YouTube: learning while having fun!

Despite all the problems related to copyright violation, I think that YouTube is an extremely funny and interesting tool to learn foreign languages. As a matter of fact, not only it is possible to listen to native-speakers and non native-speakers’ accents, but you can also find out cultural differences or similarities. In class we had fun in seeing how English people depict the Italian (but also Spanish, French etc...) way of speaking.

Although at the beginning I had a negative opinion about YouTube because of all the videos about bullying that news on TV are used to report, now I changed my mind. I think that YouTube is a good tool for my PLE and last semester I used it regularly to find out more about the ‘topic of the week’ or simply to add something funny to my blog. I also enjoyed watching the videos posted by my peers. Needless to say, I agree on the fact that music can help our learning process. As a matter of fact, I added to my blog a video with the lyric of a song some time ago and I commented that we can learn English also listening to music. For example, I learnt many poetic expressions listening to English songs, such as “pouring rain”, “roll the dice”, “bed of roses”, “two steps behind”, “you can never hide from the shadow that is creeping up beside you”, “it’s amazing how you can speak right to my heart”, “you can light up the dark”, “there is a truth in your easy” and “it can’t get worst than yesterday”, just to mention some of them.

In conclusion, we can say that, if used properly, YouTube can open many new worlds. I hope that you too can take advantage of this tool!

Have a nice day!

MY PLE - REFLECTIVE POST

Hello everyone!

This is supposed to be our last post for this English course and I must admit that I am a bit sad because the years spent at the university seem to be almost over. Since I am not going to continue my studies (and thus my ‘formal learning’), I grasp the opportunity to reflect on my PLE (Personal Learning Environment). Needless to say, as Sarah (our English professor) told us, there is not a single definition of PLE and, since everyone has their own way of learning, there are no right or wrong solutions for our mind maps. In this post I would like to share with you my reflections as far as the English language is concerned and what could we do to achieve a higher level of competence.


In the image above you can see my mind map. I decided to use the world map as the background of my key concepts related to my learning process because English allows me to communicate with most of the people around the world. Therefore, our abilities and competences are the key to open new words and to discover new cultures. In today’s world more and more people do speak some sort of English (some people are native speakers, some use it as a second language and many other people learn it as a foreign language); as a consequence, English is becoming a global phenomenon and having a good command of it is, of course, extremely useful.


But the question is: is formal learning enough to learn a foreign language? Indeed, formal education such as school and university are important, but they are not the only tools available. I think that most of us had a narrow vision of the situations where we could learn a foreign language, and they coincided, more or less, with formal lessons, difficult translations, heavy grammar books and the like. And we were wrong. I wasn’t aware of the potential of Web 2.0 as a learning tool until this year. As my mind map reveals, the words that may be linked with formal learning are fewer if compared with other entries, such as Skype, YouTube, blogs etc.


I confess that it was not so easy to organize all the tools and the opportunities I have at my disposal to improve my language skills and make progress. At first I decided to divide the key nodes according to the kind of materials used (audio- paper- visual- virtual etc.), but then I changed my mind and organized the mind map into four main sections: INFORMATION, PLACES AND PEOPLE, CULTURAL SKILLS and LANGUAGE SKILLS. In my opinion this is the best way to integrate both formal and informal learning experiences and to connect a range of resources within a personally-managed space. As a matter of fact in the section INFORMATION I listed how I collect information and how I save it. I gather information from my teachers, but I rely also on the Web (Wikipedia, Delicious, OPAC online...).A part from paper notes, everything is stored on the Internet or in my computer (blog, bookmarks, tags, GoogleDocs...). PLACES AND PEOPLE are important, too. My knowledge of English now depends on my university education, my job as a clerk in the export department of a leading company in the heating sector (a way of enriching my vocabulary with technical words such as gasket, control panel, lead, ignition probe etc.), experiences abroad (scholarship in Malta, courses in English in Broadstair, international trade fairs...) and a virtual place: the Web 2.0, where I can ‘meet’ bloggers and share my experience with other people on social networks. CULTURAL SKILLS too play a great role for those who want to have a good command of a foreign language; in this section I grouped both formal ways of learning (literature courses, formal lessons etc.), but also informal tools (YouTube, movies, chats and forums). The latter outnumber the former. Last, but not least, I created a section for ‘pure’ LANGUAGE SKILLS, where I listed the four main areas of a language: reading, writing, speaking and listening. In this big area, my job now has a leading position for the development of my abilities and helps me to interact in English more effectively. Films in the original language and videos on YouTube together with media Websites and music are other opportunities I have to improve.


I noticed that ‘formal learning’ is only a minor part of my learning process, so when I will finish the University I would not have any problems in keeping my English updated and this is great! I also realized that giving private lessons could be an interesting way to refresh some grammar issues. As we discussed in class, learning is up to us. We have no excuses for giving up!


To conclude, during this semester I had the opportunity to see that everyone’s learning can benefit from a savvy use of technology. Thanks to the many tools offered by the Internet we can take control of and manage our own learning without much effort. I strongly believe that reflecting on our language-learning process is extremely useful because it gives us the opportunity to understand our strengths and our weaknesses while setting our targets for the future.

I hope to hearing from you soon,

Break a leg!

Bye

Italy or UK?

MP'S EXPENSES...

What shall I do to avoid risks on the Internet?

Yesterday in class we dealt with a hotly debated issue: identity management and Internet risks. We listed some of the main problems related to the use (or abuse) of the Internet. These are: the risk of finding controversial information, privacy invasion, spam, viruses, online frauds but also sexual harassment, making inappropriate friendships online and Internet addiction.

In the Internet era, it seems that many people, especially young people, do not care for their privacy, yet we should bear in mind that the Internet is a public "place". Therefore, like in real life, on the Internet too it is important not to give out personal data such as telephone numbers, usernames and passwords and many other details that should be kept secret. I do not publish personal photos and do not register to websites that I don't think safe. Moreover, when possible, I use a nickname and change my passwords regularly. I believe that no one should have their personal and private information shared with other people without their explicit consent, but unfortunately, this is what happens on some social networks, such as Facebook (see also the article mentioned in E-tivity 8). Even if we do our best to protect our privacy online, some friends of ours may publish online our photos, write our habits on the Facebook wall and our professors do publish our marks on the Web.

Since the Internet is an extremely useful tool, I think that the solution to privacy violation is not stopping using it. I would never do without reading online newspapers, sending e-mails to my friends, looking for interesting information quickly and without too much effort and surfing the Net. In my opinion, we should rather use antispyware and antivirus softwares and firewalls in order to protect our computer and ourselves from unauthorized access and external attaks and be cautious with suspicious emails and websites.
Internet is a synonym of democracy, so we all must lend a helping hand to prevent its misuse.

How to prevent identity theft - a video taken from YouTube.

An e-tool a day keeps the doctor away...

This CONCISE reflecting blogging post aims to explain the features and potentialities of Google Docs.

In our last lab lesson we learnt something more about Google Docs, an online tool that enables people to share documents and collaborate using the Internet. One of the main advantages of this relatively new online resource is that people can have access to their files anywhere and anytime, provided they have an Internet connection. Working with Google Docs means simplify your work, especially if you cooperate with other people. Saving your documents, spreadsheets,and presentations on Google Docs makes you free to make changes to what you wrote while having the possibility to go back to previous versions you edited. As a matter of fact, like in Wiki pages, a section called "history" is always available. Unlike a wiki page, this web-based word processor is a close system. This means that in order to share files you must be invited from someone. This, of course, protects both the privacy and the data safety. It is clear that we do not want certain documents to be read - and maybe stolen - by anyone. Another difference between Google Docs and Wiki pages, is that with the former more than one people at a time can edit the same page and this is a great advantage!

During the second part of the lesson we tried to practice both with Google Docs and with APA style. We edited a file written by Professor Sarah Guth and Professor Francesca Helm and tried to improve the style of the references they used. Though this was not an easy task (also because of some problems with the access to the shared file "E-tivity 7" and with difficult kinds of sources to reference), Elena, Francesca and I managed to edit the works cited respecting the APA conventions for referencing. We noticed that the most difficult sources to list in the "Works Cited" section were web pages and the transcript of interviews pubished on-line, while books are relatively simple to referecing, provided you take care of punctuation, capital letters, italics and spacing... and all the rest ;-)

We noticed that Google Docs is not like Word, since it has less options and functionalities, but it is quite easy to use. All things considered, I think that this new tool could be useful when I have to work in group or when I have to discuss a Power Point presentation in different places. Since there is no more need of pen sticks and bulky attachments to store or share our files, I believe that more and more people will take advantage of this free word processor. It might have been extremely useful at the end of last semester, when I had to work together with some peers of mine to prepare our final Power Point presentation. Unfortunatly, we did not know that Google Docs existed and could also be used for free!

APA and MLA: PROVIDING REFERENCES IN DIFFERENT STYLES

(Image taken from Flickr - by Linda Cronin)

Referencing styles are not very easy to use, probably because we are not used to writing many academic papers. Though both of the websites suggested in E-tivity 6 were clear, I still feel unsure about how to properly write a reference. In my opinion, a good university student should have no doubts about how to quote other people’s works at the end of their five-year course, but I think that the majority of Italian students still face problems in dealing with citations.
Exploring APA and MLA websites, I learned that all ‘important’ words (verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives and adverbs) must be capitalised when quoting (this was a question I have been asking myself for a long time). Moreover, I found out that in the format by APA if you quote longer works you should either use italics or underline the title, but if you want to cite a shorter work, you are supposed to use quotation marks. Honestly speaking, I find this difference quite silly. Yet, if this is the general rule, I will do my best to follow it! Personally, I prefer using italics rather than underlining, but surprise surprise... according to MLA style the contrary would be much better. I agree with Modern Language Association when it suggests people use “Work Cited” or “Annotated Works Cited” instead of the more generic “Bibliography”. I finally learned that indentation of a long quotation must be five spaces from the left margin and the double-spacing should be maintained. Needless to say, APA and MLA are quite different: here below I would like to mention just a couple of examples. MLA thinks that one should not abbreviate the name of the authors, while according to APA it is preferable to write the authors’ surnames first and then their names’ initials. Also the right place for the year of publication of a work is different: while according to MLA it must be written at the very end, in the APA style it should be inserted after the author’s name. Last but not least, the use of ‘&’ before the last author’s name is suggested by the Modern Language Association, but the American Psychological Association believes that in such a case an ‘and’ would be definitely more appropriate.
In my B.A. thesis I followed my supervisor’s advice and used the single-spacing for long quotation and, as far as indentation was concerned, I did it according to my own taste. I did not used ampersands because I feel that they are more used in commercial contexts, rather than in academic ones. All things considered, the style I used was a mix of APA and MLA styles.

In conclusion, I believe that we should practice a lot not just before our final dissertation, but also on other occasions. Writing academic pieces of work is not an easy task at all and, beside being careful, you also have to carve our plenty of time in order to come up with a clear and precise work. I hope to learn how to quote correctly as soon as possible.

HOW TO MAKE POSTS READABLE. A COMMENT ON AN ACADEMIC ARTICLE BY GIMENEZ

Writing well is not an easy task at all. I can read extensive articles, even dealing with specific or technical issues, yet I find it difficult to write a good text. It is common knowledge that a text (posts, e-mails, academic articles etc.) must have an introduction, a well-developed body supporting your ideas and has to round up with an appropriate conclusion. Actually what happens most of the time is that I want to convey so many things that either I get lost or I write pages and pages. In this post I will try to summarize some general opinions about what “readable” means, analysing a scholarly article I found on the Web.

Last week in class we discussed how to make posts readable. We all agreed on the fact that cohesion and coherence are two essential elements. Thanks to a neatly laid out text that avoids redundant repetition and uses synonyms or pronouns when possible, these two goals can be easily achieved. Needless to say, structure and links in the right place are also important. Generally speaking, short sentences are preferable to longer and more complex ones, even if Italians tend to be long-winded. English is widely recognized as a writer-responsible language: this means that the writer has to do their best to make a text logical and easy to follow. Furthermore, one should not forget that font, colour and paragraphs are visual tools that have to be used properly. If the background is black, you cannot write your text in dark grey, for example. Though these might seem just trivial details, it is true that readers can be discouraged to read what you wrote if the font is too small or if there are no paragraphs at all.

“Business e-mail communication: some emerging tendencies in register” (url no longer available) is an article written by Julio C. Gimenez in 2000. Its structure is really very clear since the article follows the hourglass structure. In the introduction, which is divided into three paragraphs, Gimenez explains the aims of his research after having provided a short background on the electronic communication. Of course the article has a logical flow of ideas: first of all the author tells about the origins of e-mail, then he analyses the electronic discourse focussing on register, style and contextual aspects of e-mails. For each aspect he provides statistical data (diagrams, data, and real example taken from a corpus of e-mails). These make the article trustworthy and support Gimenez’s statements. Before concluding the article, Gimenez draws his attention to the main differences between business e-mail and commercial letters and to the implications for teaching. The conclusion sums up the most important evidence and findings of the article and mentions the limitations of his research. The text is undoubtely cohesive thanks to the use of pronouns, repetitions and demonstratives:

• “The present paper attempts to investigate whether the spoken nature of e-mail messages has already started to affect business communication. It looks at... This paper also considers some of the implications...”;
• “The language of e-mail messages, as asserted in Fig1 contains... It also shows a liking for... In the commercial e-mails analysed, this is illustrated by examples, such as...”

The writing is easy to understand: sentences are short (generally no more than three-lines long) and do not have too many subordinates. The terms used are not specialistic, the style is formal but clear. The text’s assumed audience is people interested in linguistic and in this kind of texts. As a matter of fact, Gimenez in the introduction mentions previous research and specialized journals (ESP Journal and English Today). As a consequence, the author takes for granted that the readers already know what register means and do not explain the concept.

In conclusion, writing academic papers does not mean writing complex sentences difficult to understand. Language does not need to be august to be formal and it is better if we keep things simple and straightforward rather than long and obscure. I strongly believe that the pattern introduction- body- conclusion should be respected for every text and that the writer has to be concise, yet exhaustive and accurate. From now on I will try to simplify more and more in order to avoid unnecessary repetitions.