Enjoy the day:)

I will be there at 12:10. after Science Methodology.



Best
Agron

I am sorry I can not take part in lecture today because I had difficulty getting to Tartu from southern states. I will be in place in last lecture.
With best,
Lilian F.

Sorry, absent today

Morning!

I was out of office on Friday and meanwhile there has been made an appointment of a new meeting for today and some things to do ASAP.
I'm so sorry that I cann't participate in your mini-lectures today:(

kind regards,
Katrin

Do you know Goldilocks effect or principle?

I didn't! It had something to do with making ghee at home and stopping heating in the right time. I tried to translate and got 'Kuldkiharake' and then wikipedia helped: “The Goldilocks principle states that something must fall within certain margins, as opposed to reaching extremes. When the effects of the principle are observed, it is known as the Goldilocks effect.

The Goldilocks principle is derived from a children's story "The Three Bears" in which a little girl named Goldilocks finds a house owned by three bears. Each bear has their own preference of food, beds, etc. After testing each of the three items, Goldilocks determines that one of them is always too much in one extreme (too hot, too large, etc.), one is too much in the opposite extreme (too cold, too small, etc.), and one is "just right".^[1]

It is applied across many disciplines, particularly developmental psychology, biology,^[2] economics and engineering.”

thanks - it sure is! (useful). One more useful thing - http://languagemethod.blogspot.com/ about learning (several) languages.

About presentations

I'm sorry I've missed two classes:(
But I really did some work:)
As many of you might know, we have some delegates from Asia here this week. As my friend David is the boss of this event, he kindly asked me to talk about some things. So I had two presentations today - one about the Bologna process and one about master studies in our university. And I survived.
To be honest - I had to translate some words into Russian, because not all of them understood me (it could be the reason I was so popular:))
Doing the presentations was really hard because - as always - my topics are quite boring. And I must say I knew only a little about the Bologna process (thank God for the internet). But my lack of knowledge was inversely proportional with their lack of English, so I survived.

But this isn't all - I can't come to the lecture next time either, because I'm going to Kaunas to do some e-learning work for Bova. If this helps me as a bad student anyhow, I must say I have to talk and WRITE in English there. The last part is awful of course. Happily we have some people who should  write better than I (or should I write me in this sentence? I know if I say for example my brother and I then it's definitely I). - It's about formal and informal use. A story from Oleg Mutt, my beloved lecturer from the 80s: A little boy was standing in front of the mirror and saying: "It's me, it's me!" - like the kids do. His grandma felt she needed to pay attention to grammar, and corrected him: "It's I, Johnny!". The boy thought a little, looked at his reflection and replied: "It may be I, but it looks very much like me!" - U
here it's: people who write better than I do.

As I can see you worked with tongue twisters. I know the one which I never learn: Unique New York. And the hard one is of course A cheap ship (trip).
I found 1st International Collection of Tongue Twisters (http://www.uebersetzung.at/twister/index.htm). Estonian ones a great also:)

I wish all the best for you and I'm really sorry not to hear your lectures. I miss all the good words (like pelvis) and this is the worst of missing classes.

Lilian

Hi prof Ursula,


I am writing to let you know that on Monday starting at 08:00 - 12:00 I will have a seminar on Science Methodology. So in order to avoid  overlapping of lectures of  different subjects, I will not attend the course of academic English this time. However I will attend English for specific purposes which starts at 14:00.


Best

Agron Idrizaj

Thanks for letting us know, Agron! - U (no prof, though, unfortunately :) ).

Some more tongue twisters

Hi,

some tongue twisters can be found there:
http://www.alphadictionary.com/fun/tongue-twisters/english_tongue_twisters.html

Classics from the abovementioned page:
"Three sweet switched Swiss witches watch three washed Swiss witch Swatch watch switches. Which sweet switched Swiss witch watches which washed Swiss witch Swatch watch switch?"

not very PC version from Internet:

English for beginners: "Three witches watch three Swatch watches. Which witch watches which Swatch watch?"

Advanced English: "Three switched witches watch three Swatch watch switches. Which switched witch watches which Swatch watch switch?"

English for experts: "Three swiss witch-bitches, who wish to be switched swiss witch-bitches, wish to watch three swiss Swatch watch switches. Which swiss witch - who wishes to be a switched swiss witch - wishes to watch which swiss Swatch watch switch?"

The Body (interactive)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/

http://americanfolklore.net/folklore/2010/07/hard_tongue_twisters.html

Tongue Twisters

Two toads totally tired of trying to trot to Tetbury.

A tutor who tooted the flute
tried to tutor two tooters to toot.
Said the two to their tutor:
"Is it harder to toot,
Or to tutor two tooters to toot?"

Which switch, Miss, is the right switch for Ipswich, Miss?

While we were walking, we were watching window washers wash Washington's windows with warm washing water.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where's the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?

we very much want vera well

She sells seashells on the seashore
The shells she sells are seashells, I'm sure
So if she sells seashells on the seashore
Then I'm sure she sells seashore shells.

Pronunciation: Eggs!

Off-topic: I fell in love...

... Hans Rosling's presentations!
Now I understood the magic of former TED presentations. If you have your 9 minutes, take your lunch coffee and look, for instance, this http://www.gapminder.org/videos/hans-rosling-and-the-magic-washing-machine/.
I also found another one with a great cardboard box trick at the end - http://www.gapminder.org/videos/religions-and-babies/

Our home page

Esta´s statistical analysis

 The purpose of the questionnaire was the assessment of the homepage of the Estonian University of Life Sciences in English. As there were few answers (9), it was no possible to make statistical analysis. About third of respondents found out, that the homepage of EMU is not logical, but generally understandable. The layout of the page is quite good (44%  answers).

The biggest problem of the homepage is information finding, e.g. contacts of workers and timetables, what 66% of people could not find. Some respondents want to read rector’s blog too, although 56% [of them] distrust it.       

Questionnaire analysis, Piret

I had 4 answers to my questionnaire. That is not very much to tell anything about statistical significance. Still I may conclude that people generally like EMU homepage, the English version of it. 75% of the answers stated that they didn`t find the timetable of the Vet. Med PhD. students. And people find it generally more difficult rather than easy to find any desired information about their home institute. The information about the existence of the EMU homepage was found from very different sources: from friends, from institutes secretary, from tutors. Who should actually inform people about it and how to use it?

AA Meelis

Questionnaire analysis

I got six responses for my questionnaire, most of them instantly after posting the questionnaire. Repliers believe that it was quite easy to find the webpage of IVMAS. 67% of answerers believe that this was easy because they already knew what they were looking for. Everybody knows that veterinary studies in Tartu started in 1848, and 67% of answerers know who the present director of IVMAS is. A bigger variation of answers I got for questions connected with information connected with the IVMAS webpage. I can guess that bigger variations at least answer for one question was due to confused webpage and two others because of need for deeper search.

Alisa's report about statistics

As my questionnaire results were lost in the eternal space of world web, I used someone else’s results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dENLRU1MUFMyQnZDRnRibUhWZ2pDVEE6MQ#gid=0

Sorry about that J

Describing results I assume that the number of respondents is representative for at least our class audience.

More than a half of the respondents found the logic of the homepage bearable and nearly 40% decided it to be "not at all" logical. None of the respondents considered the homepage to be logical, so there’s clearly the problem with the structure.

Never the less, the respondents did think of the page layout as bearable (63%) or even good (38%) with no scores for the “Bad” option. Posts of the homepage seem to be understandable for most of the audience, though not always for the nearly 2/3.

One particular problem of the homepage is finding the needed information. Half of the respondents admitted having problems with staff contacts search, and only 13% agreed that there was nothing they could not find.

As for the rector’s blog, only 1/4 of the audience doesn't feel the need for it, although half of the respondents are not sure.