Schlagwort: english

Classroom Research Class at the PH with Dr. Heather Lotherington

In the last couple of weeks I attend a very intensive class at the PH. Usually our classes are via one term and only two hours per week. This class is only four weeks but 8 hours each week, so we are together a lot. Its only my second class in which we are on first name base with the lecturer, the other one was with Tonio Oeftering when he had just started his PhD Program and we intensivly read texts about Hannah Arendt, one of the most intresting polictics Seminars I did ever.

The lecturer from York University / Picture created with the help of: www.sp-studio.de.

But back to our Class about Classroom Research. I had a seminar in English about it once with another lecturer but it wasn’t that interesting and I don’t remember so much. Heather is really full of power („Energiebündel“) and seems to be very enthusiastic about what she does. I wish we had more lectures like this. Though I wonder if she is very leftist? At least she seems to have a high rateing on the scales for political zynisism.

I wish we had more exchange lectureres it makes studying so much more intresting.

A friend of mine in Bengkulu (Sumatra) is writing his Bsc Thesis on this as well so I hope I might help him a little with this, too. „Classroom Research Class at the PH with Dr. Heather Lotherington“ weiterlesen

Teaching english with Google n-gramm viewer

There has been some discussion about the recently introduced google ngramm viewer. Some people like it, some linguists see it as to simplistic. However I believe its a good instrument to introduce linguistics and especially corpus analysis into the classroom. I developed together with a fellow student a unit on this in the class of Prof. Thaler. Parts of it will be published in a upcoming book of him. This is an excerpt.

Exploring grammar and cultural trends with Google Ngramm Viewer:

Please go to the following website: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com

Here you can enter two or three English or German expressions and see how their use developed in books over the years. Realistic results you will get only between 1800 – 2000.

What is it about:

This new Google service makes us able to investigate cultural trends over the last 200 years. Development in the world is often reflected in words. For example, if we Ngramm the word DDR, we see it has been mentioned from the 1950 on and peaks in the 1990. This shows insights about fields such as the science of making lexica, the evolution of grammar, collective memory, the adoption of technology, the pursuit of fame, censorship, and history of disease.

The decline of “whom”

You can see trends in the use of grammar as well, for example during the year the use of the genitive indicator “whom” declined.

 

„Teaching english with Google n-gramm viewer“ weiterlesen

Resources for teaching English

That happens if you don’t behave in school!

In our seminar on teaching english we used the following online resources for teaching grammer:

Edufind: http://edufind.com/english/grammar/grammar_topics.php

The Internet Grammer of English, intended for University undergraduates, complete with exercises and a lot of explanations, a British Grammer, from the University College of London: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/frames/contents.htm

Tingo Lingo from the University of Koblenz, a very funny flash and browser based English game for students, its intended for childrend but can be used for adult learners as well:  http://www.uni-koblenz.de/tingolingo/

Resto Bengkulu some reviews

After now living 4 months in Bengkulu City, here in the province of Bengkulu, I would like to give some advise on the restaurants that exist here. This is not a complete guide – just a simple way to give something back to the expat comunity. 🙂

Despite the fact, that this city is not so big and has only limited bule influence, there are quite a lot good restos. „Resto Bengkulu some reviews“ weiterlesen

Youth Red Cross Competition

Painting for PMRLast weekend we had the big provincial youth red cros competition. 45 schools from all across Bengkulu Province most of them with 20 students each competed in their knowledge of Red Cross History, First Aid Skills and Disaster Prepardness. Despite that the programm inculded a game show, a talk show to have interaction with the board and information from the sponsors the Bank of Indonesia.

The students are aged 11- 16 years and are member of one of the Yout Red Cross clubs in the schools. German Red Cross runs a school based disaster prepardness programm here in the province and many schools benefit from this as well.

„Youth Red Cross Competition“ weiterlesen

Weltwärts Bericht #1

Am 21.12.09 habe ich meinen ersten Quartalsbericht an den DRK Landesverband Badisches Rotes Kreuz geschickt. Er ist auf Englisch geschrieben, damit auch ihn auch die Leute vom Indonesischen Roten Kreuz lesen können.

Weltwaerts_report_sebastian_mueller_nr1

Hier ein paar Auszüge unseres Berichts, auf Deutsch, damit ihr euch ein Bild machen könnt, von dem was wir so treiben:

„Weltwärts Bericht #1“ weiterlesen