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
4 commenti:
Hi Eleonora,
I read you impressions about learning through the blogsphere;I agree with you when you say that blogging is a way to learn everyday English and this is something quite new for us at university...
Being a blogger is useful to improve your English skills but also your pc skills. Well, what is important is to have the ability to discern the info you find on the web which sometimes is more than huge and overwhelming...
You also wrote that there is no possibility to listen to spoken English. Well it is true. What i mean is that altough blogging concerns most of all written English, you can find a lot of reliable spoken material on te web and also on some blogs! Don't you agree?
thank for your impressions,
see you tomorrow
elenas
Hi Eleonora,
Fist of all, I’d like to say to you I find your blog really nice, because it has a lot of colours, and your photo catches the reader’s eye!
Speaking of your ideas about the use of blogs as language learning tools, as you probably noticed reading my post, I feel the same way as you do! The only different thing is that I’ve realized not only that blogging has influenced my language learning, but also that I’ve just improved my language skills. Nontheless, I agree with you that hearing and speaking English are fundamental to learn English! As we don’t live in an English environment we should take advantage as much as possible of the lessons we have on Monday with Sarah and of the opportunity to meet English students who are here with an Erasmus exchange programme. As you do, I also think oral English is sometimes difficult to understand because English people don’t pronounce every word separately, but groups of words together, and they tend to use a lot of phrasal verbs. It’s really hard work:)
One last thing, as you did, I also realized that when I open my blog with Internet Explorer the page is not displayed properly; as I’m not fond of technology, I can’t give me an answer :( Hopefully everybody uses Mozilla!
That’s ll for now, see you tomorrow!
Selena
Hi Eleonara,
As you said commenting my post, we almost wrote the same things. You are right, people "up there" can speak English (and in many cases another foreign language) very well. A friend of mine lives in Sweden, he can speak English almost perfectly....and he studied Finance!! So you can imagine when I talk to him I feel myself in a box....nevermind :)
See you,
ElisaS.
Hi eleonora!
I’ve already visited your blog several times, so almost every section of it is known to me! As for the first two weeks of blogging activities I must confess that I agree with you: we really “taste” real English, or better, everyday English, rather than academic, which we studied last year. What is more, I also had the chance to improve my computer skills: I didn’t know anything about the “blogosphere” and never thought I could create my own blog…and here we are! It’s always useful to acquire new competences which could be the pass for your future job. And here we’re all doing our best!
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