Hey dude! Do you like You Tube?

Hello everyone,

this is my last post this semester, but I really want to keep on blogging in the future! I really like it and find it very useful, especially if it's done in English! And of course I'm really proud to have my own blog and use the Web pretty well, which I believe is really important nowadays.

By the way, in our last class with Sarah we started to explore You Tube as a tool that can be used for language learning. Well, to be honest I didn't include music in my PLE mindmap because when I listen to English songs is usually to relax so I don't pay much attention to the lyrics. Of course there are exceptions because if you really like a song, you definitely wanna know what it means! Anyway, I must say Sarah's lesson this week helped me change my mind about music as a learning tool. I realized there's so much material on You Tube that is extremely useful to improve one's listening skills! Well, in a way I knew about You Tube's potential already, but I'm starting to look at it with different eyes only now. Apart from the well-known music videos, there's also comedy, short films and sketches on You Tube, which are really good fun and of course a good way to better your listening and learn more about other cultures! For instance, I found Katherine Tate's video terrific! She's a really good comedian, and I'm planning to watch other videos in which she stars.

I believe fun should always be an essential component of language learning because it would make the whole thing much easier and more pleasant, dont' you think?

Bye now!

Serena

Wanna know how I learn languages? Check out my PLE!!!

Hello everyone!

This is gonna be my last post I guess, and I'm kind of sad because my 'formal learning' is nearly over! Even though I'm tired now, I'm sure I'm gonna miss my university years! However, I won't stop learning languages, I'll just do it in a different way, and I really hope to keep making progress!! This week I want to spend some time talking about language learning and my experience of building a mindmap of my Personal Learning Environment. I knew something about this topic already because we've been talking about it a lot with our ESL teachers at university. I think it's really useful every now and then to stop and think about our language-learning methods. I reckon that exploring the different ways in which we approach languages helps us find our strong and weak points and set new learning targets for the future. Personally speaking, it was really nice to see the great number of tools we have at our disposal to improve a language, be it our mother tongue or a foreign language.

I divided my map into 5 main sections: paper material, on-line material, listening, writing and speaking. Under paper material I grouped the most common tools I've used for formal, traditional learning (grammar books, textbooks, dictionaries), plus other written sources I normally use to improve my reading skills and vocabulary (i.e. newspapers and magazines). I dedicated a whole section to on-line material in order to highlight the importance the Web has for language learning nowadays. So, I included blogs, wikis, social networks and e-journals just to give a few instances. The listening section is about radio and TV as the main tools I usually resort to in order to better my listening comprehension. In the same way, I listed a few things that have generally helped me make progress in writing. Finally, in the speaking section I grouped some alternatives that have proved to be very helpful for bettering my speaking and fluency with specific reference to foreign languages. For instance, I included tandem learning, occasional contact with native speakers and experiences abroad.

To conclude my post I want to say that it was quite easy to think about what I usually do to learn languages because it was all about focusing on my personal experience. However, it took me some time to organize all the material in a logic and coherent way because many of the tools I had included in the map can be exploited in different ways; so, it wasn't very easy to class them. Anyway, I enjoyed doing this activity a lot and I' m gonna keep my map in mind and see if I make any changes in the future!

Serena

Excuse me? Can I have my privacy back please?!?

Hello everyone!

I want to open this week's post by saying that I am really interested in the topic of privacy rights and the Internet mainly because the Web has become a widely used tool nowadays, but many people don't know how to use it properly.

We all know that the Internet has a lot of advantages: for example, it is an incredible source of information and is a very good learning tool as well. However, there are also many risks related to an unaware use of the Internet: for example, what happens to personal details people put on the Internet? Are they kept secret or is it possible to have access to them? The article about Facebook and Privacy rights was really thought-provoking! I have a Facebook profile, and when I decided to join the social network I didn't think about what could happen to my personal information. Giving personal details, indeed, is something that people are frequently asked to do on the Web. Moreover, websites' administrators put emphasis on the fact that your details are in safety and won't be shared with anyone else. Is it always true? The answer is we don't know. This is why it's necessary to think twice before doing such things.

Are there any possible solutions to the problem of privacy violation on the Internet? I guess the only option is to be very careful when communicating any personal information to strangers. It's impossible to avoid the Internet because it's very useful nowadays, but it's fundamental to use it critically. In other words, when surfing the Net it's important to skip unreliable sources, whose content is dubious. Moreover, it's always good to read everything very carefully, the same as if you were to sign an agreement! And what about copyright infringement? Well, I believe the same rule applies! Always be careful when publishing your pictures or pieces of writing on the Web because many people could use them inappropriately and without your consent.

As a conclusion to my post I want to warn everyone against using social networks like Facebook. I learned that even if you decide to delete your profile in the future, it won't be the same for your personal details! They will be stored somewhere we dont' know, by someone we don't know. So, please guys: keep on using the dear 'old' emails and phones!!

Serena

How to go mental trying to write references!

Hi all!

Here I am again. This time I want to write something about the often annoying experience of writing references at the end of a text, be it an essay, a dissertation or anything else. In all honesty, I find the whole thing of reference styles kind of boring. I can't actually explain why, maybe it's just a matter of laziness. As a matter of fact, when one has to write a reference list, one needs to be very precise and pay attention to a lot of details. First of all, once one has chosen the most suitable style to them, it is important that they are coherent and don't change it all the time. What I find most frustrating about writing references is that, regardless of the style one chooses, there are specific rules to follow and it's often difficult to put them into practice. I think this is due to the fact that there are so many different types of sources that it's almost impossible to class all of them. So, it happens quite frequently that there isn't a specific rule to follow and one has to guess and try to understand which specific type the source at issue belongs to. Personally speaking, I really find it difficult to quote articles in journals or periodicals. There's so many details to include, and each piece of information follows its own criteria that it's very easy to go mental!

I think it's very important to try and look beyond the difficulties involved in writing references, and think about the importance of learning how to quote sources properly. I'm specifically referring to academic writing where everything is given great weight, not only the content. This might sound weird to us Italian students because, generally speaking, we aren't used to paying so much attention to details. I guess this is not the case of American students given the great number of websites on referencing styles provided by American universities. Well, I think the only solution is to tuck up our sleeves and start working hard! SOMEBODY HELP US !!!!

Serena

What is Google Docs?

Hello everyone!

On Wednesday during our English class with Sarah, we learned about a new Web tool (another one!) called Google Docs (I guess these Google fellows have found the right way to make money!). I had never heard about Google Docs before Wednesday, and I must say Sarah's lessons are very useful because we keep on discovering new things! Anyway, I've done some search on the Internet and I've learned that Google Docs enables one to create new documents from scratch or by using a template, and then store and organize them as one likes. The application accepts different formats, such as DOC, XLS and RTF. Documents can then be viewed and edited by more than one person at the same time. However, not everyone can have access to your documents. As a matter of fact, Google Docs is an invite-only service. This means that only people you have sent an invitation to will be able to view and edit your documents, sharing them with other invited users only.

Last but not least, once you have created a document, guess where you can post it? Surprise, surprise.... on your BLOG!!!! It's great for bloggers like us, isn't it?

I believe this application could be very useful to any kind of learners, especially in those cases in which these are required to do group works and complete a task together. As a matter of fact, students using Google Docs could easily share documents relevant to the task they need to complete, and all work on their task at the same time. This would certainly facilitate the whole thing and make them save a lot of time!!! Wouldn't that be fantastic?

Honestly I don't know if I'm going to use Google Docs a lot in the future, but it's been worth learning how to use it anyway!

Bye now!

Serena

About my research article again!

Hi all!

Today I'm going to write another post about the research article I found on the Internet a few weeks ago. This time again, we were asked to answer a series of questions on the topic "how to make a piece of writing readable". Our task was to reflect on our article's structure, logic, cohesion, clarity and coherence. These are the essential elements every text needs to have in order to be easy to follow by its readers. Here I'm going to focus on structure, logic and cohesion.

First of all, I want to point out that my research article follows the so called hourglass structure. There is indeed an introduction where the author outlines her main ideas and topics covered in her paper ("This paper aims to examine aspects of the relationship between tourism and place identity in rural Ireland. (...) Through a case study it is argued that the impact of tourism must be understood in terms of the new social relations which emerge (...)" ). After this introductory part there is the body, where the writer provides evidence to support what she stated at the beginning. So, a wide range of explanatory words are used: because, firstly, secondly, on the one hand, on the other hand. Finally, the paper ends with a conclusion summarizing what has been shown in the study, thus reinforcing the initial thesis ("through the case study it has been shown that, the result is that, in summary").

The article is logic because it contains arguments to support the author's thesis. Consider, for instance, the following sentence: "(...) tourist imagery 'plays a significant role in providing a native self-image' because firstly, Irish people have been exposed to tourist representations over a long period of time; and secondly, there has been a high level of contact between tourists and locals (...)". Here it's clear that the sentence starts with the main idea followed by two arguments to support it. The same happens in the following example: " (...) the relationship between tourism and place identities can be conceptualised in terms of social relations. On the one hand, changes to place identity occur as groups, institutions and individuals act to commodify resources (...). On the other hand, resilient existing social relations influence the degree to which commodification for tourism takes place".

Finally, the paper is also cohesive since ideas in the text are closely connected to each other, as this sentence shows: "Whilst identities may be in a constant process of flux and change, there are also elements of continuity (...)".

To sum up, my brief analysis of the research article I chose has concentrated on some of the basic features that make a piece of writing readable and easier to follow: structure, logic and cohesion.

Serena

Referencing styles!

Hi ya!

As part of e-tivity 6, we were asked to go on the Internet and read about two different referencing styles: APA (American Psychological Association), and MLA (Modern Language Association). I spent some time exploring the two websites, trying to find similarities and differences between them. One basic difference that immediately got my attention was the format used to write the title of books or other written sources, such as journals or magazines. On the one hand, APA wants the title to be written in italics, without double quotation marks; on the other hand, MLA style recommends avoiding italics and underlining the title instead. Another important difference concerns the way to cite one or more authors on the reference list. According to APA, one should write the author's surname first, followed by their name's initials. In case there are two or more authors, their names have to be separated by a comma, and the last item preceded by ampersand. MLA, on the contrary, says not to abbreviate the names of authors, and to list them starting with their first name, except for the first author. What's more, there should be 'and' and not ampersand before the last author's name. The year of publication comes immediately after the author's name in the APA style, whereas in the MLA format, it's written at the end, after the publisher's name.

Thinking about the reference style I used when writing my BA thesis, I can say it was a sort of mix between the two formats. I actually followed my supervisor's instructions, without applying the rules of international formats like APA or MLA. So, on the reference list the names of the authors had to be written in full, starting with their last names. After that came the year of publication and the title of the source in Italics. Finally, place of publication and publisher's name. Everytime I quoted a new source I needed to write all the details not only on the reference list, but also in a footnote. Then, for further references to the same source an in-text citation was enough. Unlike APA and MLA formats, for in-text references I was asked to write the title of the source, followed by the year of publication and the relevant page number(s). Finally, as for web sources, I didn't need to write the date of publication or last update, but only the date of my latest access to the source itself.

I personally prefer the APA style because it's more coherent to what I've learned so far in terms of how to write references. I reckon that, unlike MLA guidelines, the APA Formatting and Style Guide is easier to learn and put into practice.

Serena

About blog plagiarism

The Macmillan English Dictionary defines plagiarism as "the process of taking another person's work, ideas, or words, and using them as if they were your own." The issue of plagiarising is not new to me because I've been told a lot about it since I was in the secondary school. It's something all students need to deal with when writing their final dissertation, or academic papers in general. As far as I'm concerned, the problem of how to avoid plagiarism has always created a lot of troubles. I remember teachers and professors spending hours in giving us advice on how to cope with this problem. But what I've always found most difficult is to put all these precious tips into practice. This is particularly true for those borderline cases in which it's hard to establish whether a piece of writing is plagiarised or not, i.e. paraphrases. I believe that in a fair bit of cases, the cause of plagiarism is not ignorance of the rules, but laziness. I myself know the steps I need to follow when I want to quote what someone else has written or said. But sometimes it's just annoying to spend time in carefully selecting quotations, putting them in quotation marks and adding the source to your references, paying attention not to break the rules that apply to the referencing style you've chosen.

By the way, what should bloggers do in order to avoid falling into the trap of plagiarism? I must admit that I was totally unaware of the problem of blog plagiarism, but the whole thing sounds obvious if you think about it. What bloggers do is writing on topics of their interest; so, even in this case there might be the risk of copying what someone else said or wrote. What is more, plagiarism can occur with images, music and videos too. Then the question is: how can we make sure we publish authentic information on our blogs? In order to find a satisfying answer to this question, I surfed the Net and I found a couple of very good websites, which I bookmarked on Delicious. To put it in a nutshell, as for written information the rule is either to quote or paraphrase, paying attention that what you've paraphrased is not too close to the original! When you quote, it is good to pick up a referencing style and be consistent. But that's not all! What about images and multimedia material in general? Even in this case you always need to quote the source, be it a book, a website, or anything else. Honestly, I completely ignored the risks of violating images' copyright, and I am glad I've discovered a good source where to find pictures without getting in trouble: it's called Flickr! Another way to get rid of the problem is to use our own pictures in our blogs, and protect them with a sort of licence in order to avoid someone else's using them illegaly.

From my Web search I also learned of the existence of some tools to detect plagiarism, such as Dupli Checker or Google. These are useful both to check if you've plagiarised while blogging, but also to find out if someone else has stolen any information from your blog! Thieves...you're warned!

Last but not least, I didn't know that plagiarism is given great importance in the States. American students need to follow a sort of honour code, and if they fail there's a good chance for them to get in serious trouble! That sounds kind of funny to me since in Italy the story is totally different. We all know that plagiarism is considered a crime, but nobody seems to care too much about that, neither teachers nor students! I think it would be good to draw a line and start applying some of the American rules; I'm curious to know what would happen!

Serena

E-tivity 5, part II: about my research article

Hi all!
This week, as part of e-tivity 5, we were asked to look on the Internet and find an article that could be relevant to our research, which is what we are supposed to start doing soon to prepare our final dissertation. My general idea is to write my final thesis on tourism and Irish identity. As a starting point of my research, I took into consideration the websites our professor recommended to us last week, and I chose to focus on Google Scholar. This tool provides a lot of material from the academic and research fields, material which is then more likely to be authoritative. As a result of my 'investigation', I've come up with an article concerning the relationship between tourism and place identity, with particular reference to Ireland. I picked this article (and bookmarked it on Delicious, of course ;)) because it was one of the most interesting and recent sources I was able to find. Moreover, the article was one of the most relevant to the topic of my dissertation.

The second step in our task was to ask ourselves a series of questions in order to determine whether the source we had chosen was reliable or not. I tried to answer the questions provided by Sarah, but it wasn't always a piece of cake! I found it quite easy to identify the author, which in my case is Moya Kneafsey. She wrote the article as part of her PhD research in the School of Natural and Environmental Sciences at Coventry University. As stated in the abstract, the aim of her paper is to examine the relationship between tourism and place identity in rural Ireland, focusing on the concepts of change and continuity. Her work consists of an introductory, theoretical part, followed by a case study in Foxford, County Mayo. Carried out over a four-month period, the study is qualitative and small scale. Through her research, the author draws the conclusion that the apparently contradictory concepts of change and continuity actually ensure that places keep their own identities in the face of the potential homogenization resulting from the globalization's process. Finally, the author mentions a sort of limitation on her study, when she states that further research would be necessary in order to get more details about the tourist phenomenon in Foxford.

I believe Moya Kneafsey's article is authoritative for different reasons. Firstly, she uses a formal register, technical jargon, and there are no grammar or spelling mistakes. Even though the language is formal, the content is understandable. Secondly, I really like the way in which she structures her essay, making it clear and readable. She begins with an introduction, stating the paper's aim as well as the main points she is going to cover. Additionally, the body of the text contains titles that immediately inform the reader of what the author is going to write about. In this way one can easily go through the article without getting lost! Thirdly, what makes the paper even more authoritative is its bibliography. There are two pages of references at the end of the article. I've found out that the sources the author referred to are recent and reliable; the authors quoted are all experts in the fields related to Kneafsey's study. This is the reason why I'm gonna use these sources for my thesis too!

To sum up, the questions I went through are quite similar to those we came up with in class last week, even though we also focused on the type of audience a source is addressed to, a point that is not mentioned in the list of questions given by our professor.

Serena Zorzi

P.S. Just to make sure not to get in trouble with Moya, I'm going to quote her article!

Kneafsey, M. Tourism and Place Identity: A case-study in rural Ireland.

Retrieved 3 April, 2009 from http://bibemp2.us.es/turismo/turismonet1/economia%20del%20turismo/turismo%20rural/tourism%20and%20place%20identity%20case%20study%20in%20rural%20Ireland.pdf

The "Irish Independent" reports on the quake in L'Aquila

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/

E-tivity 5: Evaluating Online Sources

Hi all!

Today I'm going to write something in relation to what we did in class last Wednesday. Basically, we discussed the topic of online sources' evaluation.

First we were asked to think about the questions we usually ask ourselves when searching material for different purposes, such as our final dissertation. As far as I'm concerned, I'm quite used to filtering information, especially when using the web. It's something I learned from the secondary school when our teachers taught us how to do appropriate research for our school-leaving dissertation. I usually ask myself who the author is, if they are reliable and have already written something authoritative in the past. If it's a web source, I immediately check when it was last updated and have a quick look at the layout. For instance, if there was too much colour, a lot of ads, and the language was very informal, I wouldn't consider it a good source. My second step is to evaluate the content and see how it is structured: ideas in a good source should be organized according to some specific criteria and should be clearly expressed too. The language is supposed to be correct, formal, but not too complicated to understand.

I used these criteria to evaluate online material as part of e-tivity 5. All the sources I chose share more or less the same features. Firstly, the author is known and reliable, and most of the times they have already written something authoritative. Secondly, the layout is clear and the content is coherent and well organized. The language is formal but understandable, even though sometimes there's overuse of technical jargon. Finally, the author provides the reader with useful links and a good bibliography.

What I learned from this activity is to be more careful and accurate when searching the Internet because you always find a lot of material, but not all of that is reliable. That's why it's very important to ask ourselves a fair bit of questions before making use of online sources. To sum up, mind the web!!!

Serena Zorzi

E-tivity 4: about bookmarking

Hi again!

I just wanted to share my impressions as far as bookmarking with Delicious is concerned. I already knew what bookmarking means because you can do this with all web browsers nowadays. In other words, I was aware of what the bookmarking process involves. Nontheless, I had never heard of Delicious before, apart from the adjective itself! ;) My first experience with this web application was great! At first, I found it difficult to understand how exactly the tool works, but then I got used to it very quickly! What I really like of Delicious is that it works more or less like a search engine: you enter a key word and get a lot of websites as a result of that. You can then have a look and pick up the most interesting to you. Moreover, you have the possibility to build up a social network and share your favourites with other people. In this way you can find useful material you may not have known about. The five websites I've chosen to bookmark so far are:

1)BBC Learning English;

2)the English version of Wikipedia;

3)the online dictionary Wordreference.com;

4)a website about online journals in English;

5)UsingEnglish.com.

All of them are useful sources for learners of English, and I want to make the most of Delicious in order to improve my language skills!!

Serena Zorzi

Some pics of the Emerald Isle :))

E-tivity 3: feeds and feed aggregators

Hi ya!!

Before giving my opinion on feeds and feed aggregators, I want to say that I was not in class when you started familiarizing with these tools. So, it was kind of difficult for me to understand how it all works; I had never heard of the terms 'feed' and 'feed aggregator' before. I have to say I got lost and confused more than once when trying to register to Bloglines and add new feeds. But it was just a matter of getting used to it; I then started to appreciate these web technologies and find them very useful now!

Apart from my peers' blogs, I added a few other feeds mainly concerning online news and learning as well as music. I believe it's very handy to have such a tool as an aggregator, which automatically updates net surfers so that they don't need to check their websites of interest all the time. Moreover, feed aggregators are a great thing for foreign language learners like me. For instance, I have websites of English and German online journals among my feeds and I can easily access the news whenever I like. So, not only do I have the chance to keep up to date with what happens in the world, but I can learn some new vocabulary and improve my speaking skills as well.

I really hope to become an expert in aggregators soon!

Serena Zorzi

E-tivity 2, Blogging

My prior language targets right now are basically two: to broaden my vocabulary and to improve my listening skills. I really feel the need to learn new words, especially informal ones. What I don't like about the university teaching system is that you acquire a lot of formal vocabulary because you mainly study on books written by academics and researchers. In other words, you don't learn to speak or write in the same way as people usually do in their everyday life. By dealing with native speakers I have realised that my tendency is to always resort to the same words when I want to express a particularly tricky concept. It's not a matter of fluency, it's all about word variety.

My second language target concerns listening skills. I've improved quite a lot in the past few months because I was in Ireland for 4 months, and I often went mental to understand what Irish people said. But still, I believe I need to do a lot of work. A lot of it, again, has already been done in Ireland (in relation to vocabulary as well). My aim now is to watch a movie once a week (I'll try without subtitles), and to read newspaper articles or English books on a monthly basis!

Well, wish me good luck!

Serena Zorzi

An Irish Blessing

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back
The sun shine warm upon your face
The rain fall soft upon your fields
And until we meet again
may God hold you in the
hollow of his hand
May you be in heaven an
hour before the devil
knows you're dead

Welcome to my world!

Hello everybody!

Welcome to A PIECE OF ME!!!, my first blog ever. Hopefully you'll get to know something about me and my life, things I like, dreams and ambitions I have. But you 'll need to be patient since I'm not really acquainted with those things, and need some time to learn and practise!

In all honesty I was quite worried when I was asked to create my own blog because I've always found it difficult to deal with technology! But I must admit that this Google tutorial to create blogs is brilliant! It makes things very easy to understand, which is good especially for total beginners like me!

I really like the idea of a tool that enables everyone to give free play to their creativity and express what they think. And it's also nice to have such a space in which people can meet (even by chance) and share their impressions and opinions.

I reckon this blog experience will help me improve my writing skills, especially with reference to colloquial English, which is normally used by bloggers.

So, whenever my blog is ready, take some time to surf it, hopefully enjoy it, and of course write your comments!!

Bye now! ;)