I decided my mediocre English needs a brush-up and therefor signed up for a language course.
It's a distance-course which means my main contact with the teacher will be through e-mails. All the study material is pulished on a website and every week I receive instructions on what to learn.
This first week I must:
- Read a text about the Allied Forces landing on the coast of Normandy in 1944, better known as D-Day. This gave me the creeps considering what's happening in Iraq right now and I also have the horrible opening scene from Saving Private Ryan in my head. War stinks.
- Write a 100 word long self-presentation: Hi, my name ist Steffanie und so weiter...
- Learn idioms like sick as a dog, slippery as an eel, strong as an oxe and 27 other.
- Create new words with the suffixes -er/-or and -ist. Like observe-observer, inspect-inspector (like Hans Blix' weapon inspectors!) and drama-dramaist.
- Learn phrasial verbs like these (what they mean and when to use them): look after, look at, look back, look down, look down on, look for, look forward to, look into, look on, look out, look up and look up for.
To be honest, this is a little below my level but it was a long time since I studied English the last time and therefor I want to make sure I haven't forgotten anything important.
I'm considering taking English at university level next semester which is another reason for dusting off the old grammar book (this is exactly what I should have done before going to Austria, preparations might have reduced the chock ;-))
