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almsspring2023 · 1 year

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Coming to a Close

Click here for my final thoughts on this ALMS course!

Now that I’ve done the work for my ALMS course it’s time to reflect on what I’ve gained along the way. In the beginning, planning all this out and thinking about the plan made me realize that I do tend to challenge my English skills on the regular, and I could put that to use for the course. I mostly interact with media in English; especially reading more complex news articles from various subjects is something I enjoy, and basically all TV series and movies I watch are in English. What I’m trying to say here is that this ALMS-aligned way of thinking has definitely helped me to find a positive and encouraging spin on my English language media consumption. ALMS helped me realize I might actually hone my skills and gain something by interacting with the language in a way that feels natural to me, and that’s pretty cool.

I did a lot of work over this course to meet my quota, and the best part was definitely the support groups. Social interaction brings so much to the learning process, in very concrete ways such as direct feedback but also in more subtle ways like picking things up from others’ work. I also got some really good tips from the group teachers that I’ll remember for later. One was that when writing a text in English, even if it feels more difficult it’s a lot less work to just start writing in English rather than first writing something in Finnish and then translating it. The languages are built differently and translation requires a lot of extra work in switching words around and thinking of sentence structures and words more natural to the other language. Another thing is that English has a lot more words overall than Finnish does. A lot of the words are shorter and phrases formed of several shorter words instead of the compound words Finnish tends to go for. There’s often more than one way to say something and more nuance to what would work best in a particular situation. I think this is something seen in practice when doing crossword puzzles in English – there’s so incredibly many three letter words!

I did a lot of the things I originally planned to do and added on some more along the way. I said I wanted to read a lot of news articles and that’s what I sure did! I also did a lot of vocabulary exercises with some translation, weekly challenges and playing different word games. I talked English a lot in the support group meetings, which really helped to improve the flow of my speech. I’ve written a lot as well, for group works but mostly for my ALMS blog! I’ve had a lot of hearing practice as well in watching and listening to miscellaneous English-language media.

Most academia work was contained in the translation group, as I besides translating I read a lot of the papers that were linked there. I did say I wanted to read an article, and I did – I actually read two very recently. But both of those were for another course, so I don’t know if they count for ALMS hours and I didn’t count them in, even if I did read them thoroughly and making sure I understand it all (with this ALMS course in mind). There’s also some stuff that I was hoping I would do but didn't manage to fit in my schedule.

I think I’ve also found some weaker areas of expertise in my English. I feel like talking a lot in the support groups has made me hone in on some of my problems, such as that I sort of mumble my words sometimes. The best way I can describe it is that I kind of scramble my speech when talking so that it comes out a little unintelligible; I say stuff but can't exactly keep my pronunciation up with my talking speed due to lack of practice. I just kind of don't have enough confidence in my speaking to say things fast clearly enough. This is something I'm trying to work on, and the support groups have definitely helped. Now that I’m done with the groups though I should maybe find something to keep it up. Speaking is a skill that’s only improved by active usage, no question of that. This is of course true for other aspects of English as well, but I think speaking is the one that I get least practice with. I don’t communicate much with foreigners and if I do, it’s mostly over text.

It’s been a road of setting different challenges but I hope I’ve also gained a lot! I enjoyed this course and the fact that it’s so easily shaped into something that benefits each student individually. ALMS has allowed me to find the way to learn English that fits me the best and hopefully gain more understanding on how to develop my language skills going forward. Thank you very much to every teacher, all of you that I interacted with were super helpful, kind, and competent!

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almsspring2023 · 1 year

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Word Games

I wanted to quickly highlight (in my opinion) the best way to keep one’s vocabulary up to date!

This, I suppose, is a pretty recent aspect of language learning as it is very tied to the internet. Word puzzles and games themselves have existed forever, but they are very much more accessible and require far less resources as they are a Google search and a click away – a lot of them at no cost at all.

I personally think this is a really great way to keep one’s vocabulary active and also update it with some new words. Once-a-day word games such as Wordle and Semantle (which I also talked about in my Weekly Challenges post) are a fun way to daily refresh your mind. I personally like to use Wordle as a kind of a “warm-up” before I go into writing English. Semantle takes more time to complete, but you really have to rack your brain for that one!

Some other word games include the word shake games (also from my Weekly Challenges post) and lately I’ve been living my best geriatric simulation life and doing a bunch of crosswords. I really like the crosswords by the biggest American newspapers like the Washington Post, but there’s other alternatives available online with a search. I find those very challenging but rewarding.

All of these really make you scour your memory for words and since I started playing them every now and then I think I’ve gained a bunch of new vocabulary. I do often resort to Google searches or synonym sites when I can’t find a word, but I don’t think that’s a hindrance to learning as that way one might come across some new words and learn that way. Really, word games feel more like fun than work!

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almsspring2023 · 1 year

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Watching Moving Pictures

From documentaries and videos to TV-series and movies, the audiovisual experience is a good way to learn about English in practice and in culture.

I do watch all kinds of stuff regularly, but for ALMS I tried to add some extra challenge to spice it up. Sometimes I watched without subtitles for better hearing practice. On a few occasions I did something I almost never do and switched to Finnish subtitles. I never actually watch anything with the Finnish subtitles on unless it’s the only choice available, I’ve been using English subtitles for ages. The reason is that the Finnish the subtitles often differ from the original dialogue – for practical and perfectly understandable reasons, but as I understand the spoken English pretty effortlessly, it starts bothering me if the translation is too awkward! But with the Finnish subtitles on I tried to really grasp the meanings of even the more difficult words and think about the translation choices.

I watched most of the stuff by myself but it's also more fun to watch stuff with friends, so sometimes I bullied my friends into discussing in English with me while we watched something together. I watched a lot of stuff and listing it all would be hard, but here’s my picks.

When the course started the documentary film festival DocPoint was also conveniently taking place. I tend to watch a few documentaries there every year, it’s a great place to see documentaries from all kinds of places, especially eastern European and Asian countries. I really appreciate good documentaries but personally don’t like the American style of documents all. Those are most readily available, though. With DocPoint my main issue is too many movies I want to see, too little time (and money)! Very few of them are easily available outside of the festival. Most of the documentaries don’t have Finnish subtitles at all. There might be English subtitles or none at all, so good enough English comprehension is a prerequisite. This year I ended up seeing two documentaries from there, Manifesto and Killing of a Journalist.

Manifesto (2022) was entirely in Russian with English subtitles. It’s a very rough documentary of the life of Russian children and teens form their perspective. It’s compiled of videos the kids have filmed themselves of their day-to-day life and some picked off of social media. It is heartbreaking to see how life is for some of them out in the provinces and how the Russian oppression works from a very young age. This movie definitely isn’t for sensitive people. There are some really shocking and awful parts that might upset some.

The second movie I saw was called The Killing of a Journalist (2022) and was about the murder of a young investigative journalist and his fiancée in Slovakia. This movie was partially in English with no subtitles and some Slovakian parts which were subtitled in English. It was an interesting documentary about a politically charged assassination and the investigation of it in a seemingly modern democratic European country you wouldn’t think these kinds of things happened in. This murder happened in 2018 – just a few years ago. Behind it was organized crime closely tied to the corrupt government. Very alarming, to say the least. This documentary was good language practice as well, as it had some complex judicial and political terminology. The spoken English had an interesting Slovak accent.

I also watched some shorter YouTube documentaries. For example, one was about a Cuban man who had been abused in a cult as a kid and later faced so enough trouble to burn down his own house. I also ended up watching some American and British ones. An interesting one that was somewhat close to my studies was a video about le Plessis Robinson in southwestern Paris. It’s a commune that was completely revamped from older, ugly and cheap concrete blocks to a beautifully ornate and verdant neighborhood. This was a costly, slow affair and required thinking beyond the four-year term of a city official. It also raises the questions of gentrification – the poor who couldn’t afford to live there had to move out and only some of the cheaper city housing that had already been there stayed.

I could discuss all the different aspects of this for hours, but I’ll try to be brief here. While the video raised some good points about the negative sides of the whole affair, it did keep it a bit too simplified and through somewhat rose-tinted glasses. But to be genuine I don’t think people talk about the beauty everyone should deserve to live in enough. Even in Helsinki I think most can agree it’s the more ornate Jugend neighborhoods in southern Helsinki that are the prettiest and most pleasant to walk around compared to modern simple steel-and-glass buildings. All of this is of course also tied to the price tag as well as owning versus renting and how that redistributes wealth. It also highlights the issue of short-sightedness on the decision-makers’ behalf, as they usually only serve until the next electoral period. As I said, I could go on forever about this, but I’ll stop here.

I did also watch a bunch of movies and TV series. On the earlier post about the Challenge Group I already mentioned I watched the movie Dog Day Afternoon. I also pasted my review there if you want to know my opinion on it (spoiler: it’s really good). I also watched other movies, such as The Goodfellas and Bad Times at the El Royale. The latter was okay. Entertaining enough, pretty Hollywood. Nothing revolutionary, though. I did like the Goodfellas, which I hadn’t seen before. It’s also fun listening-wise, as it’s narrated by the protagonist throughout. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was an interesting movie as well. It had a lot of very outlandish scenes to follow.

Many of the hours were spent on watching different TV series. One of the series I watched was Better Call Saul. The dialogue in that show is great and it has some good judicial words, too. I also watched The Good Place, which is a comedy show about the afterlife but really about philosophy. The philosophy is pretty simplified and dumbed down, though, and some of the characters were very annoying. I powered through, in any case. The newer series Last of Us was something I also watched. I was familiar with the game already, but while I’ve seen differing opinions on it, mine is that the TV series is better. It’s an imagination of what life would be like if such a radical catastrophe would occur and it’s a story about the people in it. It wasn’t my favorite, but it was okay.

Overall, watching something gives the visual aspect compared to any audio-only media which I personally like to have. There are all kinds of stuff to watch, and while documentaries are more factual, I think one can learn from fiction just as well when it comes to language. Even with documentaries good media literacy is important. In fiction, cultural aspects and such are often exaggerated and it’s good to know when that is and to not believe everything at its face value. Everything is always told through the lens of the creators, who are human. This is a positive and a negative at the same time. Human limitations apply, but there is the aspect of the creators themselves put into all of their work that makes it different from others' work.

What I just wanted to say was I think I gained a lot from all the stuff I’ve watched, information but also language-learning-wise. It’s fun to listen to different accents and how language is used in different places. If you want to learn words around a certain theme, watching a video on it wouldn’t be a bad idea! I watched a lot of stuff on things I was already interested in and also things that had a lot of stuff I didn’t maybe expect going in. For watching, I used around 23 hours.

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almsspring2023 · 1 year

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Listening to podcasts

Podcasts are good listening practice – can’t fall back on a text if you miss something!

First, I have to admit I don’t listen to radio or podcasts all that much. I prefer text as a media as I can read through it on my own pace and going back and forth is easier. But it is very good practice to listen to people talk, so I did. Besides some gaming themed podcasts which had good conversation, here’s my favorites among the audio podcasts I listened to:

Segregation, Gentrification, and Fair Housing: this is, as the title says, the 38th episode in a series that I unfortunately am not familiar with. It is what I ran into when looking for podcasts about segregation and housing disparity though. I wanted to listen to an English-language podcast and thought about interesting subjects relevant to my field of studies.

In this particular episode a professor from the University of Pennsylvania talks about fair housing with the interviewer. While it was very America-centric it was very informative, and the interviewee seemed to be very knowledgeable. I learned a lot about the housing issues in the U.S. specifically.

And for writing this I did have to brush up on how to refer to people with a doctorate and are university professors, as for some reason he was referred to as a doctor in the podcast description even if he was introduced as a professor. As being a professor already contains a doctorate and it is how my searches suggested I should talk, I’m still a bit unsure on how this all works. Are professors consulting outside of their workplace referred to as doctors, is it up to choice, or is it a mistake? These title policies are complex!

https://aj.audio/TheTake-504 The human cost of ChatGPT

I’ve followed the rise of AI based technology from the sidelines for many years now and as such am pretty well aware of its state now. As it is the new hot thing though a lot of the media are written either by people who don’t know a lot about AI or “tech bros” as they are called who are only too quick to praise it. I’m very interested in neutral or critical analysis of it though, and this seemed interesting so I listened to it (for my commentary on Al-Jazeera as my news source you can go to my blog post about reading news). I think the human cost is a point of view that isn’t considered too often in media and this particular podcast approached it in a very un-tech way, I guess is how I can put it. Technology is cool, but it’s still in the end created by people in the physical world and those aspects of it can’t be overlooked. A lot of the things we take for granted need human input to even work, and I feel like a lot of people see AI and ChatGPT as more advanced and self-sufficient than it actually is. I think the biggest danger of AI tech are people pushing it everywhere without understanding the capabilities or how it really works or how it came to be.

I have a bit of an inability to focus on a single thing and this especially pertains to audio as there’s no visual stimulus. I’ve learned to circumvent this by having something simple and monotone to do while listening, such as doing the dishes or going for a walk. Any activities that don’t demand much attention will do. I usually listen to podcasts or radio on my grocery trips! I do think it’s good practice especially with how modern technology works, and we have to be able to listen to phone calls and such without any visual cues. The subjects of the podcasts were also interesting, and overall I spent a good 5 hours of listening to different English-language podcasts and writing this blog text.

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almsspring2023 · 1 year

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Reading news and articles

As an avid news reader and global matters enthusiast this ALMS course was a great excuse to increase my daily information consumption from varied foreign sources.

I read a lot of news. Usually I stay on Finnish ones – even if staying domestic is limiting, Finnish news sites are pretty reliable in general and have an expansive enough foreign news section with occasional articles from foreign correspondents. But on occasion I surf around, sometimes for fun and sometimes to find out more about a news event that is relevant at the time. On those occasions I’ll often search for an English language news source from the country of origin.

The style of news is different in different countries and languages, but I do feel like the internet and social media in general have impacted it in a new way. The media companies feel like they have to publish news constantly and to keep it interesting to stay relevant and not be replaced by another site – as people now have the option of perusing any of the news sites in the world. But even without taking all that into account I feel like a lot of American and British news sites tend to be a bit embellishing in their style of presenting the news. Maybe it’s my Finnishness, but I like my news very dry, neutral, and matter-of-factual. Investigative long-form articles are of course a bit different, and those tend to be pretty good across the board.

For daily news, I usually skip BBC and CNN and the like. I do check those out as well sometimes, but my go-to natively English site is usually Reuters. Most of the time though I tend to go for Al-Jazeera International for English language news. It’s a Qatar based news company, very controversial especially in its native Arabic, and this is definitely something to be aware of. But the international version holds a bit different principles I’ve found, as it is under international scrutiny, and is usually pretty reliable and objective in its presentation. The perspective of a non-western-based news source feels very fresh. They do, of course, have journalists originating from the west as well, and they do report on global issues which include a lot of western matters. But they also have a ton of news from other places, especially the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia. A lot of the matters that are only briefly touched upon in the western news are more expansive there, and there’s also a lot of articles from the perspective of a native instead of a western journalist. I tend to have times when I read the news from Al-Jazeera often, and times when I tend to only stay on Finnish news sites, but this course definitely pushed me to read their news more again.

After this unnecessarily lengthy start I figured I’d talk a bit about the news I’ve read lately in this blog post. It’s probably ill-advised to post every single link here as I’ve read the news almost every day, but I’ll pick some of the more interesting news topics I came across. I also included some links to my favorite long-form articles I’ve read during this course.

As I told I like to read a lot of global news. But a news event that wasn’t as greatly reported on was the Ohio industrial train accident on February 3. The weird handling of the case by authorities was something that drove me to look into how it was talked of in different sources. The perceived secretiveness drove people to come up with all kinds of conspiracy theories. I ran into it on social media which is why I’m aware of this aspect of it. Reading about it led to interesting tidbits about how during Obama administration there had been regulations of how close to residential districts trains carrying dangerous chemicals could go which were repealed during Trump’s reign but also about the sad barely functional state of the railway network in the United States. Protecting the railway company led to slow reporting and the whole case spiraling a bit out of control in the hands of the general public. Then again, a lot of people were endangered by noxious gases and carcinogens secreted by the various burning chemicals and not being preventatively cautious is also a bit dubious. Not to speak of the environmental impact. Complex situation, in any case, that takes some media literacy to navigate. Fearmongering among the public should always be avoided but the parties responsible should be held accountable for their negligence and the people evacuated if they are in real danger.

Another piece of news that I didn’t see as much in Finnish media were reports on great natural disasters. For example, on Al-Jazeera I saw a lot of reports on the tropical cyclone Freddy tearing through Malawi and other Southern African countries in March. Causing floods and landslides it has injured and killed a lot of people, and a lot of people lost their home or are still missing. The cyclone actually originated from the Indian Ocean in February and traversed all the way to Africa in the exceptionally long five weeks of its existence. It was, in fact, the longest-lasting and highest-ACE-producing (ACE stands for accumulated cyclone energy) ever recorded worldwide according to Wikipedia. You’d think these kinds of record breakers were more widely reported on, but no. I suppose cyclones aren’t something we need to worry about here (at least for now) and for that reason Finnish people can’t really relate to any news about those. The clicks are important!!! (That was sarcasm, just for clarification.)

The process of Finland (and Sweden) joining NATO has made the headlines across the world, though. The new developments are front page news on all the sources from Al-Jazeera to Reuters. All news in English are for the English-speaking world though, naturally, so it’s always a bit western-countries-centric. Of course, the kick-start for the NATO process was the Russian attack on Ukraine. This event does affect the entire world. The war has been the main event in all the news media for over a year now. One would hope Russia would cease its aggressions soon, but it doesn’t seem that way. It’s sad we have to see it every day, but it’s so much more important to not forget or ignore the situation. It is good to keep it in the media and thus the eyes of people for continuing support for the Ukrainian effort. My heart goes out for the Ukrainian people.

An interesting series I’ve followed on Al-Jazeera is called “The Cost of Living”. It’s a series of insights into peoples’ lives now that the cost of living is soaring everywhere. It’s about people living in every corner of the world, from Eastern Europe to Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, and the U.S., that are poor and struggling to survive. And the prices just keep climbing up. It’s very eye-opening reading about the different circumstances and factors people have in their lives. The series really brings the glaring inequality in our world and social systems into light, and how some people just can’t catch a break no matter how they try, but also fascinating, charming and informative peeks into lives very different from mine. While it’s depressing to read about the overwhelming hurdles and difficulties, it’s also hopeful, as humans really try even when they barely have anything. But in a just world it wouldn’t be a constant fight for survival for the poor.

Here's a few of my favorite long-form articles:

This was actually a fun discovery I ended up on after a long and tumultuous Google-search the origins of I can’t begin to articulate. It’s how I found out some older news magazines such as the New York Times and Los Angeles Times have digitally archived old articles going back decades. This one is about the changing environment of cargo seafaring of the 80’s. It’s an interesting little insight into the increasingly busy and professional life of seamen that also causes some ripple effects such as the disappearance of drunken sailors and the taverns they used to populate from harbors over time.

This is an old article I’ve had on my to-read list for ages and thanks to the course I remembered to read it. It’s about a subject that I got interested in by a documentary I saw at a documentary festival some years ago (Push from 2019, to be specific), and that is city real estate and specifically how giant multinational companies such as Blackstone profit off of it, blindly squashing the locals under. I suppose this is pretty relevant to my studies as well! I finally read through it now, though. It’s a good read and I recommend it to anyone. More people should know about such threats to livable and equal cities. It’s also an often-dismissed economical threat as it is a big cash flow abroad (besides the fact that it hurts poor people the most). To find a way to combat it is to the benefit of everyone and other countries should take notes.

This was an article written by a woman with Indian Dalit heritage. Dalit are the fifth category outside the four-tier Chatur Varna caste system. In India, these castes are very much still socially visible. This particular article approaches the issue by expanding upon how Dalit women used to be forced to become wet nurses for upper caste children. I think it’s a good insight into how things used to be and how it still affects how people act now. It’s cruel how Dalit women have been treated, but also heartwarming how their community comes together now as younger generations become interested in the issues of the past.

That’s a lot of text even though I tried to be brief, but I as I warned in the beginning (yes, it was a warning in disguise) like reading news and articles. I have read these news and articles almost every day, and I calculated I’ve used up around 25 hours for it. I think it’s a good way to learn about the genre of journalistic text. English language is also a great portal into the world. It’s the bridge to a lot of content that would remain unattainable especially for someone from a small language such as Finnish.

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almsspring2023 · 1 year

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Weekly Challenges support group

The Weekly Challenges support group provided me with various weekly tasks and a fun range of ways to improve different aspects of my English!

I really wanted more groups but as my time is limited, I decided to pick the Weekly Challenges Group as it was possible to fit around my existing schedule. I think this was the case for many others as well, judging by the introductory posts thread! But more about that in the next paragraph. For now, I wanted to say it was very nice to be able to have a group with at least some level of interaction and support but at the same time for it not to be tied to a time and/or a place. For a busy university student, this kind of thing is a luxury! I have some trouble with carrying out independent work, but this kind of thing where you can choose a task from a list and complete it whenever (within the weekly deadline) was surprisingly fun and painless. It was also interesting as we had to also come up with a challenge every week as well!

I was supremely busy the week this group started, so I did get a bit of a late start as I didn’t notice the first task in time. The first task was to write an introduction on the thread, and to comment on three other people’s introductions, which I did. The introductory post was supposed to contain something about your studies, ALMS goals, and the reason for choosing the group. I never know what to write in these things! My interests even within my studies are pretty varied and hard to pin down, but that’s basically what I wrote, so not very helpful. But that’s the geography student life. It was interesting to read the others’ posts as well, and I did notice many of us picked this group for its flexible hours. But the group members were of many different fields of study and ALMS goals!

First Challenges

I’ll count the first actual challenge as the first one, even if we technically started with the introductions. For my first challenge I posted one about reading the news. I challenged people to read the news in English instead of Finnish and linked a bunch of example sites. I personally read a ton of news daily and I like to browse different sources for global news and different points of view. I do this in a very on-and-off pattern – sometimes I browse more global news in English, sometimes I just read the Finnish sites. Either way, I tried to pick some sites form different sides of the world on my suggested news sites list. It contained 9 different news sites links, mostly Great Britain and U.S. based news outlets, but I did try to get some from different continents as well. Some of these I like to browse myself as well, like Reuters or Al Jazeera International.

For the challenge to complete I picked a vocabulary challenge, for finding some unfamiliar words and writing sentences with those. The person who set the challenge provided a website link with a bunch of academic words, but I was familiar with most of it. I did find a financial term I wasn’t too familiar with and that led me to look up some financial jargon, because why not. Finances aren’t something I know a lot about, vocabulary-wise (or who am I kidding, not in any other way either). I found a lot of words I didn’t really know (in my first language either, for the most part) and wrote a paragraph of five sentences with as many of the more complex words as I could fit in.

Second Challenges

For the second week, I challenged people to have an entire conversation in English. They could either come up with it themselves, or rope in another person to talk to. I did recommend talking it out loud, though. I also added an idea of clicking a random Wikipedia article for the discussion topic, but maybe that was a bit extra.

The challenge I completed was a fun one! It was to click a random coordinates generator and find out the travel instructions to actually get there and write those up. The coordinates the linked site gave me were in the Gulf of Mexico near Veracruz, Mexico. For a short summary, I found out the fastest way to get there is by flying to Mexico City and to go by plane or whichever other method to Veracruz. I also researched Veracruz a bit – a cool-looking place, established in the 1500s. To get to my coordinates far out in the sea, I figured I’d have to hitch a ride on a fishing boat or something.

I also did another challenge this week, which was to play a wordshake game (specifically this one: https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/vocabulary/vocabulary-games/wordshake). In it, the game randomly gives you some letters with which you have to form any words you can come up with. Great for vocabulary training! I got a little bit addicted and played for 40 minutes or so. My best score was 73: the letters I got were very usable, and it was more about running out of time than not coming up with enough words. You can only write so fast when clicking letters!

Third Challenges

The challenge I set for the third week was to choose a song lyric or a poem and try to analyze the meaning or style of it. I also wrote some helpful questions for the pondering. Admittedly it was maybe a bit too complex, as I don’t think anyone picked it.

For this week’s challenge, I picked one that was to watch a movie and write a short review about it. I did watch an entire movie for it, specifically the movie Dog Day Afternoon from 1975. Special mention to the dialogue; it’s great. For the most part it feels very modern and not at all stale, but it’s good to know of some things like the Attica prison riot that is mentioned, a hot topic of the time. The movie is very 1970’s paced compared to modern movies, but it fits it well and it’s an interesting story based on true events. I really like the movie, and I might as well paste my review below:

“I watched the movie Dog Day Afternoon from 1975. Admittedly it was a re-watch, but it's been a while since I saw it the first time. I really like the movie, it has some choice dialogue and a good plot. Al Pacino pulls his role off really well, I'd say it's one of his best movies. It even won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay back in the day. It's based on a true story of a bank robbery in 1972 and the Life magazine article of it. Compared to more recent films it might seem a bit slow-paced as movies from the 70's often comparatively are, but that doesn't bother me whatsoever. It doesn't feel antiquated in its writing at all. I really recommend watching it!”

(I really do!)

Fourth Challenges

For my fourth challenge I went to my loved and hated word game, Semantle (https://semantle.com/). You can play it once a day, but you can also play the previous day’s puzzle if you missed it. There’s a good explanation on the site, but it’s a game where you try to guess a word by semantics, basically by its meaning, by using words that are measured on a hot-or-cold scale how close they are to the key word. I think it’s more understandable by actually going in and doing it. Just start inputting words and go from there. There is a hint-button you can click a couple times – but consider when it’s the most useful, as it’s uses are very limited! This game causes me pain because it’s very hard, but it really makes you think and scour your vocabulary and winning it is great, of course. Sometimes it’s also about luck. A good example is that I played it when I set the challenge, and for the previous days’ puzzle I could not for the life of me guess it even with the help of some synonym sites – I got very close but no dice, with over 150 guesses I could not crack it. Then I tried the next day puzzle and got it in 7 tries, because I happened to start with a useful word. There’s also a Junior version, which is a bit easier.

For the challenge I picked one that was about watching some sports with English commentary. As an ice hockey fan I tend to watch the NHL games at least around it’s the final rounds of the season, but I haven’t watched much lately as my favorite team did not do too well last autumn. I took this as an excuse to catch up on how they’ve been doing and really tried to listen to the commentators, especially. I watched the highlights of a couple of hockey games and actually ended up watching some hockey slang videos as well out of curiosity. While the commentators might say some stuff like “a one-timer” (shooting the puck directly off a pass without playing it) it’s the players who have very specific and fun terminology! Celly is a better-known word and pretty self-explanatory (the celebration after scoring a goal) but if a hockey fan is talking about a player’s flow, they don’t mean the players’ skills but their exceptionally long hair.

And that’s all the challenges I set and completed in period 3! It was fun doing very different things for the group, and a challenge in itself to come up with stuff as well. This group offered a fun spice of variety in my ALMS work. I don’t have much to comment I didn’t touch upon in my summaries above, so I’ll only add the number of hours I took completing these all, which is altogether roughly 11 hours of work added to the pile – including compiling this blog text.

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almsspring2023 · 1 year

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Field Trip support group

I also picked the group where people go places, because changing landscapes prompt different conversations. And I do like to go places sometimes.

I picked this support group as I figured it’d be a good way to practice speaking naturally. Being in different places could organically prompt all kinds of conversations. I was kind of on the fence about this group, since I first had the idea that it’d be expensive for some reason. Pretty soon I found out that wouldn’t be the case, but you could pick where to go instead. I was also afraid it’d be awkward as it’d be just us students, but after visiting a few places, I noticed it’s actually really easy to come up with topics to discuss when there’s all kinds of stuff around!

7.2.

We met for the first time on February 7th. As this was a “kick-start” group, we would only have the one session with a teacher and would have to conduct things on our own after. I hadn’t been in one before, so I was curious to find out how well it’d work out!

When I arrived I noticed the group was pretty big. For a starter we went around introducing ourselves; we talked to each other and had to remember each other’s names, fields of study and an adjective to describe ourselves with. I went with the adjective “tired” as that was my state of existence that day and to be honest, also on many other days. I also have a bad memory, but luckily we were allowed to write people’s names down. So you can bet I did that. Then we were supposed to introduce each other and recite the field of studies and the adjective. Some people had a bit of a problem, as they weren’t sure what their studies were in English. Luckily my field of Geography is very straightforward (at least in name).

The next obstacle was figuring out a way to communicate between the group members. Since everyone already had a ton of Moodle pages, we unanimously decided to communicate by WhatsApp and made a group with everyone in it.

After that, we started to plan our trips. We had sent a lot of ideas and such beforehand, which we then went through. I think a lot of them looked great! There were suggestions of going to museums, cafés, and so on. I particularly liked the idea of campus tours which someone had come up with. It would be fun as we’re mostly only familiar with our “home” campuses, and even going around one’s home turf could be fun. So when we were asked where would we like to go first and no one stepped forward, I suggested that the first tour could be my (and some other folks in the groups’) campus in Kumpula. We agreed to meet there the next week, on the 14th.

14.2.

We met in the geographers’ (among others) building Physicum’s lobby at 17 o’clock. It was a bit later in the day, so places like the campus café weren’t open which was a bit of a shame. But the timeslot was as such so everybody could join.

I think there were five of us there altogether if I’m right. Three of us were geography majors so only two were new to the place, which was pretty funny. But at least there were enough tour guides!

Throughout the tour, we conversed in English only. Besides the surroundings we also talked about our studies and the differences of our campuses while walking between destinations. It was interesting to find out how different our university experiences have been so far!

Obviously we had to start the tour from our home turf, the geography department. We went from there to the geologists’ side and continued to the library, where we walked around. After that we walked through the connecting corridor to Exactum, the mathematicians’ and computer scientists’ building. In there, we climbed up all the floors to the balcony on the roof. That was super cool – I wasn’t aware there was one, and hadn’t been there before. You could really see pretty far, the view was great. It’s apparently used mostly for some technology and horticulture themed research. It being February there was only a few dead plants there, though.

We finished our tour in Chemicum, the chemists’ building across the road. First we had to visit the must-see celebrity of Chemicum, the downstairs drink vending machine. It’s the only one on the campus and only works on select telecommunications providers’ subscriptions, mine not included. I did notice a coin slot on it though, and as we were on the Science Campus, I had to conduct a little experiment. I’m happy to report it worked as it was supposed to and I got a bottle of Coke for my money.

It was around 18 o’clock then, so we decided to conclude our tour there as the campus doors were about to lock up. We did stand around chatting for a while after.

The trip was great for speaking practice. It was nice having people around: if someone didn’t remember a word for something, the others helped. I hope we all learned something new on the meet and I bet it did good for all of ours’ talking skills.

1.3.

The next trip I could attend was on March 3rd. This time we went to visit another campus, the one in Meilahti. There was about to be a bus drivers’ strike, so we were unsure if people could make it. No one spoke up in the group chat in favor or against it and we didn’t know how long the strike would go on for, so we decided to go through with the plan.

We met up at 15 o’clock in front of the psychologists’ building. Either due to the bus strike or overlapping plans only two of us showed up: me and the psychology major whose campus it was. That didn’t matter at all, though! I got a private tour in English of Meilahti Campus, which I had never before visited.

We went around the psychlogists’ building first. It was nice: they had a lot of plants around! It looked clean, sleek and modern and was probably renovated on this side of the millenia, but I got shown around the psychologists’ hang out space in the basement as well, where you could see that the building is older than Physicum in Kumpula. We went through an underground corridor (cool!) into the other building, which housed the campus library and a café that had apparently been closed for a long while already and wasn’t about to open any time soon. That’s weird. The library was very different from the other libraries I’ve seen, as it was more of an open layout. As the downstairs wasn’t as much of a quiet space as the libraries are supposed to be, the noise of conversation carried up onto the level people are supposed to work on. That’d be distracting if I had to work there!

There was one more building a bit further away, with another Unicafe. We went upstairs into a corridor behind which there was a nice, quiet, open space with some chairs. There seemed to be several of these quiet nooks that would be ideal for working in around the different buildings of Meilahti campus. As the library wasn’t as peaceful, it’s good there’s options! In this building there were also a lot of thick gray metal doors that remained closed with all kinds of interesting name plaques on them like “Department of Pathology”. I have to admit I was a bit morbidly intrigued, but alas, those doors remain locked behind restricted access (probably for good reason). A lot more closed doors around the medical students’ space than in my home campus.

As a side note, while it is a hospital area, for some reason there were a lot of fire trucks around. I wondered if that was common, but my tour guide refuted it. Later I came across an article that there had been a fire in the tunnels under one of the hospital buildings. Huh!

As there wasn’t that much to see around and there was the manageable amount of two of us, we decided to go get some coffee after as an excuse to sit around and practice talking a bit more. We didn’t know any cafés nearby, but we went to see the Töölö library as well and noticed a café close by. While on the tour and in the café we talked about all kinds of things, mostly pertaining to current and past studies and also future work life plans. It was good practice for that kind of vocabulary! Especially working-related words will probably be useful in the future, so I’m glad I got a chance to rehearse.

Those were my trips with the group so far! In case there are more, I’ll add to this blog entry.

Honestly this has been really great to naturally train conversing about various subjects in real life. I can’t really come up with a better way to say it. It’s super useful to teach yourself to use the language in practice and helps probably other aspects than speech as well. Probably improves speed of coming up with and actually uttering the words, too. It’s been a fun excuse to see places and to get to know other people from the course!

It's been around 8 hours of work altogether to add to the tally.

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almsspring2023 · 1 year

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Translation support group

This blog post is for a summary of the work I did in the Translation support group over the third period, but I also wanted to write about my love for translating in general (so I did).

Translation is one of the support groups I picked, and I picked it because I really like translating. The thing is, I am really bad at translating. I’m the first to admit I tend to get stuck on useless details or trying to grapple the exact word that captures the vibe of the original when really in translating (and many other things) it’s more productive and useful to take a step back and think of the bigger picture when a problem case arises. And while you can treat translating in a clinical, literal way, specific meanings and such are important to me. Be it a story or an academic paper, I really try to retain the tone of the original. Actually, while the language in academic papers is often more complex, it’s sometimes easier to translate a paper than a story from English to Finnish as you can get away with a lot of anglicisms that do not sound natural otherwise. I have noticed sometimes those really awkward-sounding anglicisms do start to bleed into everyday language – of course mostly from Internet slang. And most originate from the lingua franca of the world, English.

I have mentioned before my memory isn’t great, but I like figuring out the logic behind how a language forms. I am by no means a linguist of any sort, but I know it isn’t an original take to claim that languages form around a culture. Especially in smaller languages the vocabulary isn’t necessarily as grand, but it there are sometimes specific words for the things important to that specific culture (like the numerous words for snow in Finnish that are hard to figure out in English). English, being a massive language used in so many countries around the world even natively, is harder to pinpoint. But I feel like through purposefully translating a text you get to know the core of the words and the meaning and as a byproduct, the culture. American texts differ from Irish ones and an agricultural paper differs from a fairy tale.

I’m no good when it comes to grammar terminology and I go off intuition rather than deep-seated knowledge more than I’d like to admit, but to me translating isn’t as much about getting exact results as it is understanding and capturing the vibe of the original language. Most importantly, through translation I learn more about how a language forms and the culture that has shaped it in a way no other compares to.

That was a bit of a mess, but hopefully my point came through. Onto the actual group report. We met once a week for 1,5 hours at a time. On top of that there’s the hours for the translation work.

1.2.

This was the first support group to start for me – even before the first counseling! I noticed we have a small group, not that it matters. It’s actually nice to have more time for each and everyone’s work. We decided we’d translate both from English to Finnish and Finnish to English and would choose texts weekly to translate for the next meeting, one formal and one informal text. Formal texts include academic papers and more difficult articles, and informal texts any easier news articles and fiction, for example.

Besides going through the practicalities of the group we did some quick translating exercises during the one-and-a-half hours’ duration of the meet. Besides reading and translating some news from English we translated an article of your choice from Finnish, which to me was the most fun and challenging part. I translated a short bit about flight arrivals from China and the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health’s guidance about it. It was a very challenging bit, including the fact it had the word “ohjauskirje” which I chose to translate as a directive but might just be a directive letter or more probably a guidance letter. It is, however, very much legal or political lingo and I am not familiar enough with the details to determine how that should be translated; literally or via the context of being a guide on how to act for all operatives. For a short little thing this was a very difficult task, but it’s nice to challenge yourself!

8.2.

On the next meet we went through the texts we had translated on our free time. The texts chosen by two of the other group members were a news article from Yle about a library for the informal and a theology paper for the formal. I didn’t have too much time for translating that week so the passages I translated aren’t too long, but I used up an hour for them. Translating is slow! Especially the English-language theology paper was a challenge as I am not familiar with the field. I usually do my translations by first doing a pass on how I’d translate it, then maybe checking a few words on a translating site or an online dictionary and fixing (or not fixing) the sentence how I see fit. A lot of very specific words are kind of hard to translate, though.

Craziest word I picked was definitely the word incarnational translated to ruumiillistunut – completely wrong, by the way. I had an insane thought process moment when I didn’t know how to translate it exactly especially in the context of academia so in my mind I went to the Latin roots of the word – in carnis, which means basically something like “in the flesh”. I don’t know Latin, by the way, that just was something I happened to know. For the record, in this context the word secular is the correct one for ruumiillistunut (or maallistunut, as the official translation) and this word would be translated probably as inkarnaationaalinen. It was an interesting discussion though, and I’m still wondering how I ended up in ruumiillistunut in the first place.

15.2.

For the next week our texts were an English paper on temperament and my prompt, which was to pick a book you like off your shelf and translate a passage. I chose the book Alamut by Vladimir Bartol since I borrowed it from the library a few days prior and was in the process of reading it. It’s a 1938 fictional book written by a Slovenian man on the Middle Ages’ religious extremists of the Middle East. It’s also a commentary on the fascism of the times the author lived in. Very interesting, hope I’ll manage to finish it among all the course work I have! It’s actually a shame I found it in Finnish, as I could’ve read it in English for this course. Oh well, I doubt I’d have found an English copy easily, since while it is a classic in Slovenian literature it’s not as much of a worldwide staple.

I translated a passage from the second chapter, where the protagonist arrives in Alamut, the titular fort hidden in the mountains. It was an interesting passage to translate, as it was written a bit fairytale-ish to convey the magical feeling of a poor boy walking into that sort of glorious sight. There was a lot of repetition of words. It was funny to compare that to my group members’ text of Ronja Ryövärintytär, a kids’ book, which had similar patterns of repeated words. I chose to use different words for “linnoitus” in my translation (citadel, fortress, fort) but as we discussed it with the group instructor Gráinne it kind of gives the impression of them all being different places, so probably shouldn’t do that. Good practice nonetheless!

For the academical paper I chose a very Medieval passage as well, completely by accident. It was about the four temperaments by the teachings of Galen from second century A.D., which I found interesting. It had a lot of difficult words and some which I knew no translation app would translate correctly; the concepts of the four humors, sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic. For these kinds of established concepts my pro tip is to look them up on Wikipedia and switch the language of the article for more accurate translations. This also works for other non-literal translations such as different government bodies or foods specific to a culture – ham temptation is actually ham casserole. Humor in this case isn’t huumori but humoraali. I also had to think a lot on how to translate the dates and writing the full passage required a lot of switching sentence structure around. Altogether the translations took about two hours.

1.3.

We had no meet-up on February 22. As it happens we only got an informal text to translate as the formal text was supposed to be sent In by someone who possibly dropped the group early on. But for the next week, we got a formal text only, so it kind of balanced out. For these two texts I chose the song lyrics posted and for the formal text was a paper on postwar studies of antisemitism in Finland of which I translated the introduction passage.

The lyrics were definitely a challenge. Besides me, one other group member had translated the same lyrics, so we compared them side by side. It was really interesting to compare our translations as she was very familiar with the song (she had picked it) and I was very much not. As she had listened to the song a lot before, she chose to translate some unclear parts of it as she had understood the meaning of the lyrics. My relationship with this song is more fleeting in nature as I’ve never even heard it to this day – maybe I should listen to it. A good example of this is the phrase “rauha kodittoman tähdenlennon ajan” which I interpreted as the shooting star being homeless, but she (more correctly) interpreted is as a homeless having a moment’s peace. When you go very poetic, these things are often up for interpretation. I tried to stay to the length of the original in my translations and also chose more lyrical words more often than not if it sounded prettier to me. I think both of our translations had good parts and a bit clumsier parts, and for the best result should be combined.

I haven’t talked much about others’ texts as they might talk about those themselves, but I really want to mention the interesting discussion we had on some other chosen lyrics. One person’s song had the line “sen voi laittaa palamaan”, which seems simple but we couldn’t decide on the best way to translate it. To let it burn is maybe right, but it’s very passive compared to the original. If you translate it as it can be lit on fire, it doesn’t include the burning itself. Neither of the options is very far off, but I think that’s a good example of a vibe conundrum.

Another person had the lyric “ei paineta leukaa rintaan ennen ku kasvetaan viljaa” interpretation of which we discussed. It’s funny how “ei paineta leukaa rintaan”, a line about glum dejectedness, is more of a “keep your chin up” in English. We also figured the “kasvetaan viljaa” is a pushing daisies -sort of metaphor: in English there’s pretty flowers on your grave, but in Finnish it’s just some crops. It’s not a common metaphor in Finnish though, I’ve never heard it before.

Translating lyrics is definitely its own kind of a hurdle, and a fun experience. The lyric translation took more time than I thought it would and I didn’t have the time to finish my formal text translation completely. I did finish the last short bit of it during the meet-up though. This was a translation of a Finnish-written English-language article, which I feel like is a bit simpler in general. It was pretty straight-forward, but there was some swapping of sentences around here as well. I think the biggest issue we had was with “set the stage”, which in this case was kind of a “form a basis” -type word but as a phrase, the meaning of “set the stage” is VERY dependent of context. Together, we looked up some ways of translating it; some sites have good example sentences. Every single one was different and none exactly applicable to this sentence in particular. I think we came up with some good alternatives, though.

This was our last meeting, and I’m a bit sad. I think we got some cool stuff done and I really learned a lot. It was so nice having a small group as we had the time to go through the texts and have thorough discussions. Not all-encompassing, though – that would have taken at least 1.5 hours per person! I recommend at least some translating for everyone looking to improve their English, even if joining the support group isn't possible. I feel like I got a lot out of it.

We did upload texts for the last time, too ( – my turn to pick the formal text!), but I haven’t yet had the time to translate those. I’ll update this blog if I do! Overall, it was a good 15 hours of work altogether (including the time I took to write this blog)!

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almsspring2023 · 1 year

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Creative Writing support group

This post is about what I did in the Creative Writing support group (and why I picked it).

One of my support groups of choice was Creative Writing. The support group started on February 7th and was held via Zoom. I picked this group as I’ve always enjoyed writing original texts but haven’t really done any for years now. I’m not talented at all or even any good, but it’s a fun way to work your brain. I like coming up with new worlds and stories but also writing about all kinds of issues; political, cultural, and so on. I’ve always liked text as a medium in its various forms and genres and I hope to improve my writing.

7.2.

We met over Zoom and learned about what the group would entail. We did some short introductory creative writing exercises, which were a lot of fun.

We started by writing about why we joined this group – for me, it’s because of the reasons mentioned in the beginning. I’d like to write some more and flex my writing muscles! It being creative writing in particular is more motivational for me. We wrote short prompts after; writing different little blurbs of text in a chosen style, like an introduction in a personal ad style and thoughts on personal English skills in the style of a diary (for fun, I chose a historical style of writing a diary entry). We also came up with some ideas for what to do in the group on the next time, like getting prompts from a word randomizer and so on.

The writing exercises were nice, as the short time period really let me write. It tends to be a bit hard for me to focus and really get started, and even when I do, I get distracted super easily. I’m really slow not in technique but in practice. While a text written in just a handful of minutes will rarely be anything profound it’s nice to get something done and a short existing text gives more concrete idea to where to go from there. I’m also noticing that even if the first task is a bit difficult, the sequential ones are a bit easier when the writing brain really gets going. I hope we’ll have more of these writing tasks!

21.2.

There was a long break before the next meeting, and we communicated only a bit through the Telegram group we established with the group A I was assigned into. I did a few of the exercises listed on the Moodle page but was a bit busy so I didn’t have time beforehand to write anything more complex to evaluate, unfortunately.

During the meeting we did a writing task with a random prompt generator. We got some random picture dice, based on which we had to write a short piece within a time limit of 10 minutes. It was kind of interesting that most people’s minds (including me) went to an American diner – one of the prompt images was a car and another was a burger (which did have an U.S. flag on it). I wrote about a British lady who had eaten a bad burger while abroad in America. When time is short, you kind of have to go with one of your first ideas and the end result usually isn’t too spectacular. Mine certainly wasn’t. But it was fun to produce some writing, and these kind of prompts and limitations really drive you to do it! For the next attempt, we had 5 minutes more and as the prompt dice included playing cards and a car, I wrote about a regretful gambler watching cars pass by. While this time I don’t think everyone’s stories were as much alike, several people (like me) had combined the two food-related prompts of a banana and ice cream into banana ice cream. Two birds with one stone, and all that.

Before we concluded for the day, we decided if we would have one moor meet-up: pretty much everyone thought it’d be nice, so we agreed to meet next week as well. We also got a list of writing prompts to pick from for the next time. I chose the prompt to write a telephone call dialogue. To be honest, I didn’t feel particularly inspired, and it wasn’t anything special, but at least I got it done! It did make me think of how a conversation in English is built and keeping the flow natural sounding. I also did a few of the other tasks by myself, like came up with a character and what they’re like, and then checked out some of the linked sites. I did also find my own links to post: my first link was for an article about creative writing under pressure or time constraints and the second one was not a link, but a general tip for writers on how to find information on all kinds of subjects (that is, to add “tips for writers” or something similar to your Google search).

28.2.

Our final meeting was on the next week’s Tuesday. We were supposed to have a piece of text to bring for show, but most people didn’t have anything, so we skipped that part. I did actually translate and edit an old poem I wrote years ago in Finnish but didn’t get to use it. I am not bummed though, it’s kind of embarrassing to show anything old and crappy like that to people…

The first task was to do “constrained writing”. What that entailed was to choose a sentence, then write a text with each of the words of the sentence being a start of the new one. A bit hard to explain, but an example would be, if the subject sentence was “he was fine”, you’d start the first sentence with the word “he”, second “was”, et cetera. I used a random sentence generator for my prompt sentence and just picked the first one. Some of the words were a challenge to start a sentence with! I think I managed somehow, even if I’m not sure it all was grammatically right.

For the next exercise we chose a prompt from the same prompt list as the task was the previous week with a few new prompts added. We had 15 minutes to write this time. I thought about writing a poem about the view from my window, but ultimately ended up writing a short manifesto about religion for the prompt “What if there was no religion?”. I found it really fun and very good for vocabulary usage, as I got to use several less common words and weird sentence structures. It’s impossible for me to write a long text or really anything “complete” in that time, but it was a work the end result of I was okay with – which for me is pretty rare!

For the last task we wrote lyric replacements. The song was NIB by Black Sabbath, and we had the beginning to “edit”. The exercise was to replace every other line with your own, and for a more difficult challenge, make the lyrics rhyme like the original do. I of course went for it. It was very fun, even if the short time limit forced me to go with the first thing I came up with. I’m still very, uhm, proud of the lyric I wrote to rhyme with the word real: “unlike an orange my love’s a banana to peel”. The deep symbolism here is obviously that unlike a messy orange, bananas are very easy and convenient to peel. How profound. 😂

Final thoughts:

The group was a ton of fun and I think really good exercise for developing writing and creativity (and creativity in English!). It’s a good test for vocabulary to do these kinds of little tasks as we did on the meetings. Discussing them with others in the groups was nice and the teacher was helpful too. Maybe there could've been some more meet-ups – I think a lot of us were busy or a bit lost on our free time. The meetings were really great, though. Robert was very encouraging and gave good feedback and also shared his writing. That was great as he’s a native speaker. The tasks weren’t anything I would’ve come up with on my own, so it was nice to write something “unexpected” especially as I hadn’t written much in a long time. I also got a lot of good tips for future endeavors! I think it all gave me perspective and made me more courageous towards writing. Altogether I did 9 hours worth of work for this group.

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almsspring2023 · 1 year

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Bertrand Russell (but in an accent)

I chose to listen to a book and it had its challenges (not all the kind of challenges I was expecting).

I’ve been interested in philosophy for as long as I remember but the bane of my budding philosopher’s career is my bad memory (especially when it comes to names, which seem to be very relevant especially in this field). Defying that I chose to listen to an audio recording of a Bertrand Russell classic “The Problems of Philosophy” from 1912. It being published so long ago means it’s free for public domain and to my delight I easily found a reading of it on YouTube. The link to it is below if you want to listen to it yourself or if you want to check what I’m talking about in this blog text.

I’ve listened to some audiobooks in my time but this one is unique in that it’s compiled of people volunteering to read it. What I didn’t realize at first is that almost every chapter the reader is different. The first chapter is read by a man with what I presume to be a generic American accent. He was easy enough to understand, and the recording is of good quality. But on the next chapter the reader is a woman with heavily Indian accented English and the recording quality isn’t as great. It wasn’t too bad though; she speaks clearly enough. This was true for the rest of the chapters as well – sometimes I did have to go back and listen to a part again if it was unclear, but that’s okay.

The text itself isn’t the easiest and has stuff like some abstract concepts established in it such as “sense data” and “universals”, but it was definitely very understandable. One must actually think to internalize the content. It really doesn’t seem like it was written more than 110 years ago, the philosophical conundrums are very timeless.

My biggest challenge was with one of the readers. It wasn’t even a non-native accent but the extremely thick Southern US accent that the reader of chapter 11 has. His stress and emphasis on the words sounds bizarre to me as well. I don't know if it is because I'm not used to his sort of accent or because he's not the best reader. I had to rewind the recording constantly and I still probably didn’t get all that he was saying.

Overall, it was a good 4-hour listen. Good for complex philosophical thoughts and good for accent listening practice. While a smidge of the content was familiar to me from previous tentative forays into the vast domains of philosophy, I’ve never read this book before. It gave me a lot of new perspective and concepts to think about and was a good introduction into the core of philosophy. I can see why “The Problems of Philosophy” is considered fundamental. I think this was great practice for my English as well. I didn’t manage to finish the entire book as it is almost 5 hours, but I’ll update this blog post in case I manage to do that.

youtube

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