Selena's blog

Self-assessment of my Intercultural Competence

2008-05-14T02:49:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody!

Unfortunately my English course is over and it’s time again for me to take stock of what I’ve learnt during the past semester and to evaluate my intercultural competence and language learning. I’ve tried to reflect on the experiences I’ve had in the past two months and to understand if and how they have changed my attitudes and beliefs about cultures and improved my language skills.

As regards my experience of the exchange, I must admit that it hasn’t been easy to assess my ICC and language learning; as I started the Padova-Dickinson exchange only one month ago I didn’t have the opportunity to skype many times with my American peer Corina and share many ideas with her. Anyway, I think the Skype exchange was really a nice experience and I definitely learnt something.
I think just using Skype instead of other means of communication has helped creating curiosity and interest. I actually had the opportunity to learn something about American culture through a direct contact with an American girl and this situation encorouged me enormously to interact with a great sense of freedom and to reflect more thoroughly on what I was speaking about. Speaking without seeing each other helped me paying more attention on language accurancy too.
I was particularly interested in listening to Corina talking about American university life and American health care. I compared the situation in America with that in Italy and I spontaneously reflected on my culture from a critical point of view. I realized that university life in America is very different from the Italian one. For example, spending a long time far away from home is normal for American students; they actually learn to be indipendent earlier than Italian students. The first time we skyped we also talked a lot about immigration. That time I particularly found myself asking Corina a lot of questions about the attitude Americans have towards immigrants because I believe we can learn a lot from their experience.

taken from http://www.irc-international.com/

The intercultural experience during the whole semester has been really positive for me. I realized I was very interested in other’s people way of life. I was particularly interested in understanding how Americans see immigrants, both foreigners coming from Europe and those coming from poorer countries. Moreover, even if I didn’t talk about it with Corina, I would be interested in knowing what the attitude towards black people is really like.
Furthermore, I believe I made some progress in changing my perspective when looking at my culture. For example, when we analysed the Italian and American political propaganda for the elections I tried to look at the Italian politics as an American would do and to understand what he/she could think about it.
I also realised that I am able to cope with the reactions people from different cultures may have to the way I express myself and what I say. When Corina didn’t understand what I was saying I tried to explain myself better using simpler words and to provide my point of view.
Through the editing of the two wiki pages and the contribution to the forum I learnt some important facts about the American culture and about the country and people that I did not know before. For example now I know how the electoral system in the US works and what the most important points of the candidates’ platforms are. Thanks to the final project I learnt much about the American health care system; I really didn’t know before that there is a crisis of primary care in America.
During the skype exchange I also realised that I’m able to maintain a conversation with people of other cultures by showing my interest in their culture. I find it important to show them that I try to understand their point of view and to look at my own culture as not necessarily the best one.

As far as my language learning is concerned, I definitely made a great progress. Doing the final wiki project I especially learnt many specific words in the field of health care and consolidated what I had learnt in the first semester; for example, rewriting the information I had found out in a more concise way helped me make improvements in writing with proper punctuation.
I believe I also made some progress in my pronunciation because I tried to speak more fluently and to imitate the stress-timing way of speaking. During the Skype exchange I also tried to change the way I speak Italian in order to make Corina feel at ease; I tried to avoid complicate and local expressions and to use shorter sentences.

I'm aware that I'm just at the beginning of a long process to acquire cultural consciusness but I firmly believe that the experience I've had during this semester has been particularly valuable for achieving this aim. This experience has definitely been very useful for both my knowledge of the American culture and the improvement of the English language.

My First Skype Exchange

2008-04-18T06:46:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody!

Last Wednesday at last I had my first Skype exchange with the American peers!:) I couldn’t wait to start this experience because I’m a firm believer that communicating with native speakers is the best way to improve the language and become aware of their culture.

The American student who will work with my group for this year's final project is Corina. This week Elisa and me skyped with her and next week it’s Chiara and Caterina’s turn. Since we are a group of four people we decided to split up and alternate two each week because it would be difficult to speak all together with Corina in a Skype session that lasts only one hour. Anyway, I realized that, even if we were three instead of five, while you are skyping the time flies and you don’t manage to talk about every thing you would be supposed to. I feel that since we unfortunately have this opportunity only every two weeks it won’t be easy to improve spoken fluency and accurancy significantly and working for our final project will be more time-demanding. For this reason I would suggest to meet all together for skyping with Corina so that we can decide together about how to develop and improve our wiki page step by step without too much effort.

Although skyping with many people at the same time might be not so easy, I’ve become aware of how much Skype has facilitated the interaction between us and increased interest in what we are doing for our final project. I noticed that skyping helped creating a feeling of community because we shared spontaneously a lot of information and ideas. I found it amazing to have the possibility to express my personality with a great sense of freedom and involvement.

This week we were supposed to speak about immigration in Italy and in America and to choose the topic for our wiki page.

As regards Immigration, we Italians explained to Corina what idea people in the north of Italy have about immigration and where immigrants in our region come from. She explained to us the same thing about her city and told us the history of her family because her mother is Italian. Exchanging opinions and information with Corina was really exciting and motivating because this time I could learn something new through a direct interaction and an “authentic source” of American culture.

taken from www.alignedstrategy.com

As far as the topic for our final project is concerned, Elisa and me decided together with Corina to focus on American and Italian health care system’s negative aspects and suggested as title something like “What’s Wrong with America and Italy’s Health Care System”. We thought that we could exchange our material and ideas per email but Sarah suggested in her post to save the websites we are using for our wiki page on del.icio.us too. I think this is a good idea and on Monday I’ll encourage my peers to choose a common tag for saving our bookmarks. As far as suggestions are concerned, once we will have our wiki page ready I think it will be easier to communicate by using the comment function of the page instead of using emails. Elisa, Corina and me started developing an outline and we realized that it will be easier to develop it properly once we’ve found out on the net enough information on the topic. Anyway, we started thinking about some points we would like to focus on. We though to point out first of all the negative consequences of the public/private cover and then the inefficiencies of the primary care, the hospitals, the emergency, the administation costs in both countries’ health care.
I’m really interested in learning more about this issue! Let’s start doing some research!

Have a nice week-end!

Selena

About Immigration

2008-04-13T06:05:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody!

This week I’ve been supposed to have my say about immigration in Italy and to start thinking about what cultural aspect of Italy and the USA I would like to explore further in my group’s future wiki page.

While until a few decades ago Italy was identified with an emigration country, today it is having to deal with an increasing number of foreign people from various parts of the world. Italy has been therefore faced with a challenging change in her role in political, social, economic and cultural terms.
When I think about immigration in Italy I automatically think about problems it has caused in our country; I often associate the term immigration with episodes of racism and violence. Right now one of the problems in Italy is illegal immigration and criminality. A few foreigners are actually committing crimes and even if they are a small group they are creating a negative image of the rest of the legal foreigners in the country. This situation has inevitably increased xenophobia amongst both Italians and foreigners. I believe that Italy needs stricter laws for reducing the number of illegal immigrants and for punishing crimes. This way foreigners might gain more respect as a whole from the native Italian society.

While I was reflecting on immigration in Italy I realized that this might be an interesting topic for my group’s final project. Immigration is actually one of the Italian cultural aspect which is discussed more frequently within my family and my circle of friends. Furthermore, as immigration is still a relatively new phenomenon for Italy and on the contrary a well-established phenomenon for America a comparison between the two countries’ immigration policies might be extremely interesting for understanding their strong points as well their weak points, their values as well as their defects.

See you in class!

Have a nice Sunday!

Selena

What's going on with the elections?

2008-03-30T03:08:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

What’s going on with the elections this week?

I’ve kept reading articles about the elections in the US and in Italy in TimesOnline, FAZ and ElMundo.

I’ve observed that news about American elections are still about the battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. There have been incrasingly bitter exchanges between the rival campaings; Obama and Clinton seem to have the conviction that personal attacks raise doubts about the opponent’s electability. On the contrary, now there is the feeling that both sides should keep their mouth shut if they don’t want to lose their prospects of winning the White House in November; the attacks they are making on each other are full of anger and hatred and convey the idea that both candidates are using these strategies because of their harmful positions in the race. Moreover, in all three newspapers I noticed an attack on Hilary Clinton’s credibility; a video shows that what she said about her arrive in Bosnia a few years ago is not true and so provides the evidence of her lies (even if she told later that she had misspoken). I believe Americans are suffering a crisis of confindence in the leadership of both candidates. As a result McCain seems to gain strength and become the favourite.

taken from msnbc

As regards the issues discussed in these weeks, the war still seems to be the leading concern for voters. Nonetheless, as last week there was the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq it was expected that there would be more headlines in newspapers about this issue; on the contrary, it appears that the war was out of the limelight and replaced by the economy. The right-wing candidate above all concentrates their speeches on the war; he is very determined to convince Americans to continue military action.
In addition to the basic points of candidates’ platforms, this week race has been for the first time an explicit issue in candidates’ speeches. Obama’s pastor Rev JeremiahWright had stated that America couldn’t change about racial prejudice and the dissemination of this idea was actually threating Obama’s strategy for dealing with his racial identity, the most important pillar of his campaign. During his last speech Obama strongly tried to convey the message that even if he has a black face, he will be capable of representing the nation in all its diversity and that he might be the only one capable to heal the racial divisions. In fact, it seems that it has long been clear that Obama can be the first black president only if he is not seen as a black candidate; there is actually a general idea that he can’t win the elections if race is a predominant issue.

As far as Italian elections are concerned, in addition to TimesOnline, FAZ and ElMundo I took a look at the online Italian newspaper IlSole24Ore, which seems to be one of the most impartial newspaper in Italy. This week’s headlines are above all about the crisis of Alitalia, the crisis of Buffalo mozzarella because of the continuing rubbish crisis in Naples linked to the local mafia, about the retirement plan and the videos made by PDL and PD. While two weeks ago there was no trace of news about Italian elections in all three foreign newspapers, this week they all have pointed out Italy’ problems about economy, politics and criminality; I feel that foreign countries don’t have high regard of Italy.

taken from interfree

In the latest news of all newspapers there is a general feeling that this is a strange electoral campaign; platforms’ basic points and the two main parties’ goals are actually quite similar (even if in the last few weeks there was a marked difference about the solution of Alitalia’s case). Moreover, this week PD’s video has attracted a lot of criticism. Both Veltroni’s video and Berlusconi’s video are actually quite ridiculous because none of them mirror reality; these two videos misrepresent the opinions Italians and above all joung people have about politics. I think that instead of gaining votes these two videos have actually ruined politicians’credibility.
Taking all these points into consideration, I feel that on 13th and 14th April there might be a lot of abstensions.

Bye bye,
Selena

The news about the elections from UK, Germany and Spain

2008-03-15T07:39:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody!

As the development of Intercultural Competence involves contact with other world views this week we’ve been supposed to compare the news regarding the elections in Italy and in the United States in sources from three different countries. Through this task we had the opportunity once again to experience a shift of perspective and appreciate similarities and differences among different cultures and languages.

This time I’ve decided not to analyse sources from Italy and the United States, but to concentrate on what other countries think and write about the two political elections. I chose to follow the online news of newspapers from three European countries: the United Kingdom, Germany and Spain. I decided to focus on newspapers with a slight centre-right inclination and I came up with the English newspaper The Times, the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. They all are daily national newspapers with wide circulation in their countries and abroad.

taken from students.usm.maine.edu

Before I started looking for news I was really curious to find out what United Kingdom, Germany and Spain thought about the general elections in Italy. When I began taking a look at the three online newspapers I was immediately disappointed; there is no trace of Italian elections! The latest news about Italian politics were about the dissolution of parliament by the president Giorgio Napolitano and the date for the general elections. Italy seems to be really forgotten by the close European countries which prefer to concentrate on other international issues and on more powerful countries.

On the contrary, all three newspapers have a special part in their websites for US political elections.
From the homepage of The Times’ online version TimesOnline you can access the News and then choose the section World News. From this point you can further narrow down your research by selecting the news regarding the world’s most critical areas. So you will click on the US and Americas News and find a special link to a blog about US elections and the latest news in the centre of the page about White House 2008.
Once you open the homepage of FAZ.NET, the online version of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, you will find under Politics a special section called Wahl in America. Here you can find a table with all the primaries’s results so far and the latest news.
From the homepage of the online newspaper elmundo.es you can access the news about US elections through the section International. Here you can find material on the right side of the page by clicking on a linkable section called La Carrera Hacia La Casa Blanca. In this special website you can read the main news about the super tuesday, comment on the blog’s posts, watch videos, see pictures and the primaries’ calendar.

All of them offer a lot of information about US elections, but I noticed some differences in the amount and visibility of coverage. While English and German material is daily updated, Spanish reportage only focuses on the fundamental news. Furthermore, the Spanish online newspaper has the link to US elections on a little image on the right part of the page. It has been actually more difficult to find Information about US elections on the Spanish website than on the English and German websites. German and English journalists might give more space to US elections than Spanish ones do because Germany and the United Kingdom have stronger links with the United States.

As regards the words and the images used in the latest reportage, I noticed similarities in all three online newspapers. In the last few days’ articles the most frequent words are racism in TimesOnline, racismo negro (black racism) in elmundo.es and schlamm (dirt), hautfarbe (skin color) in FAZ.NET. All three newspapers convey the idea of an American racial politics. They all focus on the way the nominating battle between Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama is going ahead. As both democratic candidates have same ideas and goals in their programs their battle focuses on their different personal roles: she is a woman, he is a man; she is white, he is black. This way democrats are increasingly dividing along ethnic lines and both campaigns are pointing fingers at each other over who is to blame for bringing a virtual race war into the elections.

Have a nice week-end!

Selena

Political Elections 2008

2008-03-09T05:50:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody!

The second semester has begun and I’m ready to start reflecting on my personal learning process and keep track of my progress again. In this second part of the course the aim is to develop our own intercultural competence in particular. Let’s start!

As the political elections both in the United States and in Italy are just around the corner this week we’ve been supposed to analyse and compare American and Italian campaigns. I particularly focused on the main candidates on the right: John McCain and Silvio Berlusconi. I took a close look at their personal official websites by carefully watching and listening to some of their speeches.

What I noticed at first sight is that both candidates have great appeal on their audience. In order to make their messages stick in people’s mind both ot them use clear and simple words that everybody can easily understand and remember. In their speeches their ideas are ordered into a logical sequence and supported by a lot of numeric data. Both candidates speak in a strong and clear voice which seems to be quite convincing. Moreover, I noticed that they often use the word responsibility; this way they might want to enhance their role and gain credibility.

I tried to identify key words and expressions that the candidates use in their campaigns and I noticed that they have some values in common.

The role of the family seems to be a very important value.

The word family is one of the most frequently used expressions in Berlusconi’s speeches. To help the family is actually one of his goals. He wants to keep taxes low, give each family a house, provide better social services and give a future to young people. In this context the word children is frequently used in particular. Not only does he mention the family as one explicit point of his campaign, but he also cites his family in the examples he uses to support his statements.

As regards McCain, family is neither one of the most frequent expressions he uses nor one of the issues he focuses on in his campaign explicitly. Nevertheless, there are some signals that prove family is one of McCain’s most important values. During his speeches he often appears together with his wife and always thanks his wife and his children for their support. Furthermore, some of his goals such as improving education and medical care are closely linked to family’s welfare.

taken from New York Times

Even if it is not a specific point of their political schedule, religion seems to be another fundamental value in both right-wing candidates’ campaigns.

Berlusconi uses the expression Christian tradition’s values in his speeches and makes use of symbols and meaningful expressions of such tradition to show his faith. When he was interviewed by Emilio Fede, a famous Italian journalist and director of a popular newscast, he was in his house and I immediately noticed that on the walls behind him there were two pictures that represented religious characters. Moreover, the motto of his campaign Italy, stand up! may have religious connotation because the same words are used in the Bible. What is more, Berlusconi refers to his goals by using the term missions which is a typical religious expression.

McCain shows his faith in God as well. In his speeches he uses expressions such as God bless you and God-given rights.

Not only have Berlusconi and McCain these two values in common, but they also have similar goals in their projects. In addition to those I alrealdy mentioned, both candidates focus on important issues concerning employment, business, alternative sources of energy and security.

Nevertheless, Berlusconi and McCain differ from each other about the main idea of their campaign.

The most frequent word in Berlusconi’s campaign is the word freedom. As far as Berlusconi is concerned, freedom is the most important right everybody should have and the key solution for Italy’s problems. The Italian right-wing candidate believes in all kinds of freedom: freedom of thinking, opinion, expression, worship, association, business and market. The name of his party and most of his slogans actually include the word freedom.

taken from Panorama

The most important goal in McCain’s campaign is the defence. The American right-wing candidate focuses on the fight against terrorism. Instead of promoting a common value as Berlusconi does, he points out his own abilities and his own values. Since he has military experience he wants to convince Americans that he is the most appropriate candidate for combatting Islamic extremism. McCain uses words such as courage, experience, strength and leadership.

Why differences exist?

The Italian candidate might want to focus audience attention on values that are shared by the whole society instead of enhancing his own reputation because Italian people have not much confidence in Italian politicians anymore. As in Italy left-wing candidates and right-wing candidates have sometimes completely different points of view they might want to give more prominence to what should be done. On the contrary, American candidates’ goals might be more similar and the issue is to understand who is the best prepared to lead and defend the nation.

See you in class!

Selena

Merry Christmas to All!

2007-12-25T07:22:00.000-08:00

taken from http://www.fantom-xp.com/

My Personal Learning Environment

2007-12-10T13:56:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody!

This week we’ve been supposed to develop a mindmap of our personal learning environment. I’ve never heard before of this definition but it has happened to me a lot of times to reflect on what I should do to learn a language. I must say I’ve already tried to organize my own language learning because in these last few years at university I even more realized that learning a language is really difficult if you just rely on your formal education. I believe studying languages at university, even if you’re attending a master course, is not enough to learn them properly. So I wasn’t surprised at what studies in the field have shown and I completely agree with them.

As you see from the picture below I haven’t made a clear distinction between formal instruction and informl learning. I think the tools you use and the people you deal with to learn a language might be sometimes the same in both contexts. Moreover I think the map wouldn’t be balanced because most of situations in which I’ve realized to learn something effectively take place outside of the classroom.

My Personal Learning Environment

I think just attending classes is not an effective way to learn a language because you don’t always feel compelled to use your brain. Even if you try to memorize grammar rules and new words you will soon forget them because you are not experiencing the situations in which you would be supposed to use them. Instead, if you experience real situations you will remember them for the rest of your life.

As most of you know I’m having a short work experience in a hotel in England. I feel responsible for the job in which I’ve been placed and I’m motivated to do it well. I think that stress and emotions have a great impact on learning.

I’m aware that the most difficult skills for me are listening and speaking. Understanding colloquial English is sometimes hard work because people use a lot of phrasal verbs and slang expressions and might have different accents. For this reason I’ve decided to dedicate my informal learning to activities that could help me improve above all my listening and speaking skills. I believe experiences abroad and activities like talking with friends from abroad, listening to radio and watching foreign TV programmes play an important role in my language learning.

Bye bye!

Selena :)

Judging Online Sources

2007-11-30T11:44:00.000-08:00

Hello world!

This week we’ve been supposed to reflect on what criteria we’ve used so far and should use to judge the incredible number of web pages we find on the Internet. I must admit the Internet was an important source for me when I had to do research for my bachelor thesis; nevertheless I hadn’t thought that thoroughly about the importance of a good judgement. Anyway, I think I uncounsciously evaluated everything I came across someway. First of all I paid attention to the appearance of the website; I think it is really important that a site is well-organized and without spelling mistakes. Secondly I surely had a look at the author of the document. I must say that, since I started this course and experienced how huge the Net is and how much rubbish there is on it, I’ve realized these two criteria are not enough. In these last weeks I’ve found myself having to judge a lot of online sources and this hasn’t always been easy at first sight. I’ve taken some more things into consideration:

Since Sarah told us about it in class I’ve always had a look at the domain ( e.g. .edu or .ac.uk) and at the file type (e.g. .pdf); this way you can understand why specific pieces of information are provided and who is their target.
I’ve always asked myself questions about the origins of the stuff I find. Who is responsible for publishing the information provided by the web page? How reliable and authoritative is/are the author/the authors?
I’ve made sure that the information given by the source is supported by valid documantation.
If the web page offered the opportunity to see statistics about online visits or had a forum I would always check how many people has visited it and what they’ve said about it.
I’ve usually tried to understand if the information has been updated regularly.

Of course these are useful criteria I follow to evaluate all kinds of sources. I had a look at the websites Sarah has suggested to us as well. I agree with all the tips the three universities give to students. Basically, I think I’ve mentioned all the most important points that we should pay attention to.
So we shouldn’t be attemped to rely on everything sources of information, especially the Internet, give us. It is really important to spend a little bit of time to decide weather the material we’ve found is enough serious and reliable or not.

I’m really curious to know how you evaluate information!

Bye bye from England! :)

Selena

My YouTube experience

2007-11-24T04:37:00.000-08:00

Hi guys!

After all those serious web tools we’ve learnt so far, Sarah finally introduced us to YouTube. I couldn’t wait to explore it! I just watched comic videos on YouTube with my friends; but I began taking a look around on my own only after we started this course. Nevertheless, I’ve never thought before Wednesday about the great potential it might offer for learning English.

This week I’ve tried to search for videos that might interest me or be useful for my English language learning. I must admit I felt quite overwhelmed by the large number of videos you can find on YouTube. I realized it is really difficult to find out intelligent worth watching videos because there are really too much stuff. You can just pick and choose! However, as we just did with the other tools, we should still be critical and narrow down what we come across.

What’s great in YouTube is that you can not only watch and upload videos, but also save, collect and share them with other people! You have the opportunity to comment on them and so to interact with other users. What’s more you can make your own video and broadcast it on YouTube! I just knew that some friends of mine already did it!

taken from salpetti.wordpress.com

Surfing YouTube I realized that this tool can really help me improve my English. Most of videos are actually in English and range from serious issues to funnier and more relaxing topics. You can simply choose what most interest you and you think might be useful for achieving your goal. This means you don’t have to choose only among videos with pedagogical purposes. I think watching and listening to videos which don’t offer the opportunity to read their scripts and get a learning guide might be even more useful. This way you must make an effort to understand what you are listening to. So you are tempted to listen to the video over and over and deepen your knowledge. Moreover, since I believe enthusiasm is really important to learn a language, I think YouTube can be particularly useful. I was really stimulated by some interesting and exciting videos!

Let’s have fun! :)

The world of podcasts

2007-11-17T14:20:00.000-08:00

Hi guys!

This week we’ve focused on one particular aspect of our English learning process: our listening skills. Understanding everyday spoken English is sometimes hard work. Informal colloquial English is a totally different kind of language from formal written English because you don’t pronounce every word separately and clearly and you use a lot of phrasal verbs, idioms and slang expressions. We always complain that we don’t have a lot of opportunities to listen to English native speakers as we don’t live in an English speaking environment; now we shouldn’t do it anymore. Sarah showed us a useful way for English listening practice that until now most of us didn’t take seriously into consideration: podcasting.

taken from peacecorpsonline.org

What’s a podcast? It is an audio or video file free distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds. You can download it onto your personal computer or your iPod or mp3 player. Using podcasts instead of normal audio files on the Net you have some advantages. First of all, you don’t have to listen to or watch podcasts online. If you don’t simply have enough time to spend in front of your computer or if you spend a lot of money when you’re connected to the Internet, you have the opportunity to upload podcasts onto your mp3 player and listen to them whenever and wherever you want. This semester I’ve gone from Conegliano to Padova by train almost every day to go to university and I’ve sometimes completely wasted my time; from now I could take advantage of the time I spend in train better listening to useful podcasts for improving my English. Secondly, podcasts are a great solution for those who don’t have broadband at home too. You can download the podcast onto another computer with high speed Internet connection and then of course upload it onto your mp3 player.

It took me a while to search the Internet for good podcasts that might interest me; I realize the world of podcasts is big enough to get lost! I tried to be critical and came up with these three websites:

VOA News

This is a multimedia international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government. It offers you the opportunity to download a lot of podcasts about all the news, information, educational and cultural programs it broadcasts every week. It helps you not only learn American English but also learn about American life and keep you up to date with world news. This website has a section with special English programs too; the goal is to communicate in clear and simple English with people whose native language is not English. Even if I prefer listen to genuine speeches at standard English speed these special English programs can help you understand complex subjects.

Business English Pod

This website offers you the chance to learn business English through free weekly mp3 podcasts. Lessons are for intermediate as well as advanced business English learners and focus on particular skills (e.g. meetings, presentations, telephoning, negotiating) and language functions (e.g. disagreeing, questioning, expressing opinions). I’m really interested in it because I’d like to work in business!

The Bob and Rob Show

This website is a sort of variety show that gives you the opportunity to improve both conversational British and American English through audio lessons. Bob and Rob are respectively a Yankee and a Brit who teach English at the same university in Japan. You have the chance to hear two different English accents and compare them.

Have a nice weekend!

See you :)

Selena

Simply del.icio.us!

2007-11-13T14:10:00.000-08:00

Hi everybody!

This week we’ve explored a tool that I’ve found extremely useful! It has a name that is absolutely easy to remember; it simply conveys what it is for real: something del.icio.us! Its attractive name and its enjoyable function remind me of an inviting cup of delicious strawberries!

taken from http://www.1-2-pimp.co.uk/

Since I started attending this course and surfing the Net more frequently I’ve noticed that in many sites there was a logo called del.icio.us; this name caught my attention and I always wondered whether Sarah would show us how to use this tool!

So what’s del.icio.us?

It is a Social Bookmarking, a way to store, share and discover web pages of interest online.
Using del.icio.us, first of all, you have the advantage of saving links to all the websites and blogs you want to remember online instead of on your personal computer; this way records (bookmarks) give you the chance to find your favourite web pages quickly wherever you are. Secondly, the list of web pages you saved through this tool is public; this means you are sharing your bookmarks with other people, but at the same time you are getting access to their bookmarks too. You can describe the sites you want to save not only making a short description but also using different keywords (tags); this way you can search for all the websites and blogs associated with specific tags as well as get to know how many people have bookmarked the same web pages as yours. I think creating a sort of community where you can exchange suggestions for new interesting links with people who has your same interests is the biggest advantage this tool has. Social Bookmarking gives you the great opportunity to find great websites because you are searching for them among all the websites that users regard as their favourite.

Before last Wednesday I never heard about social bookmarking; when I had to search for something online I always went to Google and explored its sections Web and Groups. So I was always overwhelmed by a barriage of sites; it took me a lot of time to filter them and find out what I was really searching for. Moreover, at the end of my research I sometimes had a feeling that I hadn’t come up with the most suitable sources; I thought that there might be something more authoritative and reliable on the Web that I hadn’t managed to find out. Social bookmarking offers you the way to narrow down the list of web pages you might interested in and successfully find the best!

taken from careo.elearning.ubc.ca/wiki?SocialBookmarks

In order to start social bookmarking and using del.icio.us, this time, we were supposed to search for websites involving language learning and other subject matters we’re studying at university. I mostly concentrated on finding out something related to informal conversational English. I tried to search for websites that we’d never come across before too. I found three interesting English language learning websites for esl learners that can help you improve your listening skills. As we don’t live in an English speaking environment, I believe we should take advantage of them as much as possible. As I am interested in economics as well and I would like to work in business, I found out a website offering business English lessons. Well, if you are interested in learning more about everyday English and business English take a look at my bookmarks adding me at your network!

Using the network I created for the members in my group, I chose the bookmark from each of them which most attracted my attention. I really appreciated the BBC web page Elena chose about English pronunciation tips. I think speaking with excellent pronunciation is really difficult! Among the bookmarks Elisa saved I liked that about synonyms, antonyms and definitions. I think trying to increase your own vocabulary is really important to express yourself -both in speaking and in writing- better. Imma found out an interesting website about differences between informal and formal English as well. It actually shows you how to avoid colloquial writing, but it indirectly tells you what the most popular colloquial expressions in friendly e-mails and chat rooms are. Katja chose something about informal expressions too. The interesting thing of this website is that you can learn in which particular English speaking area of the world each slang is used. Finally, I chose a completely different bookmark among those Lisa stored. This time it is about funny items you can create to personalize your own blog.

I have to say you all did a good job!:)

I hope you enjoyed visiting my favourites as well:)

Selena

A fun overview of current web technologies

2007-11-06T05:46:00.000-08:00

Hi guys!

Surfing the net I found out a curious metro map! Have a look at the clickable online version!

taken from iA

That’s the Web Trend Map 2007 created by a strategic design agency in Tokyo. It’s definitely impressive and suggestive!

I now have an almost exact overview of current web technologies!

It shows the current Internet trends using the Tokyo Metro map; there are the 200 most successful websites ordered by category, proximity, success, popularity and perspective.
The focus is on English language sites, but there are some popular Japanese and German ones as well. Among the stations there’s “our” Beppe Grillo’ s blog too!

Have fun looking at it! :)

My new experience with feeds and feed aggregators

2007-11-03T13:59:00.000-07:00

Hi guys!

I’ve just used the feed aggregator Sarah made us get to know on Wednesday in order to keep track of your blogs. It’s incredible how much this tool is useful! In the last weeks I’ve learnt so many things and found out so interesting tools that, I must admit it, I’m enjoying blogs more and more every day!

I must say I have never heard about RSS and aggregators before; I didn’t really know what they were and I had no idea of their features and advantages. When Sarah told us she was teaching us something which could make our life easier, I felt immediately relaxed! Every time I have to learn something new about Computer technologies I’m a little bit worried; at first sight they all seem to be complicated, even if, after all, they proved to be very simple to use. This time I was really enthusiastic because I was learning something that could give me the oppurtunity to save time!

Nowadays time is an extremely important resource; we should use it wisely and efficiently as much as possible. Just using Bloglines you are sent all the updated news of all the websites and blogs you wanted to subscribe to in a standard easy-to-read format. This way you do not have much effort and waste time going to every websites to see if there are updates; that’s a wonderful invention!

I also think the possibility of creating playlists is really great! The page in which you have the list of websites you subscribed to does not appear confusing anymore, and this way you may find what you’re looking for easier and faster. On Wednesday, in the lab, I created three folders: one for my group G, one for other blogs I am interested in and one for online English newspapers. What is more, Bloglines is a news aggregator you don’t have to install on your computer because you can access it free through any web browser.

I’m sure Bloglines will help me organize my time online better. I’m really satisfied with this new tool!

Have fun!:)

Selena

Should Halloween be celebrated in Italy?

2007-10-31T12:53:00.000-07:00

Hello there all!

Only just ten years ago Italian people knew little about the Halloween holiday; for most, it was just a strange American feast, something like an Anglo-Saxon carnival. Nowadays, through the influence of movies and marketing, it is popular in Italy as well. Quite a few Italian kids go trick-or-treating from door to door, even if they are still met with mixed reactions; some are not fully updated on the new tradition and do not know what to do with the group of masked kids standing on their doorstep, while others are abreast with the times and are on standby with various treats.

We don’t really understand the tradition, but nobody complains too much about it. Although it does not have any strong meaning for us, it is an excuse to have fun. We don’t yet take it seriously, but slowly, as there are a lot of masked parties and great fun, I think its popularity will continue to grow and this holiday might become a bigger part of Italian culture.

But what is Halloween actually a celebration of? It seems to be a holiday that was invented in America, but it has far deeper roots. Halloween was actually originally born in Europe. Only in the 19th century, immigrants from Ireland and Scotland brought their customs with them from their homelands, and kept them alive in America.

http://www.blogger.com/www.warwickshire.police.uk

On Monday we’re going to debate whether Halloween should be imported to and celebrated in Italy. As member of group G I would be supposed to have arguments for the Halloween celebration in our country. I must admit it, it took me quite a lot of time to find by myself some good motives for the introduction of this holiday; so I decided to search the Internet for more reliable information and I came up with some interesting statistics for the economy.
In the Italian on-line newspaper Il Messaggero the Coldiretti farmers’ union said that the growing popularity in Italy of the American Halloween celebration has proved to be a boon for Italian farmers, who increased their pumpkin production and variety to meet demand; they have actually seen a significant increase in the production of ornamental pumpkins and those for size competition. I found out Italy produces some 60 million kg of pumpkins a year, especially in the northern regions of Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna and Veneto, as well as in Campania in the south. What is more, according to the consumer group Codacons some 8 million Italians celebrated Halloween this year, spending around 255 million euros, while according to the agency of Telefono Blu 190 million euros were spent on masks and fancy dress and 140 million euros on organized parties.
Without a doubt, there are a lot of commercial interests, and corporations didn’t think twice about trying to graft an American tradition onto a society already extremely americanized. Halloween could be really important to the economic growth of Italy.

As you’ve probably understood, my point of view is different from what I should defend in class on Monday. Personally, I believe Halloween has been artificially imported into Italy, and I don’t like artificially imported traditions. I think we don’t have the cultural backbone to support it. I might sound narrow-minded, but I think traditions should be created the way they should be, by doing something because it has existed for a long time among a particular community.

Nevertheless.....

Happy Halloween!

My first two weeks of blogging

2007-10-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

Hi guys!

Well, I must admit it, I didn’t know anything about blogs before I started attending this English course. Actually, I heard about Beppe Grillo’s blog and I remember I had a look at it once, but it was truly beyond me what blogs really were and what a huge and complex world the blogosphere was! Only just three weeks have gone and I’ve already created my own blog! It sounds a little bit strange to me, but I’m really excited!

At the beginning I had some difficulties because I was not familiar with these technological tools, but then everything became easier! Exploring blogs on Technorati I was astonished that I had so much fun. I’ve become aware of the importance blogs have as form of communication. I’ve realized that bloggers blog for any number of reasons, from promoting a business to merely discussing an interest or reporting their feelings and emotions, and that blogs can be about anything! I love blogs especially for the sense of community they offer thanks to the comment feature. I’ve found it amazing to have the possibility to take part in discussions regarding the contents of blogs and to communicate directly with the person who creates the blog. I also like observing the way bloggers reflect in their blog pages their personalities. Generally speaking, I feel that blogs are an enjoyable way to learn about the world around us!

The Blogosphere from discovermagazine.com

I’m surprised that in so little time not only I’ve learned a great amount of things about blogging but also, and above all, I’ve made a lot of improvements in English! I’ve realized blogging has enormously influenced my language learning.
Personally, I believe there are some problems with the old traditional methods of teaching English. Sitting in a class listening to boring lectures might really be a waste of time because you don’t feel compelled to use your brain. I’ve always tended to study hard for some months and then take a few months off, and, using traditional studying methods, after the break I often forgot most of what I had studied and I lost a lot of vocabulary. Contributing to the course blog and continually updating my personal blog I feel that once I learn something, I don’t forget it.

· First of all I think motivation is very important to learn a language, and this way it’s difficult to lose your enthusiasm because responding encourages you to partecipate actively, and it’s also something more interesting, as you share ideas and opinions.

· I believe in the use of blogs as language learning tools because, when you have to comment a blog’s posts, firstly, you must understand what you are reading, secondly, you must think of an answer in English, and that encourages your brain to think in English. It is an active method because it teaches you something that exactly happens in real conversations. On the contrary, when I only used the old method I didn’t feel ready for real conversations.

· Moreover, I think that, instead of trying to remember rules and translations, blogging offers you the possibility to read so much and about everything without a lot of effort that, over time, you’ll have a feel for English grammar and may easily and naturally improve your vocabulary.

· Until now, at university, I’ve mostly learned formal English because textbooks and teachers have always taught me a written style of English, and unconsciously I’ve learned to speak “written English”. Using blogs I’ve realized the difference, especially in vocabulary choice, between everyday English and formal English is really big. I think before writing complicated essays and translating difficult articles we should improve colloquial English.

I’m a firm believer that, even if we only read and write, blogging might be a successful way to learn English!

That’s all for now, I look forward to reading what you think about!

Selena

Exploring the blogosphere

2007-10-23T09:01:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone!

After hours and hours on Technorati, I decided to suggest these two blogs to you. Hope you like them!

As I like planning cheap journeys in Europe, I put in the tags the word “travelling Europe”, and I came up with a blog called Europe String, which I found particularly interesting. The author is a girl who lives now in Frankfurt, but in her life she lived in the USA, Hong Kong, China and Korea. She has been travelling around the world for business and leisure, and for this reason she feels qualified to give tips about travelling on a budget! She shares information about cheap restaurants in our continent, cheap ways of getting around -weather by land, sea or air- and where to sleep -from hostels to sleeping at airports. She also focuses on particular cities giving a combination of info.
I like this blog because it has a lot of links -both in and out the written text- to other blogs or websites on the same or related topics.

As I love tasting new dishes, I wanted to look for a blog that might give me some ideas for new recipes. I chose a blog called A Slice of Cherry Pie, which is simply something appetizing!In my opinion this blog is much more interesting than others about food because it shows you many recipes you can come up with using seasonal ingredients. The author is an English girl who posts her specialities and photos. She is a self-taught cook who is passionate about good food and home cooking. I like this blog because it is full of images which catch the reader’s eye.
I would recommend it to you because it communicates the pleasure of cooking and teaches you genuine recipes for your body. Personally, I believe cooking makes you feel relaxed.

The style used in the blogs I chose is very similar as in both the language is almost informal. That can be seen for example by the use of the contracted forms of auxiliary verbs, the negative contraction, the negation with “any”, “going to” for future prediction, the relative pronoun “that”, abbreviations and exclamation marks. I think the language it’s not very informal because there aren’t any slangs, dots and swear words.

Searching for blogs, I’ve noticed that I was mostly attracted by those that have an original and readable title, so I can say blogs’ titles are extremely important to catch the reader’s attention. The layout is very important, too. It shouldn’t be too much complicated because it could create confusion in the reader’s mind, and so on first sight the reader could prefer to visit other blogs. As regards links I’ve noticed that most of them aren’t the url but just a clickable word which is part of the text. Visiting blogs I’ve also realized that the language can vary from specialized to everyday according to the topic and the audiance. It can be also spontaneous, just like a real conversation, or a little bit more planned when it describes something. Of course, the formality of the language used might be influenced by the relationship between bloggers and readers.

That’s all for now. I look forward to reading your comments!

See you,
Selena

Welcome to my blog!

2007-10-17T06:15:00.001-07:00

Photo by reesie

Hi everyone!

I chose this photo to introduce myself because I like exploring culinary habits of other cultures and I’m particularly a fan of oriental cuisine! Sushi dishes are so colourful that they remind me of world multiculturalism. I love new experiences, and this is why journeys are my absolute passion. I’m very curious about other cultures and, when I travel, it is important for me to meet locals, spend time with them and get an idea how they live their lives. I’m interested in exploring their own way of communicating, arguing, showing affection and eating! Two years ago I studied in Germany, at the University of Mainz, for ten months, and it was a fantastic experience from the personal point of view because it allowed me not only to know full well German culture but also to meet people coming from all over the world. I was especially intrigued by their food culture, and I loved organizing international dinner parties! As you’ve probably understood by looking at the image, I’m very fond of fish, but I would like to taste as many traditional dishes of the globe as possible. When I’m not travelling, I like spending my free time planning my future journeys. The most impressive culture I’ve experienced was Chinese culture with its strange manners. I think that this way of travelling can help you to be more open-minded because, if you are able to listen to people who are different from you and try to understand them, that makes life much easier especially when -at the university or at work- you have to deal with a lot of people.

Here are the three websites I use most frequently:

http://www.lettere.unipd.it/

This website is known by each of us as it is truly part of our life. In the last weeks I often consulted the timetable and the courses’ schedule as you’ve also probably done but almost every day I have a look at the section about international relations to check if there are new interesting opportunities to have a study or work experience abroad.

http://www.ryanair.com/site/IT/

I know this website very well because I’ve almost always travelled with Ryanair. It offers cheap flights to Europe’s most important destinations and, since we are students with meagre earnings, I think it gives us the opportunity to travel more or to save some money. Another important thing is that, fortunately, the flights are usually on time!

http://www.wikipedia.org/

I always visit this site when I have to do some research on a particular subject, to check the meaning of specialized terms or simply to satisfy my curiosity. It is very useful because in the texts there are many links to other related topics, so that you can form at first sight an exhaustive view of what you are interested in. An advantage of this online encyclopaedia is that you might look up anything in many different languages.

I’m looking forward to reading your comments!

Bye,

Selena