Category: René

Nobody’s Perfect: Denglisch? Nimm’s Leicht

I was at Munich’s main railway station last week and urgently needed to use the toilet. Too much information? Really? My experience of more than 20 years in Munich is that most Germans are perfectly happy talking about bodily functions, although it’s better not to do this with your English-speaking business partners. We really don’t want to know about your problems with your mucous membranes (Schleimhäute). Anyway, when I got to the “pay loo”, I noticed that its name had changed. It used to be “McClean”; now it’s “rail & fresh”.I had two reactions. First, I was relieved, so to speak, that it was still there. Second, I thought that the self-appointed protectors of the German language, the Verein Deutsche Sprache (VDS) would have a heart attack if they saw this. Maybe they have.

-The author of this article uses dashes, a semicolon and a parenthesis. He uses a dash in “English-speaking” to illustrate what kind of business partners they are or simply what language they speak. English modifies speaking. He also uses a parenthesis to translate mucous membranes into German. I think that’s pretty cool. He provides a translation for the German readers, just in case their English, or rather “Denglisch” is not that good.
McMaster, Ian. “Nobody’s Perfect: Denglisch? Nimm’s Leicht – SPIEGEL ONLINE – Nachrichten – KarriereSPIEGEL.” SPIEGEL ONLINE – Nachrichten. 21 Sept. 2011. Web. 07 Dec. 2011. <http://www.spiegel.de/karriere/ausland/0,1518,787455,00.html>.

Stress Early in Pregnancy Linked to Fewer Baby Boys

“Generally, there are more male than female live births. The ratio of male to female births is approximately 51:49 — in other words, out of every 100 births, 51 will be boys. Our findings indicate a 5.8 percent decline in this proportion, which would translate into a ratio of 45 male births per 100 births, so that there are now more female than male births. This is a significant change for this type of measure,” Dr. Karine Kleinhaus, an assistant professor of psychiatry, obstetrics & gynecology, and environmental medicine at New York University, said in a journal news release.

-The writer of this article uses two hyphens to further explain what the “51:49” ratio means. I think this was a good idea because there is a chance that someone who cannot understand ratios will end up reading this article.

Drew, Dr. “Stress Early in Pregnancy Linked to Fewer Baby Boys.” Yahoo! Health. 08 Dec. 2011. Web. 09 Dec. 2011. <http://health.yahoo.net/news/s/hsn/stressearlyinpregnancylinkedtofewerbabyboys>.

Paris paves the way with short- term rental cars

Autolib’ — which translates as “self service car” — is the first short-term, public car rental system of this scale in a European capital.

The concept is simple: pick up one of the 3,000 Bluecars (which are actually a very Parisian grey) at an Autolib’ station, do your shopping, go to a meeting, visit friends and then drop off the car at any one of the 1,120 Autolib’ stations in Paris once you’re done. The scheme is ecologically friendly, not only in its aim to reduce the number of privately-owned cars on the road (with an estimated reduction of around 22,500 vehicles in the Ile-de-France region), but also due to the fact that the rental cars are 100% electric.

-First of all I think this is awesome. Not only are the velib-bike rentals pretty sweet, but also the idea of renting an electric car for a couple of hours just blows my mind. We should have something similar in big US cities, like Los Angeles. Anyway, the author uses hyphens, parentheses and a colon in this article. The hyphens are used to explain what “Autolib” is. The parentheses serve to point things out, for example stating the actual color of the cars and indicating what the goal of this service is. The colon is used to list off the activities one can accomplish with the use of an autolib-rental.

Adrey, Kim Laidlaw. “BBC – Travel – Short Term Rental Cars in Paris : Eco-tourism, Paris.” BBC – Homepage. 09 Dec. 2011. Web. 10 Dec. 2011. <http://www.bbc.com/travel/blog/20111207-paris-paves-the-way-with-short-term-rental-cars>.

quiz score = 8

The president of the Center for Women & Family Affairs, Mahmoud Ahmandinejad stated that it is imperative to train elites and intellectuals to achieve economic progress. Given that the center is a branch of the government, President Ahmandinejad will be able to integrate our research results to directly improve social issues, which affect women from participating in the formal labor sector. Many female graduates from Iran are highly qualified; most even surpass their male counterparts. Iranian women posses the necessary skills to perform well in any job, it is just a matter of overcoming and looking past traditional beliefs.

Nothing interesting has happened to me within the last month while in Monterey. I do, however, have a particular incident I could share, which stirred up a ruckus during a New Year’s Eve celebration in Paris. While welcoming in the year 2010, huddled up like sardines on the Trocadéro Plaza, my friends and I quickly became uncomfortable. We weren’t troubled by the loud and vibrant fire works exploding behind the Eiffel tower or the lack of space to freely move around. A sea of scowls caused by a band of disrespectful drunks indicated everyone’s discomfort. The vulgar intoxicated men began to inappropriately grope–my friends-, thus ruining the moment. We managed to shuffle out from the mass of people only to find havoc awaiting us. The streets were covered in shattered glass from broken beer bottles, trash (more than usual), a few bodies and even blood. We decided that it would be safer to head back home. The trip back was a never-ending story. All the subway entrances nearby were closed and we had to walk all the way to Champs-Élysées in negative degree weather. It turned outs that only two or so subway lines were operating and hundreds of people were trying to return home. Luckily, my cousin and I got back before the sun was up after having to take multiple forms of public transportation including the bus and a taxi.

It drives me a bit nuts when I see a sentence that has the wrong form of (there/their/they’re), (you’re/ your) and (its / it’s). While stopped at an intersection in Los Angeles I spotted the grammar mistake on a fast-food sign. It read something along the lines of, “Its Happy Hour Time!” The apostrophe was left out. Another place where I constantly see the wrong  (there/their/they’re) being used is on Facebook. It’s the Internet and we can be sloppy at times, but still it kind of makes you look dumb. Many statuses will have something like, “There my best friends!” or comments with, “Oh daang, is that there new car?” They should have used (they’re and their) instead.

My group and I have been pretty productive this week. We have interviewed three staff members, two students and have also filmed the opening scene. Each member has been assigned one of the main sections of our topic and must make a slide explaining it. In addition to creating the slides we have also decided to start coming up with questions for our worksheet. By next Tuesday, we plan to have our assigned tasks completed and hopefully we will begin to edit the video. I think editing the video is the most fun because, as group, we’ll be able to tweak parts here and there, change the voice pitches and basically get to play around with the technology. When the project was first introduced in class, I thought it was going to be stressful, but everything has been falling into place very well and it’s actually been quite fun.

When checking for the subject of a sentence you can do one of two things. The book states to cross out the prepositional phrase, so everything that comes right after the preposition will be deleted. The book gives this example:
“The rules about the dress code are very specific.”

The other option would be to make sure the conjugated verb agrees with the subject.

“The rules…are very specific.”    Correct  😀

“…the dress code are very specific.”   Incorrect   🙁
The dress code is would be the correct conjugation and not the dress code are. Since the verb does not agree with the subject, which in this case is conjugated in the third person plural, the rules are the subject and not the dress code. I find this method a bit helpful when I revise my papers. It is even easier to spot an error when editing my papers in French and German because these languages have more subject-verb conjugations than English. Unfortunately this method fails when you have a sentence in which the conjugated verb is the same for “one” and “the students”.

“One of the students won the science prize.”

I like how the writer of this book recommends asking question when dealing with fragments. Asking a question will quickly answer what is missing in the sentence. After realizing what is missing you’ll be able to complete the sentence.

The big red balloon popped. Scared the baby.
In this example you can see that second part is the fragment since it is missing a subject. So then you simply ask, “what scared the baby?’ The answer is the balloon.

The big red balloon popped and scared the baby.

These few pages were useful and gave me clear examples of what to do and what to avoid doing.

Plagiarism is a very serious concept and should not be tolerated. Citing someone else’s work makes us, as students appear more knowledgeable than not citing a source at all and then getting caught. Isn’t it better to have a clear conscience knowing we did the right thing instead of being worried for not citing our papers correctly? In the end we’ll only be fooling ourselves if we use some one else’s work as our own. There are many ways for citing resources. The APA is one among many styles used for citing a paper. I chose the APA style because I’m not too familiar with it and would like to learn more about it. My professors don’t require that I use a specific style, but being able to use it properly wouldn’t hurt. I hope my peers will learn how to use the APA style after having watched the video my team and I will create.

On October 5^th 2011, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange experienced a bomb threat. A few minutes before 5 the local police arrived and told the workers and journalists to leave the premises. Many believed that the evacuation took place due to a fire alarm. Bomb threats in the Frankfurt Stock Exchange have occurred many times before, therefore nothing unusual. At 4:30 an anonymous caller warned that a bomb would go off within a matter of minutes. The law enforcement searched the entire building for about an hour and luckily did not find anything. With an all-clear signal, workers resumed their duties. (100)

Last Wednesday, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange experienced a bomb threat. Before 5 the police ordered everyone to evacuate. Many believed a fire alarm went off. Threats occur regularly, therefore nothing unusual. At 4:30 a caller warned a bomb would explode. The police found nothing, employers resumed working shortly after. (49)

The Frankfurt Stock Exchange experienced a threat. The police ordered an evacuation. Someone warned about a bomb. Employers returned due to a false alarm. (24)

Wordsworth is grateful that he will always have a special memory of the flowers to reminisce upon. His glumness dissipated with an unforgettable experience in nature. “Loneliness is now a blissful solitude” and no longer an undesirable feeling, since a cheerful image of a dance will forever be kept and be retold in his poem. The simple thought of dancing plants will prevent a melancholic state of mind. Wordsworth’s literary devices convey that nature’s simplicity is among one of the most valuable elements.

Most of the papers I have written were literature essays and about three or four research papers. Since I’m used to writing literature papers more and therefore am surrounded with that kind of prose, it tends to rub off on me. I noticed that I usually use a lot of fluff or beat around the bush when I write, instead of going straight to the point. Although literature papers do contain analysis sections where I have to be concise in order to address the point effectively, I usually will end up using long descriptive sentence, similar to the style of the author. For example Jane Finch the author of White Oleander, uses great imagery and diction to describe the setting or a character’s persona carrying on a sentence a few lines longer than normal. She uses imagery to keep the reader wanting more and not writing it like a police report, it was wet, dark and cold, which makes it dry and boring.

Writing detailed sentences is one of my problems. Studying concision in the class has helped me tremendously. I have learned to trim the fat and cut to the chase. Leaving out the extra “stuff”, which makes my papers less confusing and brief. Even though brevity isn’t always good since as a student I’m always worried that I might not make the minimum page requirement. Nonetheless, getting to the point right away without much detail has improved my writing.

One of my first papers that I have written in English while attending MIIS has been a policy assessment. I had to pick a policy, analyze it, and write about it. This was challenging for me because the paper could only be a maximum of two pages. At first, I added too much detail, which ended up making some sections redundant because I was overlapping certain information within the stages. I realized I had to pay close attention to what each stage of the policy process was and strictly stick to its meaning, only writing about that particular stage. Luckily, with the practice we got in class I was able to do a pretty decent job of not going over the maximum page limit and making the paper less detailed and more concise.

Sometimes when I start to write a paper, I will continue on to the body paragraphs even though I have a lousy thesis statement. I feel that I know what I want to argue, but occasionally have a hard time developing a concrete topic sentence. As I get the juices flowing I realize that what I really want to discuss reflects on the body paragraphs and later I go back to the introduction after having a better understanding of what I’m expressing. I would also like to get accustomed to wanting to edit my writing because it is a very important step when working on a paper. I’m getting better at I and the laziness has begun to disappear.