of learning a language. This letter was supposed to

help her to get a better understanding of our learning type. I thought I tried my best and wrote a nice letter. Well, as we got  our letters back I was totally upset about myself. Fiona didn't correct my whole homework because I had a bad spelling mistake. Such a mistake could be easily avoided by a spellcheck. I was so mad at myself because this is definitely not a mistake what should happen and it was my own fault. Therefore my work was graded as failed. Actually I think it is not bad if you fail because it means you need to improve your knowledge. In such a case the grade is not due to my writing skills it is because I am to stupid to spellcheck my own work again. The consequence right now is that I will read over every single piece of my work at least twice in order to guarantee that mistakes of this kind will never happen again. The only thing I can do for now is to let you guys have a look at the improved version of my letter.

Dear Fiona

I want to tell you more about me as a language learner. First of all it is important for you to know why I am so ambitious to learn languages. To know different languages it is important to understand and communicate with people across the world.  This is essential due to the fact that globalization has changed the demographics of society and made the world seem smaller than ever before. My motivation to learn English and Russian is to work in an international company once.

For me it is important that if I make mistakes, someone corrects my writing otherwise I will repeat the mistakes over and over again. These mistakes should be corrected by the language teacher to give the student the opportunity to develop one's language skills quickly. I had a bad experience in high school with my language teacher. My English teacher has never corrected a single piece of my work. I guess that is part of the reason I have difficulty expressing myself in the right way.

My goals for this term are on the one hand to know more vocabulary and on the other hand to improve my writing style. Both I need to develop myself in order to be able to express myself in a better way. To achieve this goal I read the BBC News or the New York Times everyday and try to kind of remember all the new vocabulary. Moreover I am going to order some English novels instead of reading German novels as usually. Beside that I definitely want to write or even skype more often with my friends abroad. I hope you got an idea about me as a language learner.

With best wishes

REUNION of Friends

„Truly great Friends are hard to find, difficult to leave & impossible to forget.”

Just to get you guys up dated I will give you some background information before I start with the real story. Almost two years ago I studied in Albuquerque, New Mexico for half a year. My adventure in Albuquerque started in January and lasted till June 2012. I got back from my stay in the US with a lot of new experiences in my suitcase.

During my exchange semester in the States I learned more about the people, the culture and the American lifestyle. But the most important thing is I got to meet a lot of different people with different personalities and backgrounds. One thing we all had in common was that we wanted to understand and communicate with people from all over the world and therefore learn more about their cultures and so on. During my stay in Albuquerque I found some great friends. They were like my family to me. We had dinners together, went out and traveled through the country. But the important part was that we helped each other out with kind of everything. I am kind of sad that it is not possible to have this amazing people around me or at least less far away.

I am happy about the fact that a couple of the amazing people I share this experiences with are in Austria. Yesterday was one of our get together. Unfortunately they are not really frequently but we try to time them as often as possible. I always enjoy meeting everyone and just talking about what is going on in everyone’s lives as well as talk about the time we spent together in the States. And the best part of it is that I know if I have a problem I can also talk with them about it as well as they will always be there for me.

I am glad to have them. As I said in the beginning “Truly great Friends are hard to find, difficult to leave & impossible to forget.”

Dictionary review

Having looked at a number of monolingual online dictionaries in class this week, my colleges and I reviewed the vocabulary.com dictionary. We recorded the review. I did a transcript of my part in the review. The idea behind the transcript is to see the own mistakes and get aware of the fact that improvements need to be made.

“We had a look at the dictionary vocabulary.com. It’s a website where you can look up vocabulary. It shows you the different meanings of the word. It furthermore shows if it is a verb or a noun. You can also see if it has synonyms as well as antonyms.”

I am not pleased with the aspect that I used the same verb in two successive sentences. Therefore I need to work on my vocabulary to be able to use different words. Another unbelievable mistake of mine in this recording is the mispronunciation of the word “noun”. But I am pleased that I spoke fluently.

If you have any suggestions for improvements feel free to let me know. I am always thankful for constructive comments.

Meeting new people

To learn a new language is all about meeting different people with different backgrounds. Therefore I want to introduce to you an interesting person I met today - named Lucas. He is from Carinthia, where he attended the secondary vocational school of commerce and tourism. He has already experiences with being abroad. During an internship Lucas was working in an hotel in Italy for three month. He improved his Italian and got to know more about the Italian culture. This affected his interest in languages and therefore his decision to study transcultural communication.