Dictionary review transcription

Last week in English class, we were talking about online English dictionaries. We were working in groups of four or five people. Every group had to choose one online dictionary and then make a recording, presenting the dictionary and explaining good or bad features that the dictionary offers. Our homework task now is to write out the transcript of what we said in the recording and think about what was good and what we should work on in the future. Here´s my transcript:

"Hi, I´m Verena and I´m introducing the thesaurus. The thesaurus gives you synonyms and opposites of words, for example, if you type in woman..ahm..it shows you that the opposite is man or a synonym is lady or girl or female for example."

First of all, I have to say, that I HATE hearing myself in voice recordings or videos. I don´t know why, but it´s always been like that and it´s probably never gonna change... ;)
In my opinion, I did a pretty good job though and it wasn´t as terrible as I thought it would be. I´m very satisfied with my pronunciation and I´m happy that I was able to speak fluently, without many pauses or "ahs", eventhough I wasn´t prepared for what I´m going to say at all.
The only word that I had trouble pronunciating was "thesaurus". I never really had to use it before, so the lack of practice is probably the reason why I had a little problem here.
Another thing I realised is, that I used the phrase "for example" twice in a very short recording of myself. I should have used another phrase, such as "for instance", but I think mistakes like that happen when you are not really prepared to talk. I get nervous sometimes when I have to talk in front of people, especially when I didn´t have much time to think about what I´m going to say and how I´m going to say it. Now I got reminded once again that I really should work on my talking and the video gives me motivation to do so.

What a terrible trip to the hospital

Hey guys,


Today I had to go back to the hospital to have my ellbow checked on once again. A few weeks ago I broke my left ellbow by falling down a set of stairs, when I was moving into my new appartment in Graz...how tipical!!
As always I had to wait for about 2 hours to have an x-ray taken of my left arm and another 2 hours to talk to a doctor. The best part today was, that the nurses forgot to call me in and only after I asked them when it´s gonna be my turn, they realised that they made a mistake and I was finally able to talk to a doctor.
The good news are that I finally got my bandage removed and I can almost fully strech my ellbow again without much pain. Thank god!!!
And now that I´m home, the fun part of the day begins, because I´m gonna get started on this week´s English homework assignments! ;)


xoxo
Verena

 

1st blog!!!

Hey there,

today in English class, I talked to a very nice, open-minded and pretty young lady: Sowannry. She is already in her third semester and her 2nd language is French. But not only does she speak German, English and French, she also speaks  Khmer, which is the official language of Cambodia. She showed me what their letters look like, I was so fascinated....
She told me a lot about Cambodia, its a beautiful country, very green, rainforests but unfortunately extremely hot climate....not for me! I like the Austrian cold.. ;)

xoxoxo Verena