Letter of advice

Hello everyone,

I have had so many experiences at the university so far. During the last few months, I shared my progress in English on my blog and I really hope that all of you enjoyed reading my blog. Now it is time to write a letter of advice to next year’s students about my experiences so far, and I want to give you some advice to make certain things better as I did. I will also give you some advice about how you can prepare yourself a bit when you are going to study IB&M next year.

Before I came to university I was a little scared that my English would not be good enough because at university it is not anymore common English, but a lot of professional specific economic language. Therefore, I was a little bit insecure about my English level at that moment. One of the reasons why I chose for the study IB&M, is because I wanted to improve my English. I wanted to speak more fluently English and I wanted to enlarge my vocabulary and especially my academic vocabulary. I experiences that my English has improved a lot since I am studying at university. During the first tutorials for example I was scared that what I wanted to say was not formulated well, and so I chose to be silent. But other people said things that were either formulated perfect, and everyone understood what they were saying. Therefore, I decided to speak out loud too, even though it was not always perfect English. From that point, I really improved my English and because of all the practicing, my English is now on a higher level than beforehand. So, an advice I want to give to next year’s students is that you should dare to speak up from the beginning, and then you will see that your English improves every day. And then you also get used to the English language and then your study will be more easy for you.

Furthermore, you can prepare yourself by watching English movies without subtitles. With doing that, you can enlarge your vocabulary. And although there is not a lot of academic vocabulary in those movies, you will see that your vocabulary enlarges, and you can make good use of that next year! Another good thing to do before you go to university is to read a lot of English books, because that will help you to read your study books faster. You have to read one book every eight weeks for every course at university. This is a lot, don’t underestimate this! You can prepare for this by reading a lot of English books beforehand.

To conclude with, I want to say: Don’t hesitate just do it! Good luck to you all with the next year!

Regards, Floor

Leatty

Hello everyone!

Last week we had to write an assessment report to the board of directors of Leatty.  Leatty, a major property developer, has already been involved in several projects in China. The company's latest project is in Shanghai. The project is over budget and behind schedule and they faced several other problems. Before the Christmas break, Bernd Heimann and I (project sponsors of the senior management), had a meeting with the project managers to discuss these problems, and devise a new strategy for Leatty. Below you can read my assessment report to see what we discussed.

                                                                 ASSESSMENT REPORT

To:                                           Board of directors of Leatty         

From:                                     Floor Vasse (Project sponsor of the senior management)

Date:                                       5 July 2011

Subject:                                 Assessment report: Devise a strategy to rescue the project

Introduction

On 30 June, the project manager and project sponsor hold a meeting. They discussed the problems

and devised a new strategy to rescue the project in Shanghai. The project is 16 per cent over budget

and two months behind schedule. We urgently need to rescue the troubled project.  We have agreed on

the following plan of action for a new strategy to rescue the project.

Internet-based application

To begin with, we want everyone to use our Internet-based application. This is important, because

then  everyone can collaborate and manage their projects more efficiently. The problem is that some

people are not familiar with this software. Therefore, we want to provide them with a training, where

they will get instructions about how to use this software. With this we want to involve every employee

in this application.

Common goal, communication, working practices

Secondly, we suggest another meeting time, namely, 7 o’clock in Toronto, 13 o’clock in Berlin and 19 o’clock in Shanghai. We think that this meeting time, is better for everyone. With this, we want to improve the communication. Furthermore, we propose to have one get together a year, because it is important to have face-to-face communication. This makes it easier to exchange information and solve problems. Due to poor communication, there is no real sense of working towards a common goal. Therefore, we want to introduce a bonus system. If the company reaches the deadline, they will get a reward for that. We want to improve working practices by having more engineers to reduce the work.

Neutral coordinator

Finally, we want to create a safe atmosphere in the project by introducing a neutral coordinator, so that team members will talk openly about problems and risks. We suggest to introduce one coordinator per country, and they have to report to each other and work together.

Conclusion and recommendations

All in all, we need to improve our communication and we need to clearly set goals for everyone. There has to be a common goal, so that everyone gets involved in the project. By face-to-face communication and another meeting time, we can improve communication. We firmly believe that these improvements are core in the new strategy to rescue the project.

We look forward to your reaction.

Floor Vasse

Project sponsor of the senior management

This was my assessment report, enjoy the rest of your day!

Regards, Floor

Do you speak English?

I found a funny video about speaking English on the internet, which I want to share with you. The reason why I want to share this video with you, is because my blog is about improving my English, and this is a funny video about speaking English. Enjoy!

Happy new year!

Hello everybody,
First of all, I wish you all a very happy new year! I know that I am a little late with that, but I have had a really busy, but nice vacation! I spent christmas with my family, I really enjoyed it. I spent new years eve with my friends, which was a really cool party. Tomorrow I am going back to reality, because then the vacation is over, and I am going to university for the first day this year. In about a week, we have to present our Language Learning Blog, I hope that it will go well, because I have spent a lot of time to this blog. Furthermore, I want to provide you with the link of a blog of a friend of mine, who has also a Language Learning Blog: http://merylslearningjourney.wordpress.com/ Maybe it is a nice idea to compare our blogs to see differences or similarities.
Finally, I want to share a video with you, which I found on the internet yesterday and I think it is an awesome video. It is a cover of the song "Somebody that I used to know". I hope you enjoy this video.

Regards, Floor

Graded pair presentation

Hello everyone,Yesterday I had my graded pair presentation for the English I course, together with Meryl. For our presentation, we had to choose between three of the case studies we did this year. We could choose between Hazel, Erstaunliche or Audio Wire. We chose to do our presentation about Hazel, because that was the case study we liked most. We were members of the senior management team at Hazel. Based on the SWOT analysis we carried out earlier this year, we were presenting our proposals for a strategic new vision to the new CEO of Hazel and its board of directors.We both think that the presentation went pretty well, we were satisfied with the result, although we were very nervous. Below you can find our Powerpoint Presentation, including our new website, which I think is really nice! Enjoy our Powerpoint Presentation and the rest of your day!Regards, Floor

Press Release Hazel

Hello everybody!
In my last blog I talked about Hazel and the presentation we had to do about it last week. We also had to write a Product Launch Press Release individually. The aim of the Product Launch Press Release is to inform the media about our new product, namely, HAZEL SILK TOUCH. Below you can find my Product Launch Press Release.
Kind Regards, Floor

PRESS INFORMATION

GRONINGEN, THE NETHERLANDS, November 28, 2011

NEW PRODUCT FOR HAZEL

Hazel Cosmetics has announced the launch of a new website where you can order products directly. The website redesign includes a new logo, face and advertising campaign. Furthermore, Hazel has also focused on a new supply chain for global expansion as well as implementing a limited product range, but improved and eco-friendly quality.

“With our new product, the HAZEL SILK TOUCH, we are setting the new standards for skin care,” said Bernd Heimann, CEO of Hazel. “Thanks to HAZEL SILK TOUCH, the ecoconscious young women of today will be able to experience a unique, high quality product which gives them the chance to simultaneously preserve their own skin and the environment.”

One of the key new features is HAZEL SILK TOUCH. It is an innovation that provides young women and teenagers with high quality make-up products while preserving their skin and the environment because of the recyclable container. With this product you will get a natural look and we are setting the new standards of cosmetics products. Furthermore, we will launch a new website were you can order products easily. This will contribute to the global expansion of our company, because there will be international delivery of the products by shipping. We will offer one line of products with a recognizable logo on our website. We will locate our shops where you can try the products, in the fashion capitals of the world.

The new Hazel website where you order your products online featuring our new product, the HAZEL SILK TOUCH will be launched on December 2^nd 2011 on www.hazel.com

END

About Hazel

Founded in 1972, Hazel is one of the world’s largest direct sellers of cosmetics and beauty products. Hazel operates in 15 different countries and has approximately 300,000 employees worldwide. The CEO of Hazel is Bernd Heimann, originally from Germany. He has a lot of experience in the beauty-branch. Hazel’s mission statement is "Our goal is to provide today’s young women with exclusive, state-of-the-art make-up products while preserving their skin as well as the environment."

Hazel

Hello everybody!
Week 47 was another self-study week. Our group was divided into three teams of five persons, and all the teams had to come up with a new strategy for the company Hazel.
First, I will provide you with some background information about the company: Hazel is one of the world's largest direct sellers of cosmetics and beauty products. Hazel now has serious problems, with annual sales growth of less than 1.5%. Therefore, they have appointed a new CEO.
Our task was to devise a new strategic vision for the company during our meeting. During this meeting we developed a SWOT-analysis which gave us important information which we needed for the new strategy. The new strategy includes website redesign with a new logo, face and advertising campaign. We had to present the new strategy in a ten minute powerpoint presentation, which you can find below. Enjoy the powerpoint presentation and the rest of your day! 
Kind regards, Floor

Language Learning History

Hello everybody!

I wrote this report to reflect on my language learning background. In this report I will talk about how I learned English, and the things I have learned so far. Furthermore, I will talk about what I have learned and experienced so far at university and what my future goals are.

I started to learn English at primary school. When I was about 10 years old, I learned a couple of basic words and sentences. We learned for example counting, and telling the time. Although this is very basic, this was my first experience in learning English.

In the first year at secondary school we repeated these basic words and sentences. Moreover we started to learn more vocabulary, and also grammar. We started with learning tenses, one by one. During all my years at secondary school I had to practise these tenses and I had to learn all different kinds of words and sentences to enlarge my vocabulary. There was a difference between the first years and the last years at secondary school in learning English. During the first years we made vocabulary tests and grammar tests. But during the last years we had to do more reading, writing, listening and speaking. In my final year I had a listening exam, and also an oral exam with my teacher. Furthermore, I had to do many presentations and we had to write essays. My final exam was a reading test.

The best way to learn a language is in my opinion to practice a lot in ‘reality’. That is what I did on my vacations. I had a lot of friends on my vacations, and we were all from different nationalities, so it was the best way to communicate in English. And for example in Italy, I also had to talk English when I went to the supermarket or baker. What I have experienced and learned from that is that your English and grammar does not always have to be perfect, because most of the time people do understand what you are saying and what you mean.

Before I came to university I was a little scared that my English would not be good enough because at university it is not anymore common English, but a lot of professional specific economic language. But I experienced that my English has improved a lot since I am studying at university. During the first tutorials for example I was scared that what I wanted to say was not formulated well, and so I chose to be silent. But other people said things that were either formulated perfect, and everyone understood what they were saying, so I thought, ‘Floor, you can see it is no problem, just speak and give the right answers, because having the solutions is the best.’ Furthermore, I enlarged my vocabulary, and especially economic terms, during the tutorials, that made it also easier to say things. I also talk a lot of English outside the tutorials, because most of the time we are hanging out with our group in the hours between two courses, and there are different nationalities in our group. Actually, I did not expect that, I thought I would only talk English when I really had to, so during tutorials.

My major goal is to speak more fluently and academic English in the future. I want to achieve that by practising a lot, like I am doing right now. Furthermore, I want to enlarge my (academic) vocabulary. And although I am not a native speaker, my goal is to become the best look a like!

Enjoy the rest of your day! 

Regards, Floor

Memo Report and Exam

Hello everybody!

Exactly one week ago, on monday, we got the grades of our English exam and the second memo report. We made the English exam during the exam weeks, and we had to hand in our memo report a few weeks ago, like I mentioned in my previous blog. I prepared the exam by learning the Academic Word List, which consists of 10 sublists. I also searched for difficult words in the first six chapters of our Market Leader book. Furthermore, I read the articles of the Financial Times provided in our Market Leader book and learned the difficult words in those articles. And finally, I also had a look at the first six business briefs. I passed my exam fortunately, so it was worth all the hard work. Unfortunately, the grade for my second memo report was a little disappointing. Therefore, I filled in the Self-check Error List provided by our teacher. Now I can see what kind of mistakes I made and also the frequency I used to make these mistakes.

Subsequent, my Self-check Error List:

As you can see in this list, I have to focus on making my meaning clear in the following memo reports. Furthermore, I should add a comma after introductory word or phrase, like i did in this sentence. And finally, I should not make semi-paragraphs anymore.

With this, I want to end this post on my blog. 

Enjoy the rest of your day!

Regards, Floor

Evaluation Memo Report

We had to hand in our second memo report last week. One week before we had to hand it in, we were negotiating about a topic. This time, it was about an Action Plan for improving the company's CSR profile. Afterwards we wrote a memo report about this.


The first time we had to write a memo report, our teacher gave us the link of a website: http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/eng/ . Here you can fill in your memo report, and then your text will be evaluated. The program is searching for what types of words you use and check the level of your text. It gives you the percentages of:
K1 words; 1000 most frequently used English words.
K2 words; second 1000 frequent used English words.
AML words; 570 word families which are frequently used in a broad range of academic texts.
Off-list words; words which are not in the other three word lists.


Here you can find my personal percentages of used words of the second memo report:

In conclusion, I have to use less K1 words, and more K2 words and AWL words.
Regards,
Floor

Me, Myself and I

I started my Language Learning Blog today. This is my first post on my Language Learning Blog. First of all, I am going to introduce myself and tell you something personal. My name is Floor Vasse, I am 19 years old and I live in Groningen, in the Netherlands. During the weekend I live in Hardenberg, where my parents live. In Hardenberg I play hockey, every Sunday we play a match and we have practice on Friday evening. I work in a supermarket in Hardenberg on Saturday, which is called 'Albert Heijn'. Furthermore I like to go out with friends, and spend time with my friends.

I'm studying International Business and Management at the University of Groningen. So far, I really like the study. For English I have to write this reflective blog, and I think that this is a good way to improve your English skills. 

Regards, Floor