Foreign Perspectives

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“Discuss” is probably one of the worst words that can be used in an exam or assignment question.

Why? Well, because, on the whole, you’ve no idea whether or not your answer is anywhere near complete no matter how much you work on it. A seemingly excellently written answer can end up in fairly low marks whilst at the same time an answer that you might feel is very poor comes back with really high marks.

The problem is, of course, that unless you are very good at the subject you won’t really know for sure if you have included all relevant aspects in the discussion for a start. It is possible to get really high marks on a “discuss” question but, by and large, I think that for a whole lot of people the mark coming back seems almost random. For example, if there are five points on the marking sheet then miss just one and there’s potentially 20% out the window even if you address the other four points perfectly.

And, yes, this post has been prompted by a “discuss” question that I’ve just submitted. I’ve loads of references in it so, in principle, the mark should be reasonable but, really, I’ve no idea whether it’ll be 50% or 80%. Still, one big plus point is that it doesn’t actually matter as I’ve already passed the assignment section of the course.

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It’s all very well saying that you need to take more exercise, but where do you actually start?

That first day when you step into the health club you’re surrounded by all kinds of hi-tech equipment, each with so many options that I’m sure many people haven’t the faintest idea where to begin looking for something that 1) they can manage with their current fitness level and 2) that they can understand how to use.

If that sounds like you, probably the best thing to look at first is the treadmill. Even those are far from simple these days as all of them seem to include really sophisticated exercise programmes. However, you can usually select something simple like “hill walking” which will get you going. What the hill walking programmes do is simulate a walk over rolling hills so you’ll find that at times it seems like you’re walking uphill and other times you’re walking downhill. It’s best to start off on the lowest fitness level rather than take the macho approach and go for the top end as that’s sure to make you look like an idiot when you find that two minutes in you have to get off.

When you are starting out, forget about all those incredibly fit people jogging at the highest fitness settings. Start off walking at the lowest setting and before long you’ll find that you’re turning up the setting yourself (typically it takes a few months to migrate up to the top setting if you’re at the gym regularly).

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For a variety of reasons I ended up learning Spanish rather than German years ago with the effect that it’s only now that I’m getting around to starting on the German.

As expected, it’s easier to pick up than either French or Spanish were in that since English is also a Germanic language then various aspects of it are a good deal similar to English than the corresponding constructs in French and Spanish. The overall effect of that plus me already having two foreign languages behind me is that I’m progressing through the course at quite a pace and can even say some relatively sensible things in German whereas it was quite a while before I got to the same point in the other languages.

One “problem” that I’m having is that the Rosetta Stone course that I’m following seems “too easy” in that you pick up the language without really trying that hard. Whether that’ll remain the case as I get further into it remains to be seen though!

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