ASSIGNMENT 1

In this assignment I chose questions oriented to art. Firstly I record myself without preparation and then listened to myself so I could improve my speaking and then finally made a new recording. I had a problem with phrase I said. In the original recording I used "it comes naturally from me" but the correct phrase is "it comes naturally to me". I wasn't sure how to say words "deviantart" and "manga". I had to look it up so I could correct myself. I also wasn't sure about the word "rawness". In order to improve my recording even more I tried to change ordinary words and make them more interesting. Overall my first recording was very out of order, I could hear that I often stuttered because I had to speak immediately without preparation. There were lots of pauses because I wasn’t sure what words choose to describe what I wanted say. I tried to change it in my second recording and make it as good as I can. When it comes to the type of assignment I really liked it. Talking about art is one of my favourite topics so I really enjoyed making this recording and improving my speaking, vocabulary and pronunciation.

Week 11

Reflection: I chose a one minute clip from the Simpsons. Firstly I tried to describe what was happening without preparation to find out if I was able to describe it properly but I couldn't remember some of the phrases and words such as lices or dummy because I had to speak really quickly so I usually skipped it in order to continue with the clip. After my first attempt I looked up some words and phrases so I could try it again. My second attempt was better but I still was delayed sometimes so I did again and again until it was finally ok. I'm sure I forgot some things but for me it was impossible to say everything at once.

Reflection: For my individual task I chose a short dialogue called "Life is a question of choice or chance?"(link here). I chose this again for practising intonation and reduce rhythm accent. This time I'm really satisfied with my recording. I would say one of my best recordings. I was more comfortable with doing British accent and intonation. I've also learned new words from this dialogue: adjourn, which means to close a session of something, like at court but in this context it means the end of something. Another word arch means a curved structure that supports the weight of something above it, such as bridge.

Week 10 - pic to talk about

Reflection:After listening my raw recording I found loads of mistakes in my speaking. I didn’t say much details about persons’ appearance and clothing and also used wrong phrases like ‘next to the table’ instead of ‘behind the table’. I also didn’t know a word for a ‘pen with a feather’ so I didn't even mention it in the recording and completely left out it. I looked it up and found out the right word, which is a ‘quill’. I also stuttered a lot because of the unexpected picture and it was more of a general description than focusing on details. But in the ‘tuned up’ recording I tried to come up with different synonyms and made my describing more fluent and coherent.
  Refletion: In this individual task I chose this website with a recording of Aesop's fable "The North Wind and the Sun" read by British speakers. I wanted to again train my pronunciation, intonation, rhythm by listening to the recording first and then read it out loud. I marked pauses between sentences, rising and falling intonation and of course transcription when I wasn’t sure about the pronunciation (in the words obliged and disputing). I had definitely problems with pauses. I used too much of them because I stuttered or have problems with pronunciation. I tried to read it few times until I was satisfied with it.

This website is definitely a great source of different exercises focused on pronunciation and I’ll use it later for another practising.

Week 9

Reflection:
In this task together with Nikol we chose a scene from TV series called Gossip Girl. It was really fun to record it. But of course not that easy. It was a little bit longer process. Firstly I listened to it once with English subtitles. Then I tried to talk along with the audio few times and lastly I tried to say it without the audio. My first recording was a mess tho so I tried to record it again. Finally Nikol merged the both recordings together. My problem was of course definitely in intonation and also I had problems with the name of that watch that Blair mentioned.

Reflection: In this individual task I chose another video from YouTube.com. I tried to focus on another particular problem of mine which is the pronunciation of 'th' /T/ in words like truth, thumb, mouth and /D/ in words like the, there, that and then. This video also combines two other problems which is the pronunciation of /s/ and /z/. It was really hard for me at first, especially when I had to say sentences which included everything at once. I tried to repeat as many times as I could until I was quite satisfied with it. It was definitely helpful and I’m looking forward to use different videos from this channel and focus on it more.

Week 8 - Identifying statements

Reflection:

At first I was kind of terrified that I would have problems with this task but at the end it wasn’t that bad. Although I had to try it few times because I wasn’t paying attention to pauses. I tend to say sentences quickly and as I learned from my previous individual task, it’s one of the many mistakes I make. I think I did it quite all right after few attempts. I definitely learned that it’s helpful to determine where the pauses are so I can take a breath and then continue with speaking and prevent it from unnecessary stutter. Also intonation is important to emphasise certain words that are relevant.

Reflection:

In this individual task I chose a video from ESL channel on YouTube. This particular recording is focused on intonation, rhythm and pronunciation and contains sentences with linking t + b. I recorded few sentences that I repeated after the speaker. And as I noticed in English the /t/ sound is often not released before a /b/ sound. Sometimes the /t/ sound may be even inaudible. I like this pronunciation practice video because I could focus more on this issue and also practice my intonation because I often do a mistake that involves rising intonation at the end of a sentence. It was definitely helpful and I’ll get back to it to revise it in the next individual task.

Presentation - The Power of Exercise

Week 7 - Brittish and American accents

Reflection:

This task was definitely difficult to deal with. My pronunciation’s always been mixed up. I sometimes use AmE words together with BrE. So it’s not coherent and as a result I have a weird accent. For instance a word ‘butterfly’ and ‘vase’ I pronounce the American way. On the other hand ‘dance’ and ‘aunt’ the British way. Also the fact that I watch both British and American TV shows doesn’t help either. And that’s why this task was very helpful. From the article I've actually learned the main difference between British and American pronunciations so now I can better distinguish them. Now I can concentrate more on my British pronunciation rather than figuring out what I'm doing wrong.

Reflection: 
In my individual task I chose an excerpt we got in our KOFA seminars. I chose it as my individual task because I wanted to record myself and try to focus more on pauses, tempo, and schwas and generally on British pronunciation. It’s very difficult for me to read longer text without problems. I tend to stutter and sometimes read to quickly and then omit a proper pronunciation. It took a lot of time to go through the text from one paragraph to another. But I think it was worth it. I definitely took the time and focus on everything. I hope it turned out good in the end.