Del.icio.us...a very useful website! (e-tivity 5)

Hi!

Last week I learnt how to use del.icio.us, a social bookmarking website. I found it very useful! Before discovering del.icio.us to save my favourite websites, I saved them on my computer. Anyway, there were always some problems. First, when I used another computer, I couldn’t have those sites within reach. Second, when I had to find one of those sites, I spent a lot of time because the bookmark list was very long and confusing. Third, saving websites on your computer can be risky because you could have problems because of viruses, and you could lose the urls. Once this happened to me and I got very nervous and angry! ;-)

If you register for del.icio.us there are many positive aspects. Thanks to this site you can save your bookmarks on the Internet, so you can find them whenever you want, even though you’re not using your own computer. Your favourite sites are saved on your own page and you can see them just logging in to your account. Moreover, you can add a short comment on your bookmarks.
One of the most interesting aspects of del.icio.us regards sharing your websites with other people. You have the opportunity to create your network, i.e. a list of the people you want to share your sites with. This can be very helpful for my language learning because I saved useful sites that I want to share with my peers, and I can visit the websites saved by them. That’s absolutely great! In particular, I saved five websites: two sites deal with listening, two sites deal with writing, and a website houses some online dictionaries. I hope that my peers will find my bookmarks useful! I'll add other websites in the future!

Now I’m going to comment on my peers’choices, and I’ll write the descriptions that drew my attention as well.

Alice (alicev) wrote the following description of BBC-learning English website:

‘the BBC provides a number of quizzes, exams and lessons to improve your English’

Dear Alice,

Your comment is very brief but it drew my eye because I read there are a lot of quizzes and lessons, and I thought these could be useful for my language learning. I agree with you! The website is well-structured and it's divided into different topics (news English – watch and listen – quizzes and exams – grammar and vocabulary – webcasts – the flatmates – etc.). I think your description is eye-catching, but you didn’t mention the skills involved in the activities and quizzes, such as listening. Moreover, when you wrote ‘lessons’, you didn’t mention grammar, which is an important aspect of the website. I advise you to write another short sentence in your description, and to add some tags such as ‘listening’ or ‘grammar’.
Thank you for advising me useful sites! See you!

Elisa (Elisa rossi) wrote the following description of howjsay.com website:

‘This site is useful to know the right pronunciation of an english word. It is free and very easy to use. Sometimes you have no ideas of how a word must be pronunced...here there is the solution! Just a click and you dubts are solved!’

Dear Elisa,

Your comment is very clear and eye-catching! The tags you wrote are very effective and your description doesn’t lack anything. I think that this website can be really useful. It is very simple and it can help us to learn the pronunciation of difficult words or phrases. We often take English pronunciation for granted, and this is a wrong attitude. Through this site we can improve our speaking. Good choice, Elisa! Just try to avoid some spelling mistakes because your comment could be ignored by people.
Thank you for your interesting bookmarks! Bye!

Eva (Eva) wrote the following description of Slang O’ The Day website:

‘A pleasant site which will help you understand words like eejit, kip, twat etc. You can contribute and add slang words as well!’

Dear Eva,

Your description is concise and effective. The slang words you mentioned immediately caught my attention! I thought: ‘what do they mean??!!’ You wrote just two short sentences but you explained the content of the website very clearly. I visited it and I agree with you: it's very interesting. I’m very curious about slang (also called ‘slanguage’). Moreover, the website is well-organized and deal with different types of slang (e.g. Canadian slang, Irish slang, etc. ...). Each post concerns a new word…that’s great! You made a very good choice!
Thank you for advising me helpful websites! Bye!

Federico (Fred) wrote the following description of Spelling differences between American and British English website:

‘In this site you'll find some tables with a list of spelling differences between American and British English. The first part refers to nouns, the secondo to verbs. The occurring linguistic phenomenon which is clearly explained.’

Dear Federico,

The website you chose is very interesting. Sometimes I don’t know how to write a word (e.g. have I to write 'program' or 'programme'?) and this website can be very useful to learn spelling differences between American and British English. Your description is well-written. You wrote three sentences and you managed to explain the site and catch my attention. There are two reasons why I chose to visit and comment on this website. First, I’m interested in spelling; second, your comment is simple and clear.
Thank you for sharing your sites with me! See you!

Valentina (vale) wrote this description of Fire&Knowledge website:

‘This website represents a sort of guide to improve your writing skills. It is well structured because it focuses on the main points separately.’

Dear Valentina,

You managed to catch my attention thanks to the title ('Writing in English') you wrote on your own page. This immediately drew my eye! I think that it's fundamental to improve our writing, especially because we have to learn how to write different texts. Moreover, your comment is concise and explains how the website is organized. You wrote your description from a general to a specific point of view. Good choice! The website is very interesting, and it deals with a lot of topics. For example, it deals with many text types, such as interviews or scientific texts. Each topic is very clear and it is divided into bullet points, as you wrote in your description.
Thank you for your interesting websites! See you soon!

I do apologize for this long post!!!

See you soon!

Giovanna

(photo source)