A bridge to spring...

Longing for spring eventually to come...here we are discussing the US election campaing again!

During these last weeks I've been reading a lot of articles about what's going on in the US, I've been following the news in Italy and I've also been watching videos on the web; I'm really happy I'm having the chance to do that, because I think it's really interesting, useful and challenging to be able to discuss such a topic, which is of great importance nowadays. Moreover, even if in the Italian news we daily hear about Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, I believe that not many people in our country know exactly what's going on, I don't even know if everybody is aware of the fact that Mr. McCain actually exists, so that I feel myself as having the privilege of having the means through which I can read, listen to and learn about this topic of great actuality.

There are a couple of issues which I'm particularly interested in with regards to the US campaign. First of all I really enjoyed having a look at the websites of the three candidates, which I found really different in the layouts but all of them very interesting and effective. I enjoyed doing such a work on the websites because I think that the web inevitably has a great importance in nowdays campaigns. For this very reason the web can be an important place where to build up a campaign and where to reach the audience as well as the television or the newspapers.
Secondly, I'm really interested in the health care issue, which I believe is among the most important problems in the American society. Moreover, I'm particulary interested in such an issue because health care is one of the greatest differences between American and European societies. Finally, health care is one of the important fields in which the three candidates are competing with each other; it is a particularly important issue mostly for the left wing candidates, whereas McCain focus most of his campaing on wars, on fighting against terrorism and on safety.
As for health care, here is the link to an article and a video in which Hillary Clinton discusses her position towards this issue. And here is the link to the transcript of an interview in which she discussed health care. In the next weeks I'll provide some more links in order to know something about Obama's and McCain's position on health care too!

See you all tomorrow afternoon!

Camilla

In my shoes...a newspaper...

This week task is about press, and the way the election campaigns are discussed in three different newspapers coming from three different countries.

The newspapers I've chosen to analyse are:

• The New York Times (USA)
• Il Corriere della Sera (Italy)
• El país (Spain)

I've decided not only to analyse how the three different newspapers deal with the American elections, but also to have a look at how they discuss each other campaigns, given the fact that all of these countries are experiencing an election campaing or have just voted their former President.

As for the American elections, the NY Times is obviously very focused on them in this particular period, and it devotes part of its website to this topic. In the section of the website devoted to politics and there are maps giving the results in each state, summaries of the situation of delegates, videos, podcasts and blogs. Moreover, in the Election Guide 2008 you can find all the possible materials concerning elections, such as results, candidates profiles, finances, primary calendars, schedules, and issues developed in the programs. Day by day the situation is supervised and there are articles concerning each single sentence said by one of the candidates, which gives the idea of how a big thing these elections are for America.

As for the coverage of the elections or campaigns taking place in Europe, the NY Times seems to be a little regardless of what's going on in Italy or Spain; this is probably due to the fact that

they're having a big campaign inside and thus they're not so interested in loking outside, but also to the fact that Americans are known to be a very patriotic people, and so not particularly interested in seeing what's going on in the rest of the world.

As for the Spanish elections, for instance, the NY Times devotes just a couple of articles to Zapatero's victory, one of which has such a title: "Socialists Re-elected in Spain, After a Bitter Campaign", which actually gives the idea of the NY Times having never talked about Zapatero's campaing so far.

As for the Italian election campaign, the NY Times seems to be not interested at all in following what's happening between Veltroni and Berlusconi, given the fact that if you look for the names of our candidates, Veltroni and Berlusconi, in the website searching engine, you can find just three or four recent articles, containing their names, which means that America does not follow our elections. They rather follow what's happening with Alitalia, maybe because of the fact that Italy is mostly view as a touristic country, so that they're interested in knowing own to reach our country...

...well...they're welcome!

What I found particularly interesting is that on December, 13 2007 the "Quotation of the day" was taken from a Veltroni's speech: "It's a country that has lost a little of its will for the future. There is more fear than hope" which probably reflects what they think about us abroad.

The Corriere della Sera gives a lot of importance and space to the American elections, both in the "Esteri" section and in the "Speciale USA 2008", which offers clear explanations of how elections work in America, videos, information and a complete glossary of specific words.

The Corriere also focuses on our home elections, but I think that the overall coverage for American elections is probably as complete as the one devoted to the Italian campaign.

As for Spain, the Corriere followed the elections quite exhaustively, and I realized that Zapatero's TV commercial has had a wide resonance even abroad; in fact, it is quoted even in Italian interviews and articles.

El País, on its side, is following te American elections in a less detailed way; there are obviously articles concerning the situation and the what's going on within the primary elections, but they do not have a special section devoted to the US elections or candidates, and they just discuss them in the "internacionales" section.

As for the Italian elections, in the website of El País they're following them, but not in a particularly exhaustive way. In Spain they seem to focus a lot on Berlusconi's words, both to quote and criticize him.

While analysing the three newspapers, I've noticed that there are some issues they have in common while discussing the American election campaign. The first thing I would like to say is that in America, Italy and Spain too, the attention is focused on the democratic party, and obviously in the run to get the nomenee between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In most of the articles, both in Italy and in Spain, McCain is not even mentioned, unless in the end, with a conclusive sentence such as "In the meanwhile, the republican McCain...".

This is particularly interesting because it gives the idea of how the whole world is concentrating on the left wing campaing, sometimes no even knowing who McCain is, or what he thinks and says.

Secondly, I've noticed that, as far as photos are concerned, all the newspapers prefer to use Obama's pictures rather than those of Hillary or McCain; this may be due to the fact that he's got a better look on which he's investing a lot during this campaign; moreover, he's younger, which may be relevant too.

Finally, all the newspapers put online the video of Hillary Clinton when she was a baby: this is a video which seems to have had a lot of success online!

That is all for this week discussion!

See you all nest week!

Camilla

Hillary or Barack?

Here we are again!
The new semester has just begun and so my blog is about to be updated weekly again!

The task for this first e-tivity is very interesting because it has given me the chance to look for more information about the US election campaings which actually I’ve been following day by day on the news. However, thanks to this e-tivity I’ve done something which probably I would have never done, that is to say, listening to a great number of speeches of the two democratic candidates, and, visit their own websites.
I’ve chosen to follow the democratic campaing because I’m getting more and more involved in this challenge between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, which actually is fascinating the entire world! I believe that such a challenge between candidates belonging to the same party is a great demonstration of democracy, which eventually is something unknown in a country like Italy, where we’re not allowed to choose pretty anything, neither the candidate we want to vote, or the President we would like to have. We’re living a political campaing in our country too, so that it is even more interesting to see how things are ruled abroad, in order to become aware of what’s wrong with our democratic system. Moreover, what is extremely interesting is the fact that this US campaing is having a worldwide resonance; all around the world people is interested in knowing who’s won in which state, eventually neither knowing where that state is. All around the world people say things like “If I were American, I would vote for Hillary or Obama” and these are just the primary elections. This fact means that the interest in who’s going to rule America for the next 4 or 8 years in relevant for the rest of the world; nowadays, in fact, being it right or not, where goes America, there follow the other countries.
As for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s speeches, I’ve compared what they’ve said on March, 4th, after the great day of the primary elections in a number of American states. As for Hillary’s speech, I’ve seen that she often uses very short and effective sentences, she’s able to focus the main point of what she’s saying very quickly, but, on the other hand, she’s often a very patriotic attitude, which she stresses maybe too much. Hillary likes to underline her being experienced in the whole White House matter, for instance when she says that: “When there's a crisis and that phone rings at 3 a.m. in the White House, there's no time for speeches or on-the-job training. You have to be ready to make a decision”. She is the one who knows how it works, she is the one who’s already been there, and this is one of the strong points of her campaign. Moreover, Hillary obviously stresses the role of women, and I particularly noticed the fact that when she thanks some Senator or Governor, she always thanks thier wives too: she’s been the wife of the US President, and she knows the role a wife has in the career of her husband.
If on the one hand Hillary’s speeches are effective and easy to follow, Barack Obama’s ones are maybe less formal. His sentences are much longer and complicated than Hillary’s ones, and he’s got a stronger accent, but his style is more attractive, more young-looking and his sentences seem to be more natural (as for example when, in the middle of his speech, he tells his slogna in spanish “Sì, se puede”). He doesn’t look like a traditional “politician”, even though his speeches are full of slogans such as “We believe” or “We can”. He likes to stress himself being the “new one”, being “the one who will bring change” in the system, as opposed to Hillary traditionalism and experience. He also stresses the importance of the family as a whole, as opposed to Hillary’s focus on women.
Anyway, the strong points of thier campaings are more or less the same: the need of ending the wars, the economic recession, health care and the problem of those who are homeless.
With reference to thier websites, I must say that I really like Barack Obama’s one, which I found effective in the general outlook, in style and in the use of colours and images. It is quite simple to be surfed, as opposed to Hillary’s one, which I consider a bit overwhelming and confusing, with too many colours and tools. However, Barack Obama’s website is a little too “romantic” considering the fact that is a website for political elections; even if the Obama family’s photo on the homepage is really nice and can be effective for a certain kind of audience, I defitely prefer Hillary’s pragmatism.
That is all for the moment, but I will keep following the American elections beacause I’m getting more and more fond about them and I haven’t yet decided for which of the two democratic candidates “I would vote”! Moreover, I have to look for information about John McCain too! The real campaing has not yet become!

Camilla

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