My presentation (from "e-tivity 1")

Hi everybody!

My name is Eleonora and I am 23 years old. I started studying English when I was 11 and after the high school I decided to continue to improve my language skills here at university. In my free time I like traveling, jogging, watching movies and going out with my friends.
Actually, it was rather difficult to find an image which represents me, but in the end I chose the picture of a tiger. I think that this animal embodies some important aspects of my personality, since I can be quite contemplative (as this beautiful tiger looks on “Flickr”) but at the same time also very determined and strong when I set myself a goal. Orange and black are two of my favorite colors as well…they really make a wonderful contrast together… :-)

Click on the following word to see the image: Tiger

Here are some other links I would like to share with you:

• Google: you surely know this famous page...I think this search engine works very well and it is quite helpful when you look for information…I’ve always managed to find everything I needed using it. I also recommend that you create yourselves a Gmail account; this service is very efficient because it organizes all the emails you exchange with the same person in a sort of “conversation”, and that makes it easier for you to find the exact message you want.


• Ryanair: this is another website I visit quite often. I like traveling a lot, so I try to jump at every chance I get to visit new places or friends who live abroad. I traveled many times with “Ryanair” and I have always been satisfied as the prices are very competitive and the flights usually on time.


• Rugby World Cup: here is the official website of the Rugby World Cup which is now taking place in France. I started learning more about this sport last spring, when some friends of mine and I followed Italy’s success in the tournament called “Six Nations”. Although it may not seem so, this sport is very fair and both the players and the supporters of different teams usually show great respect for each other. Unfortunately, the matches are only broadcast on pay-tv, so I have been visiting this page quite often lately since it is the best way for me to see how the tournament is going on. I think it is a real pity that interesting sports like rugby, volleyball, basketball or swimming have no place on Italian television and newspapers.

That is all for now, I hope to hear from you soon!
Eleonora

PS: Thanks to Elena and Anna for the suggestions...I hope it is better now ;-)

My first impressions

HELLO GUYS FROM GROUP G!!

Well, as I said before, this is my first experience with blogs. Although I already knew what "blogs" were and how they worked, I had never thought about the function they might have in the learning process.
In my opinion now it is still too early to say whether blogs can really help us improve our language skills or not, but during these two weeks I realized that this new approach does have its advantages:

• First of all, I noticed that blogs enable me to work with everyday English, which is something new for me as we usually deal with formal academic English here at university; I think this is a good opportunity to learn useful vocabulary and idiomatic expressions that often occur in informal conversations.


• Both the course blog and our personal blog are an easy and quick way to communicate, which is something quite difficult to achieve as there are so many of us. Through the blog we have the chance to express ourselves and to read our peers' posts and comments.


• The course also gives us the possibility to learn more about the Web and other Internet technologies.

I am sure that blogs can be good tools to improve our writing skills since they need to be updated often...so the more we write on the blog, the more we practice.. :-)
I also think that reading other people's comments is an useful comprehension exercise...in the messages we might find terms we do not know or expressions we are not familiar with; when you learn a foreign language vocabulary is maybe the most important part..how can you speak and understand what other people say if you do not know the words??

Unfortunately, through blogs we do not have the chance to “hear” spoken English…this is actually something fundamental for me; the more you listen to native speakers, the better is for your pronunciation and intonation. It is also the only exercise we can do to improve our understanding skills (I personally find English quite difficult to understand when it is spoken quickly and with lots of idioms).

During these two first weeks of blogging I realized that the blogosphere is something HUGE which contains a lot of different information about EVERY topic. It is really easy to “get lost” in it, so when you start surfing through it make sure you are free for at least the next two hours.. :-) One of the main pros of blogs is that they give the possibility to communicate and exchange opinions with people from all over the world…Just a few years ago this was something impossible you could have never even imagined.
I guess that the most difficult thing when you work with blogs is to distinguish which blogs are reliable and which ones are not…in the blogosphere there is simply TOO MUCH stuff to think that all of it is good! I am sure that only experience can help in this way...

Ok, that is all for now, let me know if you agree with me :-)

BYE!
Eleonora