Self-assessment on my intercultural competence

Well, it’s already time to reflect on our learning process…I can’t believe that these months have passed so quickly!

First of all, dealing with the American and Italian political elections helped me learn a lot of things about politics as well as the socio-political situation in both countries. Following the news about the elections and comparing the way it was presented in different online newspapers helped me evaluate critically the quality of the information I came across, and see how difficult it is to find completely impartial information. Moreover, talking with the American peers about this issue made me aware that political leaders not only in Italy but also in America often make a bad use of mass media for their political propaganda, as we saw in the videos of the pd, pdl and that of Obama girl.

Communicating through Skype and taking part in the forum with the American peers helped me reflect on many aspects of my culture and country, such as the Italian political situation and its problems, in particular the phenomenon of immigration. Doing research on it made me aware that political measures towards immigrants are still too restrictive and they don’t enable regular immigrants to fully integrate in our society, for example denying them the right to vote. Moreover, our final wiki project helped me know more about this phenomenon in both countries as well as aroused my curiosity to study it in detail. In particular, analyzing the similarities and differences in both countries, I learned many things about the condition of undocumented immigrant women and what kind of discrimination they still face nowadays (See section "comparison US & Italy" of our wiki page).

As regards my research for the final wiki project, retrieving American documents was not so easy. First of all because Chiara and I had to search for similar documents, as our topics had to be as much parallel as possible. I must say that it was quite difficult to find the same kind of information on the great amount of sites and documents that there are on the Net about immigrant working women. In fact, the majority of the articles I found dealt with specific situations (e.g. about the condition of Hispano-American prostitutes in New York, or about providing housing services in Santa Barbara) and this happened to Chiara as well. This is one of the reasons why we decided to make our topic more general, changing it from “women immigrants and prostitution” to “women immigrants and forms of exploitation”, so that we could compare better the same aspects for both countries.

As far as interactive skills are concerned, during the Skype sessions with Chiara I didn’t feel uncomfortable in asking ‘difficult’ or controversial questions, as she has always proved to be open-minded and ready to explain to us what we want to know about American culture. For example, when we talked about immigration, she told us the difficult situation of poor and undocumented immigrants who cannot have access to medical care and social services.

Talking about misunderstandings, I remember that when we had to decide a common topic for the project each one of us had her own ideas and was determined to keep her own opinion, and it was not easy to come to a compromise. However, talking with each other and bearing in mind to respect each other’s opinions, we eventually managed to come to a solution. Then, I remember that Chiara wanted to talk about abortion, even though we said to her that we found difficulties linking it with our topic “women at work”. Explaining to her our point of view and helping her by giving some suggestions for her research we come to an eventual understanding. Working in group enabled me to always express my opinion, but at the same time to listen to what the others have to say as well as respect it.

As regards language skills, doing research for our tasks and wiki projects, I realized I’ve really improved my reading skills: now I I can select more easily and quickly the information I’m searching for among the wide range of documents that you can find on the Web. Moreover, my writing skills have improved as well: thanks to the various tasks and to peer feedback, I can write more fluently and I find no particular difficulties in adapting my writing to different contexts. Finally, communicating with native speakers through Skype I’ve improved my listening skills and my speaking skills: I've gained more confidence and fluency in the conversation and I learned a lot of new words and expressions as well.

Skype on our final project!

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During our last lesson in the lab we (Group 1) did Skype with Chiara Olivi, an 18-year-old student from Dickinson college, who is collaborating with us in our wiki project. It was the first time I did Skype and it was really an amazing experience!! I never talked with Chiara before and I appreciated the fact that she is very interested in our language and in knowing more about our culture! :-) In our Skype conference we discussed the topics we'd like to talk about in our final project, but we realized that they were actually very different from each other... I must admit it was quite hard to find a common topic!

We started discussing Elena’s topic: she talked about abortion, focusing on the current debate which is now taking place in Italy. She said she'd to compare the related laws and the methods of abortion allowed in Italy and in the U.S.: Chiara really liked Elena’s suggestion and she said she would like to talk about the influence of religion on the woman’s right to decide. Moreover, Chiara would like to do some research on a particular aspect of this topic, i.e. on whether health care in the US covers abortion as well as on the widespread lack of information about contraceptive methods, which actually affects the public education system of the two countries.

Then, Elisa talked about her topic, i.e. the importance of music as an expression of multi-ethnic identities and how it could be related with the issue of immigration. I was interested in immigration as well: I talked about the difficulties that skilled immigrants encounter at work and I said I’d like to compare their condition in the two countries. Chiara suggested that we can discuss the situation of Latin Americans, in particular Mexicans, who represent the majority of the immigrants in the U.S.

Finally, Silvia Lovato discussed women’s discrimination at work, in particular in the world of politics: she’d like to talk about ‘quote rosa’ and whether this measure actually promotes women’s career. Chiara appreciated this topic a lot and said that as regards politics the situation in the US is very similar to ours: male candidates constitute the overwhelming majority in the US government with the result that women don’t have equal opportunities in asserting their political platforms.

As our topics differ a lot from each other, we eventually decided to talk about women’s issue; however, since it was too general, we chose to analyze the condition of women at work. In our opinion, it can be subdivided into 5 subtopics, so that each one of us can deal with a specific aspect. So, Elena is going to discuss the condition of stay-at-home mums vs. working mothers; Elisa is going to talk about working mother’s rights; Silvia Lovato is going to discuss women in politics; I’m going to deal with the condition of immigrant women.

About immigration

Immigration in Italy is quite a recent phenomenon with respect to other European countries; during the XIX century it was in fact mainly considered a country of emigration as thousands of Italians left their country due to the lack of work. The phenomenon of immigration has particularly increased from the 80s and in only ten years immigrants with a regular residence permit became almost 600.000-700.000. According to Caritas, in the last two years their number has further increased by 3.7 millions, with an annual rate of about 700.000 immigrants.

During the last decade, lots of things in the bureaucratic procedures for the admittance of immigrants have changed, and many of these policies were designed to limit the illegal flow of immigrants: the law "Bossi-Fini", for example, among other restrictive measures, provides that any immigrant who applies for a regular residence permit must leave his/her fingerprints. Even though such measures enable the identification of the immigrant, I think that on the other hand it leads to classify him/her as a potentially dangerous person or a criminal. Moreover, mass media talk about immigrants almost only when serious offences of organized crime happen, in such a way that they are often considered the ‘problem’ of our society.

Many are in fact the obstacles that immigrants have to face to integrate in our society: among these, certainly the mastery of the Italian language and the knowledge of Italian traditions. One of the main factors that make it difficult for them is that colleagues and friends frequently talk with each other using dialect, this way excluding the possibility for the immigrant to fully integrate in the society. In order to overcome this problem, I think it is necessary to promote more policies which enables him/her to live as a citizen with his rights and duties, also with regard to the right to vote: I think that every person who live and regularly work in our country must have the right to decide which candidate they want to govern, otherwise it will be very difficult for them to identify themselves with our society and institutions. Therefore, I think that more clear procedures for achieving such rights are the basis of a concrete and farsighted policy aimed at eliminating prejudices and reducing social disparities.

Reflecting on the topic for the final paper...

Well, thinking about the topic for my final project I’d like to discuss about the difficulties that immigrants face when they have to apply for a job in Italy, and I think that it would be very interesting to compare the situation in both the U.S and Italy as regards this aspect of immigration. For example, in Italy it frequently happens that immigrants are exploited and far less paid than Italians having the same job and they are often forced to do jobs Italians refuse to do, such as assistance for older people or people with disabilities. In particular, I’d like to focus on the problems that skilled immigrants (i.e. those who achieved a university degree and/or have had a high professional experience in their country) encounter in finding the job for which they studied because in most cases their academic and professional qualifications are not or only in part recognized.

In Italy they represent 53% of the immigrants but only 1/3 of them can effectively find fulfilment in their job. I would be interesting to know how is their condition in the US (e.g. who these immigrants are, where they come from, why they migrate from their countries, which are their credentials and how effectively they are taken into consideration etc.) and compare it with their condition in Italy. Moreover, it would be interesting to see to what extent the “Brain drain” phenomenon has spread during the last few years both in Italy and in the U.S.

The latest news about the elections...

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As in the last weeks I read above all the news about the right-wing candidates, for this task I decided to focus my attention on what’s going on in the current political debate between the Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Reading through the articles I found in the websites of the Washington Post and of The Times, I decided to focus my attention on the news about Hillary Clinton’s speech on her trip to Bosnia. It was interesting to see how different is the way in which the news is presented in these two online newspapers…

The first difference I noticed is that in the news of The Times Online “Hillary Clinton backtracks over 'misleading' Bosnia sniper story”, the video about her visit to Bosnia in 1996 appears in a central position and before the article itself, whereas in the article of the WaPo website "Hillary Clinton calls Bosnia sniper story a mistake" you can see it only at the end, by clicking on a link. What is more, this is not the same video: in The Times Online comments of the journalists are added, making Hillary’s speech seem a big lie (e.g. when the journalist introduces it saying that “this video is supposed to be an example of Hillary Clinton’s babble tested experience”). On the other hand, in the article of The WaPo the video only shows the fact without adding any further comments.

Further in the article, the journalist of The Times Online tends to report only the comments of Hillary's opponents, such as: “[…] But Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, argued that the claim was not simply a slip of the tongue as it was made in prepared remarks during the Iraq speech.“

In the related article by Gerard Baker “Hillary Clinton; fibber in chief”, right from the title the journalist openly considers her speech about her visit to Bosnia prepared and intentional, aiming at gaining more admiration for her experience in foreign policy. He criticizes her husband Clinton’s policy as well: “In fact the facility with which the Clintons misspeak is so pronounced that it is quite possible they have genuinely forgotten how to tell the plain truth. There was no real need for Mrs Clinton to make the claim about landing in sniper fire. But the compulsion to embroider, to dissemble and to dissimulate is now so entrenched in the synapses of the Clinton brain that it came to her as naturally as the truth would to a slow-witted innocent. The comments of the people are incisive as well:"[...] since she says millions of words a day maybe she should take her own advice that WORDS MATTER.”

On the contrary, in the article of The Wapo website the journalist wants us to understand that the Bosnia sniper story might also be a simple mistake due to her intensive work "I went to 80 countries, you know. I gave contemporaneous accounts […]". Moreover, he tends to justify her misstatement through her spokesman's words: "The important thing is that she was there. Our soldiers saw she was there and heard her and knew that our country cared about them and what they were doing,"
In the website of Il Giornale there wasn’t news concerning the US elections, therefore I went to read an article about Berlusconi which was about his current political platform. As usual, there is a big foto of him smiling in the foreground and raising his hands as if he already were the winner of the elections… In the article the journalist compares Berlusconi’s goals with those of Veltroni, always ridiculizing him: “Veltroni sogna il pareggio […]; …fa gli scongiuri politici, visto che tutti sondaggi danno nettamente indietro il Pd”.

Comparing online newspapers...

After having spent quite a while visiting various websites and reading through the news regarding the current elections, I decided to choose an online newspaper from America (The Washington Post, known as a left-leaning newspaper), one from the UK (The Times Online, moderately right-oriented) and one from Italy (Il Giornale center-right oriented) and focus once again my attention on the news regarding the right-wing candidates McCain and Berlusconi. As in the American and English websites I couldn’t find any recent news about Berlusconi, I decided to compare the news I found about McCain, which basically concern his foreign policy in Middle East and Europe and his uncertainty in choosing his running-mate.

As regards the news about his foreign policy, right from the title - John McCain visits Middle East and Europe - we can notice that in The Times Online the journalist appears to have a more neutral stance towards the facts than the journalist in the article of The Washington Post, in which the title sounds in fact slightly ironic - McCain on World stage on Mideast, Europe trip - using the word "stage", recalled later on in the article using the expressions "overseas audition" and "political theater aimed at voters in the United states". Then, reading both articles, you can see that in The Washington Post the journalist tends to criticize the candidate right from the start, at times using incisive words and expressions, such as: “But as a candidate, McCain has been, if anything, more bellicose than Bush on North Korea and Iran.[...] McCain's unwavering support for the Iraq war is well known across the continent; his aggressive rhetoric toward some of the world's nations. […] In early 2007, the continued violence in Iraq made his support for the policy seem naive. During his last visit in the country nearly a year ago, McCain was mocked for declaring an Iraqi marketplace safe while touring it under heavy military guard. […] Other times, he appeared to relish the use of force, as when he sang "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran […]"(Article by Shear.M, retrieved on Saturday, March 15, 2008).

This critical stance towards Conservatives is to be seen in the comments of the people as well, for example Bunkerhill wrote: "McCain has no answers other than continue down the Bush highway. This will take us to places like endless war, a broken economy, inflation, and more multi-trillion dollar deficits. Mix in torture, rendition, secret prisons, and the reputation of the US will sink even further with the rest of the world."

On the other hand, in the article of The Times Online “John McCain visits Middle East and Europe” more neutral information is presented, even though when you read the related articles, such as "Hillary Clinton's prodigal coalition" , you can see clearly that the journalist tends to praise McCain’s political campaign: "[...] Mr McCain said the Democrats would abrogate trade treaties, raise taxes and hurt American business. This is brave – and, it should be said, accurate – stuff. […] The odds on his succeeding are long, but then again the odds on his winning the Republican nomination were even longer six months ago”. (Article by Gerard Baker, retrieved on Sunday, March 16, 2008).

As regards the images used, we can notice that on the one hand The WaPo frequently uses hilarious and ironic cartoons of Obama vs. McCain (in which the final winner is Obama) and at times even photos in which McCain does not appear in the foreground (see this), even though he is the subject of the article. On the other hand, in The Times Online you can see that there are many photos of McCain smiling and together with his wife.

Overall, I think that such differences are basically due to the different political stance of the two newspapers (as I said above, The Times Online is center-right oriented, while The WaPo has more a left-leaning orientation).
Differences are to be noticed also in the location and the coverage of the news about McCain: in The Times Online it was quite hard to find it because it was located under the section News- world news – US & America's news - Latest news - Related links, and it covered only one page whereas in The Wapo it is located in the main page of the section ‘politics main’ and it covers two pages. Such a difference between the two is essentially due to the fact that in an English newspaper like The Times the US elections are treated as news of secondary importance as they don’t directly concern UK’s current affairs; on the other hand, being an US online newspaper, the Washington Post gives to them more relevance.
However, in The Times Online there is more information about US politics than in Il Giornale, as the UK has a stronger relationship with U.S. policy and culture than Italy has. In fact, on Il Giornale I couldn’t find any recent news concerning McCain since it mainly deals with Italian politics, therefore I decided to concentrate on the news I found today about Berlusconi, i.e. “Berlusconi avverte la sinistra:"Sì al dialogo, ma chi vince governa". Being a center-right oriented newspaper, the news about Berlusconi always have a central position on the main page of politics and a lot of space is left to the images as well: most of the times they are very big (like the one of the article, see above) and show him always in the foreground, smiling. Reading the article, we can notice that a lot of space is left to his current policy and his comments about the center-left platform, which are always aimed at criticism: "[...] ovvero presentarsi come un partito nuovo, mentre invece tra i suoi candidati, in posizione sicura, c’è il 70% dei ministri, viceministri e sottosegretari del governo uscente". Moreover, the journalist shows a cleary right-leaning stance in presenting the news: " [...] Un’abitudine, quella della sinistra a non mantenere le promesse fatte, che Berlusconi aveva dimostrato del resto anche in mattinata nel disastrato quartiere romano di Corviale".

John McCain and Berlusconi’s Electoral Campaigns 2008

Even though both Berlusconi and McCain have a leading role in the world of politics and share more or less the same political stance, I must say that comparing these two personalities was not so easy as it seemed..first of all because I didn’t know very much about the Presidential Elections that are now taking place in the U.S. and I was quite uninformed about what John McCain’s policy exactly consists in as well. The only thing I knew about him was that he is a conservative leader and that he recently won the Republican Party’s nomination against the other candidate Mike Huckabee. Therefore, to get a more precise idea of McCain’s current political campaign I went to visit his personal website and that of the NewYorkTimes and spent some time watching the videos of the most important speeches he gave in Arizona, Florida, Ohio etc. Then, I went to visit Berlusconi’s website as well and watched some videos of his latest political speeches and of some television interviews.

Reflecting on the things that the two political leaders have in common, I noticed that when addressing their audience they both have a great personal charisma and a lot of self-confidence stating the goals of their programs. When interacting with the public, most of the times both Berlusconi and McCain don’t answer directly to the questions but with lots of circumlocutions as well as they always tend to compare their policy with that of their opponents, often criticizing them. Berlusconi often does it with his usual sharp sense of humor and with slogans like this: “The Left has bent Italy. We say: Italy, rise up again!”

As regards their political beliefs, they both share the same ideals, i.e. patriotism, family, and religious faith, even though we can notice some differences in their way of thinking. For what concerns patriotism for example, McCain talks a lot about honor, courage, dedication and responsibility in defending the country, focusing on the importance and the proud of being American as part of a nation that throughout history has proved to be the world’s leading country. In fact, some of his most recurrent expressions are: “We are the captains of our fate"; "we're the world's leader"; "we make the future better than the past"; "we don't hide from history". We make history; "...my friends, stand up and fight for America”. Berlusconi as well talks a lot of love for the country and the importance of keeping Italian traditions; however, rather than talking of “defending the honor” and “serving the country” (MacCain's typical expressions), he focuses more on the importance of living in a free country, where people can achieve the right of individual freedom. In fact, some of his most typical expressions are: “I want to live like a free citizen in a free country”; “We believe in freedom and all its forms, from individual to freedom of speech, thought and association”.

I think that such differences in the viewpoints of the two leaders might be firstly due to the fact that the U.S. and Italy face very different sociopolitical situations, in particular that America has a much bigger commitment to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan than Italy has: in fact, according to McCain, honor and courage are essential to prevent and combat terrorism in all its forms. In addition, I think that the past experiences the two leaders had in their lives play a fundamental role in defining their policy: as a former naval aviator and prisoner in the Vietnam War, McCain praises above all courageous service as the only means to defend America and fight against Islamic extremism; on the other hand, as a former entrepreneur, Berlusconi primarily aims at giving more freedom to entrepreneurship, promoting in this way private economic enterprise; he talks about the Italian military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan only as a means to support America’s policy, certainly not as the primary aim of his program.

Merry Christmas!!

Hello my peers,

I wish you all a Merry Merry Christmas!!!

Love,

Silvia

My Personal Learning Environment

Well, I must admit that I was a bit struck when last Wednesday Sarah told us that most of our learning comes from informal contexts and that only the 20% of what we learn takes place in formal contexts...could you have ever imagined that what we learn formally plays such a little role in our learning process?! During the last few days I’ve really thought a lot about it and I’ve realized how it’s incredibly true… just think about how much you can improve your language learning by just talking with native speakers or by reading a newspaper article for example…don’t you agree?
Moreover, Sarah pointed out that our learning should be an ongoing process: if we want to see improvements in our learning we should find an effective way that enable us to constantly practice the language. Therefore, it is important that we start reflecting on our personal learning environment, i.e. on how to categorize the contexts and the tools which for us are the best ways to strengthen our skills!
After spending quite a long time thinking about how to build my personal mindmap, I decided to focus mainly on six areas: formal and informal language learning, gathering information, acting on learning, experience and free time.
Formal language learning: In our case, it deals mainly with lectures at University and the tools which help us in our formal learning, such as online and paper dictionaries, grammar books and specific websites.
Informal language learning: I think there is a wide variety of contexts in which we can learn informally, among them I mentioned Teacher Tube (in which I usually find very interesting and educational videos!), conversation with native speakers, newspapers and podcasts, which are an endless resource for our learning!
Gathering information: When I have to do some research, I look for information in the Web, using search engines, del.icio.us or the usual library catalogues.
Acting on learning: doing the activities on the blog and discussing with my peers during the lessons help me see how much my learning is improving!
Experience: the Erasmus experience I had and the cultural exchanges I took part in play a fundamental role in my learning process because they made it possible for me to get in touch with people from all over Europe and with their culture..I think that such experiences are the best way to strengthen our language learning, definitely!
Free time: it is the most suitable context in which I can learn a lot of things by just sitting in my bedroom listening to music, chatting with friends via messenger and travelling (when I can!).

I hope you could see my mindmap..sorry Sarah, but I wasn’t able to download FreeMind (I still don’t know why!)
Bye!

Analyzing online information sources...

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How can we effectively evaluate online information? Certainly, it is not as easy as it seems...

Browsing through the three websites Sarah suggested us, I’ve become aware of how important it is to learn how to evaluate the huge amount of information we daily find on the Internet! So what criteria should we use to distinguish good information from bad? How can we get out of such a big mess!?
After spending some time reading the tips of the University of Essex, I’ve come across a lot of useful suggestions on how to work out a method to evaluate online resources! Here is what I’ve come up with…
Well, if we have to do some research for our next thesis, a good way to start with is asking ourselves: where should we start looking? Is the information we are looking for only retrievable in the Internet? If this is the case, what we need is a good search engine…so we should forget Google or AltaVista as they give far too much information which might be misleading; in this case, what we need is a meta search engine (such as dogpile, search) or a specialized search engine (like Google scholar), which can refine the information retrieved in a more effective way! :-) Surprisingly, I found out that the University of Essex provides its students with free online services (like Intute), thanks to which they have access to the best web resources for education and research...great, isn't it?!

Moreover, what we have to be careful in evaluating the quality of a website is the authorship, i.e. who is the author, what are his credentials and if he/she had past writing experience in the field: when writing my thesis this was one of the first things I checked in order to be sure that what I found was trustworthy and at the same time worth reading.
A criterion I’ve always followed is that of evaluating the credibility of a website as well: in each new website we come across we should check if the home page displays the name and the logo of the institution or organization who provided the information, and if the website is frequently reviewed by the editors. Therefore, it is always important to have a look at when the information was published and when it was last updated. So we’d better not use undated sites if we are looking for recent information! ;-) In addition, we should be capable of verifying the kind of information we are retrieving, i.e. if it is based on facts or on opinions, which is not always easy to establish when reading through online material.

One think I didn’t pay attention to was the quality of the inner organization of a website: the information provided in the homepage should be easily accessible to everyone, even to the more inexpert people; moreover, a website should have external links which can help you retrieve more information about the topic of interest to you, as well as an internal search engine would be useful for the websites which contain a huge amount of information, so that more relevant material can be recovered. In addition, the content of a website should be as complete and accurate as possible.
The criterion of peer-evaluation was not unknown to me: anyway, I think it is essential in order to make sure of the quality of the information presented...Actually, I may trust more a website which has been highly rated than one which is not! ;-)

That’s all for now,

Bye girls, see you on Monday!

YouTube..a way to share your videos!

Well, it is not the first time I heard about YouTube, but I must confess that I never visited this website until last Wednesday! So before exploring the YouTube dimension I went searching for information just for curiosity’s sake and I found out that you tube provides 100 million videos per day..could you ever have imagined that?

Once I entered YouTube, I was simply struck by the number of videos and things I came across in this HUGE website!!! I spent hours visiting it because I couldn’t resist the temptation to click on the links that I found here and there on the webpage and watch the videos that caught my attention! ;-)

What I liked the most of this website is that it is organized by categories according to the topic (for example cars, animals, films) where you can find any video which can be of interest to you; however, that’s not all! YouTube is also a way to filter videos, making it possible for you to know which are the most recent, the most discussed, the most responded, and even which videos can be uploaded on your mobile phone..isn’t it fantastic!?

Moreover, I consider this new digital tool to be far better than television: YouTube enhances us to make our own contribution to develop it by creating videos, sharing them with people from all over the world and have our own say, instead of just sitting in front of the screen passively as it happens with television. In addition, the fact that it’s users and not show producers who make and broadcast their own videos makes anything more real and personal and it enables you to know more about people of our age (since most of the videos are broadcast by young people), their lifestyle, how they cope with everyday problems and what they think about certain issues such as politics, health care and so on.

Obviously, we have to pay attention to use this tool, as when surfing the Web, because in YouTube you can find a lot of videos and comments which are not filtered by moderators so they might contain vulgar and rude images or expressions. In fact, another thing that I appreciated of YouTube is the chance of creating a group in which it’s only the people subscribed to it who can post videos and comments..good way of filtering, isn’t it?

Moreover, YouTube is a useful way to improve our English language learning: by watching the videos and reading people’s comments you can learn a lot of colloquial expressions! Some curious words I found were: convo which stands for conversation; luv for love; huppy for happy; cuz for because; vid for video.
Since I’ve recently become really curious about what concerns technology and new digital tools in general (also thanks to this course!), I searched in TeacherTube and I came across this video, which immediately caught my attention: it explains in a very clear and plain English how to use wiki, a new tool which enables groups of users to create collaborative websites..enjoy! ;-)

If you can't watch the video, please click on this link:

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=b7a75a3ce09d40b497f6&page=5&viewtype=&category=rf

and it should appear.

Let me know what you think of it!

Bye!

Exploring the world of podcasts...

PODCASTS...somewhere I’ve already heard of them, but this is certainly the first time I get in touch with this new tool Sarah suggested to us! Well, I have to say that searching for some interesting podcasts at first took me a lot of time because I couldn't easily find, open and download the podcasts I wanted to listen to, maybe because of my old computer... but finally, guys, I got it! :-D

Exploring the search engines Google, Odeo and del.icio.us, I was really struck by the number of podcasts I found and I must confess that it was very hard for me to choose only three of them…anyway, I hope you find them interesting and useful for your English learning! ;-)

The first website I chose to visit is betteratenglish because it’s very well-organized and clear: podcasts are divided into sections according to categories, topics and levels, so even an inexpert learner can easily find what he/she is searching for! Besides, the latest podcasts are separated from the less recent ones, which you can find under the section archives..so if you miss an episode of a podcast you were particularly interested in, you can immediately find it by simply clicking on the link!
I chose to click on Real English conversations and I listened to an informal discussion about television between a British and an American English Native speaker, in particular dealing with tv commercials: I found it very useful because through a simple dialogue I've learnt important differences between British ad American English (such as talking about advertising, Americans say commercials while British people say adverts) as well as phrasal verbs I didn’t know (i.e. to go about, put up with, see through it) and idioms, like don’t get me started, which means that if you start talking about a certain topic, nobody will be able to stop you!

Moreover, besides podcasts concerning everyday situations, you can also find those dealing with business English: I listened to some of them (try this just for curiosity’s sake!) and I must say that despite what I thought, they can be understood without any difficulty and very useful to enlarge our business vocabulary as well! ;-)

To listen to more informal podcasts, from this website I went to www.china232.com, which was created by two American guys: even though it’s not as complete and well-organized as the first one, I really liked it because there are a lot of interesting and funny podcasts: each of them include the transcript of the podcasts added with explanations of complicated words and expressions as well as further discussions about the topic! This way, they perfectly combine fun with learning! For example, I listened to a conversation about vacation plans, which tells the problem of a guy who wants to postpone his trip to Hawaii but the travel agent refused permission, saying that the trip was non-refundable and non-transferable. I think this podcast is very useful because there are very clear explanations of the words and idioms with plenty of examples taken from everyday language (for example to explain the meaning of the expression to bend the rules and something came up). Moreover, for each podcast a further discussion about the topic is provided, so that you can get a deeper understanding of the situation and know a little bit more about American culture. What else could you want??! ;-)

Finally, the third website I visited was eslpod.com: it offers a wide variety of interesting and informal podcasts dealing with common situations which can be easily understood by any kind of learners. Among them I chose to listen to this, in which husband and wife have a discussion about the character of their neighbor: by simply listening to this brief conversation I’ve learnt a lot of new sayings and words, such as to shoot the breeze (i.e. to have a conversation in an informal way), busybody (i.e. a person who is too interested in what other people are doing) and to be entitled to something (i.e. to have the right to do something). Besides, the fact that they speak very slow helped me a lot to have a more complete understanding!

Let me know what you think about the three podcasts I chose,
See you soon!
bye

DEL.ICIO.US...What a wonderful tool!!!

Again I’ve learnt something that was completely new to me, i.e. DEL.ICIO.US!!! It is a fantastic example of what is called social bookmarking, which is a new way to store and organize your favorite websites. You might think that there is nothing new in it as you can easily do it from your computer at home..however, my dear peer, if you think so, you are completely wrong! Through del.icio.us you can bookmark and have access to your favorites from anywhere you are, not just from your computer! And that’s not all…del.icio.us enables you to share them with your peers as well as with all the people subscribed to it..I can hardly believe it!!! Moreover, del.icio.us is a very useful tool in order to filter out the huge amount of information you can daily found on the Internet, which may often be unreliable, unnecessary and even misleading. From the notes you find under each website suggested by the members of del.icio.us you can easily retrieve what it is about, how many people saved it (and therefore whether they consider it useful or not!) and if it might be of interest to you: if so, you can save it in “your favorites” and have access to it anytime you want…isnt’ it fantastic??!!! Besides, del.icio.us offers another great advantage: it enables users to organize their bookmarks by means of informal tags instead of traditional folders! By simply typing a keyword, like blogging, or English for example, you can find the websites of interest to you and cluster them into lists organized by tags…can you really imagine what it means?! Moreover, you can decide with whom you want to share your websites, i.e. if you want to share them publicly or only with people you chose to put in your networks: they can view them by category or tags, in chronological order simply randomly..Have you seen how many things you can do with del.icio.us??!! :-)

After spending some time exploring the world of del.ici.ous, I had a look at my peers’ favorites and I must say that all of you girls chose very interesting and original websites!! Basically, I've noticed that all of us are mainly interested in websites regarding online dictionaries or those which include a lot of grammar exercises, writing and listening activities; however, we also try exploring some other levels of English, i.e. searching for the origin of words and idioms or for particular techniques to improve our conversational skills.
For example, Elena mainly focused on online dictionaries: this is the website I've appreciated the most because I always have problems to choose the right preposition which can combine with the verb!
Among Giada’s choices I found this website particularly useful because it really offers a huge variety of listening activities according to the level of our English; moreover, most of the tasks include pre and post-listening activities which help you have a more complete understanding of the topic discussed.
As fas as Letizia’s favorites are concerned, this website immediately caught my attention because it gives very useful tips on how to avoid unpleasant hesitations and sounds while speaking to people! Therefore, if you’re going to become a teacher or just want to improve your conversational skills, you’d better follow them! ;-)
Finally, among Zara’s choices I think that this website is worth visiting because it includes a very interesting forum in which English/American Native speakers discuss about the origin of words of common use, such as politician or t-shirt..it's really interesting reading through their comments!!

I’m looking forward to reading your impressions !

Bye!!!

Halloween: HOW MUCH DO YOU REALLY KNOW ABOUT THIS HAUNTED HOLIDAY??

Undoubdedly, it is a good question!
Since I didn’t know very much about the origins of this holiday, I decided (as Sarah suggested us to do!) to surf the net to search for further information and I found a lot of interesting things! :-)

First of all, its name is a shortened form which stands for All-hallow-even, as the 31th of October is the eve of All Halows day (i.e. All Saints day) and traces its origins back to the ancient Gaelic festival called Samhain, which celebrated the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture. It is believed that on that day the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead are blurred, so people used to dress as otherworldly creatures in order to drive out evil spirits. This gradually evolved into trick-or-treating because children would knock on their neighbors’ doors, in order to gather fruit and sweets for the Halloween festival. During the centuries this ancient belief spread throughout Europe and in the 19th centrury was exported in America, where it became a rooted tradition.

Nowadays these ‘American’ custom of celebrating Halloween has influenced our culture as well, even though in my opinion it has only become a way to make money and feed consumerism, as shops sell any kind of pumpkin and fancy dress, and the same do locals and discos, which organize for that occasion any kind of party and stay open till early in the morning!

As you clearly see, on the one hand it is difficult for me to have arguments in favour of this ‘imported’ custom, which I didn’t absolutely feel part of our tradition; however, on the other hand, I think that we should begin to open our mind to different traditions, as nowadays globalization is entering our world day by day: this doesn’t mean that we have to have the same holidays and celebrations which other countries have, but that we should know and appreciate the positive effects which they may have on our culture. For example, the Halloween festival can have positive sides as well, as this is an occasion in which children begin to overcome their fears of spirits, evil creatures and darkness by dressing up as monsters and ghosts, so that they can go out from rational thought, even if for a moment, giving free play to their wistful imagination and to the world of their dreams and fairy tales, which I think it is very important for their growth.

Let me know what you think about this topic!

Bye!

Using feeds and feed aggregators...

Hi guys!

Well, I must admit that during our last lesson on the lab I felt a little bit confused in having to do with feeds and feeds aggregators: at first I didn’t understand what the aim of the activity was, but when I started to learn something more about it I realized that feeds are very useful because they enable you to spare a lot of time in searching if your peers have updated their blogs: thanks to this new tool now with a simple view on your screen you can immediately see if they did it!!!

Playlists can be useful tools as well, as they help you organize all your favourite websites as well as your peers’ blogs into lists, so that you can have a general overview of the latest updates, isn’t it fantastic?!

Moreover, thanks to feed aggregators you can always receive all the most recent updates of the websites you chose to put on the playlist! For example, I subscribed to the BBC website and to two other very interesting sites: the first one is dictionary, which every day provides the meaning of particular or new words that you can usually find in newspapers..so if you’re simply too lazy to search for their meaning in paper dictionaries, this could be a very useful tool to keep always up-to-date about new words!;-) Another one is quotes of the day, where you can read the funniest quotes that people every day post on this site..why don’t you have a look and subscribe to it as well? ;-)

Let me know what you think!
See you tomorrow!

My first two weeks surfing the blogosphere..

During the last two weeks of blogging, I have found that there is actually a lot of things to be experienced on blogs, of which I had absolutely no idea! Well, I have to say that before exploring the blogosphere, I was not particularly interested in visiting and having to do with blogs because I am not very fond of technology and computers! The very first week of our blogging I actually felt a little confused and lost, because I did not have a precise idea of what a blog consists of and how to work with it.. However, once I started handling them, reading through bloggers’ comments, clicking on the links I found here and there, I have realized that they are an incredible source of knowledge, where you can find anything you want, from the latest news around the world, to travel tips, food recipes and so on! I was struck by the huge variety that the blogosphere contains: there you can really find any kind of blogs, from those which deal with more formal and informative topics to the more informal ones.

Moreover, I think that blogging opens the way to a new form of communication based on interaction between people from all over the world, on the exchange of their ideas and opinions, creating in this way a kind of virtual global community, where everyone can have his/her own say! In my opinion weblogs can be a useful means to improve my skills in written English as well as to learn better the more informal level of language, which particularly in the last year of my degree course was quite left out.. I have actually realized that I still have some difficulties in having a fluent conversation with an English native speaker and I hope that blogs will help me to improve my oral skills as well!

Finally, I have to say that I’m really having a lot of fun in creating my own blog, as it is something which I can organize according to my preferences, giving free play to my ideas in developing it, enriching it with photos and thoughts…isn’t it fantastic?!

Well girls, I’m looking forward to reading your comments!

Bye!

my welcome message

Group C: Silvia
Photo by Alessandro Melazzini

Hi everybody!

This is a photo of one of the most famous streets of Munich, the Ludwigstrasse. I’ve chosen it because it reminded me of my staying in Munich as an Erasmus student: I stayed there from March to September of last year..it has been such an amazing experience which will always remain in my heart!
Among all the beautiful places of Munich the Ludwigstrasse represented something really special to me from the very first days to the end of my Erasmus experience... Every day I passed through it to go to University or just when I wanted to go for a walk... I still remember the sense of freedom I felt when I first walked along it.. it was so long that it really seemed to have no end! Moreover, it is so important to me because there I saw something really incredible… on the day the Italian team won the world championship loads and loads of Italians were there celebrating its victory! That night we occupied the whole street for hours, dancing and singing in chorus… there were so many people that no car managed to pass along it during that night! I can hardly believe now that it really happened! I will always remember such an experience and I look forward to coming back soon…The websites I frequently use are:
http://www.google.com/
This website always helps me when I have to search documents for my studies; moreover, it is very useful for my hobbies, for example when I want to search for some lyrics of my favourite singers or groups.
http://www.hostelworld.com/
It is a very useful website because I can easily find hostels in the cities I want to visit. It helps me find the cheapest hostels and see how many rooms are still available when I decide to book.