Welcome Freshmen!

And again, hey everyone!

This post goes to every guy or girl out there, who is planning to come to the University of Groningen to study.
Let my say one thing in advance: If you think your English is brilliant and you don't need to take an English course AGAIN, go to Google, tip in "academic wordlist" and read. If you still think you don't need this course, you can read my other posts and don't worry about my advice. If you think you might want to hear my advice, you better stay and listen.

When I came here to study, I thought my English might be sufficient...to have conversations, talk about random stuff or chatting with each other, yes. But academic English is not the English you know from school. Don't get me wrong, you can easily deal with academic English, I promise but... you have to study!!

Seriously, this course is helpful. It is not a course you just have to pass and afterwards you won't need it (like some others). This course is about English and how you apply it in an appropriate way to use it all around the world. Remember: You gonna be international, this means, you will talk to a large variety of people with different heritages. It could only be beneficial for you to use this opportunity to improve your English. Of course, sometimes you'll might think:"Ok why are we doing this now??", but in the end everything will contribute to better English skills.

• study the new vocabularies in the first place (best you can do)
• put effort in the assignments
• use the chance to ask (maybe for some grammar things you always wanted to know
• Have fun! this course don't want to bully you, it is a loose atmosphere which can be fun

So, use this chance and study hard, it will worth it, I promise.

First improvements!!

Hey everyone,

My first semester is almost over! In two weeks the second big exam weeks will start. However after them, my first semester at the University of Groningen is over. Time to analyze if I already made some improvements.

I remember my first presentation (already in my blog), I was really nervous and was not quite sure about what the teacher expects from me. It didn't take a long time to realize how important it is to be a good presenter and how much you have to practice. Fortunately, we got more than enough chances to practice and thus, constantly improve our soft skills.

When I see what I have reached within this short time span, I am curious about what I can reach in the next semester. Especially presentations are not longer something, about what I am scared or very nervous. On the contrary, I learned that presenting is sometimes even fun (if you are good prepared and interested in the subject you are talking about). Therefore to show you how my presentation skills have improved, I can present you the evaluation sheet of my first presentation and the evaluation of the last one. I think you can see some differences.

As you can see, I improved everything, structure, delivery and language. And I did not only improved my presenting skills, I also improved my vocabulary and grammar skills. In these two pictures, I uploaded my first and my last memo report to a Vocabulary Profiler, with which you can analyze your texts. You can see how many percent of your texts consists out of academic words, basic words and so on, check it out! As you can see, I improved the use of the academic words, which was one of m main aims.

This was my first memo report

This is my newest report

I hope I can retain this tendency, we'll see in some months.
I'll keep you up to date.

Have a nice day!

Memo Reports ?!

It's me again,
As already said in a previous post, 30% from our grade consists out of the so called "Memo Reports". To refresh your minds:

1. What is a memo report?

Put simply, a memo report is a brief report which is presented with a memo header:

To:

From:

Date:

Subject:

It is presented in the form of a memo because it is for internal communication purposes. In the context of your project, the consultant sees him/herself as temporarily affiliated to the company and, therefore, uses the memo format to stress his/her temporary insider status.

1. Memo and Memo Report the same?

No. A memo can be used for any kind of internal correspondence within an organisation. It may be very short and relatively informal. However, it is about to disappear because of the use of emails.

A memo report has a formal status. It is a means of briefly summarising complex information, using an explicit structure.

Meanwhile, we were already supposed to hand in both memo reports, which were obligatory. To give you a little impression about how they looked, here they are:

This was the first one. Graded with an indicative grade, the purpose of this report was to practice.

This was the first graded report

This is the newest one I just handed in.

What do you think about the reports, do you think writing those is a good exercise?

Our self-made product!

Good morning everyone,


Here it is, our self-made product line of the fictional cosmetics company "Hazel", "The two fase foundation". We were supposed to come up with a new product for this company, in order to improve sales and shift the target group of Hazel into a more young and modern light. 


Therefore we wrote a press release, which should be published to inform about the upcoming changes within the company. At the end, we also added some information about Hazel's current situation and further information about why changing the firms target group and product lines. This is our press release:

PRESS INFORMATION

LONDON, ENGLAND, November 25, 2011

New innovations by Hazel

Hazel Cosmetics recently has announced a series of brand new products, which should innovate and facilitate the use of skin foundation for teenagers and young women. The new product will aim on a specific target group that is, Teenagers and pre-teenagers at the age of 14-23.

“We are quite sure that this new product will constitute a huge help for young women, who are faced with the edge between the age of a teenager and the beginning to be a grown up”, said Mike Smith, Hazel’s Marketing manager. “We think this time and phase in the lives of young adults, is characterized by uncertainty, shown in their psychological interior and referring to this, their skin as well. We want to help by providing this new innovative product, the “Two Fase Foundation”, in order to improve both, the skin and hence, the self –confidence to manhandle this complicated phase in the life of a girl.”

The key factors of this brand new innovation are two effects, which team up to provide an optimal protection for the skin, and simultaneously, let the skin appear becalmed and vital look by still remaining its naturalness. The clue, once put on, the rich lotion will gives the skin sufficient moisture and care for the whole day, while the foundation delivers a young and fresh face by covering skin blemishes and diminishing the production of new ones.

The new “Fase Foundation” with its two side effect, will be acquirable in the shops starting in the beginning of December 2011. However, the sales will be firstly confined to the English market, in which the demand should be tested, whereas the selling is planed for a release out of the English market as well.

End

About Hazel:

For more than 50 years, Hazel, one of the world’s largest direct sellers of cosmetics and beauty products, is producing cosmetics, fragrances and toiletries for the global market. Nevertheless, the recent development since the 1990s describes a steady decline in Hazel’s sales. Nowadays, Hazel has got a small market share in products for teenagers and young women and is confronted with a further decline. Therefore, a new CEO has been appointed and a new strategy was set up combined with a series of new products.
Our Mission Statement:

Feel secure, a pretty and healthy skin at the same time with Two Fase Foundation.

As you can see, in our English course, we are supposed to connect our learning process with business routine as well. We learn how to write such reports, customer information and press releases. This is very useful, because you know how to structure those things when you are supposed to write a "real" one.

Check yourself!

Hey everyone!

In this post I want to show and provide you with some material, with which you can check your own English level. This could be very helpful, in order to know what you have to practice more and what is actually already quite good.

The first thing i want to show you is a self-check error list. With this sheet, you can evaluate some of your texts and search for mistakes you made. If you do that constantly, you can see improvements of your writing skills, which is very helpful.

Another thing i want to show you is the VocabularyProfiler (already mentioned in a previous post), with which you can check your written texts. You can proof how many words you used and how many of them are academic. There are 4 different kinds of word groups. K1,K2,K3 and Acadamic words.

Tip: To write nice texts, you should have the following percentage of these word groups: 70% K1 words, 10% K2,K3 and Academic words. So, check yourself!

Our graded presentation

Hey everyone!

After weeks of improving our presentation skills the last graded group presentation is due.

Every group consisted out of three people, who are supposed to give a 15 minutes presentations about a specific topic. The grade we will receive, counts for 25% of the whole end grade, thus, it is very important to put a lot of effort in it.

After some hours of analyzing, writing, and practicing, we finally finished our PowerPoint presentation about "Audiowire". Audiowire is a fictional company, selling headphones and other audio products. Due to a rather old and unattractive looking website, selling rates are getting bad. We are the consulting company "Online Experience" and are supposed to hold a meeting, in which we give our recommendations concerning improvements for the website, in order to raise selling rates.

Audiowire

In the meantime, we already hold our presentation and it went quite well. Due to we were the first team, nervousness was recognizable, although we already did so many presentations. However, in the end everything went well.

How did we practice for this presentation?

After collecting and writing all crucial information concerning the content of the presentation, we teamed up, in order to practice the whole presentation. With "we", i mean my colleagues Cem and Koen, with whom i hold the meeting. I provide you with a link to their blogs, just click on their names. To practice, we made up an audience, consisting out of two of our group, while the other one is presenting his part. This was a good way to think about supportive terms and pre choose suited words to present it the next day in class. Furthermore, these dry runs took away some uncertainties concerning how to present, and provided us with feedback to further improve.

Next day in class, the presentation was due. Despite the training, everyone was nervous. However, because we practiced before hand, everything was fluently.

This, was also because of our great audience, who gave us helpful and interesting feedback, to improve our mistakes and enhance the following presentation.

This is the evaluation sheet made by our teacher about the good and the bad things about my part within the presentation.