Happy New Year

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!!!

Preparing for Christmas

When we think of Christmas we think of the Christmas tree. The tradition of the Christmas tree comes from Germany. Germans had a fir tree in their homes and they decorated it with biscuits and candles.
In Great Britain the Christmas tree became popular after 1840, when Queen Victoria married Prince Albert, a German. He brought the tradition of the Christmas tree to the Royal Family. Then may people started to have Christmas trees in their homes.
Today almost every Christian family has a Christmas tree at home or in the garden. Some families put up the tree on Christmas Eve while many others put it up at the beginning of December. People decorate their homes and gardens with other Christmas symbols such as holly, mistletoe and paper decorations. Towns and cities, too, usually decorate the trees in the parks with coloured lights.
Every year there is a very big Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square in London. It is a present from people of Norway. This tradition started in 1947, when the Norwegians wanted to thank the British for their help during World War II. This tree is about twenty-five metres tall and it is decorated with white lights.
America’s most famous Christmas tree is at the Rockerfeller Center on Fifth Avenue in New York City. This spectacular Christmas tree has about five miles of lights! Every Christmas millions of people go ice skating near the Rockerfeller tree.
Shopping for Christmas presents can be fun. During the Christmas season shops are open until late , and they are often open on Sundays, too. There are always a lot of people in the shops looking for the right presents for their family and friends. The shop windows have decorations, and many towns and cities put Christmas trees and other Christmas decorations in the shopping streets.
If you want to buy toys, in London there is a great toy shop called Hamleys. Children and adults love it: there are six floors full of toys and interesting games for all ages. Another wonderful toy shop is FAO Schwarz on Fifth Avenue in New York City. It is New York City’s favourite toy shop.
Christmas is a happy time, but it is also a time to help and remember others. No one wants to be alone at Christmas. During the Christmas season charity organizations ask for money for the poor people and the homeless in their town. They organize free meals and often give toys to the poor children.

A Traditional Christmas day

Some Christians go to church at midnight on Christmas Eve, while others go on Christmas morning. There are special Christmas services in all Christian churches. Some people don’t go to church, but on Christmas Day families try to be together. People travel long distances to spend a family Christmas .
Children and adults usually open their presents on Christmas morning around the Christmas tree, or sometimes even in bed! This is a very happy moment, especially for children!
In the UK there is a big Christmas lunch with special foods. People start cooking the Christmas meal very early, especially when there is a turkey. A big turkey takes a long time to cook. Christmas crackers are an old tradition and are part of the Christmas lunch. Two people pull the cracker until it goes ‘bang’ and opens. Inside there is a small present, a paper hat and a joke. People sometimes wear the paper hat during the rest of Christmas lunch!
In the US families spend Christmas Day together at home. They play games and watch Christmas films on television. In the evening they have a big Christmas dinner with lots of special foods.

Christmas Foods

The traditional Christmas dinner consists of roast turkey and roasted vegetables, followed by special desserts. Typical British desserts are Christmas pudding and minces pies, while in America fruit cake and pumpkin pie are popular. During the Christmas period other typical foods are roast ham, Yule logs and Christmas cakes.

Thanksgiving -part 2

Why is Thanksgiving an Important Day?

The tradition started with the ’Pilgrim Fathers’. They were the founders of the colony in North America. These people were Puritans. They were against the Church of England, and suffered religious persecutions in England. They wanted to start a new life in a new country.
Eventually, on 6th September 1620, 102 men, women and children left Plymouth in south-west England on a ship called the Mayflower. The voyage was difficult: two Pilgrims died, but two were born. On 11th December 1620 they landed on the north-east coast of North America. They called this area Plymouth . It was almost winter and there wasn’t much food. They immediately built small houses, but it was too late to grow crops. The winter was very long and cold and half of the Pilgrims died.

(photos from flickr)

In the spring a native American called Squanto helped the Pilgrims. He taught them how to grow corn and how to hunt and fish. Soon Pilgrims and the Wampanoag native Americans became friends. The Pilgrims grew crops and the summer harvest was excellent. By November 1621 everyone had food and a home. There was hope for the future.William Bradford was the governor of the Pilgrim’s colony. He decided to celebrate with a dinner for the Pilgrims and about ninety native Americans. He wanted to thank God. This was the first Thanksgiving dinner, and it continued for three days.

Thanksgiving -part1

Dear all,

in the forum with student from Albany university I found out much interesting information on the Thanksgiving's day. To be honest, I must admit I didn't know so much on this subject before reading Albany's students comments.

I discovered that Americans of all religions celebrate Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November. Children do not go to school, and most business close for three days. People in Canada also celebrate Thanksgiving, but they celebrate it on the second Monday in October. Thanksgiving is a special day for families, and people travel great distances to be with their families for this occasion.

A traditional Thanksgiving

Today the traditional thanksgiving meal is similar to the first. People eat roast turkey with cranberry sauce, potatoes, corn and pumpkin pie. Vegetarians don’t eat meat, but they still celebrate Thanksgiving with other foods, such as soya products, rice, fruit, vegetable and big salads. Many charity organizations prepare a free meal for the poor people in their own town or city.
New York City celebrates with Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Macy’s department store organised its first parade in 1924. This parade is very famous, and more than two million people go to see it every year.

(to be continued...)

Explanations about my PLE

Hello people,

I noticed that, due to the small dimensions of the mindmap of my PLE, you couldn't easily read it. Therefore, in this post, I will provide a short summary of the basic points I'll argue on Wednesday during my presentation in class. I you'll be so kind to give me some feedback, your comments'll be more than welcome!!! Here is the structure of my personal learning environment's mindmap.
My personal learning environment:

1. FORMAL

- Places

• classroom
• centro linguistico di Ateneo
• library

- People

• my teacher Sarah Guth
• my peers
• my group: E
• friends
• tutors

- Tools

• books
• notebooks
• photocopies and materials given by teachers
• computer

- Activities

• conferences: e.g. "Repulsion" by Antoinette Renouf (from the university of Birmingham), "Computer-mediated communication and Language Learning: Research and Practice".
• seminars: e.g. "Convegno Tradurre: professione e formazione"

2. INFORMAL

- Places

• home
• university
• libraries
• pubs
• parties

- People

• my best friend from US: Adriana
• my erasmus friend from: the UK, the US, China, Belgium, Germay, Austria, Spain, France and Poland.

- Tools

• books
• dvds
• magazines
• newspaper
• websites
• blogs
• bloglines
• del.icio.us
• facebook
• studiVZ
• firstclass

- Activities

• going to social events with erasmus friends
• becoming a memberof the erasmus cafè (in ESN: erasmus students network)
• listening to music
• watching movies or TV programs in English
• participating in a tandem learning experience

3. MY E-LEARNING

• bloggingenglish
• bloglines
• technorati
• flickr
• del.icio.us
• podcasts
• YouTube
• wikipedia
• blogs
• forum with students from Albany university

What do you think about my mindmap? Do you have some suggestions in order to improve it? I'm looking forward to reading your comments!

Catch you soon

My personal learning environment!

Dear all,

This week I’ll show you my PLE. “What’s a PLE?” (You’ll ask yourselves). Well, a PLE is a personal learning environment which everyone shapes according to his/her interests and learning targets. Actually, a PLE is also a ‘combination of the formal and informal tools and processes we use to gather information, reflect on it and do something with it, which is essentially what we mean when we talk about learning” (Martin, 2007).
Many specialists in this matter decoded different ways to organize a well-shaped PLE. For example, Martin divides it into three areas:

• Gathering information
• Processing information
• Acting on the learning

She clearly pays attention to the importance of defining the three phases of the learning acquisition. Rather than focussing on the importance of the process, I’d prefer to highlight the relevant role of the agents and sources that take part in this process.
For example, we should ask ourselves:

• Where can I learn and enlarge my competences?
• Who can teach me something new?
• Which tools can I use in order to improve my abilities?

Another very helpful subdivision is to divide the formal learning environment form the informal learning environment. I want to share with you this explanatory example I found on “What is informal learning”.


‘Formal learning is like riding a bus: the driver decides where the bus is going; the passengers are along for the ride. People new to the territory often ride the bus before hopping on the bike.’ (photo from flickr)

‘Informal learning is like riding a bicycle: the rider chooses the destination and the route. The cyclist can take a detour at a moment’s notice to admire the scenery or help a fellow rider.’
(photo from flickr)


If we manage to separate these two areas, we’ll be aware of the different way we do learn and all the following implications. I mean, I think it’s very important to know what kinds of parameters influence my learning processes. What I want to say is that while some people manage to learn more in a formal context (e.g. in their job), other people learn more in more comfortable and relaxing situations (e.g. listening to music, chatting with friends, etc.).

What's the aim of the PLE?
I think that a PLE can help you to reflect on your own learning. I noticed that to draw my personal learning environment help me to reflect on the ways I learn, the time I spend and the organization I need. All these aspects of my PLE will me to use the resources I have in a more effective way.

If you want to have a look, here is my PLE:

In conclusion, paraphrasing the words of Martin, I can say that your PLE has real potential as a way to keep learning happening and everyday at a very low cost!

Cheers
Martina

Evaluating Sources on the Web - Use Your Head

Hello,

Today I will give you a brief report of the strategies I’ve used so far when I was looking for good sources at the library or on the web.

While I was writing my thesis I used mainly printed articles and books, I did a very limited use of Internet sources. I had the prejudice that printed information is much more reliable than information you can find on the Internet. Later, I discovered I was wrong, since I realized I cannot discriminate among sources according to their form (printed or online).
These were the basic steps of my researches:

First, I collected some information on the author, the content, the kind of edition and who was the book addressed to. Second, I made a list of the suitable books’ titles; I did think about the key words which could allow me to find other interesting books as well. Third, I taped meaningful words into the slot of the Catalogo Padovano (online library source). In the end, I checked the shelves of the libraries and I borrowed some interesting books.

Doing my researches, I usually made a list of interesting books that could be useful- as to make them available in the future. Basically, you can evaluate a book at first sight according to the table of contents. Usually, if contents are clearly listed and structured, you expect the book to be good and meaningful. As for the reliability of a book, you trust the author according to the way he makes quotations and selects the bibliography. Therefore, the problem of evaluating the reliability of books seems quite easy to solve.

However, if I am asked to evaluate sources on the Web, the problem to tackle becomes more and more complex. Unfortunately, the information I need to know in order to evaluate a web source is not always specified in the homepage. So, the reader must look around in order to find:

• ‘Who is responsible for publishing the information provided by the source? What are the credentials and affiliation or sponsorship of any named individuals or organizations? How objective, reliable, and authoritative are they? Is the author or contact person listed with addresses (street, e-mail)?
• What can be said about the content, context, style, structure, completeness and accuracy of the information provided by the source? Are any conclusions offered? If so, based on what evidence and supported by what primary and secondary documentation? What is implied by the content? Are diverse perspectives represented? Is the content relevant to your information needs?
• When was the information provided by the source published? Is the information provided by the source in its original form or has it been revised? Is this information timely and is it updated regularly?
• Where else can the information provided by the source be found? Is this information authentic? Is this information unique or has it been copied?
• Why was the information provided by the source published? What are the perspectives, opinions, assumptions and biases of whoever is responsible for this information? Is anything being sold? Who is the intended audience?’ (Questions’ source).

Anyway, if I had to ask me all the questions every time I need to evaluate a web source I would spend my entire life evaluating website. Gosh! Not a happy life, indeed! So, just to make things easier, I checked out what I could find on the del.icio.us. Well, I found a fantastic article entitled “Seek and Ye Shall Find: How To Evaluate Sources on the Web”, written by Wendy Boswell. This article clearly sums up the three basic rules to find out the reliability of a web source; here they are:

• Who’s in charge?
• Are you telling me the truth?
• Are you selling me something?

That’s all, guys! I mean, that’s all someone needs to know about a web source. As Wendy Boswell says, basically people need to figure out if the website presents accurate information or not. If you manage to answer this question and the answer is positive, this means your source is good.
I’d like to give you a further tip that can help you to discriminate your web sources. On the University of Berkley’s website I found this excellent tutorial on ‘Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask’, published by UC Berkeley - Teaching Library Internet Workshops.

‘Evaluating web pages skilfully requires you to do two things at once:
1. Train your eye and your fingers to employ a series of techniques that help you quickly find what you need to know about web pages;
2. Train your mind to think critically, even suspiciously, by asking a series of questions that will help you decide how much a web page is to be trusted.’ (tips’ source).

In conclusion, if you want to find more on the subject this is the complete list of the useful website I found in my research:

Tips from Wendy Boswell
Tips from from the Milton Library at Johns Hopkins University
Tips from the University of Berkley
Tips from the University of Essex
Tips from Purdue’s Online Writing Lab (OWL)
Tips from San Diego State University

Catch you soon
Martina

YouTube: the visual revolution!

What do I think about YouTube?

Well, I think that YouTube could replace television and radio as the main source of visual and oral entertainment. I know this is a strong statement but I honestly believe I’m not so far from the truth.

I discovered YouTube as a good source for language analysis. As a matter of fact, anybody says and writes what he/she thinks in a very, how can I say, direct way. Sometimes, people are too frank and they can post very rude comments, using foul language. I totally disagree with them, since straightforwardness does not mean vulgarity.

As regards my YouTube experience, I can say that, while searching on YouTube for funny videos to post in my blog, I come across some comments which were absolutely out of the world! I have always been told that orthography and grammar are the supreme 'laws' which enable us to learn a new language. Actually, I see that some native speakers do not care about grammar and orthography at all!

I think the language of ICT- information and communication technology can make us aware of how new words and new habits enter a language. For example, last Wednesday, Sarah told us how frequently some American students misspell some expressions and write "your" rather than "you are" or even "their" rather than "they are", in our forum about the Padova-Albany Exchange.

In my opinion, it’s important to distinguish among the kind of videos you can find on YouTube.
I mean, you can find everything; so we must pay attention to what we came across. Some videos are really weird! I think that YouTube, as any other tool, is a good resource if you use it the right way. On the contrary, it becomes very dangerous if people use it just to post insulting and offensive videos.

Before hearing about YouTube, I used to listen to BBC broadcast. I must say that on the BBC site you can listen to some very good programs and have a look at the scripts; but the spoken words are not supported by visual images. In one sense, the visual elements allow ideas to work with the full range of the human imagination.

As a consequence, this powerful tool will enable us to change our way to perceive information, communication and even learning. People are so used to communicating through digital materials that living without such technologies would be upsetting!

In conclusion, YouTube has become very popular and I think this is partly due to its high accessibly. Anybody can put almost anything on this site and the fact that people can rate the videos contributes to award high or low popularity to these videos.

I think YouTube is not only ‘a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips.’ (wikipedia) but also a way to communicate, exchange ideas and improve our language skills!

(photo source)

What only British dare! - 2nd part

Comic Relief - Catherine Tate & David Tennant




CATHERINE: Are you English, Sir?
DAVID: No I'm Scottish.
CATHERINE: So, you aren't English then!
DAVID: No I'm British.
CATHERINE: So you aren't English then!

Surfing on the web and searching for interesting and humorous videos on YouTube, I found this hilarious video played by Catherine Tate and David Tennant.

David Tennant is a very well-known theatre actor. 'He was ranked the 24th most influential person in the UK's media, on the 9 July 2007 Media Guardian supplement of The Guardian. Tennant also appeared in the paper's annual media rankings in 2006.' (Wikipedia)

In September, I heard about him for the first time. My friend Karen invited me to go to Stratford-Upon-Avon to see Hamlet, played by the Royal Shakespeare Company and by David Tennant (of course!). I still don't know whether I'll be able to go there or not, but I'm sure Karen will give me a very rich and detailed report about Hamlet (and David Tennant)! =) lol

If you want to read an article about the event, click here. Please, remember to send me you comments!

Cheers!

What only British dare! - 1st part

Catherine Tate: 7 languages interpreter




First, I am Italian, and I think that English accents sound better then ours. Anyway, every accent of a specific language may sound weird to someone who doesn't speak that language. In this video, Ms.Tate is extremely talented, and she does manage to reproduce foreign languages' intonation very well. Actually, she also make fun of them!

(I have to admit that if I weren't an Italian native speaker I could have recognized her as an Italian speaker! lol)

Anyway, just like British try to pull of foreign accents, I’d be glad to listen to someone trying to pull of British accent! I think it’s extremely difficult!

Catch you later, guys!

Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad was born in Berdyczow, a part of Poland under Russia, on the 3rd of December 1657. Typical of Conrad’s work are the atmosphere of adventure and the distant and exotic settings. The sea is the main ingredient of most of his novels and this is obviously a result of his own seafaring adventures as a youth and his experience with the merchant navy.

Conrad’s deep pessimism, which he inherited from the unhappy political situation of his birth country, is often evident in his works. He saw man in the lap of un unforeseen estiny which had the power of revealing his true, often negative, identity. Among his best works there is Heart of Darkness. I read this book three or four times and each time I found a new interesting topic that makes me think about colonialism. I think a certain kind of colonialism still exists in the present-day society. As you can see from the plot summary I will provide you below, the story told in the novel is not so far form the events in our contemporary ‘civilized’ world.

Heart of Darkness

tells the experiences of the main character, Marlow, during a journey up the river Congo in Africa as a commander of a steamer for a Belgian trading company. The experience he tells itself to different levels of interpretation. The darkness of the title, in fact, refers both to the physical journey into Africa and to a journey into Marlow’s unconscious, whereby the more he penetrates into Africa the more he gets a deeper understanding of himself and the world surrounding him.

The novel is a strong attack on the abuses and devastation caused by colonialism. No sooner, in fact, does Marlow arrive at the Central Station than he realizes the ruin and degeneration colonial enterprises both to the land and to the natives. The latter, in fact, are reduced to mere shades, phantoms without a glimpse of life in them.
A device Conrad uses in his denunciation of colonialism is irony, by means of which what is written contrasts with what is really meant. In Heart of Darkness colonialism reveals all his evil aspects, not only because of the economic exploitation it implies but also because of the power it has to free man’s most brutal forces.

In 1979, Francis Ford Coppola directed a film: Apocalypse Now. It was inspired by Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The film is set during the Vietnam War. Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) has been charged by the American secret services to discharge Captain Kurtz (Marlon Brando) of his command. The latter, in fact, has escaped into Cambodia and has created a personal army in the jungle, where he is worshipped as a god. Eventually, Captain Willard succeeds in finding Captain Kurtz, after a terrible voyage up a river amid of devastations, death and ruins.

(photo sources)

Podcasts are great fun!!

What is a podcast? Never heard before? Don’t worry, it seems a difficult tool but actually it’s very simple! 'A podcast is a digital media file, or a related collection of such files, which is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers.' (Wikipedia)

Last Wednesday, I looked for funny podcasts in many different websites. Some podcasts were absolutely AMAZING!!! That’s why I downloaded them onto my computer; I added them into my favourite websites on del.icio.us; and finally, I added them to my podcast playlist on bloglines. I will briefly describe you the most useful and hilarious podcasts I found. While listening to these podcasts, I can learn English and have fun as well! It’s unbelievable, guys! These are the podcasts I selected for you:


1. Lesson 111- Seattle.
2. Lesson 109- Chomsky. (The Bob and Rob Show)
3. Proofreading tips. (Grammar Girl)
4.Rethinking Teacher training. (ELSPod.com).

My first choice was The Bob and Rob Show. The Bob and Rob Show is a variety show aimed at intermediate to advanced learners of English. It takes a very unconventional approach to teaching English because the programs deal with current exciting and unusual topics. As Bob and Rob point out, their show is definitely a hodgepodge!

Now, I give you few details about the speakers. Bob is from the West Coast of the United States. He lived in California until he was six, and then spent the next 16 years living in Oregon and Washington State. Rob is from North London. Although he is British, he has dual nationality because his parents are Italian. Now, Bob and Rob live in Japan, and they both teach English at the same university. In each podcast, these two bizarre speakers teach us idioms, grammar, and slang in both American and English flavours.

I can say that their accents are extremely funny and make me laugh a lot. Both the Seattle and Chomsky lessons are not serious and boring academic lessons at all. So, if you want to spend some minutes having fun...just listen to them, guys!

Grammar Girl is a completely different website. There, you’ll mostly find podcasts about grammar rules, common mistakes, tips to improve your oral and written English. Maybe, you read the post I sent some weeks ago to my blog where I explained some useful suggestions we had come up with in class. These suggestions dealt with the basic rules in order to make a good post. Well, most of the rules I listed are described by Grammar Girl, too. For example, Grammar Girl says that it’s always helpful to read your work out loud. (I stated the same thing in my post entitled ‘Making a good post’). Then, she also gives us further suggestions which hadn’t come in my mind. For example, she suggests to:

1) ‘Read your work backwards, starting with the last sentence and working your way in reverse order to the beginning. Supposedly this works better than reading through from the beginning because your brain knows what you meant to write, so you tend to skip over errors when you're reading forwards.

2) Always proofread a printed version of your work. I don't know why, but if I try to proofread on a computer monitor I always miss more errors than if I print out a copy and go over it on paper.

3) Give yourself some time. If possible, let your work sit for a while before you proofread it. It seems to me that if you are able to clear your mind and approach the writing from a fresh perspective, then your brain is more able to focus on the actual words, rather than seeing the words you think you wrote.’ (Mignon Fogarty).

Mignon Fogarty, the creator of Grammar Girl, believes that learning is fun, and the vast rules of grammar are wonderful fodder for lifelong study. She strives to be a friendly guide in the writing world. Actually, she really manages to provide short, friendly tips to improve our writing. The thing I like best in this website is that Grammar Girl makes complex grammar questions simple with memory tricks to help us recall and apply some troublesome grammar rules.

The last but not the least: ESLPod.com. This website is run by a team of experienced English as a Second Language professors with over 30 years of experience. Dr. Lucy Tse writes scripts and story ideas for the podcasts, and records many of the dialogues and stories. The host for the podcast is Dr. Jeff McQuillan, who helps read the scripts and provides explanations for them.

The podcast I selected for you deals with a topic I am particularly interested in: rethinking teacher training. As I told you in my welcome post, my dream job is to become a teacher. Therefore, everything that is concerned with teaching is absolutely important to me! Especially, in the podcast you can listen to the reasons why many teachers decide to give up their job.

While listening to the podcast I came across a word I had never heard before: attrition. In my Collins COBUILD dictionary, I found that attrition means ‘the decrease in number of students or employees caused by people leaving and not being replaced’. The speaker states that teacher attrition happens when teachers quit their jobs and start a new career. This is a huge problem in the U.S., since as many as 50% of all teachers leave teaching in their first five years. Some leave because the pay is not very high, but many leave due to the stress involved in being a teacher nowadays.

This podcast is very popular because many people listened to it and sent their comments about the situation of teachers in US, in Germany, in Spain and in Russia. Concerned with this subject, there is an interesting article entitled Rethinking How to Teach the New Teachers by Denise Caruso, published in The New York Times. Caruso states that one option to solve the problem is to start teacher education students in front of the classroom teaching right away, instead of waiting until the end of their training.

In conclusion, podcasts are a great resource indeed. They enable you to listen to conversations and discussions on very interesting topics. So, it’s a very good way to improve our English.

It’s simple, it’s obvious, and it’s very powerful!

Hope it helps! Catch you later.

(photo sources)

Del.icio.us is delicious!

Try del.icio.us- you’ll love it! I still think of the time when I was looking for studies that really work, authentic articles, and effective information but rather than finding them straightaway, I was obliged to search for them for hours and hours. After spending so many energies searching on the web, the result was pretty unsatisfactory. But now, that time is over because now I can count on del.icio.us!

Del.icio.us is a useful way of 'filtering' the overload of information on the Internet and a very effective way of using Internet for my learning and searches. This week Sarah introduced the class into the world of SOCIAL BOOKMARKING. As she said, social bookmarking is not only a way to store and save your favourite website online, but also a way to share them with people you know or with people who have your same interests. Google can help you to find a huge amount of information but it doesn’t suggest you which site is good for you and why it is useful.

By using social bookmarking, you can highlight what is special about a site and why it’s worthwhile to have a look at it! In addition, if you create a personal network of people who share your interests it’ll be very easy to find out some new interesting sites, just by clicking on the sites they added. To search for websites and blogs that might interest you will become as easy as it has never been before!

As a matter of fact, websites are an immensely popular cultural form of communication and they don’t have to be read from the beginning to the end because you can find interesting only some chunks of them. Despite their popularity and accessibility, they are not organized in a hierarchic way. All that said, it’s difficult to estimate the degree of effectiveness of each site; it’s not easy to guess from the title or from the url how much meaningful a certain site is for you. Del.icio.us is the solution! It's simple, it's easy! The easy-to-read format of delicious does not mean that it is not carefully crafted. In this site you can find everything about a website: its title, its url, its brief description, some notes and tags. In addition, you can also retrieve the name of the people who added it into del.icio.us.

In my group, many peers chose educational websites. This is partly due to the contents we always are looking for: English learning, dictionaries, grammar, vocabulary, punctuation and so on. I had a look at some websites and I will briefly describe what I liked most.

• Camilla’s choice: informal English dictionary
  “This is a simple and useful dictionary of informal English”. (Camilla)


• Elena’s choice: English Pronunciation
  “An useful site to practice English phonetics and improve your pronunciation. You can work on the most difficult English sounds through videos and dictations, by comparing minimal pairs, listening and recording conversations, or by trying your hand at tong”. (Elena)


• Marina’s choice: schematic rules for English punctuation
  “A helpful list of the different parts of punctuation when writing in English”. (Marina)


• Silvia’s choice: wordreference
  “This website contains free online dictionaries. It can be very useful when you're translating! As a matter of fact, it contains both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries.” (Silvia)


• Veronica’s choice: Free online English dictionary
  “This free online English dictionary can be a useful tool when translating a text into English. This monolingual dictionary not only explains the meaning and the grammatical function of the word you are interested in, but also its ethymology.” (Veronica)

Overall, I think the websites my peers chose aim to promote specialist English learning in the field of on-line learning. They focus on specific aspects of language use in one or several languages and provide valuable insights into language and communication research. As we pointed out in class, punctuation is a very complex subject for Italian students who learn English and we still make too many mistakes. Marina wisely put on del.icio.us a website where we can find schematic rules in order to correctly use English punctuation. Elena suggested us a very good site which can help us to improve our pronunciation. Camilla, Veronica and Silvia are interested in dictionaries: on the one hand, Camilla wants to know more on informal English; on the other hand, Silvia and Veronica looks for a good online resource for translation’s aims. In my opinion, the basic features of online dictionaries should be: to help me to understand the differences in meaning between words with similar meanings; to provide detailed definitions and natural examples; to suggest the correct use of a word; to give some example sentences which are taken from authentic spoken English.

In conclusion, I really liked the work my peers done. By exploiting the websites they suggested me, I hope I’ll gain confidence in using new vocabulary!

Thank you girls for your contributions on del.icio.us!
Social bookmarking is a very useful resource and I hope we’ll take advantage of it!

(photo source)

ezra pound

About two weeks ago, it was the anniversary of Ezra Pound’s birthday (on 30th October1885). So far, I’ve not read so many poems by this author but I’d like to read more on the subject. Here for you, some information on his life, his career and his poetics.

"Ezra Pound is generally considered the poet most responsible for defining and promoting a modernist aesthetic in poetry. In the early teens of the twentieth century, he opened a seminal exchange of work and ideas between British and American writers, and was famous for the generosity with which he advanced the work of such major contemporaries as W. B. Yeats, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, H. D., James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, and especially T. S. Eliot. His own significant contributions to poetry begin with his promulgation of Imagism, a movement in poetry which derived its technique from classical Chinese and Japanese poetry--stressing clarity, precision, and economy of language, and foregoing traditional rhyme and meter in order to, in Pound's words, "compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome." His later work, for nearly fifty years, focused on the encyclopedic epic poem he entitled The Cantos.

Ezra Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, in 1885. He completed two years of college at the University of Pennsylvania and earned a degree from Hamilton College in 1905. After teaching at Wabash College for two years, he travelled abroad to Spain, Italy and London, where, as the literary executor of the scholar Ernest Fenellosa, he became interested in Japanese and Chinese poetry. He married Dorothy Shakespear in 1914 and became London editor of the Little Review in 1917. In 1924, he moved to Italy; during this period of voluntary exile, Pound became involved in Fascist politics, and did not return to the United States until 1945, when he was arrested on charges of treason for broadcasting Fascist propaganda by radio to the United States during the Second World War. In 1946, he was acquitted, but declared mentally ill and committed to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. During his confinement, the jury of the Bollingen-Library of Congress Award (which included a number of the most eminent writers of the time) decided to overlook Pound's political career in the interest of recognizing his poetic achievements, and awarded him the prize for the Pisan Cantos (1948). After continuous appeals from writers won his release from the hospital in 1958, Pound returned to Italy and settled in Venice, where he died, a semi-recluse, in 1972." These notes are taken from a website on poets, if you want to find more click here.

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Remarkable movies

While searching information about movies I watched during my course of 'Letterature Comparate', I found a blog on Greta Garbo called 'Great Garbo lives'. It's written by philippe who is not a movie critic but is very fond of Greta Garbo. Go and have a look at his blog! It's definitely worthwhile a visit!

Here for you, the reviews of two masterpieces which are all-time classics by Ernst Lubitsch: Ninotchka and To be or not to be. I think that Lubitsch is incredibly brilliant because in To be or not to be he manages to provide a biting satire of the Nazis and the movie itself is priceless. Ninotchka is a very moving and witty love story; Lubitsch has a very gentle touch and he manages to represent the story in a very subtle way.
In my opinion, these are fantastic movies, indeed.

Ninotchka (1939)

'Garbo laughs. So read the advertising for the star's first outright comedy, and it brilliantly sums up the appeal of this remarkable film. Director Ernst Lubitsch has the actress gracefully step down from her pedestal as the stern Communist who warms to the appeal of Paris champagne and playboy Melvyn Douglas. Combining farce, romance and satire, yet still maintaining moments of that soaring Garbo intensity, NINOTCHKA is special indeed.
When three Soviet emissaries (Bressart, Rumann, Granach, whose work could not possibly be bettered) arrive in Paris on a mission, it's not long before Paris arrives on them instead. And so, super efficient Comrade Ninotchka (Garbo) appears to retrieve jewelry in the possession of the former Grand Duchess Swana (Claire). It is the Soviet government's contention that the property of the aristocrats properly belongs to the people. The two women's tussle over the goods becomes complicated, however, when Swana's swain Leon (Douglas) becomes infatuated with the frosty commissar.
Many of Garbo's films rely on her presence alone for their appeal. That's not the case here. Working from a brittle, witty script by no less than Wilder, Brackett, and Reisch, the gifted Lubitsch brings his patented "touch" to scene after scene. From the bumbling emissaries' arithmetic about ringing for hotel maids to Ninotchka's hilarious "execution scene" the film bubbles merrily throughout. Garbo rarely had a paramour as adroit as Douglas, who wears a dinner jacket with the flair of Astaire and the polish of Powell. He plays the gushy romantic dialogue early on with the perfect combination of conviction and playfulness, and one of the film's beauties is watching Garbo shift gears into this mode herself. The lovely scene in a cafe where Douglas cracks Ninotchka up only when he falls off his chair remains a highlight of both film comedy and screen romance.
An adroit satire of both Communism and capitalism, NINOTCHKA still manages a healthy heartiness and a sweet sadness.'

To be or not to be (1942)

'A masterpiece of satire and one of the more controversial films of its day, TO BE OR NOT TO BE is a brilliant example of how comedy can be as effective in raising social and political awareness as a serious propaganda film, while still providing hilarious entertainment.
The film begins in Poland, 1939, where Joseph Tura (Jack Benny), a tremendously vain Polish actor, and his wife, Maria (Carole Lombard), a conceited national institution in Warsaw, are starring in an anti-Nazi stage play that subsequently is censored and replaced with a production of "Hamlet." Maria has taken a fancy to a young Polish fighter pilot, Sobinski (Robert Stack), who is called to duty when Germany invades Poland. In England, he and his fellow pilots in the Polish squadron of the RAF bid farewell to their much-loved mentor, Prof. Siletsky (Stanley Ridges), who confides to them that he is on a secret mission to Warsaw. Sobinski, however, begins to suspect that Siletsky is a spy and flies to Warsaw to stop him from keeping an appointment with Nazi colonel Ehrhardt (Sig Rumann)--an appointment that will destroy the Warsaw underground. There, Sobinski enlists the aid and special talents of the Tura's theater group to save and protect the Resistance.
A satire built around a rather complex spy plot and directed with genius by Ernst Lubitsch, TO BE OR NOT TO BE lampoons the Nazis and paints the Poles as brave patriots fighting for their land, for whom Hamlet's question "To be or not to be" takes on national implications. Released in 1942, in the midst of America's involvement in WWII, the film drew a great deal of criticism from people who felt that Lubitsch, a German (though he left long before Hitler's rise), was somehow making fun of the Poles. TO BE OR NOT TO BE is also remembered as the last screen appearance for the dazzling Lombard, who, just after the film's completion, was killed in a plane crash while on her way to Hollywood for a war bonds spot on Benny's radio show. TO BE was a perfect and brash finale to Lombard's great comic genius, especially because of it's examination of play-acting. Was there ever as playful a spirit on a movie set as Lombard? The film came from an idea by Melchior Lengyel--as did NINOTCHKA. Mel Brooks's remake of the story was released in 1983, with Brooks and Anne Bancroft playing the leads. While not as good, it's a perfectly watchable, if unecessary, tribute to the original, with Bancroft faring better than Brooks.'

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What's special about Bloglines?

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Hello,

Today I’ll start with a brief summary of what I’ve learnt about Bloglines so far. Last week, I learnt how to subscribe to the personal blogs in my group; how to subscribe to any other interesting sites I found during my online searches; how to create playlists.

It was great fun and it was definitely useful. I didn’t know how to create an account on Bloglines; how to subscribe to all of my peers’ personal blogs; how to organize a playlist. These are nice tools to organize information and a good way to organize my work. Due to the fact that in our everyday life we are constantly urged to save time (and money), we need to find what we need - quickly.

The strong point using an aggregator is that each time the sites you subscribed to are updated with new information, you receive the update. Therefore, you’ll save so much time and you’ll receive information quickly. In my opinion, it’s vital to have such a tool because it enables us to tidy up our collection of blogs.

If you want to find more about aggregators, have a look to Using An "Aggregator" To Capture RSS Feeds: A Technology For Keeping Up-To-Date, a very interesting article by Bell Steven. I carefully read through it and I realized that life is easier for those who master technology (I’m clearly experiencing it now in my work!).

Last week, I had a look also to the site of npr, which Sarah suggested us. I had a look at this site because I could find much information on:

• News


• Politics and society


• Business


• People and places

• Health and science

• Books


• Music


• Arts and culture


• Diversions


• Opinions
  

In addition, I can also access hourly news summaries and 24-hours programme stream. It’ amazing! It’s a good way to improve my English, to be constantly up-to-date and have fun!

Finally, as you can guess from the title of my post, I want to point out what is special about Bloglines:

• I can effortlessly blend and monitor the development of my peer’s personal blogs


• I can add to my personal playlist whatever I like


• I don’t have to be an expert blogger to find a way to check everything I need without getting lost


• I can be an active explorer of blogs and save them in new playlists, giving them a title


• I can learn real-world English by accessing information on the web


• I can be inspired by fresh and exciting contents I read on the blogs


• Therefore it’s easy for me to do my work and to save time.
  
  
  Before leaving, here it is a little piece of wisdom, just for you!
  

Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself!
(Chinese proverb)

See you!
Martina

Happy Halloween!

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If you want to have some ideas on how you could celebrate Halloween, have a look to this Halloween site: you can find costumes, decorations, masks, crafts, movies, photos, and scary stories of course!

On wikipedia, I found some interesting information about the symbols and the origin of Halloween. As you can read on the site, traditional activities include trick-or-treating; Halloween festivals; bonfires; costume parties; visiting "haunted houses"; carving jack-o-lanterns; and viewing horror films.

Last year, I tried to make a carved pumpkin, lit by a candle inside, by myself. It is useless to say that the final result was very modest (as to use an euphemism); anyway I had my try.

For those of you who are interested in fantasy, horror and mystery books I suggest you a blog I found amazing: the BookForKidsBlog. It is written and very frequently updated by GTC who recently retired after spending more than 32 years as an elementary librarian. The blogger says that he/she really misses the joy of bringing together the right book with the right reader at the right time. What a good activity!

As a matter of fact, the blog offers book reviews for young people of preschool to high school ages by a children's librarian with decades of experience in reading guidance.

While reading through the posts, I was immediately impressed by this effective title: “Love at First Bite: The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula by Eric Nuzum”. I suddenly start reading the review which I found very interesting and amusing. Last year I watched the original German film "Nosferatu" by directed by Murnau in 1922. Actually, since it was a very old black-and-white film it was not scaring at all. However, I think it is one of the most brilliant film I have ever seen.

As I have already said, the review of the book is very enticing but if you want to know more on this book, let’s listen to an interview to the author on npr. The author of The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula, Eric Nuzum, is very fond of vampires and we can consider him as a true specialist in this matter. He toured Transylvania and even drank his own blood in hopes of understanding the fascination with vampires!

Now I must go to get ready for my Halloween party! So, have fun and enjoy your parties!

Happy Halloween to you all!

Cheers

Making a good post

Hello!

Here they are some useful suggestions to improve your English and to make a good post! Based on our observations in class, we've come up with a list of what makes a good blog post. You are welcome, of course, to do what you like with the suggestions, but we all agreed they make reading blogging posts easier. Yesterday, our teacher, Sarah Guth, gave us some pieces of advice in order to improve our English by avoiding mistakes and being more careful at writing! I think I’ll frequently have a look at them and I hope you’ll find them useful. In the end, remember that when you write a post you should check it over and over again.

Hope it helps!

Martina

Checklist list before publishing

- check spelling by using advanced search on google. Look for authoritative sites such as American universities (edu); British universities (ac.uk); or files in pdf, written by professors

- Don’t overuse present perfect

- Pay attention to punctuation

- Be careful at word-order

- Avoid run-on sentences: you cannot put too many clauses and too many commas in one sentence

- Avoid spelling mistakes

- Typical errors:
COMMENT TO ON
MAKE SOMEBODY WRITING WRITE (make somebody + base form)
TAKE PART TO IN
SUBJECT- VERB AGREEMENT

- Before publishing something, read it out loud!


Making a good post by Sarah Guth

- keep it short, not too long

- clearly structured in short paragraphs

- 1 paragraph per idea / link /concept

- keep paragraphs similar lengths

- do what you can to catch the reader's eye

- space between contents

- only center a title or a poem/song lyrics, etc.

- justify a text

- links: not the url but just a clickable word

- links integrated into the text

- use of colors to catch reader's attention, to organize, to define titles and content, but use yellow, orange, red and pink sparingly on a white background as they're difficult to read

- check the size with a preview before publishing

- use bullet points for lists

To sum up: make it readable. English is a writer-responsible language, i.e. you, writer, are responsible for making what you write easy for your reader to read.

My first two weeks as a blogger

Hi guys!

How are you? What have you been up to?

I want to give you a brief report on my first two weeks as a blogger. To be honest, it was a new experience since I wasn’t used to read blogs and I’ve never created a blog before! You’ll never believe me... but this is the pure truth!!! So I feel thrilled and excited at the same time for the big amount of things I’ve just learned in these two weeks. What’s more surprising is that I was used to write in a very academic style last year (when I did a huge and tough work with Mr Falinski, Mr Garfield and Mr Scott). Now, I find it odd to write in such an informal way but I will catch up soon, I promise!

In these dark and raining days I was longing for a wave of life and so I took up surfing on the web. I read through many posts you sent me and I found out that I can learn a lot from what you write and what you think. I appreciated your comments on my posts and your compliments very much (I hope they were sincere!!!). You wrote me many compliments but I didn’t feel flattered because you also highlighted the weak points of my posts! Thank you!!! Don’t stop showing me my mistakes...Your constructive critics are more than welcome!

In order to make my blog more interesting, useful and effective I’ll create two boxes: help box, and friend’s box. In the first box, I’ll cajole the best links I can find, in order to divulge the kind of information you would never find in any other blog; in the second one, I’ll put the links of my friends’ blogs, just to enlarge our community! In my page, you’ll read the most enticing topics, featuring everything you need to know about what is going on, here in the fantastic university of Padua ;) Excited? You will be! So, for those of you who demand adventure, excitement and allure and look for interesting sounds, exotic tastes, odd stories... this is the page for you!

Every week I will regularly write a post on a specific topic you may find interesting. For those of you who are still wandering around Padua, looking for a decent room to share with “the perfect housemate”, here they are some Priceless Tips on Picking the Perfect Housemate. I’m offering you a brilliant page that will enable you to find out a way to cope with housesharing. If you want to find more on the argument, keep on visiting the fabulous site of the University of Aberystyth,Wales. And I am delighted to announce you that I will keep on adding many pictures, videos and stuff to my page, so remember to visit my blog frequently =) Oh... don’t forget to jot down the tips and links I will generously give in my posts.

I want to have a look outside myself and my life, I’d like to know what you like and what you dislike and also if you agree with me or not. I’m writing to you not because I need to get things off my chest but just because I want to share with you everything it comes on my mind ... and I hope you may find it interesting! I want to let you know that whatever opinion you have, I am really interested in reading it. Tell me everything and anything that’s on your mind. Far from laughing at you I will answer you. =) So, what are you waiting for? Just write me!!!


See you then!

Photo Source: Martina Urbani

hello, welcome to my blog!

Picture of the National Library of Wales- Aberyswyth

by Martina Urbani

Hello! I’m Martina Urbani, I'm 23 years old and my dream job is to work as an Italian teacher for foreigners. I spent last winter semester in the University of Wales at Aberystwyth, a tiny but fabulous town situated on the Welsh coast. For me, Aber represents simply wonderland! There, I felt completely at ease, I found many friends and I enjoyed campus life very much!!! =) For me it was a wonderful experience!

I am still in touch with some English, German, French, Polish, Spanish and Chinese friends. Due to the distance which separates us, we cannot meet anymore and so the only way to communicate is internet. I belong to two online communities of students or people who are friends or just met randomly. The first community I joined is studiVZ and it is composed mainly by German people. A few months ago, I joined also Facebook, a community where you can meet people from all over the world.

Last year, after having applied for assistantship, a Spanish friend of mine started working in UWA as a language assistant. Unfortunately, the Italian department at Aber is closing because of the low number of students studying Italian. Even though Italian is not a very popular language in the world, it is still taught and learned in many universities. That is why I would like to become an Italian teacher for foreigners. Since I still need much experience and training, I would like to undertake a traineeship or a Leonardo program.

In the university of Padua I could also enrol in the master “Didattica dell’italiano come L2”. I think that course could enable me to become an Italian teacher for foreigners, but I need more information about it. In addition, I usually have a look to the British council’s site and the Italian site of pubblico ministero. In these sites, I find information about the partnership between Italian and English universities. As a matter of fact, the selection is very tough and hard.

During my stay in Aber I got to know Welsh traditions, which date back to the Celtic civilization. Welsh people are very proud of their origins and their language; therefore they try to preserve and to defend their cultural heritage from disappearing. I think that a language does not represent only a way to communicate but is also reflects our culture and tradition. Therefore if it disappears, it will bring our memories away.

At the beginning of this semester I set my goal for the new academic year: to improve my English. We know that no language has ever been taught so widely in the world (neither French in the Middle Ages, nor Latin before it). For this reason, I think everybody is compelled to study and learn English also because it helps to overcome international barriers. I think that English can help me to develop a cosmopolitan, outward-looking attitude to life and I think that every language is a precious resource in our life!

Hwyl!
(Welsh for “see you”)