Well I had been hoping to have results for both my assignments in English and German by now but alas I do not. I am happy to report that I did exceptionally well with my German and got 97%, although when converted into final marks it sounds a lot less impressive as it was only worth a max 5% of the continuous assessment mark, which in turn is only 2.5% of my overall score.  Anyway if I get stranded at an airport or need to spell my name or give my telephone number out I am golden apparently...

English is a rather irritating story.  I had hopes that because we had a tutorial yesterday morning that like last time the results might materialise some time on Friday.  They did not.  When asked our tutor said that he had marked them and it must be a computer glitch that we hadn't got them, benefit of the doubt things like that can go wrong. However shortly afterwards he said that the cut off was 24th November and that he'd sent them off about 10 days afterwards which was around Monday... hang on... but yesterday was the 10 day mark.  Okay so he's an English teacher not a Maths teacher, number of days might escape him.  So can he give us our marks individually? Nope they have to go via the system, he isn't allowed to discuss our own marks with us on a one to one basis... erm... oookay.  Lastly, we did have a small discussion at break between us students about the last TMA and the fact we all posted so we could read each others, and bearing in mind this guy is quite passionate about linguistics he didn't mention anything about any of our postings, such as variety, interest etc.  So conclusion? I must admit to thinking he hasn't looked at our assignments yet, let alone marked them.  Oh well the OU says that we should expect to get results back up to two weeks after submission, hopefully I'll have them before Wednesday.

Apart from the non marked assignments the tutorial was pretty useful with regards to the assignment due in January, I just need to find a program to transcribe.  I was thinking of Jeremy Kyle because it is at least linguistically interesting but he's gone and changed the format of his show, they've given him a desk and everything now! I will need to have it transcribed by the time I go to Germany or find a suitable clip I can access while I am over there, otherwise it might put a spanner in the works.

Sorry for the somewhat boring post... seems I needed a rant!

Was ich heute gelernt habe

Today was my first tutorial for L193, I was a lot more nervous about this then I was for the English one even though I was pretty comfortable with the topics covered in Thema 1.  I think it is because the dreaded speaking is involved, and with language classes you're usually made to get up and wander around asking everyone the same questions, which we were and as usual it wasn't as bad as I anticipate it to be.  It is always good to meet people that are also learning and sharing tips.

I did learn a few new bits of vocabulary which I have written down and will add to my flashcards, speaking of which I was recommended a site called Quizlet to use which has the L193 vocabulary set up by a course tutor but it can also be used by everyone to create groups and add vocabulary for any subject they like, I will add this address to my links on the right hand side. There are 299 terms in the set and I managed to get 59% (177) correct in the first try, so will be doing that as often as possible, a lot of the wrong answers were due to giving the wrong gender article or spelling mistakes rather then not knowing the word at all, which was encouraging.

In fact I was so encouraged I have submitted the first TMA which has 4 parts to it, Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking but we are only marked on the Reading and Speaking parts this time.  I think I did okay in the end, I am happy with what I submitted but time will tell, this first TMA is only worth 5% of the continuous assessment mark so not much pressure if I find I have messed it up.

I have now posted part 2 of U211's TMA02 and submitted it as a whole, and the deadline isn't for a few more days yet which is very pleasing.  I had been absolutely dreading part 2, and I changed which person I was replying to more than once and even after I had settled on the word I changed the angle I was taking with the investigation and stumbled on some really good finds.  I really hope I have done well in this TMA as I worked hard with the research aspect and really enjoyed it a lot so it would be a shame to find out I have done poorly.  Just playing the waiting game now I don't expect to hear anything for about 3 weeks... will I be able to stand the wait?

Investigative Happiness

The last week or so has been spent doing a mini research project for U211's TMA02 into a word from a non standard English variety.  I have to admit to have been dreading this task, although I drop my t's and have an estuary like accent, the majority of my spoken language is what I would regard as standard.  However that was until I contemplated my online gamer side and realised that I spoke a very non-standard and creative variety.  I picked a word which to me was interesting and reflected that creativity and started from there.

Usually when it comes to word counts I am struggling to meet the limit, this time I could have easily gone over it and had to cut so many bits that I had discovered to fit the meagre 600 word limit.  Once finished the most scary part of all arrived.  This assignment is not just written in word in the safety of your own space but instead posted on our tutor group forums for your fellow students to read! I know we are all in the same boat, that they post theirs for me to read but it doesn't make things better, especially when you're the 20th person to post and you can see how everyone else's compares.

So why is this so public? Well the second part of TMA02 involves replying to one of the other threads with further investigation into their word/phrase/etc.  I haven't had a chance to look properly at them all yet, I didn't want to scare myself too much by comparing what I've written to what they have but I hope to have as an enjoyable time researching this part as I did with the first.

This TMA also signals the completion of Block 1 of the course, we are a quarter of the way through the module!  The last couple of chapters I have kinda skimmed through but I don't care so much, I have decided that I will not answer a question on the exam from this part, and as long as my glossary is up to date it is fine.  This has the added bonus of me now being 2 weeks ahead of schedule and I hope to stay that way at least so I don't have to do too much while I'm in Germany next month.