My personal learning environment

Hi girls!

Yesss!!!I got it!! I was able to design a map of my personal learning environment using Free mind! Firstly, I thought about all the sources I used to learn English; secondly, I divided these sources in four categories, which are: tools, places, people and experiences. I think it was funny and interesting to do this activity. Above all, I focused on my past experiences; they helped me to learn English as a language but also as a culture; I mean, I learnt a lot about this language and its culture, thanks to studying holidays and travel exchanges. I’m sure that the best and quickly way to learn English is to go abroad. In this way, you are completely plunged into the language and every day you learn something more!

As far as people are concearned, I think that English host families and some guys I met during my Erasmus experience, played a big role in my PLE! I mean, I think that sometimes I learned more English speaking with my friends instead of going to school...Don’t you think so? They implicitly taught me English and that’s what I liked most !

Then, I grouped together the places where I learn English and the tools which I use to do it. Maybe, these two categories are a bit banal but they are necessary to build my map! In order to make it more personal, I wrote some examples after each source. In this way, I think the map is more realistic!

Well ,that’s all! Let’s have a look to my map!

See you!!

Elena Carlet's English learning

I'm terribly sorry for my spelling mistake in the map!!!! I wanted to write English learning!:-(

Judging online sources

Hi girls!

Well, as far as concearning online sources, I must say that I found a lot of information on the Internet when I was doing my thesis. Furthermore, I had my personal criteria to judge the websites which I wanted to consult. Firstly, I checked the author who wrote the text in the website; secondly, I checked who published the material. That's all.

Without any doubt, what I did in the past wasn't enough to judge online sources... In fact,reading through the web sites we had to consult, I learned new things about evaluating online sources. For example, I noticed that I've never cared about plagiarism before now...I recognized that if I'm writing an official document such as a thesis, I can't do copy and paste on whatever I find on the Internet. So, I decided to summarize what I found in the links Sarah suggested to us, in order to have clearer ideas on what I had learned about evaluating online sources.

The University of Essex focused on the critical use of the Internet; it stressed the use of referencing, the plagiarism and the authorship. I liked most of all what it was written about authorship. Firstly, they gave a definition of this term, saying that authorship refers to the production and ownership of ideas and intellectual material, such as books, articles, images, etc. Secondly, they made some reflections about the concept of authorship. They affirmed that it effects all our acedemic work, not just the way we are expected to apply referencing convention. For example, at University we have the possibility to develop our own ideas and enlarge our knowledge, using established knowledge as a foundation. Furthermore, we will be motivated to "find our voice", which means developing our unique academic writing style.

Then, they focused on how to avoid plagiarism and they uggested to us these three solutions:

• Learning how to note -take effectively.


• Learning how to reference correctly.


• Lerning how to paraphrase correctly: rephrase the idea entirely, trying to capture and mantain its essence and meaning.

The Purdue's Online Writing Lab said that evaluating sources is like a detective work! In this web site they gave us some information on how to do this analysis.

Firstly, there are some questions to ask ourself before starting:

• What kind of information am I looking for?


• Where would be a likely place to look?

Secondly,we evaluate the bibliographic citation:

-Who is the author?

• Credentials: how reputable the author is.


• References: name listed in other sources; find other references to the author.


• Institution: organization, institution or company the author is associated with.

-Timeliness:

• When was the source published?


• Is that date current enough or might there be outdated material?

-Publisher/Producer:

• Who produced or published the material ?


• Might be the material be too scholarly,too specialized or too popular to be useful to me?

Thirdly, we evaluate the content:

• Read the preface.


• Look to the table of contents and index.


• References and citations.


• Audience.


• Determine if the content of the source is fact, opinion, or propaganda.


• Accuracy: how timely the source is.

Finally, evaluating Internet sources we should check:

• Authorship.


• Accuracy of information: is there documentation to indicate the source of the information


• Goals of the site.


• Access:How did I find the site?

In the third website which belongs to San Diego State University, I found useful tools which I can use in evaluating sources of information. These tools are library catalogs, such as the Pac or periodical index databases, which contain brief author, publisher and date of publication information.

Well, I think now I've enlarged my personal criteria of judging online sources.That's all.

See you!!!

You Tube!

Hello everybody!

What a funny and interesting experience surfing the net on You Tube! It was the first time I explored this tool and I realized that there are so many videos...It's incredible to think about how many people make videos of every kind and put them on the net!

Journalists often mention You Tube on television; it happens when there is a particular video. For example, I'm thinking about the frequent events of "bullismo" in the schools...And what about those guys who shooted themselves while they were driving at full speed?!!! In my opinion, journalists are making a terrible mistake; they inform us about the existence of such stupid and violent videos. In this way, many students could imitate what they see on tv...Don’t you think so??!

Furthermore, I think that You Tube can be very useful for our English language learning. Differently from podcasts, with You Tube we can watch the person who are speaking; in this way we don’t bore ourselves! For example, I found interesting to watch the news on BBC channel; moreover, I liked listening to music watching music videos as well! I watched “Message in a bottle” by Police...What a nice song! Then, I watched the video I suggested you; it is called “The best of Homer Jay Simpson”, I love it! It makes me laugh every time I see it... Thank you Homer! Ha ha :-)

In the end, I think that every kind of video, in which people speaks in English or American can be useful to improve our language. I’m referring to music videos or cartoons as well! Everytime, with those kind of videos you can learn new words; moreover, you can accustom to listen to speak people in a very fast way!

That’s all! See you tomorrow!

The best of Homer Jay Simpson

Hi! I chose this video because I love "The Simpson" and Homer in particular. I don't think that Homer represents myself but sometimes, I would like to behave like him; I mean, I would like to live my life with more irony and naivety!

Let's enjoy this video!

Podcasts!

Hi girls!!

Well, this is activity six and I learned another new thing...Podcasts! Sorry for my ignorance but I've never heard about it before! I mean, I have an mp3 player but I never downloaded podcasts.



I chose http://http://www.podcastsinenglish.com/ , which is a website that offers you a lot of listening activities, according to your skill level. I found this website interesting because there isn't just the listening activity to do; you can answer questions, read the text and do vocabulary tasks related to the listening. I did the activity number 23; Asha talked about Ramadan, the most important month in the Muslim year. This listening wasn't so difficult to understand but it was a little boring because I couldn't see the face of the girl who was speaking. I think that it's easier to understand a foreign language looking to the mouth of the speaker...I know that it can be a very strange idea but it's just my personal thought!

http://http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/
In this website you can listen to the BBC news; I like it very much because there are many programmes and you can choose your favourite ones, according to your interests. For example, I listen to sport bulletin and I found it difficult to understand; the speaker spoke very fast! Usually, I prefer listening to the news watching the video; I think that I don't got lost if I watch the video...Don't you think so??!

http://http://librivox.org/
Finally, I subscribed to "Librivox Audiobooks"; here you can listen to many audiobooks and it's very funny! I've started listening to "The Adventure of the Six Napoleons", it seems interesting...Why don't you try to read it?!!



Ok, I think that these three websites can be very useful to practise English; furthermore, they are very different so that I can't bore myself! To be sincere, I'm happy because every week I'm discovering something new about the meanders of the Internet...That's good!

See you next week!!!

Elena

Delicious!

Hi girls!! Well, this week we are discovering social bookmarking! As "Bloglines", "Delicious" was completely new for me...But this time it was easier to understand what it was and how did it work! Maybe I'm becoming a little more expert with Internet...I hope so! Whatever the truth, I think that if we defined Bloglines as "our secretary", "Delicious" could be understood as a sort of "on-line diary" in which we keep the websites we need, according to our interests...What is more, we can share these websites with other people, so we can learn always more. I enjoyed searching the Internet for websites and writing the notes to describe the sites I had visited! It seemed that I had to do some advertising because in the notes I always tried to convince the reader to visit the websites I had chosen! I found very interesting the blog called "English study and learning materials ", in which I spent some time doing listening activities. I think that this blog is well organized and it can be very useful to improve our English...Hey girls! I must admit that I enjoyed watching the websites you had suggested!! Monica, I read the blog about "Engrish"! It was very funny...I liked the foto of the restaurant called "Fu Kim", which was written "Fuk mi"...ha ha!Then it made me laugh the fact that Japanese pronunciate "shi" (or"shee") instead of "see"or "baby shitter"instead of "baby sitter"...Ok that's all! Then, I did some exercises about time prepositions and phrasal verbs in the website suggested by Elisa and it was useful! I noticed that I need a lot of exercise in order to improve my English!! Reading through the websites chosen by Cristina, I read some news from "El mundo", a famous Spanish newspaper, which I always read when I want to practise Spanish. This time, I read an article about a violent protest against the intoduction of the driving license with marks in Argentina; fortunately, in Italy people didn't react in the same way when it was introduced the same law :-)) Finally, I did some multiple-choice vocabulary quizzes on the site called "Special English" chosen by Valeria and I got a good score!
Ok, I think that Delicious is like a personal library we can visit to practise English!!That's good!! See you tomorrow!!
Bye Bye!

Halloween!

Hi my friends!!
Well, I noticed that our group has to be against Halloween and fortunately, I'm against it!! maybe not at all...but I think that this celebration shouldn't be celebrated here in Italy. I heard on television that on October 31, the bishops and priests of the Turin archdiocese launched a crusade against Halloween. The clergy accused American pop culture – especially movies and songs – of popularizing US-like night parties and ousting the traditional way of celebrating All Saints' Day. Instead, the Catholic Church called on its faithful to attend “the night of saints and mysteries,” which will culminate with a midnight mass.
To be sincere, I agree with the Church for the fact that Halloween doesn't belong to our culture; it's just a consumeristic celebration we imported from US. Thirty years ago, here in Italy people didn't know what Halloween was...this celebration was introduced in the Ninenties I think....I remember that, when I was at the Elementary school and we started to study English, our teacher explained us what Halloween was. We were very excited to discover that new celebration but above all, we looked forward to going to the houses asking for "Sweets or tricks??". Certainly, we didn't think to All Saints' Day as "the night of saints and mysteries", in which we should stay at home or at least, we shouldn't have a party...
Therefore, for one hand, celebrating Halloween, we risk to loose the religious meaning of this night, which is part of our italian culture of course! For the other hand, nowdays we are living in a multicultural world and I think that it's good to share something which is different from our culture....but always trying not to forget our origins!!
Do you agree my friends???!!
See you tomorrow!!
bye bye!!

Bloglines!!

Hello girls!!
Wow! I'm discovering always new things on Internet! It's great! Well...at first I wasn't so excited, because on Wednesday I wasn't able to come to the lab lesson and at home I have a slow connection; therefore, I wasn't able to watch the videos, which explained what we had to do for registering for bloglines Tutorial and for subscribing to Feeds Tutorial....what a mess!!! Fortunately, a friend of mine had the "DSL" and so, I went to her home and I was able to watch those videos....well, at the end it wasn't so difficult! What is more, this time I was able to convince my parents to install the "DSL"!!!I'm so happy! They don't use Internet very often, so they don't understand how important is to have a fast connection...but it was so difficult to explain them that Internet isn't just a waste of time and nowdays, it's becoming more and more important and useful...by the way, at the end they seemed to be convinced! Next week, I'm sure I'll have the "DSL"!
Talking about Bloglines, I think that feeds and feeds aggregators are a very useful way to share information and organize our work; everyday, according to our interests , we can consult easily and rapidly what we want to see...it's great! Furthermore, it's a nice way to bring us up to date! I created a playlist for the members of my group and soon, I'll create other playlists which will include the other groups, music, animals, and so on..I had look to National Geographic News and I found it very interesting; I read the article about Hurricane Noel,which is the deadliest Atlantic storm this year! what terrible news....
What about you my friends??? Did you find interesting to use Bloglines?!!
See you on Monday!!
bye bye!!

My first two weeks of blogging

After these two weeks of blogging I can confess that I'm happy to have chosen this course. Well, at the beginning I really didn't know what exactely a blog was, but then I enjoyed searching the Internet for blogs. It's incredible to see how many people write a personal blog, in order to share their experiences or simply to say something of themselves. So, I've been discovering something new and this is the first time I've been creating a blog. Furthermore, after four years at University, this is the first possibility we have to write in colloquial English! I like also the fact that we can make comments to other posts, opening new discussions and sharing our opinions. I'm sure this will be a good way both to improve my English and to learn from each other!

I'm Elena!

Hello everybody!!
I'm Elena and I chose this photo which represents Capoeira.
Capoeira is a sport which was invented many years ago by slaves in Africa and I practiced it in Spain during my experience as Erasmus student. I liked this sport very much because it was funny and we did it listening to a typical instrument called "birimbao"; furthermore, it gave me the possibility to get in touch with new people from different countries, such as: German, France and United States.