As the course progresses I realize that the Net offers a wide range of tools aiming to simplify our researches on the Web. Last Wednesday I discovered Del.icio.us which is really a wonderful instrument as it gives the opportunity to store and share our favourite Websites and blogs. Of course it wasn’t the first time I heard about Social Bookmarking and about Del.icio.us but honestly I had never trusted this kind of tools as I always preferred doing researches on my own, without visiting the Websites other people had already selected because it could turn out to be a waste of time, as people could have stored whatever from the Web, not necessarily what I was looking for. Anyway, after a couple of hours wandering in Del.icio.us I realized it was not that bad and started to appreciate it.
It took me quite a lot of time to visit, read and evaluate the different Websites concerning language learning, also because I didn’t want to chose the same Sites my peers had already picked up – though I finally chose a couple of Websites that the girls in my group had already noticed. As far as I’m concerned, I primarily looked for special WebPages on the basis of what my weaknesses in English are: grammar and punctuation. As a consequences I came a across a couple of interesting Websites offering a clear description of the rules of punctuation in English and another one offering a hundreds of exercises of every kind and for any level. When language learning is concerned, I love interactiviness: I would spend hours doing that kind of multiple choice exercises because I think it’s a good way to test my knowledge and eventually to enhance my grammar. Then I looked for some listening exercises on the Web and a thousand of Websites appeared. In my opinion these cyber listening laboratories could be very useful for students since we do not have always the time to watch DVDs or listen to the BBC’s news, so if we want to keep up our English and test our abilities these Websites offer various tracks with different voices and their relative quizzes and solutions.
After fulfilling the first task I spent some time exploring the twenty Websites that my peers selected and I must confess I found all of them interesting and useful. I noticed that we all tried to focus on the four abilities but there is a general tendency to focus on the writing skills and as consequence to search for Websites that could help us avoiding mistakes or that just help us enhancing our abilities and writing effective pieces of paper. Silvia for instance came up with this interesting Website explaining how to write more clearly, think more clearly and learn complex material more easily. I can’t say exactly why this Website captured my attention, probably because the Power Point presentation was simply appealing and as I started reading the various sections I thought that I agreed with its creator Micheal A. Covington and his tips could turn out to be really helpful for me, since when I have to write something in English I am always over concerned about what I have to say, how I have to express my opinions, what the best way to organize the text is etc. Obviously I’m obsessed with errors too and Sara/Zara found this wonderful Website about the most common errors in English. I decided to signal it in Del.icio.us too because I found it amazing: there is a long list of words or couple of words that students as well as native speakers often confuse or just ignore the real meaning.
Elena's choices are instead clearly oriented towards dictionaries. Monolingual and bilingual dictionaries are among the most important tools a student needs and on line dictionaries are a meaningful invention since they are fast, clear and help us saving time, so I really appreciated her choice, most of all because she picked up the dictionary of idioms and idiomatic expressions. Last year we have been doing a lot of translation and it often happened that we came across metaphors and expressions which were culturally bound and which were difficult to translate in English. I remember professor Scott claiming to check always if there was the correspondent idiomatic expression in English. However idioms are quite fascinating and it is interesting to see how they change in Italian and in English and as a consequence I guess I will be using it a lot. Among Letizia’s Websites the one that caught my attention the most is the one about “ Mother Tongue annoyances: how to lose ums and ahs from your speech”. This Website, or better this blog, is really practical: it gives different suggestions for speaking more fluently and feeling more confident when speaking in public. I read the whole post and I warmly recommend everyone to check it out because it might be helpful for our future debates on Monday!
I’m looking forward to reading all your posts and comments about Social Bookmarking and I hope you will appreciate my choices. See you next week!
It took me quite a lot of time to visit, read and evaluate the different Websites concerning language learning, also because I didn’t want to chose the same Sites my peers had already picked up – though I finally chose a couple of Websites that the girls in my group had already noticed. As far as I’m concerned, I primarily looked for special WebPages on the basis of what my weaknesses in English are: grammar and punctuation. As a consequences I came a across a couple of interesting Websites offering a clear description of the rules of punctuation in English and another one offering a hundreds of exercises of every kind and for any level. When language learning is concerned, I love interactiviness: I would spend hours doing that kind of multiple choice exercises because I think it’s a good way to test my knowledge and eventually to enhance my grammar. Then I looked for some listening exercises on the Web and a thousand of Websites appeared. In my opinion these cyber listening laboratories could be very useful for students since we do not have always the time to watch DVDs or listen to the BBC’s news, so if we want to keep up our English and test our abilities these Websites offer various tracks with different voices and their relative quizzes and solutions.
After fulfilling the first task I spent some time exploring the twenty Websites that my peers selected and I must confess I found all of them interesting and useful. I noticed that we all tried to focus on the four abilities but there is a general tendency to focus on the writing skills and as consequence to search for Websites that could help us avoiding mistakes or that just help us enhancing our abilities and writing effective pieces of paper. Silvia for instance came up with this interesting Website explaining how to write more clearly, think more clearly and learn complex material more easily. I can’t say exactly why this Website captured my attention, probably because the Power Point presentation was simply appealing and as I started reading the various sections I thought that I agreed with its creator Micheal A. Covington and his tips could turn out to be really helpful for me, since when I have to write something in English I am always over concerned about what I have to say, how I have to express my opinions, what the best way to organize the text is etc. Obviously I’m obsessed with errors too and Sara/Zara found this wonderful Website about the most common errors in English. I decided to signal it in Del.icio.us too because I found it amazing: there is a long list of words or couple of words that students as well as native speakers often confuse or just ignore the real meaning.
Elena's choices are instead clearly oriented towards dictionaries. Monolingual and bilingual dictionaries are among the most important tools a student needs and on line dictionaries are a meaningful invention since they are fast, clear and help us saving time, so I really appreciated her choice, most of all because she picked up the dictionary of idioms and idiomatic expressions. Last year we have been doing a lot of translation and it often happened that we came across metaphors and expressions which were culturally bound and which were difficult to translate in English. I remember professor Scott claiming to check always if there was the correspondent idiomatic expression in English. However idioms are quite fascinating and it is interesting to see how they change in Italian and in English and as a consequence I guess I will be using it a lot. Among Letizia’s Websites the one that caught my attention the most is the one about “ Mother Tongue annoyances: how to lose ums and ahs from your speech”. This Website, or better this blog, is really practical: it gives different suggestions for speaking more fluently and feeling more confident when speaking in public. I read the whole post and I warmly recommend everyone to check it out because it might be helpful for our future debates on Monday!
I’m looking forward to reading all your posts and comments about Social Bookmarking and I hope you will appreciate my choices. See you next week!
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