My first summary: The Crisis of Credit

Before:


The YouTube video „The crisis of Credit Visualised” explains the effects as well as the reasons for the .com bust. Before the collapse, lenders lend money to reliable families who wanted to buy houses. The resulting mortgage was then sold to investment bankers. Investment bankers sold the safest mortgages to investors. However, the supply of reliable individuals who needed houses soon came to a halt. Therefore, the lenders gave money to people without checking their income and without any down payment. Since many house owners were unreliable and could never had afforded such houses, they soon defaulted. As too many defaulted, the value of houses dropped. House owners, who had previously been reliable, decided to default as well, because they did not want to pay a mortgage that was much higher than the actual value of the house. Instead of receiving monthly payments, the investment bankers received worthless houses. Brokers were not able to sell any property, lenders stopped lending money, investment bankers did not buy any further mortgages and investors stopped investing. All of them had previously borrowed millions of dollars in order to invest their money safely. However, with the .com bust the entire financial system froze.

What I could have done better:

• the video was not about the .com bust but about the 2008 financial crisis --> misunderstanding
• write in Paragraphs
• include CDO/ CDS, 9/11 and 1%
• use a more formal English

After:

The video “The Crisis of Credit Visualized” by Jonathan Jarvis explains the effects as well as the reasons for the 2008 financial crisis.

Before the collapse, reliable families used loans in order to afford buying houses. The resulting mortgage was then sold to investment bankers. The mortgages were turned into CDOs, dividing and rating the mortgages according to investment safety.

After the attacks of September 11, as the Federal Reserve Bank lowered the interest rates to 1%, investors diverted their investment from the bank into the safest layer of the CDO.  However, the supply of reliable individuals decreased, causing lenders to provide money without income check and down payment. This led to the default of unreliable house owners and therefore to the devaluation of houses. Reliable house owners defaulted as well, because of the difference in value between houses and mortgages.

According to the credit default swap (CDS), investment bankers receive the houses in case of default. Therefore, instead of monthly payment they received worthless houses.  Lenders, investment bankers, and investors stopped investing. All of them had previously borrowed millions of dollars in order to invest their money safely. However, with the 2008 financial crisis the entire financial system froze.

Conclusion 

To be honest, I'm not really sure whether this version is much better than the version before. Since I had no experience writing summaries, this was kind of a challenge. For example, I wasn't sure whether I should mention the term "CDO" or whether I should describe it in another way.
However, by trying to write it again and by reading one of my friends summaries, I clearly saw the difference between my more or less informal first version and the more formal way I should have written it. In my correction, I tried using a more nominal style (I googled scientific/ more formal English and most of the websites listed the nominal style as one of the main features). This also allowed me to include more information, since the sentences got shorter. I will try keeping this in mind for my next summary.

Advanced Vocabulary Learning Strategies

Studying vocabulary is one of those things that can either take ages and be more than exhausting or be so entertaining that time passes without you noticing. Granted – studying vocabulary for exams and not only for fun usually has this taste of “working hard” to it. However, if you do it right, you can save time and not get stressed out. 

Since I am now in the 3^rd semester and teachers expect a lot from us, time has become a rare resource that needs to be spent wisely. This is why I am constantly looking for new ways to study more efficiently. Last semester, for the most part I used vocabulary books to study Russian and English words. However, the number of words we need to know has increased so drastically that I had to rethink my strategy. Some friends and I decided to work together and create a Google Doc spreadsheet. We not only add English and Russian words and their German equivalents but also definitions and collocations. One of our teachers gave us the hint to download an app called “gFlash+”. This smartphone app converts spreadsheets into flashcards and therefore helps you memorize every single word you’ve added to the list. This technique is rather new to us, but we have already used it to prepare for a Russian vocabulary test. Although we’ve not yet received the results, all of us were very optimistic.

In order to really know a word, you have to know the most common collocations and how the word is used. This is why we add this information to our spreadsheet as well. However, how can you find out how a word is used?
 Here is where one of my favorite websites comes into play. The Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE) consists of 1.9 million words. You can type in a phrase and see how common it is in any English-speaking country. You can also look for the most common adjectives, adverbs, prepositions or other grammatical features that go with that word. 

However, I also use other very handy websites. Ozdic.com, for example, also gives you the most common collocations as well as fixed phrases. Collin’s Dictionary Thesaurus offers synonyms, which is very helpful when writing a text and struggling to use different expressions.

The absolute winner, however, among the vocabulary learning tools is Vocabulary.com. This website supports anyone interested in boosting their vocoabulary. It does so by estimating your vocabulary level and giving you only words that are neither too hard nor too easy. You can also create your own list of words or use lists other people have made, for example, the ones your teacher created for an upcoming exam. The website tests you by using the flash-card system, making sure you know most of the definitions of a word. I was so impressed that I decided to buy the app for my smartphone. It didn’t cost much and I am very happy to have it, although there are still some bugs. Unfortunately, this website is only created for English learners, so it can’t help with Russian.
Studying Russian is much harder than studying English due to the fact that students doing English are spoiled, thanks to all the excellent resources and websites they have at their disposal. You really have to dig if you want to find useful Russian websites. So far, I’ve found the Russian Academic Dictionary, which offers example sentences as well as English translations. The best website for looking at declinations of words is Wiktionary.  
While I tend to use bilingual dictionaries for looking up Russian words, I avoid doing this with English. Once you’ve reached an advanced level, German translations just won’t be good enough anymore, because they can never highlight every nuance that goes with a word. It is nearly impossible to translate a word by using only one other word and capture all the nuances. Connotations, for example, very often get lost when trying to do so.
 

I believe that vocabulary building can never be accomplished by using merely one source. The various meanings and different uses only become clear when you have different tools work together to help you. In the age of constant Internet connection, students should make use of  the free access to corpora and learner’s dictionaries. For me, due to their convenience and accessibility, such online reference largely replaced older methods such as vocabulary books or flashcards made out of paper.

Advanced

Studying vocabulary is one of those things that can either take ages and be more than exhausting or be so entertaining that time passes without you noticing. Granted – studying vocabulary for exams and not only for fun usually has this taste of “working hard” to it. However, if you do it right, you can save time and not get stressed out. 

Since I am now in the 3^rd semester and teachers expect a lot from us, time has become a rare resource that needs to be spent wisely. This is why I am constantly looking for new ways to study more efficiently. Last semester, for the most part I used vocabulary books to study Russian and English words. However, the number of words we need to know has increased so drastically that I had to rethink my strategy. Some friends and I decided to work together and create a Google Doc spreadsheet. We not only add English and Russian words and their German equivalents but also definitions and collocations. One of our teachers gave us the hint to download an app called “gFlash+”. This smartphone app converts spreadsheets into flashcards and therefore helps you memorize every single word you’ve added to the list. This technique is rather new to us, but we have already used it to prepare for a Russian vocabulary test. Although we’ve not yet received the results, all of us were very optimistic.

In order to really know a word, you have to know the most common collocations and how the word is used. This is why we add this information to our spreadsheet as well. However, how can you find out how a word is used?

Here is where one of my favorite websites comes into play. The Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE) consists of 1.9 million words. You can type in a phrase and see how common it is in any English-speaking country. You can also look for the most common adjectives, adverbs, prepositions or other grammatical features that go with that word. 

However, I also use other very handy websites. Ozdic.com, for example, also gives you the most common collocations as well as fixed phrases. Collin’s Dictionary Thesaurus offers synonyms, which is very helpful when writing a text and struggling to use different expressions.

The absolute winner, however, among the vocabulary learning tools is Vocabulary.com. This website supports anyone interested in boosting their vocoabulary. It does so by estimating your vocabulary level 

 and giving you only words that are neither too hard nor too easy. You can also create your own list of words or use lists other people have made, for example, the ones your teacher created for an upcoming exam. The website tests you by using the flash-card system, making sure you know most of the definitions of a word. I was so impressed that I decided to buy the app for my smartphone. It didn’t cost much and I am very happy to have it, although there are still some bugs. Unfortunately, this website is only created for English learners, so it can’t help with Russian. 

Studying Russian is much harder than studying English due to the fact that students doing English are spoiled, thanks to all the excellent resources and websites they have at their disposal. You really have to dig if you want to find useful Russian websites. So far, I’ve found the Russian Academic Dictionary, which offers example sentences as well as English translations. The best website for looking at declinations of words is Wiktionary.  

While I tend to use bilingual dictionaries for looking up Russian words, I avoid doing this with English. Once you’ve reached an advanced level, German translations just won’t be good enough anymore, because they can never highlight every nuance that goes with a word. It is nearly impossible to translate a word by using only one other word and capture all the nuances. Connotations, for example, very often get lost when trying to do so.  

I believe that vocabulary building can never be accomplished by using merely one source. The various meanings and different uses only become clear when you have different tools work together to help you. In the age of constant Internet connection, students should make use of  the free access to corpora and learner’s dictionaries. For me, due to their convenience and accessibility, such online reference largely replaced older methods such as vocabulary books or flashcards made out of paper