Stream of Consciousness: Christmas

I’ll be home for Christmas. Such a beautiful song. Christmas is my favorite season. I love the smell of Christmas ~ with cookies fresh from the oven, mistletoe and evergreen. Even cities seem to like Christmas. Blinking lights and happy faces can be seen walking down the streets, stores play music which reminds people of their childhood ~ and the cold weather?! It seems to be eternally connected to Christmas. It’s acceptable in this season because it helps to transmit the feeling of coziness. It blushes your cheeks, makes people snuggle up to each other, draws people closer together. Even tea and hot cocoa and Glühwein taste tons better during this cold time of the year. And the candles… Can’t forget the candles. They help to make Christmas memorable. Such a warm light that warms your heart. Red candles are the prettiest at this time. Red and green are such beautiful Christmas colors. They harmonize so well together. Combine red with white and you’ll get yummy candy canes. So pretty and so tasteful. ~ But their meaning so sad… Red the color of Jesus’ blood. A reminder of the Holy Child which suffered so much. Christmas is the time the Savior was born. Born to save us. All people. So Christmas is a happy time. A time in which families come together, give each other presents, enjoy delicious food. A time in which people come to peace with things that may bother them.

Thoughts on today's class topic: Emotions and Words

• Emotions influence our writing and the way we interpret written material.
• Words can create certain images. These images, though, can differ depending on the person.
• Favourite word:
• Sounds, associations etc. of words are also stored in our mental lexicon.
• Favourite word: 

• All these associations are linked to our mental lexicon.
• These associations influence how we perceive written words.

What is good writing?

What is good writing?! Is it merely a piece of writing that is understandable to every reader capable of comprehending the language the piece is written in? Or are there more aspects a writer has to consider in order to produce something worth reading? The following will briefly discuss three topics a good writer should think about.

            First, writers should always consider their readership. It is important to think about, for instance, the age, the profession, the educational background or sometimes even the sex of the intended readers. If you are writing a book for children, your language will differ than that in a text you would write for colleagues or academic journals. Having a specific readership in mind will help you in the process of writing.

            Secondly, good writers should structure their pieces of writing appropriately. Depending on your readership and on your intentions for your writing, you are able to choose from a vast amount of possible text structures. You can write a poem, an essay, a newspaper article and much more.

            Thirdly, good writers always have to think about their choice of words. You have to choose the right amount of variety or maybe even repetition, the right precision and the right register. The choices you make also depend on your readership and your intentions. A speech, for example, might need a large amount of repetition to help you make your position clear to your audience.

            Summarizing, it is important to know that there are numerous aspects that make writing good writing. These aspects should be taken into consideration when you start to put language down on paper. They may assist and guide you during your writing process. In addition, they may give you the possibility to produce a text that your readership will enjoy to read and you enjoyed to write.

English?!

Travelling back and forth between the United States of America and Germany comes as naturally to me as breathing because I grew up speaking two languages (English and German) on a daily basis and owning two passports – one from each country. As my mom comes from a small town roughly ninety miles south from Chicago, USA, my siblings and I used to spend almost every summer holiday visiting our grandparents and aunt in Pontiac and Chicago, IL. Although I have lived in Germany for most of my life, I also call the United States my home for many reasons: as a little girl I loved my American Cabbage Patch Doll and Froot Loops, at sixteen I got my driver’s license in Pontiac, at seventeen I graduated from Wheaton North High School and at twenty-one I spent one year working at a Mexican restaurant in Wheaton while visiting the College of DuPage.

When my friends are asked to describe me, they always say that I am the crazy American-German, who loves kitsch, speaks Denglish and wears red, white and blue on the 4^th of July. So, I guess, when it came to choosing the subjects I wanted to teach, it was obvious that English would be one of them and, as a pediatric nurse, Biology would be the other. Since money is tight when you go to school, I tutor 7^th graders in English and Math to earn some extra money to spend. I really enjoy this “job” because I like to work with children and I learn, by experience, what it is like to teach them.

For the future, I would like to improve my English skills while I am still going to school myself. I believe that one of my weaknesses in English is due to the fact that I grew up bilingually. As I understand and speak both languages quite fluently, I sometimes, for instance, overlook Germanisms in my own or in other people’s essays because the phrases or words make sense to me. However, my weakness is probably also my strength; speaking German and English, almost native-like, is a huge advantage and I am proud that my mother had the stamina to teach her children two languages at the same time although she was faced with a great deal of prejudice in the 1980’s.