Marry Christmas! :-)

Best wishes for Christmas :-)

The mindmap of my Personal Learning Environment

Hi everybody!
Below you can see the mindmap of my Personal Learning Environment. I divided it into 6 different areas: gathering information, people, informal and formal language learning, free time and experiences.

Gathering information
I usually search for information on Google, Del.icio.us and sometimes on Wikipedia when I need to find precise contents, whereas I prefer going to a library when I need more theoretical sources. Having many friends who study at University it’s a good resource! I mean, sometimes it happens that you have doubts and a piece of advice given by someone you trust can be very helpful. Furthermore, a good practice is to check bibliographies because they can help you to find information which better meet your needs.

People
Professors and teachers are the most reliable sources of information, the people who can teach you many things and obviously the most important ‘points of reference’ for your learning process. However, students and pen friends can help you develop oral skills and improve your vocabulary because you can communicate with them in a lot of contexts.

Formal language learning
Formal language learning is essential but you need to integrate it with informal learning. Books, grammar books, specialized journals, lessons and academic websites are fundamental because they offer you good materials, but since they belong to ‘imposed sources’ it is necessary that you take advantage of something that interests you.

Informal language learning
Watching TV, listening to podcasts and talking with native speakers give you the opportunity of using foreign languages when you have finished your studies as well. We all know how important it is to continue to speak and hear a foreign language, otherwise you tend to forget it!

Free time
Your free time can become productive if you listen to foreign songs or if you watch films trying to understand words. Travelling abroad is a wonderful experience, but at the same time you can learn a lot about the culture of a foreign country.

Experiences
Erasmus projects and tandem learning are the best occasions to get in contact with a different country. However, if you have already finished your studies I think that a job like ‘language assistant’ can give you many opportunities to practice foreign languages in many different contexts, such as answering the telephone, writing letters, speaking with foreign people and often travelling as well.

To build your mindmap of your PLE is a useful activity because it allows you to reflect on what you do and will do to learn and improve your language skills. If you compare your PLE with those of your peers you can see the differencies and obtain other suggestions which you might find interesting and useful during your career.

Bye,
Elisa

Judging online sources: criteria and reflections

Searching for information on the Web, we always come across much information and that is why we must evaluate all the resources found by search engines. To distinguish between reliable sources and unreliable ones I’ve always used the following criteria:
1. I read the annotations below the websites provided by the search engine to see if the content of the source corresponds to what I’m searching for.
2. I usually ask myself who is the author of the source because if he is influential or famous I consider him and his work more trustworthy.
3. I look at the first date of publishing and at other possible reviews.
4. I look at the layout of the webpage to check if the information is well structured and to see if other links are provided.
5. I quickly browse the entire page to get an idea of its contents.

As far as books are concerned, I feel more confident of the contents because they are published and carefully examined. To find out the information I’m interested in I’ve often used the following criteria:
• I search for information about the author if I don’t know him and I check the publishing date.
• I browse the table of contents to get a general idea of the book and see if it can satisfy my informative needs.
• I look at the bibliography to see if the author’s quotations are reliable.

I usually prefer books if I need to find general and theoretical information and websites to search for more specific and precise sources.

Reading the tips provided by the University of Essex, Purdue’s Online Writing Lab and San Diego State University, I noticed some good suggestions to evaluate sources of information. For instance, the tips I consider very useful are:
• the use of specialized source engines like ‘Google scholar’, which are said to be very precise (University of Essex).
• To check the domain of the url to see if the webpage is hosted on an educational, goverment, organization or commercial site (University of Essex).
• To check if there is a bibliography (University of Essex).
• To check if the author is listed with adresses (San Diego State University).
• To check if the provided information is authentic, unique or copied and see who is the intended audience of the source (San Diego State University).

However, I think that it is not necessary to check if the site is part of a permanent organization, do you agree?

Let me know what criteria you follow to evaluate sources and your reflections on the suggestions provided by the three websites.
See you soon,
Elisa

YouTube: a world of videos

Hello everybody!
Searching for an interesting video in YouTube, I chose the following because it really drew my attention... I’ve always wanted to find a way to do difficult multiplications mentally (without using the calculator!!!) and this video explains an interesting and easy trick to improve our mathematical reasoning ;-)

Be human calculator

http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=rf3_36a9MWc

YouTube is a tool which allow people to share their videos. It surely includes some good materials (I saw many video about learning, cartoons, funny things, music and films, entertainments), but bad videos as well. If you search for something you are interesting in on the Web, you must always be critical and careful: you can find something which is worth reading and useful for your studies and other things more superficial and counterproductive. However, watching videos you have the advantage of seeing what you are listening to and in this way you might follow and understand the explanations provided by the videos you choose. Do you think that videos are better than podcasts? In my opinion both of them are useful, but images and written words help you to fix in your memory much information: visual memory plays an important role in your language learning!
Furthermore, YouTube offers videos about various subjects giving the possibility of watching only what you are interested in whenever you want: this confirms its superiority to the TV. Do you agree?
Let me know what you think about the video I chose!
See you soon,
Elisa

...Podcasts...

Hello everybody!
The world of podcasts is really huge! I couldn’t imagine that it was possible to listen to everything you are interested in, to give you an example I found many podcasts about Chinese. Furthermore, what is really useful is that you can download them onto your mp3 player and listen to them in the train or in the bus every morning when your are going to university or simply at evening sitting on your sofa... You relax but at the same time you learn something new because instead of listening to the music you listen to native speakers’ dialogues. What a nice way of improving your English!
Searching the Web, I found two interesting podcasts about ESL lessons and one about business English; all three are very useful for improving not only your listening but also your vocabulary skills.
Searching the website 'English as a Second Language Podcast' I found the following podcasts:

• ESLpodcast319 ‘Being under stress'

It is about a dialogue between two people, one of whom is having problems because he is under stress. At the beginning the two people speak slowly, then there are the explanations of the whole dialogue especially of the most difficult and idiomatic words and finally you can listen to it at a normal speed. For instance, some useful word explanations are:

1. Something is acting up: something is not working correctly; you can use this verb to talk about a machine, for example: ‘my car is acting up again’, or about a young person, i.e. a child who causes problems.


2. to be worn out: it is a way of saying that you are very tired, exhausted.


3. dog-eat-dog: this expression means very competitive, agressive, i.e 'this is a dog-eat-dog business' means that there is a lot of competition.


4. a breather: a rest, a break.

• ESLpodcast279 ‘Saying goodbye’

It is about the different way of ‘saying goodbye’ to somebody that you know. The following is a list of some useful expressions:

1. I’d better be going: I need to go now, I should leave now.


2. To run into each other/ someone: to see the other person almost by accident.


3. To catch up: to talk about all of the things you have done since the last time you met a person.

This two podcasts are structured in the same way. I didn’t find difficulties in undestanding them because they give a lot of good explanations.
On the other hand, the website 'business English podcasts for professionals on the move' provides many activities for business English students, which are very useful for improving listening, vocabulary and language skills in a specialized business context. I listened to the podcast ‘Telephoning:leaving a message’, which explains how to take and leave a telephone message professionally, giving both a bad and a good example. You learn that a professional phone has 4 parts: the greetings (you can say: ‘Hello', 'Hi', 'Good morning/ afternoon'), the company’s name (you need just the company name or the name of the dipartement,i.e sales), the answerer's name (this is...), the offer to help ('How can I help you?' 'What can I do for you?'). Moreover, you learn how to say that someone is unavailable (i.e. 'Sorry, Mrs is on a meeting now, would you like to leave a message?'). At the end of the dialogues you are asked to answer some questions, which make you reflect on the content.

I really enjoyed listening to the podcasts, let me know what you think about them.

See you soon,

Elisa ;-)

Del.icio.us and social bookmarking

Hello everybody! How are you?
Last week we explored a very useful tool: social bookmarking. As Sarah told us, it gives the possibility to store our favourite websites online and to share them with other people who have similar interests. What an excellent resource for our studies! Furthermore, Del.icio.us gives you not only the titles of the websites, but also short notes which allow you to know their contents. In this way you can immediately decide if a website interests you or not; you don’t need to visit all of them. I had never heard of del.icio.us before and I used to search the Web using GOOGLE, but this search engine gives you many websites which may or may not interest you and your resources might become really complicated and confusing. Using the new tool, we can also create our personal network of people who share our same interests.
This week we were asked to search Del.icio.us in order to find 5 websites concerning English learning, listening, teaching, blogging… The websites that I chose are:

• English Language Listening Lab Online (ELLLO): it includes about 1000 listening activities which deal with various topics. Students can listen to them free via internet and learn many new idioms and words thanks to the different activities offered.
• English for specific purposes: it is the world online journal about English for specific purposes for teachers. It includes the articles of many teachers who tell their experiences in ESP teaching.
• How to use English punctuation correctly: it explains the correct use of English punctuation.
• British National Corpus: it contains a collection of 100 million written and spoken words and it gives the opportunity to find the frequencies and the concordances of words in different registers not only considering the whole corpus but also searching in parts of it.
• ESL lesson plans and materials for communicative English lessons: it is addressed to teachers who want to find useful materials for communicative English lessons in classroom.

The members of my group chose some interesting websites: I noticed that Sara chose ‘How to use English punctuation correctly’ as well and that 9 websites concern grammar, 5 listening activities, 2 vocabulary exercises and explanations and 2 dictionaries online. They are all extremely useful for our studies, but the following drew my attention:

• English Pronouncing dictionary with instant sound free online (Sara): it gives you the correct pronunciation of words.
• Listening Lab (Anna): ‘you can listen to everyday conversations and improve your listening skills.’
• Common errors in English (Nicola): you can find the list of the 2008 common errors in English usage and their grammar explanations.
• Cambridge Dictionaries online (Davide): a useful monolingual dictionary online which gives you the opportunity to listen to every words and to avoid typical mistakes.

I would also include another nice website chosen by Nicola, which I consider very useful when you write since by making a fight between two words you can see which one is the most used in English:

• Google fight

I really enjoyed Del.icio.us and social bookmarking,
See you soon
Elisa

Should Halloween be imported to and celebrated in Italy or not?

Before discussing if Halloween should or should not be imported to and celebrated in Italy, I find it useful to tell something about its origins.
Halloween grew out of the rituals of Celts celebrating a new year, and out of Medieval prayer rituals of Europeans. The word 'Halloween' comes from a contracted corruption of 'All Hallows Eve', the 1 st of November, 'All Hollows Day' (or 'All Saints Day')( 'The History and customs of Halloween'). Irish and Scottish immigrants carried versions of the traditions to North America in the nineteenth century. As regards customs, people dress up during this day: the Celts thought they had to protect themselves from ghosts and goblins; 'one story says that, on that day, the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year (History and customs of Halloween). Another way to scare evil spirits is to use pumpkins, originally called 'Jack-o-lantern' : Irish people used turnips to create them, but when they went to live in America they couldn't find enough turnips and for this reason they started to use pumpkins instead. Other typical customs are: Trick or treating, bobbing for apples and telling stories about ghosts.
In my opinion, there is no reasons to stop the importation to and the celebration of Halloween in Italy. The only thing that I don't accept is the business created around this event; I mean, shop windows are all dressed with fancy dresses, pumkins, everything which can scare during the night of this day. Furthermore, discos are open, pubs usually organize parties... don't you think that instead of celebrating Halloween people search for profits? Of course this has become the problem of every celebration, for instance the same thing happens at Christmas. I think that many people who celebrate Halloween don't know the reason and the origin of this event, they only know that they have to dress up following the models suggested by media. To conclude I would say that Halloween is a nice event, but it should be celebrated together with its cultural traditions and not imported just to make good profits.

See you soon,

Elisa

Feeds and feed aggregators

Hello everybody!

I've just finished creating the playlists of the websites and the blogs I subscribed to. What a time consuming job creating the playlists of all the groups! Furthermore, I subscribed to 'The Times' and in the future exploring the web I will surely add other useful websites. Anyway, I realized that the bloglines aggregator is a very useful tool because you have the possibility to see all the latest news published on your favourite websites at the same time on your screen and this means that you don't have to look at each websites to see new information.

I'm sure that in this way it will be easier for us to comment on our peers' posts... do you agree?

As far as I am concerned, I didn't find problems subscribing the blogs of my peers, my favourite websites and creating playlists, probably because I attended the lesson on Wednesday, but the people who didn't attend probably had difficulties using this new tool and spent much more time doing e-tivity 4. Do you think that it is easier to do e-tivities attending the lessons? In my opinion if you attend your task will be easier.

See you on Monday,

Have a nice week-end

Elisa

Blogs and language learning

Hello Everybody!!
Blogs are new for me. At the beginning it was quite difficult to cope with e-tivities, but then everything became clearer and I can say that I enjoy e-learning. I have learned a lot from these two weeks of blogging; before I only knew what a blog is and I couldn’t imagine how important it is in learning English. Searching for blogs you realize that you have a world in front of you: people of different nationalities write in English about their lives, their experiences, their thoughts and you can read and comment them.
Blogs are useful to understand the differencies between formal and informal English and the context in which these two varieties appear. I noticed, for instance, that people tend to use informal English when they write about their personal experiences, however, when their blogs deal with more serious issues (religion, education, linguistics, racism...) formal English prevails. You can obviously improve your vocabulary and at the same time your writing skills because you get in contact with the language used by native speakers, and this is a resource that books are not always able to offer. Furthermore, you can share ideas, post comments, all activities that help you to learn a lot from the others because they enable you to compare and improve your work.

my welcome message

Hello everybody!!

This photo shows my favourite breed of dogs: Yorkshire Terrier. I’ve chosen this picture because the dog in the photo looks like my little ‘Willy’ (this is the name of my dog).I love animals because I think that they enrich one’s life. In particular, Yorkshire Terriers are very clever, affectionate and lovable: if you have never had a dog belonging to this breed, it will be probably difficult to imagine what kind of things he is able to do.

As far as my experience is concerned, I can say that a dog can soften people’s characters and above all help to forget everyday problems. He is lively, playful and if you live alone, you can enjoy his company because he becomes a real member of your family.This photo reminds me my home and all my affections which I miss because during the week I live in Padua.

The three websited that I often use are:

http://www.google.com/

http://www.lettere.unipd.it

http://www.gazzettino.it/

The first website is very useful because it helps me with my studies when I need to do some researches about something which I don't know or I don't understand properly. It can also be useful to search images of your interest.

The second one is part of my everyday life and its importance is extremely clear without any detailed explanations.

Finally, the third one is important for me because it is where I read daily news about the world and my city during the week when I don't have the possibility of watching TV.