video description

Well, well, well.. :)

 This activity was the biggest fun I've had since I started all these recordings. I've been doing this kind of activity for a time so it was nothing I wouldn't know. It's been very helpful, but also really hard since scenes change quite often and mistakes occur freuqently.



Reflection: I decided to use Community since it's been my favourite show recently. I also wanted to use a video in which "something" happens and people are active. As I said, this wasn't the first time I was doing this kind of activity. Nonetheless, it was still hard and I made tons of mistakes. Very often I stopped talking in order to think about what I'd say next. I also used basic vocabulary, as I had no time to think about advanced words and without time to think I use those "Teddy bears" spontaneously, which is a pity because this made the recording sounds as if it had been recorded by a beginner. Sometimes I also forgot to use -s ending when I was speaking about someone else, for instance: "Britta feel" instead of feels. What happend to me few times was that I started with a sentence and suddenly changed it after few words and started with another one which made it sounds not understendable. Also last sentence: Let's see what's happen next.. really Jana, really? :D But practice makes the master, so let's go for it :)

As my individual task I decided to do a picture description in order to practice it for the ZJZP exam which is about to be taken very soon.

Since I've been attending speasking sessions every single week and practice at home I dare say there are no serious problems. Sometimes I do pauses in order to think up a story or find an appropriate word, but I hope it's becoming better and better :)

Picture description

Well, to be honest, I don't mind describing pictures any more since I've been doing that every single week. I've learnt that if there is nothing happening in the picture, it's necessary to think out of the box and try to create a story behind the picture. But this means my fluency is sometimes worse than I wish it to be. The reason is that I have to think about the story and about all the stuff I want to share, as I don't want just describe what is obviously in the picture, since everybody can see that.

In the given picture I had several problems: as I have already mentioned, it was fluency - there were pauses in few sentences that didn't sound very well, e.g. "very often suffer from fear," or "who drank themselves to death". I also wasn't able to hear some articles while "profreading" the recording, even though I think I used them. So it means I either forget to use them, which is not good, or used them and didn't pronounc them properly, which is not acceptable either, so I definitely have to work on proper pronounciation of articles.

At the beginning I also used a phrase "in a pub" instead of "in the pub", but fortunately, I corrected myself.

Also gap filler used within the sentence including "horrible results" made it sound like as if I used an article before the word horrible.

The second task meant practicing some words that are stressed on the first syllable in order to try to exagerrate it a little, as I need to remember not to forgot to pronounce even stress on the first syllable properly.

Identifying statements

Howdy, 

First of all I'd love to apoligize for the backroung "music" in my recordings, but since the weather is warm, my notebook (who's an old papa already) decided it was about time to overheat all day.


The first task seemed to be hard and that was confirmed while I was trying to reach absolutely the same intonation and pronounciation as the speaker. When I was imitating the recording simultaneously with the recording uploaded on the souncloud, I felt like it could be with no problem, but the fact is I was only leaded by the recording and copied that. Later on, when I was recording myself, it showed up that it was much harder to follow the same structure, intonation and pronounciation as before since there were nobody to push me forward. Even though I had notes written down and marked words that should be pronounced with stronger stress, I had troubles to do that correctly and I am sure my recording is far way from the original, but still I hope I at least succeded at following the stressed words. The individual task I decided to record was about th sounds again, as there is never enough practice and I know I have had several moments in which I simply tend to forget to pronounce it correctly.
I found some tongue twisters again in order not to have it very simple. As obvious from the recording, it really wasn't much fun. I've been working on the pronounciation of th after a word ending on "s", but no matter how much I've been trying, I still have to make that little pause after the word and before the th sound. That means I'll keep trying and repating the phrases that make me troubles and it will get better! It simply has to. No another result will be accepted.

Hi there,

This week's task was to record ourselves using different kinds of English while speaking - the British one and the American one. Honestly, it's been probably the hardest task so far, especially the British part. I did my best, I did the recording about 8 times, but still I struggled while trying to use the British pronounciation, as it sounded everything but not natural to me. The biggest problem I had was using the words "adults" and "ballet" with a word stress on the first syllable.

What I've found out was that I had been using the British pronounciation of can't instead of the American one in some cases. From now on, I hope I'm gonna use only the American pronounciation.

But I have to admit that even though it took me the most time to do the task, I had the most fun with it.


I wasn't really sure what I wanted to practice, as I know I should practice everything, which I've been doing, but thinking of a singular task, I couldn't decide, but I found a funny tongue twisters on helpforenglish, so I decided to try it! I realized that having more than two words that sound similar in one sentence can easily cause complications when trying to pronouce them correctly, but I am happy to try, as it gave me another knowledge. It was so much fun, even though I almost broke my tongue :D

strong n' weak

Hi,

the first recording was based on reading of several sentences and focusing on strong and weak forms. In some cases I wasn't absolutely sure whether the word should be strong or weak. I tried to do my best and uploaded the 4th recording. There were some words that were followed by a pause, e.g. the third sentence beginning with "Is this the train .. ". That was probably because I have a little problem with pronouncing th correctly (if I don't make a little pause) after words ending with "s". I hope the whole performance sounds acceptable and would be considered good enough though.




The second task was quite fun. I really enjoyed recording those poems and did it for 6 times, just so, because I liked that. But what disappointed me after I had listened to that was that I obviously tend to overact while reciting. Like a little Shakespeare :D. I'd say weak forms of "but", "and" and "of" are no problem, but a weak form of "at" showed up to be way harder to be pronounced correctly. But based on today's experience I can say that with every recording I was becoming better and more fluent, so I'm sure that after practicing it even more there will be no problem even with that weak "at".

connected speech & ng

I'd say there is not a problem for me to use connected speech for me, or at least I guess and hope so. Maybe there are mistakes in the recording, but it is based on the fact I don't use some of the phrases very often or on a daily basis. I know that many phrases like these are used in songs and I have no trouble while using them in private. But even if I pronounced it absolutely correctly (which I don't), there would always be a space for my improvement. Let me sing a lot then.


The second task will be probably the same for several following weeks. Since I have no more problem with the th sound I have to improve my ng sound. As I have learned pronounciation is just a matter of practice and that's why I am doing my best to improve also this error. I watched many videos on youtube and they all were based on these words you can hear on the recording, so that's why I used them. I think the word "oblong" was mispronounced - the word stress should be different, but I hope ng sound sounds better than during the speaking session. Anyway, a lot of practice has to be done, but every single correctly pronounced word is a small step for me to pronounce it correctly without thinking about it.

names & titles

This task was a lot of fun and surprises! I was shocked how some names are pronounced correctly and learned somethig new. Now I know, that Selena is everything but not "Seléna" and even more. During the recording I had several problems with too distinct pauses and word stress, especially talking about "Archimedes". Th sound doesn't seem to be a problem anymore which is brilliant and gives me more space to focus on other weaknesses - articles and word stress.
   

There was no doubt about what I should pratice this time - the instructions were given during our consultation and therefore I focused on th sound in the middle of words. You told me to pronounce everything, anything, something, nothing and so on perfectly next time, so I've done a lot of work to improve that. Based on what I can hear I'd say there is no big problem if the task is based on these words and I know what to focus on, but when speaking about a given topic, I make mistakes and forgot to use it correctly. But "the", "they", "this", etc. were also problem and I was able to learn how to pronounce it correctly even without thinking about it, so the above mentioned and similar words will also become no problem for me, I swear.