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

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Halloween in Italy

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Should Halloween be imported to and celebrated in Italy or not?

This is a very interesting question, and Italians are still wondering about that. Halloween has positive aspects, because it offers you the opportunity to stay with your friends, to go to parties, and to have a lot of fun. Anyway, Italians don't know the true meaning of Halloween, and they should learn it, because it is very important to know different cultures and traditions! If you want to get further information, click here.

Here I'd like to point out why Italians should not celebrate this holiday.

Even though it comes from Europe -as it was first celebrated by the Celts- it doesn’t belong to Italians. In Italy we have various regional traditions that are similar to Halloween, but still different from this famous Anglo-Saxon and American holiday. Because of Halloween, those Italian traditions have been lost. I think that we should celebrate All Saints’ day and All Souls’ day, and also remember our regional traditions.

Italian children love Halloween because they can dress up as ghosts, witches, vampires, skeletons and they go from house to house asking for candy. Anyway, they don’t know the history and the meaning of Halloween. Sometimes they ring your doorbell and they don’t have a costume, or they don’t say ‘Trick or treat?’(which is translated into Italian with ‘dolcetto o scherzetto?’). This is quite absurd!!

In my opinion, Italians started celebrating Halloween without knowing its origins and meaning. They are influenced by mass-media and consumerism. So pumpkins, candies, and customs aren’t considered symbols. They are just objects. We should start reading about the meaning of Halloween, and keep our traditions alive.

Do you agree with me or not?

Let me know!

Giovanna

My experience with Bloglines (e-tivity 4)

Hi everyone!

I’ve just learnt how to use Bloglines and I must admit I’m quite satisfied with myself! Thanks to e-tivity 4 I understood the importance of this website. Maybe you’re wondering what I’m talking about…Let’s start with some definitions!

Bloglines is a website that serves as feed aggregator. This means that it collects the updates of your favourite websites. You have simply to register for an aggregator, such as Bloglines, and subscribe to your favourite websites or blogs through feeds, which are data formats thanks to which you'll receive the updates of the sites you selected. If you want to read more about this topic, please visit our course blog and read about e-tivity 4, which is entitled ‘Feeds’.

When I started reading about Bloglines, I was very curious about this new interesting technology. Anyway, I was also afraid not to understand how it works, because I couldn’t attend the lab lesson. I read the task carefully and I watched the videos posted in our course blog, and the e-tivity became immediately clear. Moreover, I also talked to one of my peers, who gave me advice. I’d like to thank her very much!

As soon as I registered for Bloglines and I started adding the feeds related to my favourite websites, I understood the importance and easiness of this aggregator. In order to organize my feeds, I created four playlists: ‘Group J’, ‘Online newspapers’, ‘Friends’, and ‘Other blogs’.
This feed aggregator can save me a lot of time because I don’t need to visit all the sites or blogs to know if there are some updates. I have just to visit Bloglines (and log in to my account), and I can keep track of these websites by clicking on the playlists I created. Great!
If I want to visit my favourite websites, I have just to click on their links. Moreover, there is also the opportunity to participate in forums, and this is very interesting.

I hope to receive comments with your opinions!

See you!

Giovanna

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The course blog: my impressions (e-tivity 3)

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Hi everyone!

Two weeks ago I started working on a blog for my English course, and I immediately found this idea very interesting and stimulating. Before taking part in this project, I knew how to develop a blog, because I already have one with two friends of mine. This helped me not only writing my posts and my comments, but also creating my own blog, in which I’m writing now.

During the first three years at the university I used an online programme (Firstclass) which enabled students and professors to join and work together through chatrooms, forums and online conferences. However, I think that working on a course blog and on our blogs is more exciting, because we can use an easy, creative tool to improve our English. A blog is a website which doesn’t require particular skills or programming language, so anyone could have one. Moreover, we can increase our creativity, because we can do whatever we want, whenever we want. For example, we can make our blog more interesting or eye-catching by adding links and pictures in the posts or in the sidebars. The most important characteristic which I noticed in the course blog is that communication and interaction prove very easy among students through the comments, and this can influence our language learning in a positive way. We can suggest others some useful websites, and we can learn how to write informal texts by reading many messages, which can be more or less colloquial, and by writing posts and comments in a conversational way. This is an important aim because I know how to write an essay in English, but I’m not very experienced in writing informal texts in English, even though I had already taken part in forums and chatrooms. I also have to point out that even though I can’t attend the blogging course (I do the e-tivities at home), the tasks and the purposes explained in the course blog are always simple and clear.
The only two negative aspects I noticed regard the number of people involved in the course, and the groups into which we have been divided. First of all, I think that it is a little bit difficult to work with many people, but this is a frequent problem at our university: there are always so many students attending courses!! Moreover, not all the people in every group participate in the blog in the same way, so interaction among students can be sometimes difficult. Anyway, I'm convinced that we can solve these problems all together!

What do you think about my impressions?

See you!

Giovanna

Welcome to my blog!

'Soul kitchen' - photo by inquirer

Hi everyone!

I’m Giovanna and I study languages at the University of Padua. I chose a picture to introduce myself, and it is entitled ‘Soul kitchen’. Even though the picture is black-and-white, it shows a genuine and warm atmosphere. The reason why it drew my eye is that it represents a place which is very important for me: my home. Here I spend a lot of time when I’m not at the university or I’m not going out with my friends and my boyfriend. The room that I like the most is the kitchen because it is the place where I can stay with my family. In particular, I love being at table with them and with my boyfriend, and talking about everyday life and its problems. Moreover, I chose this image because I love eating! In the picture there are also some objects representing my tastes: a teapot and an espresso machine. As you can understand, I love tea, especially with apple, and I also love coffee. However, what is important for me is not only to drink a tea or an espresso, but to share some nice moments with the people I love, and drink something together.
...What else? I love taking care of my pets...they are very important to me! I have two wonderful cats, Bana (Eric Banadovic) and Coci, and a faithful dog, Lola.
As you can see, I have many interests...I love spending time with my family, boyfriend, friends, and also with my pets! When I'm alone I love listening to music (especially rock, folk and indie), because it makes me feel good...If you want to listen to one of my favourite songs, click here.

I hope you'll enjoy visiting my blog!

Giovanna