SIMPLY… DELICIOUS!!!

Hi,

the key words from now on are SIMPLIFY and BACK TO THE BASIS, so this post will be brief and concise, yet accurate and proofread (at least I hope so!).

Last week in class we found out the potentialities of Delicious, a tool that enables people to share their bookmarks and take advantage of the research other people did. Clearly, looking for something in Delicious is easier than searching in Google. As a matter of fact, in Google there is everything and anything, while Delicious is something more reduced and specific because it connects you with other users. Needless to say, the power of the community is one of the main strengths of this digital tool.

I added in Delicious some bookmarks that I believe may be useful for my peers and for anyone who wants to practice their English and learning online. I definitely love the ‘Teacher section’ in the BBC website because it gives you the opportunity to learn something new in an amusing way. Having a look at my peers’ bookmarks, I found out that we share the same interests, above all for what foreign languages are concerned. As a consequence, some websites of famous radios, online dictionaries, and, generally speaking, websites offering tools for improving our knowledge of the English language are among our favourite bookmarks.

Elena’s bookmark about MAD TV is really hilarious: it has a full variety of sketches and parodies of famous people and many images and videos. Francesca Maniero’s choice, on the contrary, fell on BBC Homepage, an interesting and serious website where you can learn more about national and international issues and reflect on important matters.

Before the parting salutations, I would like to say thanks to Professor Guth for her accurate corrections; I think they are extremely useful and I hope not to repeat the same mistakes. The lesson we had on Thursday was really interesting, since it gave me the opportunity to reflect on my mistakes and on my heavy long constructions when I write in English. Therefore, SIMPLIFY ;-)

I wish you a nice weekend,
Bye,

Francesca M.

Twittering

PURPLE

It seems that most of us love purple, since the majority of blogs are pink or purple...
Here you are a present for you!

Francesca M.

Building up resources on my aggregator...

Hi!

This week’s post is about feed aggregators. For people like me, who do not know exactly what they are, here you are the definition I found on Wikipedia:
“a feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader, news reader or simply aggregator, is client software or a Web application which aggregates syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and blogs in a single location for easy viewing. Aggregators reduce the time and effort needed to regularly check websites for updates”.


Being an efficient and quick way to read blogs, I think they will be extremely useful during our English course. As a matter of fact, it was rather frustrating visiting my peers’ blogs regularly in order to find out weather they had updated their page to send them a comment. I am convinced that aggregators will help me to save much more time and to interact with my peers in real time. Sending them comments to their posts as soon as they publish them will enable us to exchange information simultaneously. Not only do I think that feed aggregators may simplify my life as a blogger, but I believe they are an added value to my IT skills. I am only afraid of the fact that, if I subscribe too many websites which have feeds, I will receive a huge amount of updates that would be difficult to handle, yet I suppose it is up to us to manage the use of feeds properly. Moreover bloglines gives you the opportunity to choose if you want to receive complete updates or just a summary of the posts. I decided to receive the full post for my peers’ posts, but just the summary of the news, because I think they are too long to read and if I am interesting in something in particular I can visit the website to find the complete article.


Subscribing to feeders is also a good way to ‘force’ yourself to read something in English every day and this could be a tool to learn more about the language of journalism (if you subscirbe to online newspapers) or the looser language used in some blogs, where accuracy is not highly regarded. Im conviced that, as soon as I acquire more confidence with bloglines, feed aggregators, Technorati and similar tools, I will become a perfect blogger. The thing that impressed me most was that many useful websites students at the University of Padua use regularly do not have any feeds. That is a non-sense, since it happens that a lesson is cancelled and if you do not check the website regularly you risk just to waste time going up and down in Padua. Needless to say, using feeders I will be no longer busy as a bee looking for new posts and that’s great!


On Thursday I enjoyed visiting many webpages of the most popular English and American newspapers. I started looking for feeds, but then I looked at the many interesting news. I noticed that there is a great deal of sites which have a section dedicated to job offers or to give advice on how to write a good resumé... But, once again I believe it is just an obsession of mine, since I have carved out plenty of time in the past few weeks to complete my CVs and write a short academic paper about this topic. I also explored the blogosphere and I have to say that it seems to me that I am a bit more acquainted with this new tool.
I wish you all a nice weekend and keep you constantly update without much effort with aggregator feeders!


Francesca M.

My reflective blogging post

The goals I would like to achieve as far as my English language knowledge are to improve my listening skills, enrich my vocabulary with new words and expressions and develop better speaking skills. In order to do all this I know I will have to work hard, not only during the lessons, but also at home. In my opinion, the materials I need in order to speak and write better in English are: dictionaries, the Internet and its tools (blogs, on-line radios, videos, interactive exercises...), films in English and a great amount of will. I strongly believe that the activities done in class will help me, too. Needless to say, the blogosphere with its many resources will provide me with useful materials and articles, as well as with new idiomatic forms and expressions. Moreover, my peers’ work and my own work will raise important grammatical issues and will encourage me to interact actively writing on their blogs and thus practising my writing and reading skills.

I think I will be able to devote about 10 hours a week to achieve my target and a greater accuracy in what I say/write.

Honestly speaking, last week I was in Frankfurt for a trade fair, so I could attend just one of the four lessons we have every week. When I came back to the hotel I watched programmes in English and I was in contact with people that spoke English all the time. Along with this, I also watched a film in American English and I am trying to do my best to keep up with the homework assigned for next week. I hope to manage to achieve my targets...

See you soon,

Francesca M.

My first experience with blogging

Hi!

It’s me again. In this brief post I’d like just to share with you my first experience with blogging. Needless to say, blogging is not as easy as it might seem because the blogosphere is so huge that it is very rare to find what you are looking for right away. Hence, if you do not want to get lost in the labyrinth of blogs and posts on the Internet you have to be a bit patient and practice a lot surfing the web regularly. On one hand, blogging can be rather confusing at first, but on the other hand Web 2.0 gives us the opportunity to share our experience and develop a noticeable critical ability.

It is also worth noting that blogging in English can influence our learning process, not only because it makes us aware of our achievements (in the same web page it is possible to see many posts written in different periods), but also because blogging gives us the opportunity to explore a different kind of language: the informal, spontaneous written language that has short constructions, phrasal repetitions and a looser sentence construction. Moreover, when you blog you often find many links or clickable words that enables you to read more about a particular topic. Indeed this is also a good way to read in English and to enrich our vocabulary with new expression either formal or informal. All this helps us to get acquainted with the intriguing, rather new and hybrid language used in the blogs. Everything put aside, blogging deals with reading: in order to write a thoughtful comment you must read the post carefully. Do you agree?

Bye,

Francesca M.

Welcome

I warmly welcome you to my page!

Hi!

This is my first experience with blogs and I am curious to learn how to create a good blog that can catch the reader’s attention and stimulate discussion among students. I am eager to share my point of view with you and I look forward to receiving your comments.

For me it was quite difficult to explore the blogosphere, but I hope to develop my IT skills and to have an eye for detail so that my blog will be something pleasant to read.

I want to take full advantage of the opportunity to create and run a blog during this semester and I am waiting for your posts. Your comments would be highly appreciated, as well as your suggestions for ways of improve my page (and my language, too)!

Please be patient because my blog is still under construction :-(

Bye,

Francesca