Eleonora's Blog

...Looking back at my PLE...

2008-05-29T09:06:00.000-07:00

Hello people!
Well, I thought it was finished, but actually we are yet to have our finest hour:-) In fact, we have not talked about our PLE anymore, and I do agree that it might be interesting to see how it has developed during these months. So I stepped back to my oldest posts and had a look at my mindmap…The first thing I noticed was that no big changes took place, although I cannot say my PLE is exactly the same as six months ago.

If I had to draw my mindmap again, I would keep the main division between my learning at university and outside it. As I explained in class, I am convinced that what we learn at university is not enough to reach a high level in English (of course I am not saying it useless or unimportant!). Unfortunately, we usually have large numbers so if we really want to practice the language we have to do it by ourselves. I would also keep the division into the four branches which correspond to the four different abilities. They are clearly not the same so I think they should be considered independent parts of a whole. I mean, you can be very good at writing but extremely bad at speaking or vice versa. Personally, I still feel more confident in writing than in speaking or listening, although thanks to the exchange I had the chance to practice a lot ;-)

As regards my learning at university, I think that this semester the comments on my peers’ blogs did not play such a big role as in the first part of the year. Furthermore, the ‘Padova-Albany’ forum disappeared from my mindmap, or better, it was replaced by the ‘Padova-Dickinson’ forum :-)
In the section called ‘tools’ there have been no significant changes: I still use both 'bloglines' and 'delicious' and I had already been using 'Skype' for a while before starting the exchange. However, this semester I got to know other two useful tools to keep in touch with my peers and foreign friends: 'MySpace' and 'Facebook'. Another important source of learning was of course our WIKI PAGE; it was a great occasion to practice my writing skills but also my ability to work in group. I know it may sound trivial, but organizing and planning some work together with other people is something we will surely have to do in our future job… And we’d better learn to do it now since it is far from being easy :-) That is why I think that working in group has been a fundamental part of my PLE lately.

I think people still play the most important role when it comes to communicate in English in my free time. Over the last months I had the chance to ‘meet’ new foreign friends I can practice with (I am talking about my American peer as well) and I am really happy about it. As I stressed when I presented my PLE, we do need people if we want to speak the language. We must get some kind of feedback; we cannot just talk to ourselves in front of the mirror (that would not be so fun I guess!). The only possible way to improve our speaking skills is meeting non-native speakers of Italian (I know it is extremely useful to talk in English also during class with our peers, but it is quite awkward as we are all native speakers of the same language).

In the next future I hope I my mindmap will keep growing… And I am not only talking about languages. At this time next year I will be probably (and hopefully!) working…And God knows how many new things I will have to learn then…

Lately I have been thinking about the meaning of the word “learning”, and I have realized I have always associated it with school/university rather than with the world of work. No need to explain that I was quite wrong… ;-)

Ok, that’s all folks. Good luck for your exams and have a nice summer!

Last post about "Intercultural Competence"

2008-05-14T13:35:00.000-07:00

Hi there!
I have not written on this blog for a while and, sad but true, this is probably going to be my last post :-(
The semester has almost finished, so it is time to sit down and reflect on what I have been learning during these months.

The main ‘topic’ in this second part of the year has been intercultural competence and we tried to ‘gain’ it somewhere doing an exchange with an American university.
As I wrote on my mid-term paper, I was actually a little bit disappointed about the exchange we did in winter… Of course it was nobody’s fault if it did not work out properly, but I must say I felt as we had missed a great opportunity. That is why I did not have great expectations when we gave it another try at the beginning of March. To tell the truth, I was not very optimist as I had always experienced that native speakers of English are not so interested in getting to know other cultures… They come from the so-called 'dominating culture', they speak the language that the entire world has to speak… So it is quite obvious that they are usually less motivated than us.

But this time things have been COMPLETELY different. First of all, the Americans were students of Italian so they were also willing to practice a foreign language. Then I think I was very lucky since my peer was really eager to know Italy and the Italian way of living better; she had a lot of enthusiasm and always did her best to speak Italian whenever possible. I had a wrong idea of the attitude Americans had towards other cultures, and that led me to have a wrong attitude towards them sometimes. Now I have learnt that they are not all SO proud: they can be very open-minded, and accepting this fact I have learnt to be more open-minded as well.

During these months my knowledge about life in the States has improved significantly. Now I know more about college life, politics and crucial social issues as health-care system and illegal immigration. It was a great chance to hear the opinion of someone who actually lives there… Much better than just believing to what we get from the media. I hope my peer could learn something from me, too, even though sometimes it was hard to answer to her very specific questions about Italian politics ;-) In fact, I think this period was useful for ‘revising’ some history of my own country as well (and also to learn things I had very little knowledge about).

As reagards language, I know it is only a small part of intercultural competence, but I think it played a fundamental role in my exchange experience. I must say I am thoroughly satisfied of my progress in spoken English. When I decided to skype in my spare time, I was a little bit worried because I knew that things would be more difficult to organize… And that was partially true, especially when it came to work on our final project. Anyway, I also learnt to appreciate the fact that there were just two of us in our group(Stefania joined us only at the end of April). That meant talking a lot in English and Italian; I think Sharon and I were maybe the only ones who had the chance to speak half an hour in English and half an hour in Italian every week. I was very happy about it since speaking is the skill I needed to practice most. I know it is still going to be a long way till I can say my English is really fluent, but I am sure there have been significant improvements :-)

Finally, I would like to thank all my peers I had the pleasure to work with over this year. I feel I have learnt a lot from them, and, above all, I have learnt to know them and their opinions better. Moreover, I would like to thank Sarah: all this would not have been possible without her enthusiasm and hard work. Yea, the course was quite time-demanding and there was often a lot of stuff to do… But now I am convinced it was worth it.

Mmm… I must admit I feel a little bit sorry now that the course has finished… It has never happened to me before… weird feeling… ;-)

BYE!!

Sixth Skype exchange/Wiki Page

2008-04-23T05:49:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody!

Yesterday I spoke with Sharon about our FINAL PROJECT. As I have already written here, we would like to concentrate on illegal immigration in Italy and the USA. We realized that the topic is rather 'wide' so we decided to narrow it a little bit and focuse on the attitude which people and media show towards this issue.

Our Wiki page will be divided into 5 sections:

1. PART ONE: INTRODUCTION (Eleonora, English/Italian)

What is 'illegal immigration'? (in general)
About Group 16. Here I will put all our contacts (email addresses, Skype names, TAG used in del.icio.us....), so that if we need some information we will find it here :-)

2. PART TWO: THE ISSUE IN AMERICA (Stefania, English)

General information about 'illegal immigration' in the USA: numbers (how many illegal immigrants are there in the US more or less?), nationalities (where do they mostly come from?), places (are there some specific States/areas where we find illegal immigrants?)
Media's/people's opinion: in this section we could put two links (a forum and an article taken from an American newspaper) and see what people and media 'think' about illegal immigrants...And of course, we will try to understand WHY they have that particular attitude towards them :-)

3. PART THREE: THE ISSUE IN ITALY (Sharon, Italian)

See above (PART TWO). These two parts should be as parallel as possible, so I think we'd better follow the same pattern for both of them. Of course, this section will concentrate on 'illegal immigration' in Italy...So the forum will be in Italian and the article taken from an Italian newspaper :-)

4. PART FOUR: COMPARISON BETWEEN THE TWO COUNTRIES (Eleonora, English and Italian)

Differencies and similarities in the two countries.
Conclusion

5. PART FIVE: REFERENCES (Bibliography)

Here we'll put all the URLs of the websites we got material from...:-)

Of course, we can add pictures, videos (and captions) or anything else!

Hope this is clear enough,

SEE YOU!

Fifth Skype exchange

2008-04-18T01:33:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody!
After having spent the last weeks talking about politics and elections, this time we focused on another crucial issue: immigration.
As I wrote on the previous post, Sharon and I had already discussed briefly about it, but on Tuesday we went deeper into the matter and learnt more about this phenomenon in the two countries.

I must say it was quite an interesting conversation as the word 'immigration' has a very different meaning in Italy and USA. In the States basically everybody comes from somewhere else: let’s look for example at our peers at Dickinson. Most of them have foreign origins and their grandparents were often immigrants. America was born thanks to immigrants: they left their own countries, they settled in the ‘New Continent’, started a new life there and contributed to its economic growth. Therefore, it is pretty obvious that Americans and Italians usually have a different attitude towards immigration.
As Sarah said, Italy has known this issue only for the past 10-15 years. Traditionally, Italy was a ‘country of emigrants’ and only at the beginning of the 90’s it really turned into a ‘country of immigrants’. Sometimes I have the impression we still have to get used to different cultures living in the same place…And probably our politicians are not yet used to that, either, since they often have not been able to deal properly with immigration over these years.
On the contrary, America is well-known as a big melting pot where people from about 50 different nationalities live and work together. As I wrote before, many of them were born in the States, but there are also a lot of foreigners who move to the US to find a job and start a better life.

Unfortunately, it is not always easy for all of them to integrate in the American society. Sharon told me at the time they are having serious problems especially with Mexicans. They often cross the border without visa and documents, they do not speak English so all they can do to survive is selling drugs or robbing. This leads some Americans to have strong prejudices against them and sometimes to take advantage of them, too. In fact, above all in California Mexicans are usually discriminated and are forced to do the worst jobs for very low wages.
I told Sharon we are also having big problems especially with gypsies since they are very difficult to integrate (and maybe they did not want to, either). I am sure not all of them are criminals, nor I think they should all be sent away; but undoubtedly, their culture is so different from ours that it is hard to see a solution for this problem. I would not ask them to give up their traditions, it would be enough if they sent their children to school instead of let them begging and robbing on the streets.

When there are integration problems, there is less tolerance and racism is more likely to spread. Unfortunately, every now and then in both countries we still hear stories of natives who beat or insult immigrants; in the US, this happens more often in Southern States, where Mexicans and black people are sometimes discriminated.

After our long conversation, we came up with the conclusion that legal immigration is a precious source of work and cultural richness for our countries. The real problem is illegal immigration.
It is a problem for both the ‘host-country’ and the immigrants themselves, who often have to decide between breaking the law and starving. At the moment this is a crucial point in Italy as well as in America, so that is why we decided to concentrate on this issue in our final project.

I hope it all goes well and that you will find it interesting ;-)

See you!

Immigration

2008-04-12T01:32:00.000-07:00

As soon as I began to think what I could write on this post, I realized I did not know much about the rules which regulate immigration in Italy. Of course, I remembered that the law called “Turco-Napolitano” had been substituted by “Bossi-Fini”, which had partially been changed by Prodi’s government. But I just had a faint idea of how they dealt with this issue, so I looked for more information on the Web and I found the following links (in Italian):

The whole system seems quite complicated; what is clear is that every immigrant must have a job before coming to Italy, otherwise he/she cannot get the permission to stay here. The “Bossi-Fini” law provoked a lot of discussion since it was much more restrictive than the previous one (“Turco-Napolitano”). Moreover, I found out that it was also criticized by Amnesty International because it did not grant political asylum as it should have done according to international laws. Amato and Ferrero, who were part of Prodi's government, tried to cut the red tape for high-qualified foreigners and postponed the expiry date of work visas.

I think Italy does need immigrants. This is not just my opinion, it is simply a well- known fact. Take a look at this:

L'immigrazione in Italia

Italy’s population grows thanks to foreign families. In 2004 immigrants paid taxes for 1.87 billion €; in 2005 they contributed to our GDP for 6.1%.
Just yesterday evening I heard on TV that Italian small companies cannot find plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, hairdressers, tailors and carpenters. In these fields there are a lot of jobs available, but it seems that Italians prefer studying or working in offices rather than “using their hands”. That is why artisans' associations are thinking to ask for workers coming from abroad; the same has already happened with nurses and caregivers.
I also think that immigrants who live, work and pay taxes here should have the right to vote. I have got one friend who was born in Romania but has been living here since he was 13. He attended the high school here, he has been working for an Italian company and paying taxes to the Italian state for almost 10 years now. Despite this, he cannot decide who he wants to be governed by because he does not have the Italian citizenship. I do not know how it works in other European countries, but honestly I find the situation here quite absurd.

The real problem is illegal immigration. I read Enrico’s post and I agree with him when he says that an illegal immigrant cannot do anything legal… So it is quite obvious that when you are desperate, you just end up robbing or trafficking in drugs if you want to survive.
I think the government should be more strict with people who break the law, no matter if foreigners or Italians. Gypsies who steal in houses or rape women MUST be punished as well as Italians who drive when they are drunk and crash against other cars. You make a mistake, you pay for it. It sounds quite simple, so why does it seem something impossible here?

Good question…

Ok, I will stop now :-)
See you on Monday!

Fourth Skype exchange

2008-04-11T13:42:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody!
Here I am again to discuss my fourth Skype meeting which took place on Tuesday afternoon. This week we kept on talking about politics and elections in Italy and USA. Anyway, this time we went deeper into the issues each platform concentrates more on. Sharon asked me some questions about Berlusconi’s and Veltroni’s programs and when we switched to English we had a long conversation about American candidates.

As usual, we started talking in Italian and Sharon wanted to know more about Italy’s biggest problem: tax evasion. I explained her what the different governments tried to do in order to solve it and why the whole situation with taxes is so bad here, although this was quite a difficult issue to talk about. The system is pretty complicated and it was not easy to find the right words to give her an idea of how things work. Anyway, everything went well in the end :-)
We also discussed a little bit about immigration in general: she asked me if we have many immigrants in Italy, where they mostly come from etc…So we anticipated the topic we are supposed to focus on next week…Hope this will not be a problem :-P

As Sarah had asked us I had posted some questions about platforms on the forum, so I started from them when we began to talk in English. I have just answered these questions on our exchange page so I will not repeat the same things here ;-) I can only say that I got more information about American health care system and Sharon confirmed me what Chiara had told us in class.
For those who cannot afford insurance it is extremely expensive to get medical aid. Of course if you need assistance and you are not insured they will not let you die….But then you will have to pay for it for the rest of your life. Even calling an ambulance can cost thousands of dollars. It really sounds quite illogical to me: if I do not have insurance it means I cannot afford it, so how am I supposed to pay this huge amount of money?
Health care is a big problem in America and is a crucial issue in both Hillary’s and Obama’s platforms. The USA have always been well known for its private health care system…Now I am curious to see if things will change with the next president.
We agreed it is a real shame because in America there are a lot of excellent hospitals and doctors, but unfortunately only few people can take full advantage of them. It is absurd, isn’t it?

Ok, see you later for the post about immigration…

Third Skype exchange/Reflective blogging

2008-04-05T05:39:00.000-07:00

Hi people!
Here I am again to reflect on my latest Skype meeting :-)

As always, at the beginning we started talking about what we did during the weekend and during class at university. It came as no surprise when Sharon told me that lately they have been focusing a lot on the elections (both in Italy and USA); actually, in these days 90% of the news on TV and magazines are about Obama, Hillary, Veltroni and Berlusconi ;-)
Therefore, it was pretty obvious that the core of our conversation was going to be the elections2008 and political issues in general.

The starting point of our discussion was the impression I had of the so-called political videos. Unfortunately, Sharon had not seen any of them so I more or less repeated what came out on Monday in class.
Then she asked me some questions about the previous Italian government and the candidates who are running for the new office. She told me she heard that Berlusconi has a high probability to win again, although most of the Italians she knows do not like him...(strange, isn't it?) :-)
Anyway, it is always difficult to talk about the political situation in Italy since it is really complicated!

When we moved to English, I asked her for further information about the American electoral system since I had been really struck by the difference between the popular and the electoral vote. In the end, we agreed that the “winner takes all” system might be pretty unfair, but it can be seen as a “necessary evil” to give the country the stability it needs.

As far as similarities are concerned, we noticed that both in the USA and in Italy the key word of these elections is CHANGE. It is clear that in both countries some wrong decisions were taken over the past years and now things cannot remain as they are. The only difference is that Americans still believe that changing is possible, whereas most Italians do not.
This point made me think a lot. Sharon told me that the majority of young people in the US are pretty excited about the elections. They are interested in political events, they try to be well-informed and seem eager to participate actively in their country’s social life.
Sad but true, in Italy is pretty much the contrary. Especially young people are generally disappointed about politics and I am sure many of them are not going to vote this time. I do understand them very well and actually I am also quite unhappy with most politicians (both left- and right-wing). However, I do not think that if you do not vote the situation will get better. And I do think that saying: “I do not care about voting because all politicians are the same” is quite superficial and, after all, not true. Whoever the Prime Minister will be, he/she will not probably be able to solve all Italy’s problems, but I am convinced that different electoral results can have quite different consequences.
Our vote is the only means we have to protect democracy and have our say. It is not much, but we should not forget that many people fought and sometimes died for this right….And in some countries they are still fighting and dying.

In conclusion, let’s spend a few words about our final project. In these months we have been exploring a lot of aspects regarding Italian and American culture, so it is hard to choose just one. I jumped back and read through the questionnaires again to get a clearer idea of what interests me most.
I would really like to learn more about the idea of family Americans generally have. Our peers overseas described American lifestyle as extremely stressful and career-oriented. I also noticed that in "Word Association" none of the Americans associated the words “family” or “mother” to American women.

From all this you might get the impression that nowadays family and children are a little bit in the background in American society. However, I read all the presentations on the Wiki and I saw that most American students have 2-3 brothers or sisters.
Are they just an exception or is the birth rate in the US (despite stress and career) higher than in Europe? Does the State help those women who have a family and a job? (i.e.: are places in nurseries easily available? Can women work part-time?) Do American parents spend a lot of time with their children? Do they think it is important to spend as much time as possible with their children?
I would like to answer these questions and compare the situations in the two countries. I think it could be interesting as the low number of births has been one of the most discussed issues in Italy lately. I wonder if in the US they have this problem as well. If so, I would like to know how they cope with it; if not, I would like to know how they prevented it.

See you on Monday!

YOGA form

2008-03-29T11:37:00.000-07:00

Hello!
I have just finished reading and filling out the YOGA form…Wow, I must say I find the topic Intercultural Competence really intriguing! I am happy we are going to deal with it this semester.

As I read through the text, I was pleasantly surprised to notice that many reflections were not new to me. In the form there were some ideas which I had already expressed in the post I wrote on my blog two weeks ago :-)
I was already aware of the importance of Intercultural Competence in today world. I also agree that if you work in an international environment you need to be open-minded and to know how to cope with people with very different ethnic backgrounds. However, as I stated in my post, I am convinced that a whole life is not enough to get to know a culture/language which is not yours. That is why I completely agree with the statement that ICC development has no ending point. You can never consider yourself as “interculturally competent”, so in the end the aim is not KNOWING a foreign country but rather BEING AWARE of what is different there and why. Only if we learn to be critic we will be able to appreciate and accept diversity.

The YOGA form was quite long, so as I went on reading I stumbled across aspects I had never considered before. I am talking for example about the “double-edged” nature of the intercultural experience. It is pretty obvious that competence in another culture and proficiency in its language are part of the same process, but I had never thoroughly reflected on this matter.
I realized that when I talk or write to my foreign friends, I often tend to concentrate more on the language rather than trying to learn something new from them. I mean, I am a student of foreign languages so I just try to jump at any chance I get to speak them. Sometimes when I meet foreign people, practicing my English/German seem more important to me than getting to know their culture. But little by little I am learning that “language and culture are dimensions of each other, interrelated and inseparable”. (This was the sentence which struck me most.)

On the whole, I found the text about Intercultural Competence very interesting, but not so easy to understand, though. There were many specific terms I did not know (i.e.: endeavor, to be germane to etc…) and the concepts were not always straight-forward.
When it came to fill out the form, I had some difficulties as well. To tell the truth, I do not like judging my own competences in general. I may be wrong, but I have always had the impression the others can judge me much better. This was the first time I had to assess my Intercultural Competence and I must say it was a bit awkward to rate myself in such an issue. Actually, I am not sure you can even rate yourself in such an issue… :-)

Anyway, I tried to do my best….And I am eager to see where the YOGA form will lead us :-)

See you soon!

Second Skype exchange

2008-03-23T10:19:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody!
Here I am again to discuss about my second Skype meeting.
As I had already talked to Sharon two weeks before, this time I did not feel ‘embarrassed’ at all and I suppose it was the same for her. In fact, we both started talking very spontaneously right from the very beginning.

First of all, she told me about what she did during her spring break and she asked me questions about my week (in Italian).

Then we shifted the focus to the main topic of this week: terrorism. We had a brief discussion about the film Buongiorno, notte! and the so-called ‘years of lead’. I tried to explain her what was going on between the Communist Party and the DC and why these upheavals led to Aldo Moro’s murder. I stressed the relation between what happened in those years and some of the main problems of today Italy; for example, I told her about the big scandal of “Mani Pulite”, in which many politicians, entrepreneurs and judges were involved. The huge debt we have now partially comes from that long period of corruption, although many Italians seem not to realize that.
From here we moved to the present situation: Sharon asked me about the elections (how many parties we have, who the candidates are) and who in my opinion is going to win ;-)
We drew a comparison between Italy and the US, since they are also having elections soon. We tried to figure out what the most important issues are (for the new Government/President): economic growth, health care (mainly in America), immigration (mainly in Italy) and, once again, terrorism.

Afterwards, we switched to English and talked about terrorism in the US and American politics in general.
As is well known, after the terrible events of 9/11th the American government tried to do whatever possible in order to ‘defeat’ terrorism and prevent other attacks to happen. This was President Bush’s main goal when he was reelected for the second time.
Unfortunately, most Americans think that Bush failed in his duty and would like the new President to pull all the troops out of the Iraq. That would probably help American economy bounce back since huge investments have been made in a war which is actually leading to nothing. In addition, people would feel safer and not constantly under threat of terrorist attacks.

As you may notice, in our conversation we did not strictly concentrate on the topic we were supposed to develop.
Last time we were to talk about university life, and so we did. This time it was much more difficult because we felt more confident and at ease; the conversation was very spontaneous so it was harder to stick to one single issue. We started talking about terrorism but then we digressed and talked more about politics and social problems in our countries. I hope the task can be considered fulfilled the same :-) After all, we talked ½ hour in Italian and ½ an hour in English and we learnt something new from each other…This is what counts, isn’t it? :-P

I am really satisfied about how this exchange is going on. We are just at the beginning but I feel we are on the right way. Contributing to the forum is a great chance to get to know something about life overseas and to find out things we do not know about our own country. In fact, when Sarah told us that this week topic would be the ‘years of lead’ and the Red Brigades, I was kind of puzzled. I realized I just had a faint idea of what was going on in those years; unfortunately, we do not usually study this period at school. So it was a great opportunity for me to learn something new about Italian history…I really appreciated it! :-)

See you!!!!

Mid-term paper

2008-03-21T06:05:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!
Before taking these few days off for Easter break, I would like to discuss about the mid-term paper I got back from Sarah two weeks ago.
I had a look at my peers’ works as well, so that I could get a general idea of what people thought about this course.

As regards the content, I was not surprised at all to read that all of us were satisfied and happy with what we did during the first semester. We all wrote more or less the same things and defined this course as informal and thought-provoking…Something pretty different from what we had been used to.

From the point of view of language, the papers were quite different from each other. Some of us used a more formal, some others a more colloquial style.
Although we all have a “bachelor degree” in English and should all be more or less at the same level, I noticed that there are quite big differences among the students.
I am neither a teacher nor a native speaker of English, so it is not my intention to judge anyone, but I must say some papers were much more accurate than others. Some people really came up with original reflections and went deeper into the matters, while others were a little bit superficial and the language was not always appropriate. What’s more, I had the impression that someone concentrated too much on the description of the ”e-tivities” and did not pay enough attention to the learning process (as we were supposed to do).

However, I realized that most of us made the same kind of language mistakes. We still have some difficulties with punctuation and verb tenses. In her comments Sarah often pointed out that we tend to mix verb tenses (simple past and present perfect); for me, after 13 years studying English is still hard to get these two tenses right since we do not have the same distinction in Italian.
In my paper there was also a lack of connectors, whereas some students used them either too often or in the wrong place (i.e.: ‘Moreover’ at the beginning of a new paragraph). In my first posts I used too many connectors, now I have tried to ‘reduce’ them but maybe I am exaggerating too much ;-) I will try to get better in this sense.
Another thing I noticed is that many of us misspell words sometimes. In my paper there are no spelling mistakes just because I always use a spell-checker (even when I am writing in Italian) and I would suggest that my peers should do the same. We all know that English spelling is not a piece of cake (I was also sure it was ’partecipation’ instead of ’participation’ :-/…); thank goodness, technology can help us avoid silly mistakes :-)

On the one hand, I think in my paper there are some mistakes I could (and should) have avoid:

The repetition of the subject when it is the same in two coordinate sentences (I was told a million times about it…)
The use of ‘consistent’ instead of ‘significant’ (I should have checked its meaning and thought it might have been a ‘false friend’)
The use of wrong prepositions (you should always look them up as they can be really different from Italian)

On the other hand, I realized there are things which are not so straight-forward. For instance, although I studied all possible grammar rules about it, I am still not sure about the difference between ’also’ and ’even’. I mean, I do know there is a difference between the two and I think I have understood it, nonetheless when I write the choice does not come so naturally.
The same happens with prepositions sometimes: for example, ’to expect something FROM someone’ and ’to expect something OF someone’ are both possible…I read some sentences and I noticed they are slightly different, however this difference is almost imperceptible to my ’non-native speaker’ ear.
Let’s hope watching films and talking with my Skype-peer and other foreign friends will help me get better from time to time.

Last but not least, I would really like to thank my peers for providing me feedback. They gave me a lot of useful tips and good pieces of advice…Without their help my paper would have been much worse, that’s for sure!

OK, that was long enough ;-)

Happy Easter to everyone!!!!

BYE

Reflecting on "Intercultural competence"...

2008-03-16T02:57:00.000-07:00

Hi there!
As the Americans had a few days off for spring break, there will not be a report about my conversation with Sharon this week. So this post is going to be quite different from the previous one ;-)
Today I’d like to concentrate on my personal learning…But not in the same way I did during the last semester. Ok, I’ll explain it better: I do not want to focus on my language skills, but rather on the aspects of America I am learning more about. From the very beginning I liked the idea of getting to know another culture and improving my English at the same time. I must say I was right…so far the exchange has been really stimulating!

Mmm…Intercultural competence…It sounds as something pretty difficult to gain ;-)
I have always thought it is quite hard to become familiar with any culture you did not grow up into. Even though you spend some time abroad, I think your idea of the country you are living in will always be influenced by your own culture. This often prevents you to get a clear and objective view of how things really are.
This is basically what I reflected on after our meeting with Chiara last Monday. And these three weeks working on the Wiki and reading the forum just confirmed this conviction.

I have realized that the world tends to have quite a distorted view of the US. I noticed it also when I was in Germany and had friends of many different nationalities.
On the one hand, some people see America as the country in which everything works perfectly: everyone has a good job, an excellent wage, everything is big, technology is high-developed and the economy is thriving.
On the other hand, some others see America as the root of all evil. They associate this country only with inequity, war, army, disaster and junk food. They think it is impossible to find something positive in this culture.
As regards my personal opinion and experience, I must confess it is hard not to be influenced at all by one of these two (extreme) views. To tell the truth, I used to be quite critical towards American society sometimes and I often wondered how Americans could be so presumptuous and think they were “the best“. These months spent with Sarah and the meeting with Chiara proved that American people are much more critical towards their own society as I actually thought.
Americans ARE NOT Bush (and Bush does not represent ALL Americans) ;-)

I really liked the discussion with Chiara last week since we stressed both the positive and the negative aspects of the US. It was made clear that both countries could learn a lot from each other.

As it came out in a discussion last semester, we (Italians and Europeans in general) seem to import only the worst things frm America...That is a real shame, and there is nobody but ourselves to blame.

So, after all it is always the same old story…you cannot judge something you really do not know.

See you next week

First Skype exchange

2008-03-08T03:58:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody!

It has been quiet on this blog lately, but now…Welcome back :-)
Yesterday afternoon I had my first Skype meeting with Sharon, a first-year student of Biochemistry at Dickinson College.
A new exciting experience has begun… :-) Thank God I was already familiar with “Skype” since I have been using it regularly for the last two years. So in this post there won’t be a tedious description of a mysterious technology I had to learn to cope with…;-)
Anyway, I must confess I was pretty nervous while I was waiting for Sharon to call me. In “Skype” I usually talk with people I know, so the idea of having a conversation with someone I had never met before sounded a little bit weird to me. Fortunately, I felt at ease from the very beginning.

Before talking about our different school systems (that was what we were supposed to do), we both introduced ourselves (in Italian). Sharon has been studying Italian for four years because she loves our language and country. She would like to visit Italy one day and meet her relatives who live in Molise. Dickinson students are going to have spring break next week and Sharon is spending these days in New Jersey with her family.
I asked her some general questions about American school system: she told me they start university when they are 18 and it usually takes them 3-4 years to graduate. In the US the high school lasts four years and there they study a lot of subjects (as we do). In each State the education system is more or less the same, but some differences can be noticed between public and private schools.

Then we switched into English and talked about the importance of studying abroad. She asked me if we have exchange programs and I told her about my Erasmus experience. We reflected on the fact that spending some time in a foreign country enables us to become more broad-minded. We both seemed to appreciate multicultural environments where you meet different cultures and ways of living.
We also discussed about university life; I explained that in Italy we do not have a campus with dorms but we usually live with our families or share apartments with other students. That is quite different from the USA, where most students leave their home towns to go to university. We came up with the conclusion that both living in the campus and with your family has its pros and cons.
Sharon had me notice that when you all live very close to each other it is much easier to form deep friendships. Your peers become your family while you are away from home, so it is often at university that you meet your “best friends”. I realized that myself when I lived in a student hall during my Erasmus. I feel here it is the other way round (at least for me); we attend the same lectures, we go for a coffee or have lunch together but in the evening (or at the weekend) most of us come back to their own home and life. I think this way you meet a lot of nice people but it is quite tough to become close friends.
On the other hand, it is not always easy for American students to live so far away from their families for such a long time.

My impression of this first Skype exchange is absolutely positive and I really hope it will go on like this. I am convinced this is a great opportunity we just cannot miss!

Bye!

Feedback

2008-01-01T11:04:00.000-08:00

Hi people!

How are you doing? Are you enjoying your holidays? Are you ready to begin the new year? :-)

Today I checked my feeds after quite a long time and I visited our course blog again...I read Sarah's message about our mid-term paper once more and I thought that I would really like to get your feedback before sending my work to her (that was actually her suggestion, too).

It would be great if you could spend a few minutes reading through it and then give me your opinion; if so, just reply to this post with your email address and I will send you the file (I still do not know when exactely, I have not finished it yet.. :-P)

If you think you need some feedback as well, do not hesitate to ask me and I will be glad to help you.

THANKS A LOT!

See you soon

Happy New Year!!!

2008-01-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

PLE (Personal Learning Environment)

2007-12-08T10:06:00.000-08:00

Hello people!

Well, here comes another “e-tivity” which does not involve technologies…;-)

This time we are supposed to reflect on what we do to learn foreign languages and what tools we use to improve our skills…Apparently rather easy, right? That was exactly what I thought as I read Sarah’s post, but then I soon realized the task was not simple at all.

Although brain storming, mindmaps and keywords were not new to me, I had never been asked to explain how I organize my personal learning. That is actually quite difficult since it is not just a matter of education; I think that basically you can learn in thousand different ways, so summing up this complicated process can be really challenging…

Anyway, let’s give it a try… ;-) Just click here to see how I developed my PLE mindmap

As you can see, there is a first division between what I do at university and what I do outside it; this is quite important as I think our personal “everyday” learning is essential if we really want to improve…No need to say that three hours per week are not enough to get a thorough knowledge of a foreign language…Well, probably a whole life is not enough :-)
Another thing I wanted to stress on my mindmap is that learning a language involves four abilities which all have the same weight. Our educational system tends to focus more on grammar and writing; especially when I was at the high school I often had the impression that “writing coherent texts without mistakes” was what “learning a foreign language” was all about. I am not saying writing is not important, I am saying it is NOT the only thing we should be able to do if we want to master a language. If we cannot understand when other people talk (most of all native speakers) or if it takes us five minutes to get a sentence out of our mouth, we will never be able to communicate effectively.

The problem is that listening and speaking are difficult to practice if we do not live abroad; we can write or read on our own, but for listening and speaking we do need other people. Actually, now we have much more exposure to foreign languages thanks to DVDs, satellite dishes and podcasts…So we have plenty of chances to listen to some English (or German, Spanish, French…), but unfortunately for speaking we still need an interlocutor :-)
That is why I think listening and speaking are my “weak points”; lately I have been trying to concentrate as much as possible on them, especially when I learn on my own. To stress the importance of these two abilities, on my mindmap I put a yellow icon next to them.
Traveling and communicating with foreign friends are the best ways for me to practice languages; the tools I use for this aim are basically Skype (it enables me to make free calls all around the world!) and MSN (the most famous chat program).

I would like to spend a few words about those technologies which help me organize the material I need for my learning. I must say I got to know them (Bloglines and Del.icio.us) during the course and their biggest advantage is that thanks to them you can access your favorite blogs and websites from any computer. They just make your life easier, don’t they? ;-)
In my PLE mindmap I also made a list of the tools I use to check my work when I write something in a foreign language. Some of them (like grammar books and dictionaries) are more “traditional”, whereas others are based on computer technology (advanced searches and spell checkers).
Advanced searches enable us to narrow the number of pages we usually come up with on the Web; if we apply the criteria Sarah told us we can make sure we get material written by educated native speakers. That is quite useful when we have doubts about concordances (verb-preposition, noun-verb, adjective-noun and so on).
Spell checkers are also very helpful when we type something…I always write my posts and comments in “Word” and then I copy and paste them on my blog…It is the best way to avoid silly spelling mistakes ;-)

Ok, I hope this was clear enough…Anyway, you will have the chance to ask me whatever you want tomorrow in class :-)

Have a nice Sunday!
BYE

Judging Online Sources

2007-11-29T03:09:00.000-08:00

Hello people!!!

Well, after seven “e-tivities” in which we were supposed to take a trip through the big world of technology and explore new tools, here comes a reflective post…I must say I am quite happy, I really needed a break from registering and subscribing to different websites and blogs ;-)

There is no doubt that the Internet has become an important part of my life in these last years; it enables me not only to communicate with my friends who live far from me, but also to find a lot of information about anything just by sitting in my room. Of course I am talking about my academic life as well; when I wrote my “bachelor” thesis the Web played a fundamental role in my research (and I am sure this was your case, too). So I am quite used to judge the sources of the material I come across, but actually I have always done it unconsciously without thinking much about the specific criteria I use. Nevertheless, this is far from being just a trivial issue since (as we realized in these two months) you basically find ANY kind of stuff online, no matter if good or bad. For example, I got to know that some professors do not even want us to use the Net as a source of material for our final dissertation. Is that because they are skeptical about the information we find online? Or are they just traditionalist and still prefer the good old books? Well, maybe they fear we copy and paste everything from the websites instead of producing an original piece of work… :-D
Anyway, if I had to list the most important criteria I follow when I do a research online, this would be my idea:

Who is the page written by? Who is/are the author/the authors of the essay/article I am reading?
How is the page written? Are there any grammar or spelling mistakes? Is the author a native speaker of the language the page is written in?
How many people have visited the page so far? (If it possible to see it) When there is the chance for visitors to leave comments (like for example a forum), what are their impressions about the website?
How long ago was the page written? Is it regularly updated?

When I clicked on the links Sarah suggested to us, I noticed that apart from the third point (the one about the visitors’ opinion) all my clues have been mentioned on the three websites. Other useful things to keep in mind are looking at the first part of the URL (most of the times it tells you where the info comes from) and considering the author’s point of view. I had not thought about this, but it is true that sometimes his/her ideas and biases can influence the content quite strongly.
So I would add these two things to the list I made before; and of course these criteria should be followed not only when searching for material online, but also when consulting any other kind of source.

I hope I gave you some interesting cues for discussion, I am looking forward to reading your posts.

See you on Monday!

YouTube

2007-11-24T02:42:00.000-08:00

Hi there!

How are you all? Today I am going to talk about a very famous tool we explored in the lab on Wednesday…It has been the last one we introduced this semester… Ladies and gentlemen, here comes YouTube!!!
Thank God this time I cannot say I had never heard about it before; I visit this website regularly and my mail box is often full with messages containing links to funny videos placed there. Anyway, I had never thought to register, probably because I was just interested in watching the videos rather than in posting them.
I am not going to spend many words on the videos Sarah put online for the “e-tivity 7” as I have already left my comments in the forum; I would just like to say we have a lot to learn from them, and of course I am not only talking about the language :-)

The impressions I had clicking around on YouTube are more or less the same as those I had when we explored the blogosphere, flickr and del.icio.us.: this website is a huge container filled with loads of material!! And unfortunately, good stuff is not always easy to spot.
Nevertheless, I am sure YouTube can be useful to improve my language skills since it can be a great chance to listen to some English. It can also help me learn how to do some things I am not familiar with…I am thinking for example about those videos Sarah put on our course blog to guide us through “Bloglines”: I could not go to the lesson in the lab that day, so those videos were simply vital to me ;-)
However, as is well known, on YouTube you also find pretty silly stuff, like those videos taken with mobiles by students (or should we say "baby-gangs"?) during the lessons. I think one of the negative sides of this website is that you can post almost everything you want there, which means also a lot of rubbish. So you'd better watch out and always be critical!

I was just wondering…Thanks to YouTube some weeks ago the German police managed to prevent a school-massacre; the two guys who had planned it had posted a video where they explained their intentions. If this website had not existed, maybe nobody would have found out what was about to happen.

I often ask myself why videos have become so fashionable lately…A couple of years ago nobody would have cared about them. And I also ask myself which role everyone’s right to privacy plays in websites like YouTube (IF it actually plays a role); I mean, if someone films me and then puts the video online without my permission, can they be prosecuted if I report them?

I was quite happy when Sarah introduced us this tool, though. So far I have been surfing through YouTube just for fun and I have never thought about it as an alternative way to improve my English. I guess I will keep an eye on it to see if I find something interesting and helpful (the I-Rack video was simply awesome!)

Ok, I hope it was not too long this time :-)

See you all in class!

Eleonora

Video-Bohemian Rhapsody-

2007-11-23T02:59:00.000-08:00

Hello you guys!
Well, as you can see I decided to follow Sarah’s suggestion and I posted a video on my blog. At the beginning I could not do it as I had not understood how to do it…Sorry, it takes me a bit to get into these things :-) But at the end everything worked out!
Unfortunately, the video I chose has nothing to do with language learning…I hope it will be fine the same :-/ A friend of mine sent me this link some time ago…There you will see a man playing music with his hands. This song was written by Queen, it is pretty old but quite famous though, so probably it will not be the first time you hear this melody :-)

The guy is a phenomenon, on YouTube you can find many videos where he plays other songs…I am still wondering how on earth he can produce these sounds…And, most of all, can he really do that? On the Net you will never know if something is real or just a fake…;-)

Anyway, I hope you will enjoy it!

BYE!

Podcasts

2007-11-17T03:43:00.000-08:00

Hello everybody! How are you all?

Well, this week we have learnt what podcasts are (this was actually quite a new word for me) and I must say “e-tivity 6” was the one I liked the most so far. Last year we did a lot of writing exercises so now I am happy to have the possibility to focus more on my listening skills; that is why I usually try to jump at every chance I get to listen to stuff in English… And podcasts are really helpful in this sense :-)
Anyway, it was not easy to find interesting material; it took me a little bit of time to choose three good links it was worth sharing with you… I hope you will enjoy them ;-)

Business English Pod -Job interview
This podcast is taken from a very well-structured website about business English. There you can find grammar tips, vocabulary exercises and most of all podcasts about different situations you normally have to deal with when you work. So the files are not strictly about business but also about traveling, job interviews, presentations and much more.
If you click on the link I put here you can listen to a very good example of job interview. I particularly liked it because it is not too simple (so it was pretty a good challenge to try to understand it well!) and also because it contains a lot of words which might be useful for us in the future. We are all going to have a job interview one day or another… And it could be in English… Who knows? ;-) I think it is always worth having an idea of how we should behave when we apply for a job and these podcasts are very helpful in this way.
Before you click on the link you can also read a brief summary of what the listening is about, so that you can understand the content better.

Englishfeed -President Bush and English
This is another fantastic website I found on del.icio.us. Here there are plenty of funny podcasts you can listen to when you are a little bit down… They will surely cheer you up! The one I want to suggest shows President Bush’s tendency to make up new words when he cannot express himself properly during his speeches… ;-) I can assure you it is simply awesome! Anyway, it was not so easy to understand (at least for me); as we are not native speakers we do not know if these expressions are just idioms or if they actually do not exist in English. Fortunately, those who put these files online were aware of this problem... They wrote a kind of glossary where they explained the meaning of every “bushism” :-) That really helped! Finally, another big advantage of this website is that you can also watch videos.

Better at English -IM slang is invading everyday English
In this website you can find interesting files about how the spoken language has changed through the years. The podcast I chose deals with a very widespread tendency, that is the massive use of abbreviations (taken from the Instant Messaging slang) which American youths make when they speak. The file’s title caught my attention straightaway since we had already talked about that in class with Sarah a couple of weeks ago. The most popular abbreviations are “jk” (just kidding), “lol” (laughing out loud) or “rotfl” (rolling on the floor laughing). I knew that young people often use them when they chat, but I did not know they were so common in speaking as well!

As you have probably already understood I think podcasts are a great way to improve our listening skills. I guess everyone of us would like to do a lot of things during the day, but unfortunately the problem is that often we do not have enough time. But we do not need to spend hours in front of our computer to listen to these files, we can just download them and listen to them while we are on the bus or simply when we have time. Anyway, the biggest advantage is that they are FREE! I really hope that we will also be able to find free material and sources online in the future… That is the main gist of the Net, isn’t it? ;-)

See you soon and sorry for this endless post :-)

BYE!

..."del.icio.us"... ;-)

2007-11-13T00:34:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody!

How are you doing? I hope you had fun searching for blogs and websites about English…I really did :-)
As soon as I read the text of “e-tivity 5” I felt just like last week with “e-tivity 4”, which means quite disoriented and worried; but in the end everything turned out to be quite simple…Well, I am getting more and more confident with these technologies, isn’t that GREAT??? ;-)

I think “del.icio.us” is another useful tool I had never heard about before; it allows us to make a list of the websites we are mostly interested in and to share them with the members of our network. This is the big advantage of “social bookmarking“: you create a sort of “community” where you can exchange ideas and links with other people. It is a good example of how you can interact on the Web with someone who has your same interests. I also liked the possibility to narrow the search field by searching for blogs and websites only on “del.icio.us”: in this way you do not get so many results as you would do if you searched on the whole Net.

This time we were supposed to find web pages about English learning or subject matters we study; I noticed that most of us focused on English, especially on slang, proverbs and idiomatic expressions. Almost all of my peers (me included) chose at least one website which has to do with listening and pronunciation exercises; for example, in my group K there are three of us who chose “Lello”, a very well-structured website that can really help us improve our understanding skills.
So I guess the majority of us concentrated on this ability because it is the most difficult one to exercise if you do not live in an English-speaking environment…Nevertheless, we all agree it is extremely important to be able to understand as much as possible when native speakers talk… :-)
Many of us also chose the “BBC Learning English Homepage”; I think this is one of the best ways to learn English online and to test your improvements. I got to know this site since someone suggested it in “e-tivity 1” and I find it fantastic…And it seems I am not the only one who thinks so!

My first impression is that most students picked websites which are more or less similar; however, some people’s choices reflect their specific interests. For example, I put a website about Business English among my favorites, while Enrico chose a website about philosophy, which I liked a lot as it explained quite complicated matters with simple words. Nina also has a link to a page about psychology and to a great website where you can listen to narrations taken from books…That really impressed me, I never thought it would exist something similar.
One last thing: I asked myself if in “del.icio.us.“ you can organize your links into different folders as in “Bloglines”…Well, I do not think so (but I might be wrong...) and I must say it is a real shame :-( Of course thanks to tags you can filter the information as well, but…It is not the same anyway!

Ok, see you soon!
BYE

My impressions of feed aggregartors

2007-11-02T04:52:00.000-07:00

Hi Group K!

How are you all? Are you enjoying these few days off?? :-)
In this post I am supposed to express my opinion about feed aggregators...I must say I find this task easier than the others we did before! Maybe you are asking yourselves why…Well, this time we do not need to use our imagination, nor we have to spend hours on the Net searching for blogs…the question we should answer to is quite simple: do we think feed aggregators are useful or not? Do we consider them good tools?

First of all, I must confess I have never heard about RSS feeds before; I did not know what they were and I had no idea of their advantages. As soon as I read the text of “e-tivity 4”, I started feeling a little bit worried since all the process seemed pretty complex to me (unfortunately, I was not in the lab on Wednesday). I said to myself: “How on earth am I gonna make it??” :-) But after reading all the instructions and watching the video, everything became clearer: the single steps were explained in a very detailed way, so I tried and I realized it was not so difficult after all.

I was rather surprised when I saw what these tools were able to do! I find feeds extremely useful…you just go to “Bloglines”, you log in and can subscribe to every blog or website you want; every time these pages are updated, you receive a kind of “notification”, so you do not waste time going to every blog to see if there are new posts. Isn’t that GREAT??!!??
I also liked the possibility of creating folders where you can order all the websites you subscribed to; in this way it is easier to find what you look for. At the moment I have got 4 folders: one for my Group K, one for my ex-Group G, one for other interesting blogs and one for online newspapers.

I really think feed aggregators will surely help me organize the work we do in the course, and I might find them useful in the future as well. So…I am rather happy as I learnt something new! ;-)

Finally, I would like to say it is a pity that some websites do not have feeds. I wanted to subscribe to our faculty’s page and I could not… :-(

Ok, these are my impressions. I look forward to reading yours!
BYE!

Should Halloween be imported to Italy or not?

2007-11-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

HAPPY HALLOWEEN PEOPLE!!!

One of the tasks we have to do for next week is giving our opinion about this famous American holiday, which in the last few years has become quite popular here as well. There are different points of view about Halloween: young people seem to love it and they celebrate it, while "traditionalists" are basically against it as they say it does not belong to our culture and history.Who is right? Good question...

On the one hand, it is true that Halloween never existed here until the end of the 90's (when I was a child I did not even know what it was); on the other hand, I like it because ghosts, spooks and vampires have always fascinated me :-)

Since I am in Group K, I am supposed to pretend to be totally against it during the debate which is going to take place in class on Monday. Before starting to think about some good clues to defend this point of view, here are a couple of details about Halloween’s origins and history:

"Halloween's origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in).
The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the New Year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.
To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities.
During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.
By A.D. 43, Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.
By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints' Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-Hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. Even later, in A.D. 1000, the church would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the eve of All Saints', All Saints', and All Souls', were called Hallowmas."

(taken from http://www.history.com/minisites/halloween/)

As you can read in the extract, Halloween takes its origins from a Celtic festival, which has absolutely nothing to do with our traditions. So, why should we celebrate it? Moreover, today Halloween is a North-American holiday more than a European one…We import a lot of things from the States: clothes, food, technologies, movies…Is it now necessary to import their holidays as well?? It sounds quite nonsense. There are lots of festivals around the world we do not care about…And many people in the world do not care about ours! If we celebrate Halloween, why do we not celebrate St.Patrick’s day, either??? I do not think we should import Halloween to Italy just because it comes from America! This holiday would lose all its meaning here because we do not consider it an important part of our culture...It would be just fashion or a sad result of the globalization process.

PS: That is not exactly what I really think about Halloween…Actually, I dressed up as a witch yesterday! ;-) In spite of this, there is some truth in what I wrote before. Well OK, we will discuss it on Monday, I hope this post will give us some useful cues anyway :-)

See you soon!

My presentation (from "e-tivity 1")

2007-10-25T03:33:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-23T00:36:00.000-07:00

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