Reflecting on YouTube.com

Girls,

This week I came across a new and endless tool: Youtube.com Suddenly a completely new world appeared in front of my eyes: a huge list of videos dealing with any kind of topic, from all over the world. Something bizarre, don’t you think? I searched a great number of words in English and French putting tags in the search bar; well, I always found a video dealing with what I was looking for…this activity was funnier than last weeks!

I think that the most incredible thing is that this site enables users to share their own experiences with people all over the planet; as a matter of fact you aren’t a passive observer of what is going on because you can leave a comment getting in touch with somebody who lives really far from you. And what about “private” groups linking a close number of persons? I think this is a considerable advantage for people living abroad of being in direct contact with their own families.

As educational tool Youtube is great as well: if you are looking for chunks of conversations, movies or simple monologues in English, here you are able to find what you need; for a languages student, as we all are, there’s nothing better than listening at these things. Obviously all that glitters is not gold: among all this good things I found a sort of rubbish dump made up of meaningless videos, sometimes even morally harmful, which have nothing to do with all the things I mentioned above; personally I think that all depends on the way this tool is exploited.

Well girls I’m really waiting for reading all your comments!

yours alessia

Podcasts: learning using technology

Dear all,

today I'm gonna talk about podcasts. We have been asked finding, at least, three mp3 files we found useful in improving our listening skills. First of all searching these websites was a very hard work for me because I never entered such sites! After long hours here's what I found and what I'm glad to share with you all:

-Business trends;

-Placing a business order;

-Breaking news.

As you can see clicking on the links above, I was mainly interested in business conversations because of the lack of information I have in this field. To be more precise the first two sites are a sort of on-line guide conceived for helping learners of English as a second language; here you find great suggestions to face some typical business situations properly, such as talkig about your business in the future and placing a business order. My list ends with a link to an interesting website dealing with news in English; it provides simple, daily news casts in order to improve lerners' listening skills.

I'm always discovering new things and podcast is probably the best tool I learned so far: audio files are excellent in helping who need correcting prononciation and comprehension. Don't you think so?

Peers I'm waiting for all your comments!

See you,

alessia

Social Bookmarking: something del.icio.us!

Picture by: WWCPT

Dear cyberspace friends,
how are you going this week? I’m here to update my blog with a new post about social bookmarking. Do you all know what is it? Being relatively new to the world of blogging I must admit that I had never heard about it before this week. I’m not very familiar with this complicated computer science; as one of our classmates said last week I often feel like a child: amazing things appear from everywhere. Searching the Internet I realize how important bookmarking is:

- it’s accessible from everywhere so that you don’t need your PC;
- it’s called “social” because your bookmarking can benefits other people; that’s the reason why I think it’s all about sharing;
- it’s a sort of filter because you’re choosing from what other people have chosen;
- thanks to the notes you can immediately see the arguments a site deals with and how it's considered by users.

I definitely think that surfing the net and blogging are time demanding activities. Well, this week we learned exploiting a new tool taking from it a great advantage: saving in time without getting lost while doing a search.

This week we have been asked to take a look at our peers’ bookmarks and to post here a comment. Here are my feedbacks:

Write and presenting a thesis
Dear Giovanna, I chose this site from your bookmark because as you can see looking at your network I chose it too. I found it really interesting both for its topic and for its intelligible structure. Reading the introductory paragraph you realize immediately this website is conceived just like a guide providing helpful suggestions to graduate students. Thesis is something scares me because I know time is running out!

Frequently asked questions
Dear Cate, good choice! I think most of us has problems with English grammar and I’m sure this site is going to be useful in my next English activities; I know I’ll certainly come across things I don’t know. It caught my attention because of its user friendliness: if you need to clear up all your doubts just click on the link and…here there’s your answer!

Job Searching
Dear Roberta, this is the site I preferred among the five you chose probably because I have never worked! To write a proper CV it’s not something so easy to do: I think you should be able to sum up your educational background and other details. Obviously it should be effective, concise and complete at the same time…what a hard work! About.com provides us a great variety of CV’s samples and clear instructions. Therefore thank you!

BBC learning English
Dear Stefania, this was the site I appreciated the most! How many things you can learn reading a newspaper! “vocabulary from the news” and “English as it’s used today” are the sections I consider extremely useful. I also saw there’s a blogging service for learners of English… this reminds me something…! Good job!

Using English
Dear Marta, great site with lots of great information... Much appreciation for both the sections "English language reference" and "Tools and resources". I particularly appreciated the fact of choosing resources and tools for students of English as a second language. All excellent information... well-put!

Ps: friends, let me know if you like or not the new title of my virtual space!

alessia

Feed Aggregators (e-tivity 4)

Hi my dear friends!

Here I'm again with a new post about RSS. What are they? Before starting this course I didn’t know anything about that, and I do believe that almost none of us could use them properly. But now that we’re all working smoothly in the blogosphere, we’d better exploit this useful tool in order to improve our skills and, above all, the quality of our time. Actually, after logging in bloglines.com and choosing whatever site you want, subscribing to it, you have the chance to know all the new posts and the updated sections of the aforementioned sites in real time. That enables you not to waste time because you can monitor all the sites you chose directly from one page, and there you can read the actual changes and updated versions of it. You can also create categories where you put your favourite sites.

As far as I’m concerned, I decided to create two folders, one concerning the sites of my colleagues, Marta Tosato, Giovanna Sperotto and Roberta Fumani (group H), and another one about cinema, my big passion.

I’ll let you know very soon how I found this device, but I’m sure I won’t have problems with it!

See you
ale

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!
Picture by: iamxiuxao

For further information about halloween click here: Wikipedia

My favourite blogs (from e.tivity 2)

“Desperate Housewives” is one of the most enjoyable and brilliant US shows I regularly follow, so that’s the reason why I chose to analyse this blog. First of all, I definitely like knowing all the news relating to the serial, and here I can find succulent news and spoilers about the 4^th season, new to the Italian audience. Then, I love the photos published, which show Teri Hatcher and Eva Longoria (two of the most fascinating actresses of the soap), the former in the throes of taking off her shirt in a park, and the latter in a commercial. There’s also some gossip about one male character; moreover, I could watch the videos of the new episodes: just fantastic! In short, this blog helps the reader get to know his/her favourite stars, and I’d recommend it to anyone who loves the show.

After each post there are some tags (clickable words) referring to some relevant topics just mentioned in the post itself: I found them useful, especially if you wish to further investigate a particular subject you are interested in.

The language is informal, sometimes very colloquial and idiomatic. The personal pronoun I is written i, the form she’s is replaced with the simpler shes, going to becomes gonna, etc. Punctuation is neglected and sometimes reading becomes awkward and difficult to understand (e.g. “[…] unknown wrote an interesting post today on Here’s a quick excerpt Shouldn’t there be some law that prevents Marc Cherry from telling Eva Longoria she can’t get pregnant?”). There’s a frequent use of acronyms, e.g. OMG, standing for oh my God, STD, meaning sexually transmitted diseases (referring to a character in the show), IDK, that is I don’t know, etc. One person in a post wrote the symbol $ rather than money: the tendency to lighten and simplify the writing is clear throughout the whole blog. While the blog’s owner tries to integrate the link into the text, using a clickable word, the bloggers don’t use this device: they write the link at the end of the post, putting down the url.

The 2^nd blog I decided to take into account is far more thoughtful: it deals with father’s rights, child support and custody. The blog publicizes a new book, “Taken into custody”, exposing the injustices of American Family Courts. It’s interesting to focus on this matter: it’s not very popular here to talk about that and it seems as if it were a taboo.

The first thing which struck me was that the links are integrated into the text and have the aspect of one or more clickable words (sometimes a whole sentence), so the reader immediately knows what topic is hidden behind the link. Sometimes, the clickable words are in a different colour (red or blue) and bigger than the rest of the text in order to catch the reader’s attention. What is important to remark is that language choices change as opposed to the previous blog: here they’re much more specific (the semantic field is different and relates to child rights, custody and support) and the language is formal; some posts have a journalistic approach (the documents answer the questions who?, what?, where?, when? and how?) because they report what has happened. The bloggers’ posts respect grammar rules and punctuation: in this sentence I even noticed a semicolon, rather odd in a blog! (e.g. “[…] The Author has the rare talent of being able to see the problem for what it truly is; being able to describe it pointblank, pulling no punches, and telling it exactly the way it is.”) As opposed to the other blog, here the bloggers use inverted commas to cite reference books.

The two blogs I analysed are totally different in style and approach: the first one is about TV, a frivolous matter which shows a careless style, and a very informal and colloquial language; the second one is a reference guide to all the people who want to know more about child custody and support: the language tends to be formal and the bloggers suit their way of writing according to the blog in which they write. There’s a sort of “hidden convention” which links all the participants in a blog.

Have good surfing!

My first two weeks of blogging

My dear friends, during these two weeks I had a lot of fun; I enjoyed this course very much! Finally an interactive course where we're supposed to exchange our background and different points of view. I think that learning from each other is absolutely great because it makes you reflect upon the most common mistakes usually made by non native speakers as we are! I must admit I'm completely new to this specific kind of activity. Actually, many friends of mine often asked me to become a blogger and to take part in this endless world ...well, suddenly this happened and here I'm with my little corner As You Like It. I definitely hope most of you will share with me my virtual space, giving me some advice to improve my English and avoid gramatical-error and stupid mis-spell.

I wish to hear from you soon,
ale