Why Italy should remain an EU member state

Sandra Lang, Vanessa Steingkogler, Lisa Marie Vido

Group text

Academic Paper - My progress so far

My academic paper is currently in its second stage of development: Research. I have already found a decent structure for my text and have (luckily!) already started searching for helpful sources a few weeks ago. I found most of the information on EU websites and the official “MEDIA 2007 website. Also, I came across two papers closely related to my topic which might be very useful.  Still, there are a few topics that are not yet covered. For that reason I have started doing some more research  in order to find academic texts that might be of assistance while writing this paper.

As my topic is EU funding for audiovisual data, the paper will focus on the different funding programmes but also on the change Europe underwent due to funding. This particular section of the text is the one that will probably cause the most difficulties. I am a little worried that I won’t be able to find enough sources for this subtopic. So far, I haven’t found a good paper, statistics or texts that could give me enough information to formulate a couple of paragraphs. This problem  is generally the thing I am most afraid of when it comes to writing this academic text: Finding too little information to write a decent paper. 

James Vincent McMorrow

This week’s post is going to be dedicated to a new artist I came across last month. His name is James Vincent McMorrow and he is an Irish singer and songwriter. Even though his career was off to a very rough start, he didn’t give up on his dream. Luckily, he decided to keep on trying because in 2010 he succeeded in publishing his first album. This album, entitled “Early in the Morning” ,was a huge success in Europe. It even won the European Border Breakers Award. As far as I know though, he is not very well known in the USA yet but I think this is just a question of time. For me, this all just goes to show, that no matter what you intend to do with your life, you should NEVER give up on it.

      The first time I ever listened to one of his songs was in fact unwittingly. I watched some TV series and there was a song playing in the background of one of the scenes. I couldn’t get the song out of my head and I kept humming it’s melody for at least a week. I didn’t bother to find out who the singer was, though. The first song of his I consciously listened to was called “Follow you down to the Red Oak Tree”. I came across it in the movie “Third Star” (the one I reviewed a month or so ago). Only after hearing this track in the movie’s closing credits, I started researching and realized that I already know another song of his called “We don’t eat”. And that is how my “addiction“ was born and now I still can’t help but be fascinated with his music. I am the kind of person that listens to almost every kind of music: Rock, Pop, Indie, Classical music and its different subgenres. So finding out about a new and so extremely talented musician, always makes my day
      The kind of music that James Vincent McMorrow makes falls into the Folk and Indie music genre. This genre wasn’t one of my favourites music styles before but James Vincent McMoroow made me fall in love with it. His calm voice and the powerful kind of music he writes is just amazing. Another singer that also produces folk and Indie Pop music and that some of you might actually know is called Bon Iver. If I had to compare McMorrow’s style or voice to another musician, I’d say that the biggest resemblance can be found between Bon Iver and him. Funnily enough, they even look very much alike....
     Okay now you have reached the point where you’ll have to judge for yourself. I’ll add a couple of links to his music in this post. Feel free to listen to them, and who knows? Maybe you’ll come to realize that you have heard some of them before, considering some of them have been used in TV series like “Gossip girl”, “Teen Wolf” and “Chuck”.  And maybe (keeping my fingers crossed here!) you’ll even like them and if that’s the case, writing this post was really worth it.

"We don't eat"
"Higher love"
"Follow you down to the Red Oak Tree"
songs: (c) James Vincent McMorrow

Group Work Analysis - EU Citizenship

Group Work Analysis

Comment on "Tackling Crisis"

Tackling crisis

  Europe is in the deflation crisis, which influences the rise of debt. Moreover, the history of mankind has experienced this problem before. Sometimes deflation may be lethal for economy, when debts exceed the margin of 300pc. Generally, in Western Europe inflation is not perfect, 2pc which even deteriorates the case. Denmark is close to finding itself in deflation, so is Sweden.

With a downward shift in inflation, countries like Italy and Spain may be in a ‘’runaway debt’’. In Italy, for example, unemployment is already very high, and private debt there and in other EU members like France, Portugal keeps on rising by more than 100%.

Indeed, most of the countries could still be rescued by boosting inflation rate. Europe would not have to end up with Japanese-style deflation and with a burden of damaged private sector. Hence, the inflation may not fall below 2pc. With flat inflation, close to 0, even a stable country like Germany is at risk. 

 Club Med allies could also unite and demand appropriate action from Germany. By making bilateral decisions countries could achieve more. Hopefully, deflation will leave Europe in short. Global growth is a valid reason to keep waiting, but it is not how responsible economy should behave.

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 Comment on "Tackling Crisis"

As a part of this week’s homework we had to correct a summary written by one of our fellow classmates. The text I chose is called “Tackling crisis” and to my mind, it still requires quite a bit of improving. Firstly, the author forgot to mention the title of the text the summary is based on, the name of the newspaper and the date of publication. The vocabulary used in the text is quite formal but there are still a couple of flaws, namely the use of e.g. “so” and “like”, instead of more formal expressions. Another word that should not be used in a summary is “hopefully” because it conveys the author’s opinion. A summary needs to be objective and therefore you can’t include your personal outlook on the topic.  I also managed to find some minor mistakes such as missing words or the incorrect choice of articles. The biggest flaw of the text, though, is its incoherence. The sentences of almost every paragraph don’t fit together logically and therefore the structure gets very confusing. The first paragraph is especially messy and all of them put together don’t succeed in bringing out the main topic, but create confusion.

How to study vocab

In last week’s class we tried out a new method of memorising academic vocabulary. To my mind, it was incredibly funny and also very useful because it helped me remember at least half of the words we learned of. This is how it worked: Having prepared eight separate pieces of paper, we had to write down a sentence on the top piece, including one new acadamic word. Next we had to pass the stack of paper on to the person to our left, who then had to convert the clause into a picture. The next person in line again had to guess what the drawing could mean as a sentence.  This went on until all the eight cards of every stack were complete.The stack of cards I ended up with looks like this: