Dear colleagues!

Unfortunately I missed class last week... Could anybody please inform me about the content of last week's session?

Thank you!!!!! :)

This week's class was quite interesting for me. As we discussed about proposals and also revised our's with a partner, I've been able to address some problems I have with my paper myself. I realised that my proposal was far too descriptive. Therefore I have to narrow down my research question and try to rephrase it to one significant statement. Furthermore I have to modify the subject itself because the way it is now it will go beyond the scope of the paper. I hope that defining the outlines will help me with this task.

I'm also a bit worried about the literature about my topic (destiny of small wrested islands and their role in today's politics, economy and culture) --> by the way; i have to reword my title...
I thought I was analysing the topic by looking closer at the following islands/island groups:
- The Falkmann Islands
- Senkaku Islands
- Alhucemas

But anyway, we'll see :)

I have been writing in English for about 14 years now during which time my skills have improved a lot. Nevertheless I feel like 14 years should have had a greater impact. Although I try to apply what I have been taught, in some ways it seems like I am still struggling like a beginner.
My greatest weakness in my opinion is my tendency to construct English sentences in a German way. For example I often use multi-clause sentences in my first drafts. Then I have to review the written text again and again and make corrections, which is not only frustrating but also very time consuming. Furthermore I urgently have to improve my thesaurus. When communicating, whether in a formal or informal way, I make use of the vocabulary I know by heart. Most of the time I build the phrases I use around the terms I am familiar with; just true to the motto ?the message is what counts?. However I would really love to be able to write down my thoughts exactly like they go through my head. What happens now whenever I attempt to write more sophisticated is that I spend an eternity checking dictionaries for the perfect wording. This is again very frustrating and time consuming.
When it comes to the content of written texts I usually do not have problems structuring a draft or shaping a goal. What challenges me is to explain how and why I set up a structure and goals like these and sometimes I even completely forget about this paragraph. Furthermore I have concerns about me loosing myself over details. When writing a paper, I have pretty often caught myself ex-plaining side issues very much in depth and consequently losing the focus over what is actually im-portant or what I wanted to say.
As a last point I have to admit that I have severe problems using the right punctuation, especially in question of commas.
Summing up I would like to improve my sentence construction and wording skills in the course of this semester. At the end of it, I would like to be able to write an academic text as fluent and natural as I do in German. I hope that I can develop the necessary feeling for the English language so that when it comes to writing my master theses, I will not spend more time on reviewing and correcting the text than on actually writing it.