Madrid

As they always say in Spain...NO PASA NADA!!!

Camilla

Merry Christmas

So this is Christmas

and what have you done another year over

a new one just begun

and so this Xmas

I hope you have fun

the near and the dear one

the old and the young.

A merry merry Christmas

and happy New Year

let's hope it's a good one

without any fear.

And, so this is Christmas (war is over)

for weak and for strong (if you want it)

for rich and the poor ones(War is over now)

the road is so long

and so happy Christmas

for black and for white

for the yellow and red ones

let's stop all the fight.

A merry merry Christmas

and happy New Year

let's hope it's a good one

without any fear.

And, so this is Christmas

and what have we done

another year over

a new one just begun

and, so happy Christmas

we hope we have fun

the near and the dear one

the old and the young.

A merry merry Christmas

and happy New Year

let's hope it's a good one

without any fear.

(War is over if you Want it war is over now)

Camilla

PLE: My Personal Learning Environment

It is often said that if you attend a language course or if you study a language at school you're about to learn that foreign language; well, if on the one hand it is undeniably true that following a course you're laying the foundation stone for your learning process, on the other hand you must have clear in your mind the fact that you cannot learn a language just with classes or grammar exercises.

Learning a language is a process which involves each moment and each field of your everyday life, and it is something which is not only included in the pages of a book, but it is all around you, in every moment of your life. Obviously there must be a starting point, and that starting point may be a language course at school, or even at university, in order to get in touch with the language you want to learn. However, if you stop at the things you can learn during classes, your knowledge about that language will be what we usually call in Italy "Inglese (or whatever language) scolastico". What does this widespread label mean? To me, it means that you know "something" about that language, you know how it sounds, maybe also how it works, you know a lot about its grammar, but maybe nothing about its use in everyday life, its developement or its processes. At school you study foreing languages as well as you study History, or Maths, that is to say, as fixed matters, not as "live" matters as a language actually is.

As far as my PLE is concerned, I must say that the informal part of the learning process has always been very important to me: I remember myself being 12 years old and trying to translate the lyrics of my favourite singers, and at the same time learning new words and expressions without knowing I was actually improving my English. That has always been very useful to me for my learning experience, even if I know that it depends greatly on the level of curiosity each one of us can develop. Personally, I believe that formal learning can just help you to build a background for your language learning process, but you can really learn that language only if you come into contact with its "live" element, with its daily use; actually this can happen only if you manage to make an effort by yourself, and if you're curious enough to dip into that language in order to learn as much as possible about it every time you come across one of its various elements.

While building the mind map for my PLE I decided to show not only the different elements linked to formal and informal learning, but also which skills you're imrpoving while focusing on the two different fields of language learning. This does not mean that if you're watching TV you're not improving your grammar skills, or that during classes you do not improve your listening skills, but I wanted to make this distinction in order to point out where to focus your attention if you feel that you want to improve some of your skills. For instance, as far as my Spanish is concerned, I feel that I should improve my skills in oral production, so that I'll try to focus on the informal learning processes, whereas as far as my French is concerned, I should review my grammar, so that a good grammar book (formal learning) should be the best solution.

Ultimately then, it is a well-known fact that getting in touch with English in informal environments is much easier than with any other language, so that we should be even more encouraged to learn it given the fact that we come across it whenever and wherever we want, or sometimes even if we do not want, we're forced to relate to it. Informal learning processes are obviously more difficult to be developed as far other languages are concerned, but our curiosity should make us look for chances to get into contact with other langauges too.

Camilla

Consider the source. Reconsider the source.

At last...it's getting cold!
I love winter, that's my favourite season!

The topic we're about to discuss this week is very interesting and useful for those who often have to search for materials (especially online materials) as we actually are. I've read a lot about this topic because I was pretty ignorant about it, and I found very useful tips to use for my online investigations.
Firstly I'd like to quote a couple of sentences taken from an article by Tina Kelley and published by The New York Times which is called "Whales in the Minnesota River?" :

"If you wanted to publish a book that says 2 plus 2 equals 5, you had to go through a lot of effort and spend a great deal of money, but the cost of putting up a Web page saying 2 plus 2 equals 5 is virtually nothing".

"We've inherited this notion that if it pops up on a screen and looks good, we tend to think of it as fairly credible".

I definitely agree with these two statements, and I think that they show two of the most relevant problems within the issue of trustworthiness of webpages. In fact, considering the great amount of information one can get access to in the World Wide Web, the problem of determining whether a webpage is trustworthy or not becomes central in our search for documents. Unfortunately, most of the times we're not able to judge properly, and we get wrong by considering just the layout of the webpage and not judging using the right criteria. According to the great majority of the websites I've visited to get information about this topic, the main criteria to judge the reliability of a web document should be:

• Authorship (Who is responsible for publishing the information provided by the source)
  
• Publishing body (Where we are in the geography of cyberspace, looking at the web page you are trying to evaluate and focusing on the URL)
  
• Currency of the document (Considering the age and updatedness of your page)
  

However, we should always keep in mind that "evaluating information usually consists of weighing a number of criteria together" (Practical Steps in Evaluating Internet Resources) and that "there's not only a huge quantity out there but a very uneven level of quality" (Evaluating Sources of Information).
In fact, it is undeniably true that the problem of coming across untrue and rough information is extremely high in the Web. While surfing the Net I've read quite a lot of articles demonstrating how easy it is to publish any kind of bogus information or how frequently websites publish just what they're paid for (e.g. it is frequent habit for Amazon.com). Paradoxical though it may seem, everyone has the chance of publishing essays demonstrating not only that 2 plus 2 equals 5 (which would be of no danger at all), but also political, medical and scientific fakes which could eventually be dangerous for the readers evaluating them as trustworthy.

It is often the case that we tend to be not so critical as we should, so that we do not have to make the mistake of evaluating a webpage only when there are "grammatical errors, sloppy spelling or a goofy design, that makes us distrust the content" (Tina Kelley). Evaluating sources is a skill we need all the time, even when we feel overwhelmed with the endless amount of information available, and "The temptation would be to accept whatever you find. But don't be tempted" (Evaluating Sources of Information)!

As far as I'm concerned, I do agree with the statement Tina Kelley quotes in her article: "People have to be their own editors" within the information they come across in the World Wide Web! That is absolutely true, and is actually the basic issue at stake here. And finally, we should always remember that "there are other, nonelectronic, methods of getting much of the information" and that "it may be the Internet is the best resource, or maybe a book, or maybe a person will be the best resource"!

Camilla

Broadcast Yourself

YouTube...Broadcast yourself!

YouTube is among the most famous websites in the world! There you can find everything you want, and even more than what you could have ever imagined!
I’ve recently discoverd YouTube: unfortunately I’m a bit out of the whole Web 2.0. thing because I do not have broadband at home, so that it takes 2 hours to me to load a single video! However I often go to my father’s office in order to look for strange videos, and it is cool to see how many unbelievable videos you can find...everything you could be interested in is available on YouTube!
I often look for videos of concerts, foreign TV shows or for some episodes of my favourite TV series! Other times some friends of mine send me links to some strange videos which always make me LOL!
As for ESL learning experience, I think that YouTube is a great place where to find useful materials in order to improve our listening skills!
The videos Sarah proposed to us are very interesting and funny, I especially loved the one about the “sort of” translator, that’s awesome! Hope we’ll never become such “good” translators! While watching it I was wondering if the Italian accent really sounds like that abroad! It was obviously a joke, and all the accents were a bit exaggerated, but the Italian accent really sound so? Just Sarah can answer to this question!
To me that was much more similar to the accent they speak in Naples...but I watched some other videos I found in YouTube and I realized that the Italian accent perceived abroad is that of Southern Italy (try for example to look for the joke about “The Italian man who went to Malta”, which is everywhere!).
With reference to the other videos, I really like them as well, and particularly the one about the i-rack! That’s amazing, and everything correspond exactly with what is really happening...great piece of lampoon against G.W.B! And now it’s time for the i-ran! YouTube is full of amazing videos like the one Sarah choose for us, the only problem is that looking for them is so time – demanding! Most of the time you get lost among the great amount of videos available, and you go from a video to another losing a lot of time...isn’t YouTube something like a “drug”? Once experienced you get addicted to it!

Camilla

They're back...Back for Good

Hope this video will make you LOL!
It is called APACHE and it is part of "The Ultimate Tour" 2006!
Even if you don't like Take That, have a look at it, that's amazing!
And you can even practice your listening skills while watching it!



Camilla

Confessions of a Shopaholic

A few weeks ago some of my peers told me that they liked my style; particularly, elenavi said “Let’s take, for instance, this quote from your post: “However, here I am, I know it, and I intend to learn using it as much as possible!” Isn’t this your personal style? Of course! That's absolutely you! Imagine that while reading your post, it was like listening to you when we talk together at lesson on Monday!”
The way I write in informal English has been highly influenced by my readings, in fact, as silvia said “The way we write is inevitabily influenced by what we read. Therefore, we can learn how to improve our informal English only by reading a lot!”. And that's what I actually did during these last months, I started reading Sophie Kinsella’s books, which are written with a very informal and friendly style. I love her way of writing, which is much more similar to spoken language than to written language. Her novels are mainly about a young woman, Becky Bloomwood, who’s a real shopaholic, and who lives an amazing life, facing a lot of sentimental and economic troubles.

Ok, I know that Sophie Kinsella’s bestsellers are not exactly the kind of “contemporary literature” a student at her last year at university should be interestend in, but they’re so exciting that I like reading them in my free time!
An what is more, they help me improving my writing skills!

Sophie’s way of writing is so effective and attractive that you cannot stop reading her books, but while enjoying Becky’s adventures you can also learn how to write using informal written English, which is exactly what we’re asked to do in our blogs!

In order to show you what I mean by “effective and attractive style”, here’s the beginning of Sophie Kinsella’s “Confessions of a Shopaholic”:

“Ok. don't panic. Don't panic. It's only a VISA bill. It's a piece of paper; a few numbers. I mean, just how scary can a few numbers be?
I stare out of the office window at a bus driving down Oxford Street, willing myself to open the white envelope sitting on my cluttered desk. It's only a piece of paper, I tell myself for the thousandth time. And I'm not stupid, am I? I know exactly how much this VISA bill will be.
Sort of. Roughly.
It'll be about ... £200. Three hundred, maybe. Yes, maybe £300. Three-fifty, max.
I casually close my eyes and start to tot up. There was that suit in Jigsaw. And there was dinner with Suze at Quaglinos. And there was that gorgeous red and yellow rug. The rug was £200, come to think of it. But it was definitely worth every penny — everyone's admired it. Or, at least, Suze has.
And the Jigsaw suit was on sale — 30 percent off. So that was actually saving money.
I open my eyes and reach for the bill. As my fingers hit the paper I remember new contact lenses. Ninety-five pounds. Quite a lot. But, I mean, I had to get those, didn't I? What am I supposed to do, walk around in a blur?
And I had to buy some new solutions and a cute case and some hypoallergenic eyeliner. So that takes it up to ... £400?”

I know that all my peers (who actually are all women) know what’s going to happen to the poor Becky…isn’t it?

Well, it was just a funny extract from Sophie’s novel…just to show you how interesting her style is!
I’ll post some other extracts in the next weeks…and I hope my style will become more and more similar to hers!
I love it!

Camilla