Watch out Freshmen

Finally, my recommendations for you guys as well as for the Freshmen starting doing a Blog this year!

I personally think that you should be aware of the following points during your studies in English as well as Blog this year:

1. Learn AWL by heart - I started maybe a little bit too late, but I can recommend learning it, because you will profit from this in all your subjects.

2. Make use of Business Briefs - I used them doing my assignments and I could implement a lot of words in my texts, which I now use more frequently.

3. Make use of online based tools - Our teacher provided us with many helpful webpages, which I always tried to consider doing my assignments.

4. Think in the long run - Always, when I was frustrated by doing assignments I thought of what I want to achieve in my future. Working abroad or even just doing an exchange could motivate yourself. Always keep your goals in mind and I think we all can achieve amazing things. I heartily think there will be a nice placement for all of us in the future.


I might seem a little naive, but I'm thinking that we all can combine fun with work. I personally love traveling and meeting people from all over the globe as I am really open-minded. I am really opened to new things and I took every chance discovering new cultures and mind settings of people.
I was never one of the best in speaking and writing English, I was just a everyday normal guy.

The difference between others and me was the aim of doing something else. Seeing myself being part of a globalized world, overcoming cultural differences and looking for a peaceful world in, which everybody gets a chance doing his or her personal interest in their future jobs.

I want to suggest that you all should go out in the world and discover new things. It will coin all of you even if you would have bad experiences like I had, surviving an earthquake in New Zealand, where over 250 people died. I still took something out of it, friendships with travel mates and local helpers. I could gain so much out of traveling  that I think thats this is the main thing, which I promote.
Starting being impressed after doing my exchange to the United States I came back home as a different person. I gained from funny as well as bad situation language skills and I got more personal value.

Looking into my near future, I would like to combine traveling with doing business in a company in South America or Canada. I think thats what I really want to do. With this goal in mind I will try to achieve reaching this in the next years.

I looked at several other blogs and I could find others, having the same background as I do.

For instance,
Daniel's: http://daniels-super-duper-english-blog.blogspot.com/
and
Cem's: http://www.cem-and-history.blogspot.com/

Especially Daniel's Blog is impressing as he is writing about his experiences traveling to several countries and doing internships there, so doing exactly what I would love to do in my future career.

Ending this, I would like to show you some pictures of me traveling around the world with travel mates.
This might motivate also you also going beyond your own borders.

New Zealand - Surfing

 My Dutch friends having a nice view on Queenstown (NZ)

 People from around the globe having some beer and nice chats

 temporary Indonesian

Kuala Lumpur/Malaysia with my Swedish friends

China Town - Bangkok /Thailand

Nice Landscape / NZ

Uluru - Australia

Go out there and experience your chances in a globalized world!


Here a song, which will always remind me doing my travels!

Assessment Report

I submitted on Monday my last graded Report, which dealt about a construction project.

To:                                                                 John Redforest (CEO of Leatty)                

From:                                                           Lennard Weiss (Representative of Leatty)

Date:                                                            12 December 2011

Subject:                                                     Suggestions for a strategy to rescue                                                                            the Shanghai construction project

Introduction

On 12 December, Joep Breurkens and Pascal Corée (Managers of Shanghai Works), Rick van der Werf and Lennard Weiss (Representatives of Leatty) held a meeting developing a strategy to rescue the Shanghai construction project. We need to develop a new strategy in order to push the construction progress catching up the time that was lost due to delays in previous working sections. We have agreed on the following plan of action to overcome our project problems and to avoid complications in upcoming future projects.

Improving information exchange and co-ordination of tasks

Firstly, we advise establishing an online bulletin board providing all project parties with the opportunity to exchange information and to co-ordinate their tasks.

Furthermore, we propose to show the work process in flow and Gantt charts illustrating the project life cycle in phases and sub-phases. All this will avoid co-ordination problems of tasks, which arose in the past. The responsibility lies with the IT Manager of Leatty.

Creating open team communication channels

Secondly, we have agreed on introducing daily gatherings directed by the construction managers with the whole working team on the building site to achieve better team communication. This will help preventing miscommunication on the spot and create a coordinated workflow. The responsibility lies with the project manager of Shanghai Works.

Achieving a good working morale and motivation

Thirdly, we recommend hiring more construction workers to take the pressure off the whole construction team. Moreover, we advise introducing an intrinsic and extrinsic reward system creating inducements to work goal-oriented to regain the morale and motivation of the construction workers. The responsibility lies with the project coordinator of Shanghai Works.

Suggestions to be considered in future

Finally, backup plans should be prepared for future projects in case subcontractors are not able to perform or deliver their goods or tasks, thus causing delays in our present project. Furthermore, a good communication with the local government would be considerable as we had problems with incoming goods due to road works, which could easily have been prevented.

Conclusion and recommendation

The consulting team realizes that implementing these recommendations will be necessary to regain our time schedule. Moreover we firmly believe that we can regain a good team communication as well as a good working morale and motivation through intrinsic and extrinsic reward systems.

We look forward to your reaction and we hope that these proposals will comply with your requirements.

Lennard Weiß

(Representative of Leatty)

Evaluating now my report with http://conc.lextutor.ca/vp/eng/output.pl?action=#editor

I can illustrate the use of the different kind of words.

This illustrates that I used a lot more AWL Words (16,55%) compared to my last graded Report.

This could be, because I focused a lot on using words from the Business Briefs that are given via NESTOR. 

Graded Presentation - "Erstaunliche Autos"

Hello everybody,

The last weeks we were really busy, as we had to hand in several assignments in all our subjects.
We also had to conduct our graded presentation for English for I.B., which counts for 25% of our total grade.

In the case scenario for the presentation Rick (rick-languagelearning.blogspot.com) and I pretended to be consultants that made recommendations for "Erstaunliche Autos", a German car manufacturer, which had troubles doing their business.
Therefore, we prepared several recommendations helping "EA", surviving their corporate-crisis and becoming competitive again.

To give you guys an idea how our presentation was looking like and what our improvement were, following the slides

As the presentation wasn't our first one we tried to implement all our existing knowledge about: how to prepare an interesting and professional presentation.
Done this, we earned a lot of positive feedback and an sufficient grade (7,7)
Finally, I can say: there is still a lot to improve.
Assessing the feedback of my Lecturer and my class mates I found points of improvement.
Following my main findings:

1. Speaking slower - I need to slow down, so that my audience is not distracted by my fast talk

2. Interrupting my Partner - As we presented I interrupted my colleague several times, which I shouldn't do as it hinders the flow of information and is some kind of impolide

3. Correct pronunciation and spelling -  I made some mistakes that I could have avoided by being more concentrated


Lastly, I can conclude that this presentation showed me that I made another step forward my English improvement. As I  said in my LLH, I want to gain better presentation skills, which I think could gain preparing presentations over and over again. This doesn't mean I am perfect now, this basically mean that I did steps in the right direction.

Feel free to comment my progress!
regards,
Lennard

Happy New Year's Eve!

To keep the tradition year after year!

"Same procedure as every year, James!"

Update on my Language Learning History

In my first blog-entree I already spoke about my Language learning history, 

especially how I learned English in school as well as on my travels and journeys

to other countries.

However, in this entree I would like to update my LLH, therefore I will focus

on my expectations for my future learning process as well as how I
changed my way of English learning during my university time so far.

Finally, I would like to give some advice to next year's first-year students providing

them with helpful information how to facilitate the Englsih learning process.

First of all, before I came to university I expected that my level of English would

be sufficient.

Anyhow, during my first weeks at university I realized that I had to cope

with several problems.

Especially I had to struggle writing academic English texts.

Searching for the reason, I evaluated the way I was used to write and

with the help of my English tutorials I found several ways how to improve
and develop my academic writing style.

The best ways gaining better writing skills are:

Firstly, force yourself writing texts that include many academic words by

 using words from the academic word list.

Furthermore, avoid words like: to make, to get or to give.

Use instead synonyms like to create, to receive or to provide.

Secondly, provide your readers with an well ordered structure that

 facilitates reading and creates the impression of professionalism.

This will all contribute to an academic writing style which is essential

 obtaining good grades at the university.

Furthermore, I changed my way of English learning in that way, that

I'm now more focused on Business related texts and therefore,
I read several online journals in my free time

about international business which is improving my steady
extension of vocabulary.

In the end, I would like to give some advice to next year's first-year students.

I can recommend, surmount difficulties by facing them.

Never hide yourself, face the fields of your problems!

First locate errors and after that work on them to prevent doing them

over and over again.

Moreover, do not be depressed or in low spirits.

Try always to motivate yourself and you will be able to improve your English skills.

I would like to end this with an quotation.

"While one person hesitates because he feels inferior, the other is busy making

 mistakes and becoming superior."  ~Henry C. Link

Press release and evaluation

Hey,
today I would like to present you my first press release which I wrote about a fictional company called "Hazel".
Our task was creating in groups of five a new strategy in order to rise the profits and making "Hazel" more competitive in the global market.
Therefore, our group acted like real managers and developed a new product. Furthermore, we presented and explained in an PP-presentation how we would like to change the business in order to expand our market share of men's products through widening our product range.

Preparing this assignment, I used several frameworks from the internet making it as professional as possible.

Here the original Text with the Boilerplate giving factual information of Hazel.

HAZEL’S HAIR HOLDER –

INTRODUCTION OF AN INNOVATIVE BEAUTY PRODUCT FOR MEN

GRONINGEN,NL November 28, 2011 –  Hazel, one of the global largest direct sellers of cosmetics and beauty products, releases their newest product innovation especially for men, called “Hazel’s Hair Holder”. Their product slows the degree of hair loss down and is especially developed and created to target on the receding hairline.

More focus on the male anti-age beauty market

Lennard Weiss, Chief Executive Officer of Hazel, stated “Hazel’s Hair Holder, is our answer to an emerging market of anti-aging products specialized on the needs of men, this innovative product is a solution for many mid-aged men to “freeze” their loss of hair and with that their chance to keep their beauty for many years. This product is innovative and we will build up a broader range of beauty products on it, especially for men to raise our share for beauty men products on the global market ”

Natural ingredients

“Hazel’s Hair Holder” is completely based on natural ingredients and therefore free from chemicals that might harm the scalp. Furthermore, it also aids their consumers with a fostering effect on the scalp and also strengthens the hair structure. This contributes to an ever-present feeling of well-being.

New slogan and advertisement campaign

Supporting their product, Hazel also launched a new advertisement campaign with a catching slogan: “Freeze Your Loss of Hair!”

Additionally, Hazel also introduced a new logo showing hazelnuts to illustrate their relationship to natural ingredients.

All in all, “Hazel’s Hair Holder” is an innovative product for the emergent anti-aging market for men based on natural ingredients and supported by an eye-catching campaign.

END

Hazel was founded 1886 in New York City and operates global as the world’s largest direct seller of cosmetics and beauty products with more than 42000 employees.

Their CEO Lennard Weiss is running the company since 2000.

Hazel’s priority is to deliver premium cosmetic and beauty products at obtainable prices to men and women of all ages.

Hazel Incorporation, New York City, New York.

Website:  www.hazel.com

#

Following our presentation slides providing the audience with our new marketing strategy as well as information about our new product.

Hazel

View more presentations from Lennard666.

Following, an illustration showing my evaluated press release.
The use of different kind of word is highlighted by different colors.

"The average 'near-native' (C2.2) ratio is: 70:10:10:10"

Evaluated text written by myself:        71:7:7:15

My Explanation for the use of 15% of "Off-List Words" is that the program from the webpage  http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/eng/

determined the company name as an "Off-List Word" and through the frequently use this is also expressed in the evaluated statistic.

University Exam and Memo Report

Hello everybody,
The last weeks were really exhausting, I had to study a lot for my exams.
I wrote exams in all my subjects especially my first one in English.
Later on, I will explain you have I prepared myself for this Exam.
Anyhow, it was a very exciting day today.
We got the grades of our English exam as well as the second Memo Report.
To shortcut, I passed both and I am especially satisfied about the Memo Report.
As I told you I tried to make it as professional as possible.
Thereby, I also tried to minimize mistakes in Grammar and other fields of Errors.
With the "Self-check Error List" provided by our teacher, I now can look for all my mistakes and the frequency I used to do those mistakes.
Following, our "Self-check Error List":

Evaluating both Memo Reports I recognized that I will have to focus in future more on the use of gerunds.
Furthermore, I think I could have easily avoid the spelling mistakes by giving my reports to others to check them on mistakes.
I will work with and on this list furthermore to gain more academic writing skills.

Concerning my English exam I would like telling you how and why I prepared for my Exam.
Firstly,  I tried to refresh and to refill my knowledge of academic business vocabulary.
Therefore, I learned the Academic Word Lists by heart.
I used a special vocabulary learning program for that. This was facilitating looking for words that I already knew and that I still had to learn.
For MAC-user I can recommend a freeware called "Provoc" published on following webpage:
http://www.arizona-software.ch/provoc/

Furthermore, I made use of an example exam that we discussed a weeks  before the actual real exam.
This was contributing, because with that I was able to focus more on my actual problem parts of the exam that were for instance linking words as well as special words from the AWL.

I would like to end this entry with a funny exam situation ;)