Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!

Lifelong education

It's our last year at university, at the end of which nothing is really certain.. Indeed, we have expectations, plans and dreams, but our future still waits for us to give it a proper and personal shape.
Yet, there's only one thing we ca be sure of: we'll never stop learning. Our education can not stop at the end of our university experience: we'll still need to become more mature, improve our skills and knowledge, widen our horizons...
To understand the value of our future learning it's necessary to become aware of the path we have been walking so far. Especially as far as language learning is concerned, I've tried to think of all the ways in which I've been improving my language skills during these years. Then, taking Sarah's and Martina's mindmaps as a model, I've developed my own PLE map. As you can notice, it's a very simple map. It focuses on three main aspects of learning: gathering information, storing and sharing information and people involved in the learning process.

Despite the simplicity of my PLE there's one point which in my opinion is quite interesting: developing my own map I realized that, among the formal opportunities to learn a language, giving private lessons plays an important role in the improvement of linguistic skills. It may sound a paradox but I'm convinced that if you really want to teach something you need to make sure you actually know what you are talking about! This is not only the case of English lessons to Italian children, but also of Italian lessons to foreign people: as they don't know Italian at all (they all come from Sub-saharian Africa), English is for me a fundamental vehicle to teach them the basic elements of my language. This gives me the chance to deepen my knowlegde of English, as well as that of my mother tongue. Giving private lessons of music in London has been for me a further and extraordinary way to improve my language skills: teaching music in English was not only amusing but also extremely useful to get to know and use specific words and expressions. In general, teaching can be a wonderful experience we, as teachers, can take advantage of in order to develop our own abilities...this is something we should always keep in mind, since it proves that education never ends...

see y..

Hi girls!!!
I'm writing to you all to apologize because this week I won't be able to do our next e-tivity, since I'll be off to work..in Spain! I'm leaving tomorrow with the orchestra I'm working with (I'm a violinist..) and I'll be back at the end of the week. I'll try to answer your posts as soon as possible, anyway..

Have fun!

Marta

Do You/Tube?

As usual, the Web is full of new tools we can make use of for our purposes: YouTube is one of them! I must admit I felt almost overwhelmed by the huge amount of videos you can find on it: and, as usual, what is difficult is to filter and select what is actual useful to you..

Surfing YouTube I realized that this tool offers videos for any purpose: if you want to be informed on what's going on in the world, or if you want to learn something new about a particular subject, or if you just want to relax and have fun...in YouTube you can find all this! Moreover, what's great in YouTube (and in all the other tools we've discovered so far) is that anyone can upload their own materials and share them with the rest of the Net-explorers.

Can YouTube be useful to improve our English? I definetely think so: you just need to sort out the right stuff from this huge cosmos of information and you'll then have the chance to watch and listen to any kind of videos.. They don't necessarily have to have a pedagogical purpose, because you can learn even from funny stories.. Indeed, I would say that you can learn things better by having fun!

YouTube is not only useful to learn a language, but also to share impressions and ideas on topics you consider to be important... That's why, surfing TeacherTube, I've chosen to add a video on racism to my personal blog. I was quite struck by this video because it speaks directly to our soul trying to rouse our reaction on this still actual problem. I think that watching videos of this kind can make us think about urgent matters and, possibly, stand up against them.

video by cirnbarnsley

I'm not on strike, though..

Dear all... I'm sorry I can not complete e-tivity 6 (looking for pods on the Web..) untill Monday afternoon, since I don't have any broadband connection.. I'm afraid you'll have to wait till that moment (I'll do the e-tivity in the lab)..

So, see you on Monday! Have a nice weekend!

Marta

Pods, pods and again pods..

...Well, after having spent several hours surfing the Net, I think now I know a bit more about podcasts... One the one hand, I do believe pods can be useful tools to improve my English: as I don't have the chance to look at the speakers' body language, I'm somehow "forced" to listen to the audio file very carefully in order to understand its content. Moreover, some pods I've come across actually explain you how to do something, f.i. how to solve some everyday problems in an English-speaking context, or how to improve your grammar: thus, listening to them is actually like taking part to an English lesson...

On the other hand, however, there's some disadvantge, since looking for interesting and usuful pods is very time-demanding... how can you enjoy listening to pods if you've spent hours and hours searching the Web?! I think you can get so nervous that, at the end of your search, you'll be too exhausted to listen to your audio file carefully and take advantage from it! Now that I've saved some pods among my bookmarks, I hope things will be easier! :-)

About the pods I've come across... I must admit I'm not very familiar with business English, but I do believe that, one day or another, I'll need it for my job.. That's why I was quite happy to find a website which helps you improve your business English thorugh pods. In this website you can find podcasts on different topics (advertising, recruitment, sales, telephoning..) which are created to help people at any level of English learn new vocabulary, expressions, idioms and structures from the world of business.. Each pod focuses on a specific difficulty non-native speakers can encounter and tries to provide the tools to ride over it. It's worth listening to it!

Everybody knows English is a tricky language, because its grammar, despite seeming quite simple, can easily become troublesome and make you feel insicure! For example, do you remember the difference between the verb "to lie" and "to lay"?! I always get confused.. So, if you need some tips on grammar rules, have a look at this website: Grammar girl's pods explain grammar rules in a nice and clear way.

English as a second language podcast seems to be a very popular website among English students, that's why I've chosen to add it to my bookmarks.. ESL is actually a quite interesting website which gives you the chance to listen to conversations and discussions in English. In my opinion, the pods in this website are quite different from the ones I've found on the Net: while pods generally deal with specific language problems (grammar, specific English structures or registers..), these pods deal with more "wide" topics, from books to music, from shopping to daily life, which are presented in the form of discussions and conversations. This gives these pods a very natural and colloquial air, which goes beyond the usual English lesson and lets you explore the real world of American culture and customs.

Autumn on a bookmark..

photo by ingirogiro

That's how cooperation works..

What's Social bookmarking?

Like everybody else, I already knew how to store my favourite websites on my computer at home..but the concept of Social Bookmarking was totally new for me untill last week.. Yet, it's an easy and useful tool: you store the webites you're interested in as you would do on your Pc, but in this case you save them online, so that you can find them anytime and anywhere you are.

What's interesting in Social Bookmarking is that you can share your favourites with other people on the Web and have access to the websites they have stored: this gives you the impression you're not a lonely Internet navigator, but you belong to a wide and welcoming community in which everybody makes their own contribution by sharing information with others. In my opinion this can be considered a way to meet other people's needs and, thus, feel more intimate with them.

As you have free access to the websites stored by the other members in the global community, social bookmarking is not a simple store of your own favourite websites, but also a way to filter information and retrieve more authoritative sources on the Web: as while surfing the Net we're constatly overwhelmed by a huge amount of information, which actually makes it difficult to distinguish between good and bad sources, social bookmarking offers you a way to narrow your search to smaller units of information..
Let's make an example: it is well known that the Web is full of websites on English learning online; overwhelmed by this amazing quantity of more or less good tools, I usually lose my patience and give up my search for online materials unsuccessfully. In this case, social bookmarking has proved to be a very useful filter, since visting my friends' bookmarks I found two interesting websites on the topic. WorldEnglish, for instance, offers exercises, quizzes, tests, grammar explanations as well as video, written and audio resources to improve all your language skills. If you're in trouble with phrasal verbs or you're interested in English idioms, UsingEnglish is a very useful website which I found thanks to my classmates. Thus, without wasting much time I found out what I was looking for by simply "asking" my classmates for it or, better, by having a quick look at their favourites. And if they'll found something interesting visiting my bookmarks, this will show how cooperation works!

photo by Amigurumi Kingdom

Halloween: are you pro or against it?

picture by robalsmith

How strange.. I'm not really used to seeing kids playing "trick or treat" from house to house on Halloween.. And now the question is: should this holiday be imported in Italy, as it is actually happening now? Well, I think my first, impulsive answer would be: "No, thank you! It's not part of our (or my?!) tradition". And in fact Halloween originally belongs to the Anglo-Saxon tradition, thus having nothing to do with our culture. You could say I'm too traditionalist or even narrow-minded, but to me Halloween does not really "taste" of anything.. It rather looks like a mere opportunity to have fun, and that's it. Of course, I'm talking of Halloween imported in a different culture, since I have the utmost respect for this festivity as it is conceived and celebrated in its true and original context. But as in Italy this holiday does not have the same historical and cultural meaning, it seems to be rather "deracinated" and even looks more like a business event than a rooted and generally shared tradition. Instead of simply copying the mere surface of this holiday, why don't we try to explore its true meaning, the habits and beliefs that originated it? At least, in this way Halloween would not just mean "trick or treat", and we would be all more aware of other people's cultures, as well as of ours.

Relax..feed aggregators are there for you!

It's almost 2 o'clock a.m., and I've been surfing the Net for about three hours.. A wonderful experience thanks to feed aggregators!! You guys, I am soooo enthusiastic about feeds right now!!!!!

Imagine you are drinking a piping hot cup of tea (like me now, since I'm trying not to fall asleep) and the postman arrives handing you the latest newspapers.. Siping your hot and restorative beverage, you start reading them, without even moving from you confortable sofa.. I think this scene quite properly gives the idea of how I feel now.. Yesterday I subscribed to some blogs and websites and I've already been sent updated news and posts from them! What's amazing is that all this has been done for me by an aggregator, that is the kind “postman” that collects and delivers any new information posted on the websites you have chosen..
I'll make you an example: as I subscribed to two online newspapers, “The Guardian” and “Die Zeit”, today I was sent the latest news published on both of them. What was interesting is that I had the possibility not only to read the news I was interested in without much effort and with no waste of time (since the aggregator had already collected them for me), but also to compare the information given by these two different newspapers: both of them, for instance, reported the fact that Russia now wants to reduce the number of international election observers, thus giving rise to protests by human rights activists. Well, it was quite interesting to notice that this international news was reported by both newspapers in a similarly clear and objective way.. In this case, the aggregator helped me compare two different sources of information, which I think is a good way to understand how the same news can be dealt with in different cultures and contexts. Great, isn't it?
You know what? I'm enjoying blogs more and more every day!!!
Have fun on the Net!
Marta

A blog?! What on earth is a blog?!

Arghhh!!! This was my first reaction when I was told computers, keyboards, the Internet and blogs were going to be my next tools to improve my English.. As you can understand, technology is not one of my passions..

Anyway, after two weeks of e-learning and e-activities, my skills are slowly improving and I'm even beginning to enjoy writing posts! Creating your own blog can be frustrating if you have such little knowledge of e-technologies, but it can also make you proud of yourself when you finally click on the right button publishing your post..

What are blogs for? Will they be really useful to improve my language learning? Well, we'll see..but let's just take this example: while I was looking for blogs on cuisine and recipes, I came across some new words and expressions which are usually used in spoken English. What is more, whenever I write a post, I always try to use vocabulary and grammar properly (even if I'm not the kind of person who reads their own posts hundreds of times!). In general, I would say I'm getting quite conscious of what I'm writing and reading, trying to learn from what is good on the Web.. The only problem, now, is to become able to recognize what is actually good out there!!!

;-) Marta

Yes, it's me!

A traditional London bus..

Photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/esuzf/

Why have I chosen this picture? Because I simply love London! I have just come back from this exciting city and I'm already planning to go back there.. What I like most of London is its amazing mixture of cultures, colours, traditions and languages..everything there seems to be lively, vivid and full of energy! When I was in London I always travelled by bus, partly because I lived in the town centre and partly because it was the best way to "explore" and to get to know the city, its streets, its oddest people, its bright colours and, why not, its traffic! I think that this picture best represents my enthusiasm and my will to go back there, one day, and be part of that fascinating reality..

Here are two websites I would suggest to you to have a look at:

http://www.wordreference.com/

I have been using this free online dictionary since the very beginning of university; I find it particularly useful when, using the computer to write in English, I come across a new or difficult word. Thanks to this website you can quickly solve many of your basic translation problems; moreover, if you just click on the right links, you can get images and samples of contexts for the word you are looking up in the dictionary.

http://www.timeout.com/london/

If you are planning to go to London, this is the website for you: it provides you with all the information you need about events, expositions, films, restaurants, pubs and TV programs that are on in the city. Each event is reviewed, and you can also get tips on where to eat nearby the place you want to visit! This website, as well as the Timeout Magazine, is largely used by Londoners to be constantly informed of what is new in their city.