Merry Christmas!

Hello everyone!

Working with you has been a useful and funny experience... Thank you for this first semester together and...

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Happy holidays,

c u next year!!

Personal Learning Environment

Hello Group D!
Well, it was quite strange to think about my way of learning… I mean… When you have to study something you just do it without worrying too much about the method you use. However, reflecting on PLE I realized that it’s very important to know how to organize your own learning. This is true especially for language students: we have to practise and practise otherwise we forget; we have to pay attention to any kind of ‘input’ in order to make improvements and to keep on learning in an effective way. That’s why I find some activities really useful for my English learning: grammar and vocabulary exercises; listening practice; reading texts aloud; doing translations.
When I want to learn a new word or expression I write it down on my notebook, I check its use in the dictionary and I fix it in my memory linking it to some examples.
Of course, it’s important to attend lessons, to take part in discussions suggested by professors, and to speak with your colleagues at university.
Finally, making comparisons between my work and my peers’ one is very helpful: you can learn from mistakes and you can appreciate other styles of writing and different ideas... Very stimulating!

I’m sorry…My picture is not very good… However, I divided my mindmap in 4 macro groups called HOW, WHERE, WHO and GATHERING INFORMATION.

I hope u are able to read something!

Bye bye

Laura

web sources

Hi everybody!
In this post I'm going to discuss sources of information and how they should be evaluated.
We should always evaluate a source of information whether it comes from the web or from a newspaper or a book…we should find out more information in order to understand if the document is reliable or not. This is why sometimes I just think books are much easier and much more trustworthy than pages that are available on the web. Anyway as nowadays the role of Internet in the field of politics, economics, news, literature and basically in every area of interest is becoming more and more important and used by anyone, we should set some criteria to follow when doing our research on the web.

Personally whenever I use the internet to researching a piece of writing such as an essay I always follow several golden rules. Firstly only trust a source if it has come from a recognised and reputed source such as an E-Journal or electronic library. Secondly, when using sources that have been taken from online newspapers make sure that the story has been printed in paper form by a national or regional paper. The final rule is to take any other sources that you find on the internet “with a pinch of salt” i.e. don’t believe everything you read and most certainly don’t base your entire essay around unverified sources. These criteria are fundamental for me, but they definitely need to be combined with the advice I found on the web pages of some Universities.

I hope you find my post useful!

See u!

YouTube

Hi everybody!

The world of YouTube is really huge! Exploring this new tool and searching for something interesting I realized that it provides videos for any purpose: you can watch videos about music, world news, travel or just have fun and relax thanks to many funny sketches. Moreover, YouTube can be useful to learn something new about a specific topic and for our English language learning too!!! The potential of this tool is that watching videos you have the advantage of seeing what you are listening to and better following the development of videos… Actually I think that images and written words are the best way to fix in your memory much information and this is really helpful in learning!
Another great feature of YouTube is that anyone can upload their own material and share them with other surfers. You can comment on those videos you find interesting and rate them so that the maker of the video can improve or update it.
YouTube is simply fantastic!!



This is the video I chose: Cat Stevens singing “Peace Train” during a live concert in 1976. It’s a song against war… It’s sad but hopeful.
Listening to a song can be a good way to improve our listening skills and learn new words… Do you agree?

I look forward to hearing from you!

C u!
Laura

Podcast

Hi guys!
My impressions on the e-tivity of this week are good again… Podcasts are another very useful tool on the Web and another new thing for me! I had never heard of them before but while surfing the Net, exploring and searching for them on Google and del.icio.us I understood what they are used for and how they can help us learn English. The extraordinary thing is that podcasts can be downloaded onto personal computers and mp3 players (I've already filled my IPod with podcasts in English!) so that we can listen to or watch the podcast whenever and wherever we want to.
I spent a lot of time listening to conversations, English lessons online, interviews and in the end… I was done in! But I really enjoyed myself learning new words and expressions… Through this kind of technology we can improve our skills and have fun at the same time… Cool!

These are the podcasts I chose… hope you’ll enjoy them!

• http://www.betteratenglish.com/

This website is really well done! It consists of different podcasts levels: intermediate, upper intermediate and advanced. In the first two you can listen to two guys speaking about funny and easy topics such as food habits, television, superstition… The third one is more difficult because it especially focuses on specific subjects like English business.
Of course you can also download the transcripts of the conversations… So you can’t get lost!

• http://www.oculture.com/

I had already chosen this website in a previous e-tivity because it’s very useful and you can find everything you are interested in! On the right side of the main page there is a section called Podcast Library… There are many and many texts and different topics to listen to: audiobooks, news, music, science… It's fantastic! Go have a look!

• http://www.englishthroughstories.com/scripts/scripts.html

This website is for learners of English who are looking for fun or a relaxing way to improve their listening skills. Each weekly podcast is an episode of a drama or "soap opera" with romance, mistery and sometimes... murder! Join the fun today and improve your English at the same time!

That's all for now!
C u!

Social Bookmarking!

WOW! Every week we discover something new: first the blogosphere, then how to develop our blog, the use of feed aggregators and now social bookmarking…
Also this time I had to spend some hours in front of my computer to understand what the purpose of this e-tivity was and to explore the new website del.icio.us but in the end it was a real pleasure!
I think that social bookmarking is the most useful tool we’ve seen up to now for our English language learning and searches: we can easily look for everything we are interested in! It’s great! I appreciate the ‘social’ aspect of this e-tivity… I like the idea of sharing my favourite websites and blogs with other people, especially with you! Moreover, the short description we gave to each website is very useful and important because in this way we can immediately know their topic and structure.
I really enjoyed searching for the web pages to add to my bookmarks and exploring the websites selected by my peers… We all primarily chose sites related to English learning and looked for tags such as English learning, bloggingenglish, listening activities, English literature and so on...
I found the site suggested by Alberto very interesting and funny. It provides slang expressions and gives their definitions, examples and origins... A large number of them is very strange but I think this site can be useful if you want to know informal words and colloquial language.
Thanks to the blogosphere we can learn English online... That's why I had a look at Englisch-hilfen site chosen by Cla83: we can learn rules, do exercises, tests or just have fun playing games.
Another website I found helpful is about writing phrases for commercial letters suggested by Claudiatri. Here we find expressions related to technical and specific commercial language. How to begin and to end a letter is no longer a problem!
Among the websites chosen by Alessandra I took a look at Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary site; it provides definitions and pronunciations of many words.
I always had difficulties in listening activities... Now I can improve my skills thanks to the interesting website suggested by Serena: I explored VOAnews site and I listened to some audio files and radio transcripts... They can really help me! Moreover, I can learn something more about current events... Fantastic!

Well, social bookmarking is great... It's like creating our own online bookshelf, isn’t it?

That’s all for now,

C u soon!

Bye bye
Laura

Bloglines

Hello GROUP D!
I am Laura, a new member in your group…I just visited your blogs…they are all really nice!!!

As far as the use of Bloglines is concerned I can only thank Sarah for having put the video with the directions… I can’t attend the lessons in the lab on Wednesdays because of other lessons in the same hours and when I read in our blog the explanation of what feeds and feed aggregators were, I got into a panic! Only after having checked out the video the things got easier and easier!
Thanks to Bloglines we can immediately know on a single page if our peers’ blogs have been updated! It’s fantastic! This kind of technology allows us to organize information in a good and nice way…that’s why I think it’s a very useful and time-saving tool… This is very important for me because my computer is old and the Internet connection is really slow!

Also this time we have learnt something interesting and new…thank you Bloglines, thank you Sarah!

Halloween

Should Halloween be imported to and celebrated in Italy? Absolutely not!
I read Claudia’s answer and I completely agree with her.
This tradition belongs to Anglo-Saxon people and to Americans… I can’t understand the reasons why Italian should celebrate it. We have Carnival in February as occasion to dress up and have fun… Unfortunately the consumer society of today influences our choices and our life-style... By now every holiday or cultural tradition are matter of business and in this way we risk forgetting the real meanings behind them. 

I think we all should appreciate more our Italian traditions!
C u soon!

Hey guys, if you like Tom Hanks I've already came up with his blog...it's really funny!

my first two weeks of blogging

It's completely new and really strange for me to have this virtual space… I’ve never used a blog before and, to be honest, I didn’t know almost anything about it! During the preparation of the first e-tivity I was really scared not to be able to find the right picture, the right comment…I’m always so worried about making mistakes! But now, after two weeks of blogging I understood how a blog works and I think that once you have started sending the first posts it gets easier and easier!
First of all, a blog is a very useful tool to develop your ideas, thoughts, opinions and to share them with other people: you can express your creativity and use your own style…it’s fantastic!
Moreover, through interaction we can improve our reading and writing skills in English…this is very important for me because I think my English vocabulary is not very extensive and in this way I can learn and learn, but we all have to pay attention to possible mistakes!

welcome message

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog!

The best way to introduce myself is this picture...why?!

Books are really my passion!

I would spend hours and hours reading and leafing through any kind of book, review or magazine to satisfy my curiosity. I usually read novels, plays and I sometimes love identifying myself with the characters. Moreover, I like reading newspapers in order to be always well informed about world's news.

One of my dreams is to open a bookshop to share this interest with other people, to advise the most interesting books and to organize meetings in order to make children appreciate the world of literature.

Here are the websites I'd like to share with you:

• http://www.internetbookshop.it/

This first website reflects my passion for books: you can find any book you are looking for. It is very easy to use and you can buy books on favourable terms.

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/
• http://www.repubblica.it/

These websites are very useful to be informed about national, international news; cultural events; sport.

• http://www.paesionline.it/

This one is very interesting because it offers not only tourist but also historical information of each country in the world.

I look forward to reading your comments!
Bye bye for now!
Laura