Exam Update 5#

No comment. I did not sleep at all last night, I had a temperature and so you can imagine how I felt this morining. Surprisingly I did not drop with my head on the table during the exam, but I don't even want to know what rubbish I put on the paper.

Again I had no real choice and was left with: The industrial revolution in Bavaria: technical evolution, machine hotspurs and traditional agricultural state.

Great, I know as I had no knowledge about this Bavarian bit of the question, I was left with my general knowledge of the industrial revolution. I invented a few things and i just hope that I scratched a pass.

Well, I am glad it is over and in the end the results have nothing whatsoever to do with my real knowledge. I guess I just have to live with it and that's it. So now I am looking forward to the Easter break when I finally meet my godchild face-to-face and then I start studying for the oral exams. Jippy!

Have a good weekend. It is so great that now I am allowed to do whatever I want without having a voice in my head telling me: "you should study, not waste your time with...."

Exam Update 4#

It seems that these exams are becoming more and more a Russian Roulette. When I opened up my exam paper today, I was close to laughing out loud - and I was not amused! I have studied really hard over the last 6 months and in the end I had to choose a question I would never have dreamt of, but I had no other choice.

I can only remember the first 4 questions, because they were from the period I had prepared for:

1. Chlodwig I.
2. The "karolingian" Renaissance
3. The imperial politics towards Poland, Bohemia, Hungary and Denmark from Otto I. till the beginning of the Investiture Conflict
4. The impact of the crusades-movement

So I had to consider which question to answer:
- Question 1: max. half a page
- Question 2: 2 pages?
- Question 3: okay, I know enough but this question means suicide - 6 KINGS to consider!!!
- Question 4: maybe a few pages, but I don't know any of the theories behind the movement, I am not too keen on theological discussions

In the end I had to answer question 3, which I did not like much, but as I had no choice... It definitely WAS suicide. I wrote 24 pages and I am sure I "invented" a few things and mixed up names and dates and forgot some things - no wonder when one has to go through 5 kingships (not to mention that this meant half of all I learnt) and all did "the same" and ...

Okay, I stop complaining now. What did I expect? We are of the opinion that the professor who submitted this questions tried to make it as complicated and complex as possible so that no one answers it - sorry mate, we had no choice :-)

So, let's see what we can do on Friday and then, at least the written exams are done!

Exam Update 3#

Exam today: English Linguistics (Modern English)

This exam went surprisingly well - not too well - but better than I had ever hoped. Last night I had this funny feeling that everything I had tried to get into my head had somehow vanished.

Fortunately they did not ask us to explain any theories and I was able to write at least something on every question. Some of the questions were strange and more of the "bla, bla, bla" kind. The text we had to analyse was from a blog about the Live Earth Concert in London last spring.

LIVE EARTH LONDON

I just found the text on the net, so you get an idea what we had to deal with. Here the questions:

1. Transcribition: "Announced amongst great fanfare at a celeb-studded press conference last week, it turns out that the Live Earth concerts – set to imitate Live 8 with a worldwide set of simultaneous gigs, this time to raise awareness of global warming – don’t even have a licence or venue confirmed in London yet."
   
2. Give a syntactic analysis (form and function) of the following sentence. Comment on all problems: "Following hot on the heels of the admission that Wembley might not even be ready for this year’s FA Cup Final, it looks like a further lack of foresight might put paid to another landmark London event this summer."
3. Give a syntactic and morphologic analysis of the following noun phrases: the door of former US presidential hopeful; hundreds of steroid-enhanced superhumnans, boasting sub-40 bpm resting pulse rates, speeding past, astride gleaming racers with funny handlebars; more ‘sustainable’ line-up
4. Make a list of 6 words in the text which are examples for conversion (noun to verb or verb to noun) and comment on the semantic relation between basis and deduction.
5. Find 8 examples of conjuction and adverbials which make the text cohesive and explain how these transport the opinion of the author.
6. Analyse the interrogative sentences in lines 23-25 and line 31 according to the speach-act-theory.
7. Comment on extraordinary lexical and grammatical features and then say what kind of "style" the text has.

As I said, most of the questions were of the "bla, bla, bla" kind, but the sentence analysis was absolutely dreadful, it took ages and I don't think I got it right. But that does not matter, I definitely passed and that is just great. However, my hand is hurting badly, I wrote 24 pages, I never ever thought that this exam would take up that many pages....

So now I have come to the end of my first exam week. It was exhausting and I am not looking forward to next Wednesday when the History exams start. But the best of it is that now I can start to get rid of some of the huge folders - no more linguistics - NEVER EVER! Okay, don't mention the Master Exam which involves linguistic again, but that is an oral exam, so not too bad.

Have a good weekend you all!

Exam Update 2#

Exam today: Translation English - German (without any dictionary!)

Today's exam was not too extraordinary, as I did not have much hope to pass with a good grade anyway. I always only managed a narrow pass in these exams in all my courses. So today was no exception I guess. A few words I had never heard of: promulgate, requisite, Contageous Disease Act of the 1860s, heavy scrutiny, ....

I managed to translate them all - mostly guesswork of course, but I am sure I did not get the exact German expression and some translation attempts are utter nonsense. However, it is at least possible that I managed a pass, which is more than I hoped for.

By the way, the topic was: The crisis of the body concept during the Victorian period - an excerpt from a book on Victorian literature.

So, let's move on to English linguistics which I dread most of all, as I do have some problems with linguistic theory (semantic sign concepts, pragmatics (deixis) and historical linguistic) and I am not sure whether I am able to analyse the given sentence in the correct way according to Quirk and Greenbaum - not to mention transcribtion which is like Russian Roulette!

Exam Update 1#

Today I had my first exam: TEXTPRODUCTION

It felt a bit surreal when I got up this morning. I have been preparing for these exams since last August and today, the first big day has finally arrived. However, I did not really prepare for this exam today and I glad I did not spent more time on it.

Usually you are advised to learn as much as possible about British and American Culture as you need background knowledge to answer the essay questions. However, the exam topic today was:

Fighting CRIME in the UK and the US

Task 1: Write an article for a student magazine discussing: "Asbos (Anti-social behaviour orders): A model for Germany? Keep in mind that your readers do not have any background knowledge on Asbos. (300 words)

Task 2: Imagine you are an exchange student in the USA. Use the statistics on crime rates in the USA and write an informal email to a friend analyzing the statistics and at the end give your own opinion on the findings. (250 words)

Task 3: Write an essay on either

"The Causes and effects of crime and how to combat them?" (400 words)

or

"The right to bear arms should be part of the basic law in Germany" (450 words)

Great, isn't it. I did not have any knowledge on Asbos or why it could be a model for Germany or not. The text commenting on Asbos was quite ironic and definitely contra Asbos. The statistics went on over 3 pages - and I had to analyse them in 250 words including all the email bla, bla, bla (hello, how are you, yours,....). Oh, you had to answer all the questions. The word count was the worst. This email was horror and in the end I had to shorten my mail by 100 words!

I don't think I performed very well, at least I did not like the stuff I had written, my English was horrible, more like DENGLISH. Okay, nothing to be done about it. So, let's look forward to the next exam, which will be on Wednesday - Translation English-German.

I just hope that at least you had a good day today.