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.
I just found the text on the net, so you get an idea what we had to deal with. Here the questions:
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!
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.
I just found the text on the net, so you get an idea what we had to deal with. Here the questions:
- 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."
- 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."
- 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
- 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.
- Find 8 examples of conjuction and adverbials which make the text cohesive and explain how these transport the opinion of the author.
- Analyse the interrogative sentences in lines 23-25 and line 31 according to the speach-act-theory.
- Comment on extraordinary lexical and grammatical features and then say what kind of "style" the text has.
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!
Labels: University
posted by Nadja @ 3:02 pm
3 comments
3 Comments:
Hi Nadja,
when I read the first task of your textproduction, I thought, if asbos (whatever it is :-D) are mentioned, you will have some knowledge about these orders and giving some background information won`t be a big problem, but obviously I was mistaken. And I must admit that commenting on a topic you`ve never heard of would have been quite awful, particulary when the only clue is the full name of asbos itself.
Packing 3 pages of statistics in a 250 words e-mails may be a exhausting task, but I think you`ve managed to do and I would not care about my "Denglish", as every test you are not too comfortable with, seems to be written in horrible English and in the end the results are nevertheless not too bad.
What really surprises me is that you listed "heavy scrutiny" in the list of "unknown" words at you translation test. If you had ever read one of Ludlum`s spy agent thrillers, especially the Bourne Trilogy, you would have know these phrase as in these novels the words "scrutiny" and "scrutinize" are used almost every chapter. But notwithstanding I myself would never dare translating about the Victorian period without even a dictionary :-D. So, fat reeeeeespect, as Ali G would out it :-D.
That you obviously did a good job at your linguistic test delights me.
I wish you all the best for your further tests even if its going to be more and more "bla bla bla" :-D. (24 pages?...unthinkable)
Best wishes
Benjamin
No, to be honest I have never ever read one of Ludlum's spy agent thrillers. I think I got the meaning from the context, but as it had something to do with "suspicious sciences", I am not sure if I got the exact meaning.
By the way, the text we got about Asbos (Anti-Social-Behaviour-Orders) was not very informative and I have no clue if it is a model for Germany or not :-)
As I said, linguistics was alright, but the exam was of this "all or nothing kind", I wrote a lot (and even had to shorten because of time problems) but I am not sure if this was exactly what they wanted of me.
The next exams will be hard-fact-exams, as unfortunately I am not allowed to "invent" the history of the Middle Ages. However, as all the questions are mere essay questions, they are still "bla, bla, bla"!
Thanks anyway, hope your sister is not annoying you too much (don't tell her!) as she is now living at home again and that school is not too exhausting.
Have a good weekend!
Well, my sister is definitely not annoying me, as she is employed at one of the local newspapers by now.
I would describe this new job as a stressful undertaking, due to the communal "election campaigns" during the last weeks. She`s quite busy atm, but I assume that the job doesn`t really challenge her writing abilities. Furthermore, if you have to write a German test about a book she`s already analyzed, to put it bluntly, it`s quite useful to have access to her konwledge :-).
School`s going to be exhausting from 25th April on, when the "Abitur" will be imminent. However, it`s going to be just a fraction of your efforts :-D, although chemistry is not too little.
I hope that your history exams will discuss epochs or parts you`ve got knowledge about and not one of the side issues.
Have a nice and relaxing weekend, too!
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