Personal opinion

I have really enjoyed writing English articles about certain topics. It was a very useful task because in the future, as a journalist, we will have to use our writing and language skills a lot. By doing this exercise, we have been able to train these skills and to explore the English media landscape.

In the future, as a journalist working for a newspaper or magazine, we will also be given topics to write about, just like now. In that way it maybe was a restrictive exercise, because we really had to write about a given topic, but we were free to chose the content of the article.
I think it was a challenging exercise, certainly when we had to write about sports. I have never been interested in sports at all, but I found something very interesting to write about, and I learned that writing about sports can also be fun and instructive.

On top of that, it was a good exercise because we had to combine a lot of skills. To write a good article it is necessary to do some research, to understand what you are writing about, to translate your Dutch ideas into English ones, to write in good English and to think like a journalist, which means to be critical.

In my opinion, it was a positive experience, but it was a pity we didn’t receive any feedback.
I think, as a (future) journalist it is very important to receive comments on what you have written.

By Ruth Knaepkens

Critical opinion

I truly enjoyed this assignment. English is my favourite foreign language. This in combination with this assignment’s journalistic touch made it a task that was nice to do.
The topics being fixed certainly was a good idea. As a journalist you also don’t have all the freedom you want. Your bosses will always tell you what to write about. We still had a lot of freedom in the topics, so we were able to go choose our own path.
The only topic that didn’t interest me at all was ‘sports’. Because of that, I started the quest for information rather demotivated. But all of a sudden I discovered that Tia Hellebaut became the new world champion pentathlon indoor. Even I found this interesting.
Now, the negative aspects of the assignment. The most important one is the fact that there barely were any guidelines. ‘Would it be a problem if two student wrote about the same subject?’ was a question we asked ourselves a few times. Kathleen and I came in touch with that problem. I wrote about Tia Hellebaut, and she wanted to do the same which resulted in some panic. In the end she posted the article anyway, which I think was a good decision.
I also think that feedback would have been a good idea. I understand that a teacher doesn’t have the time to give feedback to every single student, but we could have given feedback ourselves, to the students of the other groups, that is.
But seen as a whole, I really enjoyed this!

Jessica Van Sintruyen

Personal opinion assignment

In my opinion this assignment was very useful for students journalism. Because of this assignment we also came in contact with a lot of different media topics and with the news, which is of course a very important issue in this study.

It was a lot of fun, but it is a pity that the subjects we had to talk about in our blogs were fixed and so we couldn’t choose them ourselves. This is a shame, because as a journalist you also have to be creative and come up with new ideas to keep the public interested.

There were also a few misunderstandings, for example: did we have to write our opinion and personal experiences or more something like a real article with real facts? So I found the assignment rather vague.

It’s also too bad that we haven't received any personal feedback. If I write something I like to know what is good and more important what mistakes I have made so I can learn from them to become a better writer.

But still it was a very good exercise to practice my English and of course my writing skills in general. I think it is one of the most useful assignments we have already gotten this year, finally a little closer to the real work!

Kathleen De Roey

Personal opinion

I have thoroughly enjoyed this assignment. It was fun to write about a certain subject in English. I don’t think it was a bad thing that we weren’t able to choose what to write about. In the topics that were given, there was enough freedom to add a personal touch, to write about something in that specific area that interests you. Sometimes that was a bit more difficult with certain topics, like when we had to write about sports. I have little to no interest in sports but after searching the web about sports news I quickly found something that looked interesting enough to me to write an article about. Journalists often get assigned a topic to write about. You can’t be too picky and you have look for something interesting within that subject because I think you can’t write a good article if you have no interest whatsoever in the topic you’re writing about. It would have been nice to have some feedback on the articles. It might be a good idea to let students comment each others blog. Overall it was a fun assignment. It wasn’t a chore writing the blogs, it was enjoyable to find something to write about and do your research.

Hannelore Glibert

Chinese police prevents attack on the Olympics

The Chinese police has been able to prevent an attack on the Beijing Olympic games in August by arresting and killing Islamic terrorists. ‘Materials like guns, homemade bombs, and extremist religious ideological materials that were confiscated during a raid in Urumqi on the 27th of January, have shown that the fifteen persons who were arrested and the two that were killed during this searching prepared an attack on the Olympic games’, said a Chinese official.

A Chinese state newspaper had already mentioned the irruption, writing that suspects wanted to commit bomb attacks at the beginning of February, but nothing was said about an attack on the Olympics.

According to the Chinese official, the group was obeying commands of the separatist movement ETIM, which has its home bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The United Nations and the United States consider the ETIM as a terror organisation.

Chinese forces have been battling the low-intensity separatist movement ETIM among Xinjiang's Uighurs for years. The Uighurs are Turkic Muslim people culturally and ethnically differing from China's Han majority. According to Chinese officials, the ETIM is the most important terror threat for China, although the group is not believed to have more than a few dozen members. By way of precaution, China has intensified the number of anti-terror operations.

By Ruth Knaepkens

Lanzinger loses left leg

The 27-year-old Austrian skier Matthias Lanzinger had to have his left foot amputed. Last weekend the unfortunate skier made a horrid crash in the Super-G. Doctors were not able to salvage his foot. Austrians blame the Norwegian medical rescue team for getting Lanzinger to the hospital too late.

Lanzinger had a concussion and broke his left leg in a fall in the World Cup Super-G race in Kvitfjell. He was air-lifted to a hospital in Oslo where he has undergone two operations since Sunday. At the hospital he was placed in an artificial coma to help treat his injuries but developed serious vascular problems.

Lanzinger lost his balance in the high-speed race and was knocked unconscious as his head hit a ski-pole marker. He then crashed to the ground and hurtled down into the safety-netting. "Unfortunately, his injury was very serious because it seems that his foot was twisted several times around its own axis and this really damaged the bone and soft tissue” Doctor Lars Engebretsen said.

On Tuesday the decision was made to amputate his lower left leg. The doctors stated that there was no alternative to the amputation. “Unfortunately we were unable to re-establish the blood circulation to his foot which has obliged us to take the decision to amputate" Engebretsen said.

Austrians scream bloody murder. They say the medical help came too late and the coordination of the rescue went all wrong. At first there wasn’t a helicopter on scene and when it finally came, they took Lanzinger to the wrong hospital. Eventually he was air-lifted to a hospital in Oslo where the first operation took place 6 hours after the crash.

Hannelore Glibert

Hellebaut wins gold

Tia Hellebaut has become the world champion of the pentathlon in Valencia. She is the first woman who won gold on a world level in athletics. Kim Gevaert had the flu and became the firth with the 60 metres.

Although Hellebaut loves the pentathlon, it isn’t amusing. She needed 10 minutes to regain herself. It was very confusing after Tia had won the 800 metres Geveart tried to throw the Belgian flag at her, but Tia had to search for a bucket to puke of exhaustion. After all this Gevaert and Hellebaut could finally hug of happiness. Gevaert congratulated Hellebaut very enthusiastically.

Hellebaut proved herself already in Gent last year. But because of the flu, she choose for high jump and didn’t become European champion. In the beginning Hellebaut wasn’t that lucky, but then she jumped one metre and 99 centimetres high, this is more then she or anyone else had ever done. She also achieved a personally record in shot put.

Hellebaut has achieved not only gold, she has places the best achievement of 2008 and a world record in high jump. In an interview she says that she can’t believe it, Tia will probably not realise it until tomorrow. She’s very happy, but exhausted.

Kathleen De Roey