Due to the fact that everyone is writing about the PC2 oral exam I thought I also share my study experiences with you.
I haven't had the exam yet, I still have some days to feed my brain with useful collocations, meanings of words and pronunciation.
I have to admit, studying over 700 words is a hard piece of work, because knowing means more than just being able to recite the German translation like a human translating system.
Without sharing the work with classmates, I wouldn't have even known where to start. Now that I enthusiastically searched for and finally wrote the phonetics to my part of the AWL words, I faced a problem. I don't know who's fault it is, if it's my teacher's from middle school or just my own, but I can't read most of the phonetics I just eagerly wrote into the google spreadsheet. I never learned how to read it. That's why I sat down and searched for a good way to fill this gap in education.
I found a really good pdf file with all the phonetics explained and with helpful dialogues to each of them. http://www2.vobs.at/ludescher/pdf%20files/Pronunciation%20exercises.pdf
My intensive research also led me to a pronunciation blogger who highly recommended this site: http://cambridgeenglishonline.com/Phonetics_Focus/
With games such as hangman, puzzles and quizzes, it easily teaches the phonetics and you have a lot of fun at the same time.
On this site you can also create flashcards and record your voice to see if you did it right. It looks like a page for children or beginners, but there are different levels of difficulty.
I also really like the site Frank showed us, where you have to pronounce all those similar sounding words in a sentence. I could do that all day long, I'm not kidding (or at least until my mouth starts hurting)! DavidAppleyardsPlayfulPronunciationPractise
As I am really into reading, it often happens to me that I've read a word a hundred times and also know its meaning, but never actually said it. That is why it's sometimes a little disturbing for me to find out that a word isn't pronounced like I used to pronounce it in my head when reading.
I really like this one:
I
take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Well done! And now you wish perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Well done! And now you wish perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware
of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead, it's said like bed, not bead-
for goodness' sake don't call it 'deed'!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth, or brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's doze and rose and lose-
Just look them up- and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart-
Come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd learned to speak it when I was five!
And yet to write it, the more I sigh,
I'll not learn how 'til the day I die.
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead, it's said like bed, not bead-
for goodness' sake don't call it 'deed'!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth, or brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's doze and rose and lose-
Just look them up- and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart-
Come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd learned to speak it when I was five!
And yet to write it, the more I sigh,
I'll not learn how 'til the day I die.
