Analyzing my PLE..

I think it's better writing in a post what I wrote in my PLE, because I noticed you can't see anything at all! I wasn't be able to download the programm, so that I go back to my simple piece of paper and my digital camera!

FORMAL AREA:
- activities: attend lectures, private courses, conferences, seminars; produce projects, thesis,researches, tasks; oral discussions with peers;
- people: mother tongue teachers, professors, peers;
- tools: exercises, bloggingenglish, labs, wikipedia, del.icio.us, bloglines;
- sources of information: grmmar manuals, dictionaries, language guides, CDs and DVDs;

INFORMAL AREA:
- activities: listening to music, working, travelling, reading books, writing, watching videos, talking, abroad experiences;
- people: Erasmus students, people met while travelling, co-residents, customers, bosses, colleagues met while working;
- tools: TV, radio, internet, instant messaging, virtual communities;
- sources of information: books, newspapers, websites, blogs, TV-programs, podcasts;

Hope this helps!

My PLE and much more!

photo by graf_bobo
Besides being time to start thinking about our final thesis, it’s time for us to sum up our long and personal journey across English language learning, as well. I think the process of studying a new language may be seen more or less like a long trip within yourself, your skills, your abilities and knowledge. You start from a point where you don’t know almost anything and, step by step, you reach what’s supposed to be the best you can do. As during a journey, there can be pauses, accelerations, obstacles to pass and goals to achieve.

This time we were asked to produce our Personal Learning Environment (PLE), obviously about our English learning process. I can describe the PLE as a sort of outline where we can put whatever we think can be helpful in order to learn a foreign language throughout our life, not only concerning the time we spent learning it at school. Above all in this scheme we have to write what we really use and do to approach and make ours what we learn. They can be tools, resources, processes, persons, situations, experiences, activities and they depend on your personal possibilities and needs. A PLE is something more than personal! It’s not an easy job, because we all know the learning process takes place in various situations: formal and informal, national and international, institutional and daily. Anyway, let’s try!

It’s true when we say we won’t ever stop learning. We learn from everyday situations, from mistakes, from dangerous or bad experiences, but even from memorable events and unforgettable friendships and relations. It’s interesting to notice how more you can learn outside of institutional contexts, such as school and university. There’s a huge world outside where you have the opportunity to share your opinions, to learn from the others, to listen to what they have to say, to practice what you already know, to keep your mind flexible and to reflect about what you’ve done so far and what you could do to improve it.

The easiest way to organize my PLE was to divide it into two big areas: the formal and the informal one. Then I made four different subdivisions for each areas: activities, people, sources of information and tools. As you can see (can you see, really?!!?) from the picture I posted there are various ways to learn a foreign language and above all everybody can do it! It’s not easy being original about this topic, because we are used to learn more or less all in the same way. Anyway, within the formal area I want to emphasize the great contribution mother tongue teachers, grammar manuals, peers’ discussions and oral activities give us. Whereas within the informal area I want to underline how fundamental experiences abroad are (this is my case! Last year I couldn’t a word of Spanish, and now I can speak about everything and with everybody!), besides listening to foreign music, watching movies in their original version, reading and chatting in virtual communities.

To produce my own PLE gave me the possibility to reflect on the learning tools I used till now and to take a look inside what I’ve done in order to see if I achieved the goals every student set when he/she began studying English. At the beginning I couldn’t find where to start writing, probably because there was too much to say. As a matter of fact while I was writing this post I noticed the more I was thinking, the more came to my mind and I wanted to add. It’s really impressive how many ways exist to learn, gather and store new pieces of information. Since learning time never ends, I’m sure I will have many other things to add to my outline!

Thesis time has come!

Photo by Abdullah AL-Naser

Thanks to Sarah who reminded me that I have to start thinking seriously to my thesis, to my next graduation, and above all to the hard work that stays behind a good production! I can’t escape! Time has come! And isn’t it a wonderful manner to start this run that to write something, and therefore to make a little research to find out what the fundamental tips for a judicious work are? I am sure this will help us all!
I remember when I was preparing the thesis for my first graduation: lot of time spent searching for the most interesting books and authors, for the most useful critical reviews and essays. I was always reading and underlining, copying and pasting, readapting and cutting. What a hard work! And if you are a fussy person as I am, it becomes really an obsession! Everything must be perfect! But unfortunately we all know this isn’t always possible. We have to live together with our imperfection and with the imperfection of our works!
But I’m sure there are some tips we all have to follow in order to produce a discrete text. The most important in my opinion is that you’ve always to read and analyze the texts by yourself. It’s your thesis therefore don’t confide to the others’ suggestions. You’ve lot of time (really?!?), so read whatever is possible in order to increase your knowledge and discover new topics and pieces of information.
As far as the online sources are concerned I’m quite skeptical. You don’t have to be a writer, a critic or a professor to write something in the net. Everyone can do this! So I don’t rely on the web as a trustworthy source for my thesis work. It may be that you can find interesting arguments and subjects, but I think the net isn’t a reliable mean of knowledge, yet! Books, articles and essays give me more a sense of security and certainty by now!

YouTube is everywhere!

I thought YouTube was something older, but I discovered it was created only in 2005. We all know it’s a website which allows you to see and share videos with other users. You can watch videos about everything, and when I say everything I mean whatever is possible (and impossible, too, unluckily!).

I began surfing in YouTube last year when I was in Barcelona. There it was impossible to me to see Italian TV-programs, and I have to admit that when you live abroad for a long period you miss a little bit what you were used to see in Italy. Obviously there were thousands of things to do, but before going to sleep I usually searched for parts of Italian shows in the net in order to fall asleep convinced to know a little bit more about what was happening in my country.

Everyone can post his/her favorite videos: from a home-made video to something recorded on TV or downloaded from the net. You can be the protagonist of your video or another person can be the actor, most of the time without knowing it. Nowadays with all these new cell-phones it’s easier recording whatever in every moments but above all without the others to know. Just an example, students in Italian school. Is increasing the number of those students who put on YouTube videos about pieces of nonsense they or their teachers do in class, or about what students do to or with teachers, or the contrary. This is an example of what is going to be YouTube in the future: a well of TV-trash and a documentation of reality (or degradation, I could say!), as well.

As far as the English learning is concerned, I think YouTube is a very useful and economic tool to improve your study of a language. Because, obviously, we are always speaking of English, but, as foreign languages students we are, we can use all the tools Sarah suggested to us for the other languages we are studying, too. We can watch videos all the times we need, we have the opportunity to hear mother tongue people speaking, listening to their pronunciation, developing our listening and oral skills without spending money!

I hope YouTube will keep its sense of cheerfulness, irony and fun, without collapsing, as unluckily it’s happening, in pornography or trash. Therefore I decided to post an amazing video on what Europeans think of Italians! Hope you’ll have fun watching it!

Learning English through your iPod!

photo by Tyson Smith

I have to admit this was the very first time I had some problems in order to understand what “podcasting” means. Therefore I apologize with all my peers to have been so late! I had to search the definition of this word in the dictionaries and last in Wikipedia, and it’s here where I found the most detailed description. In the end I discovered that is more or less the activity I do every time I download a file for my iPod. You can now understand how stupid I am in using computer!

To sum up, podcasts are above all music and video files you can download automatically in your computer and then transfer in your mp3 reader, if you want. Nowadays, for example, lots of radio stations create their podcasts in order to enable users to listen to them wherever they want. You don’t always have the time to listen your favorite radio program, so that you can do it when it is more congenial to your obligations.

By subscribing in bloglines. com the most interesting podcasts websites I found I noticed how useful it can be to get informed whenever they are updated with new files, new interviews, new programs and new discussions. After 6 weeks of class I can say the computer tools we are getting to know week by week will be helpful for the improvement of our oral skills, as well.

After a little research, thanks to del.icio.us that undoubtedly makes me waste less time, I discovered some affective websites:

- English as a Second Language Podcasts it's a kind of English course in the net. Instead of buying one of those expensive series of dvds with dialogues and exercises to learn English, here you are a perfect one. You can find dialogues, with the text transcription too, on the most various topics: from the discussion with your boss to tips on how to write a love song for your lover. If you register to the websites, you have the possibility to learn new vocabulary and grammar rules. Each episode represents a short piece of everyday life and this will help you in your English practice.

- Open Culture: Audiobook Podcast Collection it's a audio library, where you can find chapters of some of the most famous novels and poetry of English literature read by some English mothertongues. I straigh away searched for my favorite authors, that are the Bronte sisters, but unfortunately I couldn't find the audiobook of "Wuthering Heights", so that I cheered me up by listening to a chapter of "Jane Eyre". How a useful tool is this website in order to practice my English pronounciation!

- BBC Radio Homepage in order to get updated everytime with news from all over the world. How could it be missed? Besides listening to the news all the times you want to understand them better and to practice pronounciation and learning new words, I found interesting the link that allow you to listen to the news in different languages and the free music you can listen to through the BBC Radio.

I'm sure that a tool like the one we have learnt to use this time will turn my approach to computer science and technology more positive and optimistic. I enjoyed surfing the net to find something which could help me improving my English oral skills. Hoping to learn much more about this, see you at the next discovery!

Don't leave room to laziness!!!

photo by undertakergonzalez

Here again talking about what the net offers to lazy users! As a matter of fact the aim of social bookmarking is to filter useful websites for those users who don’t have enough time, patience or will to search what they need and what they are looking for by themselves. Once you logged in you can have access to series and lists of suggested websites on the topic you’re interested in, filtered for you by diligent students. But my questions are: who does make me sure that the websites the users suggest are really the most interesting and that there aren’t others more relevant in the whole net, and they don’t appear in the list? Who does assure me that the people who suggest the websites are really reliable, in the sense that they could find the most catching website about that specific topic?

I wonder whether you have notice how skeptical I am about internet and its users. I hope having the possibility to change my opinion during this “bloggingenglish” year. I don’t believe that sharing is always the best way to produce something. I mean that if you have to do a research or a tesis (such as that we are supposed to be preparing for our final graduation!) on a specific topic, it could be better for you to search, read and analyze all the material by yourself, seeing what you need, what you don’t need and what you could put in it but only in the end if you have time and there’s space for it. I think that leaning against these new technologies deprive us of this fundamental part of the research, besides our critical attitude.

I know Sarah suggested us to get familiar with social bookmarking because they can make our job easier and in fact they actually permit this, because instead of wasting time by searching in Google or wherever, we can trust in the help the other users give us with their suggestions and pieces of advice. I admit to have been taken the suggestion in a far too negative way, but I want to reaffirm my motto: “Don’t leave room to laziness!”.

As far as the websites suggested by my peers I find relevant the following:
- among those suggested by Stefania I found that of the BBC really useful. Every time I try to read an English or an American newspaper or to watch Tv-news, I have big problems in order to understand everything. In this site there is a section where you have the possibility to learn the meaning of the scientific and professional words journalists use throughout their articles and interviews.
- among those suggested by Alessia I think the websites about the most common mistakes in English is helpful for an Italian girl like me who wants to delete everything could demonstrate she's Italian. When Sarah corrects our texts, she always finds more or less the same typical mistakes of Italian people studying English. I hope this websites will help me to improve my lackness!
- among those suggested by Roberta I appreciate that on punctuation. As a matter of fact punctuation in English is another big problem for Italian students. For example we don't quite know how to use semi-colon, or when we write informal we tend to excess in the use of dots. This website provides rules and examples in order to understand better how to use them.
- among those suggested by Caterina I like that on intonation. It's true that unfotunately is very difficult for everyone to leave his/her particular accent, but I hope we can do something to improve it just by following some useful rules and by practicing. This website allows you to listen to a mothertongue reading some words, so that you can learn the pronounciation and the word stress patterns.
- among those suggested by Marta I found really interesting those on English literature. I'm so fond of literature that I immediately started surfing them, searching for my favourite authors and reading some pieces of their novels. I'm absolutely convinced that studying the culture of England means learning and analizing its history and its literature!

How many things we learn!

Technology is great! I mean, nowadays you can do a lot of things only by pushing a button or by clicking on a icon. The last thing we learnt was how to keep track of new information of our favorite websites or blogs. Actually I can’t realize how much more we have to learn and discover, because every day we are amazed by the news the net can propose to its users, but I’m sure we have a long way to go.

Technology is really helpful and above all allows us to do whatever we want very rapidly, but I’m afraid that all these improvements are going to make everybody lazier than what we already are. People go shopping on the net, people organize their holidays just by filling some forms they find in internet, people download movies and music or read newspapers on the net. I ask, what about crowded supermarket? What about agency travelers’ job? And what about eating pop-corns watching a movie in a dolby-sorround cinema? And what about chatting a little bit with that curious man of the newspaper kiosk?
That’s only a little part.

Nevertheless I think that a program like a feeds aggregator that allows us to know if one of our peers updated her blog, gets our task easier and quicker. I know that not everybody has the free time I have, so it’s better for him such programs do exist to make easier his job. I admit I’m not very good in using computer’s programs, so I will continue to do whatever is possible without using internet or whatever concern technologies. I hope one day I will improve my computer skills. But I admit not to be so optimistic, or better to say I don’t want to be. I won’t leave room to laziness!

My suggestions..that's just a little part of me!

Photo by niqist2000

The first blog I undoubtedly suggest you to visit is about sushi.
The url is: http://sushiday.com/
I fell in love with Japanese food during my Erasmus, and I want you to discover the originality and ethnicity of this cuisine as well. I hadn’t even tried to eat sushi, but Barcelona is full of Japanese restaurants, and above all of Japanese buffets, where you can eat whatever you want paying a fix, that I couldn’t resist. In practice, I was there eating every week!
The blog is very well organized, colourful and full of catching pictures. There you can find a lot of recipes and above all a well-structured glossary, because it’s obvious that not everybody knows what wasabi or daikon are or what the tools you need are. People can share comments, suggestions, tips and even recipes. Japanese cusine is quite a new fashion here in Europe, so I think it’s necessary improving your knowledge and practice sharing whatever you know through a blog with other people who have the same interest.

The second blog I invite you to have a look to is about the strangest places in the world.
The url is: http://mystic-places.blogspot.com/
I’ve always been attracted by mystery, myths, gothic and paranormal. It’s sound a little bit weird but I’m sure that more or less everyone once in her life has asked whether Ufos really exist, what happened exactly to Atlantis, or who built the pyramids or those strange statues in the Easter Islands. Through this blog people try to explain the possible (and even the impossible!), sharing ideas, anecdotes and evidences. I hope that here you could find some of the answers.
The background of the blog is obviously total black, as to introduce you to this dark side of reality, but I have to assure you that there are very clear and scientific explanations.

To sum up I can say that the language used by bloggers is colloquial and informal, as they were all friends. But they never fall into rudeness; on the contrary they behave always in a good way. I think that the blogsphere besides being a place where you can share opinions, it’s a place where you can always learn something and for this reason there is no room for impolite people.
The idea of sharing all that we know and post it in our blog is supported by the use of links. Every blog has its part reserved to links, that are a series of blogs connected to yours that deal with the same topic. This allows you to surf and immerge you totally in the topic you want, to meet people with your own interests and above all to learn and compare what you already know!

Hope you’ll enjoy visiting my blogs!
See you!
Giovanna

Two weeks of blogging!

Two weeks blogging..a passion that could last forever! As a matter of fact updating a blog is more or less like writing a personal diary. I say “more or less”, because there are different types of diaries, the secret one and the one which works as a kind of agenda. I think the blog we are going to create will work like the second one. Obviously you won’t write here your personal feelings you would confess only to your secret diary and which only those papers would protect forever (remember to keep it away from your curious sister, if you have one!), but surely it gives you the possibility to share your passions, your opinions, your thoughts, your tips and impressions with other bloggers.

Owning a blog not only allows you to share everything you want the others to know, but even to learn always something new from the others bloggers, who will post you their comments and above all by visiting their blogs. I assure you that the blogsphere is really wide, so it’s quite impossible not to find someone who like you has your own interests and who could teach you something new.

As far as the theme of “learning” is concerned, I’m absolutely sure that the idea to create our own blogs and the possibility to receive comments and suggestions from the other peers will improve a lot our fluency and our skills in English. What the others have to teach is so vaste that we will surely increase our packet of knowledge, with new words, expressions, slangs and whatever.

Welcome!

Photo by Tiemelijn



Hi everyone!
I’m Giovanna and I will be one of your peers during this “bloggingenglish” year together.
I posted this photo, which represents the façade of Casa Battlò that is for me the most resounding work built by Antonì Gaudi in Barcelona.
I’ve just come back from an intense year studying in this wonderful city thanks to the Erasmus program and I still miss its colours, its people, its perfumes, its sun and its dynamic and cosmopolitan life.
Actually I came back two months ago, but it seems to me like I had never left it.
It has been such a magic and fairy experience (like the façade of this house is!!!), that surely I will bring into my heart forever.

http://www.turistipercaso.it/
http://www.barcelonaturisme.com/
http://it.youtube.com/

I add these three useful websites. Actually only the first two are useful in my opinion; the third is just to have fun, but sometimes also to learn something. Do you know that Berkley decided to put some of its lectures in the net, and you can watch them through You Tube?

The first one is indispensable for those of you who are preparing a journey. It works like a forum, where a lot of people who love travelling are ready to provide you advice and information even about the most hidden place of the earth. Whenever I have to leave, I always have a look at this link. I’m sure I will discover something it will turn out necessary.

The second one was essential for my life in Barcelona and I’m sure it may be essential even for those of you who are going to visit that city. You can find all the information you need. From what you can visit to what you have absolutely to eat, from where you might go dancing to what you have to buy.

The third one it’s just for the free moments, when you just lay on the sofa doing anything. This is the right moment (instead of sleeping!) to have a look at what happens around you and miles from you, and why not, also to learn English. Why do not try to “attend” a lecture of Berkley?