First Day of School!
First day of classes!
I know I'm a total geek, bu today was my first day of real Austrian classes, and I was totally excited! My roommate Christy and I went around finding our buildings and classrooms yesterday. I was supposed to have two classes today: Development of language and text competence in school aged children, and the Theology of Hitler. Both are "lectures", although the first is going to have a little more work to it, and the second didn't actually meet. No professor.. and apparantly in Austria the 10-minute rule is the 45 minute rule. ugh.
Anyway, because Eau Claire is crazy in setting up credit equivalencies, I'm taking 15 classes, and eventually will probably pair it down to a smooth 12. Yes. That's right. 12. Classes. The classes only meet once a week for 1 and a half to 2 hours a day here, but for the most part your entire grade settles on the final paper or exam at the end, so no matter what lecture or proseminar (More individual work than a lecture), I'll have a good 10-12 exams and papers to do before July 2nd. Sort of funny, actually. The semester is over July 2nd. Students here can do their exams or papers anytime within a year of taking the class, but I need to have this form filled out by the professor as (yes) my ONLY proof of taking the course and the grade I get to bring back to EC (Can you believe this?) before I leave. My flight is the 13th of July, and I only have my room until June 31st (yes, before the classes are actually over...). nice, hmm?
Anyway Class today was excellent! I understood everything the professor said, and it sounds so interesting. During the course of the semester we have to do a small research project with kids 10-12 years old to test their language competence alone and in pairs--looking at their reading and retension skills when working with a text and creating a summary of said text. May not sound incredibly exciting, but I just dropped into the course because I thought it might be a good idea to sit in on for future possible research concepts. Good move I guess. Pretty neat. Tomorrow I'm sitting in on a class in the Amerikanistic building called Varieties of English. My mentor is taking the class, so I'm going to sit in for fun and help her out with some of the dialect issues and linguistic terms. I like to give back. Also may be going to a class on Language change and Variations of German.
Thursday: Living styles and Social Relationships of Immigrants (this is the equivalent of a 5 credit course back home.. and is basically one big reasearch project. Probably over my head, but I'm going to at least sit through the first session and see how I feel.) Language Acquisition, Jesus and Mary in Islam, Famous Forged Documents.
Friday: Austrian State Treaty of 1955, Society Culture and Social Change; African Structures of Time and Space
Monday: Meaning of 1989; Languages of the World; Problems of Sociolinguistics; Assessing Multi-Lingual Comeptence
The obviously linguistic courses I'm taking for sure, the others are padding, really interesting sounding lectures that are only worth 1 or 2 credits back home (really stupid), and sounded super interesting. All German but one--Assessing Multi-Lingual Competence. My excuse: The professor heads up research in the field I'm applying to study with the Fulbright, and I'm hoping to woo her and convince her to write me a letter of support. The top five students in the class get to take part in a field research project. If five Austrians beat me out of that in and English taught class, I'm moving to Guam.
So, nothing so crazy I guess, but VERY exciting to me!
Hope everything is going well for the rest of you!
Let me know if you want my address, etc.: cushinjr@uwec.edu
LG
Jenna
I know I'm a total geek, bu today was my first day of real Austrian classes, and I was totally excited! My roommate Christy and I went around finding our buildings and classrooms yesterday. I was supposed to have two classes today: Development of language and text competence in school aged children, and the Theology of Hitler. Both are "lectures", although the first is going to have a little more work to it, and the second didn't actually meet. No professor.. and apparantly in Austria the 10-minute rule is the 45 minute rule. ugh.
Anyway, because Eau Claire is crazy in setting up credit equivalencies, I'm taking 15 classes, and eventually will probably pair it down to a smooth 12. Yes. That's right. 12. Classes. The classes only meet once a week for 1 and a half to 2 hours a day here, but for the most part your entire grade settles on the final paper or exam at the end, so no matter what lecture or proseminar (More individual work than a lecture), I'll have a good 10-12 exams and papers to do before July 2nd. Sort of funny, actually. The semester is over July 2nd. Students here can do their exams or papers anytime within a year of taking the class, but I need to have this form filled out by the professor as (yes) my ONLY proof of taking the course and the grade I get to bring back to EC (Can you believe this?) before I leave. My flight is the 13th of July, and I only have my room until June 31st (yes, before the classes are actually over...). nice, hmm?
Anyway Class today was excellent! I understood everything the professor said, and it sounds so interesting. During the course of the semester we have to do a small research project with kids 10-12 years old to test their language competence alone and in pairs--looking at their reading and retension skills when working with a text and creating a summary of said text. May not sound incredibly exciting, but I just dropped into the course because I thought it might be a good idea to sit in on for future possible research concepts. Good move I guess. Pretty neat. Tomorrow I'm sitting in on a class in the Amerikanistic building called Varieties of English. My mentor is taking the class, so I'm going to sit in for fun and help her out with some of the dialect issues and linguistic terms. I like to give back. Also may be going to a class on Language change and Variations of German.
Thursday: Living styles and Social Relationships of Immigrants (this is the equivalent of a 5 credit course back home.. and is basically one big reasearch project. Probably over my head, but I'm going to at least sit through the first session and see how I feel.) Language Acquisition, Jesus and Mary in Islam, Famous Forged Documents.
Friday: Austrian State Treaty of 1955, Society Culture and Social Change; African Structures of Time and Space
Monday: Meaning of 1989; Languages of the World; Problems of Sociolinguistics; Assessing Multi-Lingual Comeptence
The obviously linguistic courses I'm taking for sure, the others are padding, really interesting sounding lectures that are only worth 1 or 2 credits back home (really stupid), and sounded super interesting. All German but one--Assessing Multi-Lingual Competence. My excuse: The professor heads up research in the field I'm applying to study with the Fulbright, and I'm hoping to woo her and convince her to write me a letter of support. The top five students in the class get to take part in a field research project. If five Austrians beat me out of that in and English taught class, I'm moving to Guam.
So, nothing so crazy I guess, but VERY exciting to me!
Hope everything is going well for the rest of you!
Let me know if you want my address, etc.: cushinjr@uwec.edu
LG
Jenna
posted by Jenna @ 1:23 AM
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