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.