habemus blog

ICC

2008-05-13T06:13:00.000-07:00

Here we are again making another introspective analysis. The seff-assesment of our intercultural competences is undoubtedly useful to cast up accounts after this english course. The five elements that make up the ICC are 1attitudes, 2knowledge, 3skills of interpreting and relating; 4skills of discovery and interaction and 5critical cultural awareness/political education. Thanks to the various activities that we developed during this two semesters, we actually improved in some way each of this 5 aspects of the ICC. Obviously, each of us feels differently towards what we have been doing but anyway I think that none of us can deny the utility of this course. As all the reflective activities, this has been quite difficult or better, let’s say time demanding. One again I ‘m here, sitting down in front of my PC trying to make a self evaluation of my language learning skills.
I can say that has a been a great english course, funny and interesting; maybe the stranger but also the most effective one! Several are the aspects of this course that I really appreciate and felt comfortable with. As a matter of fact, the most important aim of a language is to communicate and during this months we surely communicate a lot: we wrote assays, we spoke with our course mates, we made blog posts, we took part in online forums, we created a wiki page, we spoke through skype with American friends… We actually experimented the most various ways to express our feelings, ideas and points of view. But there is also a reverse of the medal; as a matter fact, following day by day all the activities and tasks, remaining up loaded with everything, taking constantly part to the on line forums and working on the final project together with my peers, both American and Italian, have been tiring! We were supposed to work a lot both in class, during lessons, and at home and I must confess that I made great efforts in order to do everything respecting the deadlines!
Now this course it’s almost at the end and I can say that despite all this hard work, I feel enriched and more open minded than before. I learned a lot of new and interesting things about American’s school system, politics and point’s of view and I found out that conversations are the best sources of information. Nothing can be more effective than something told by a friend or a peer! Well, also on line and written sources can be useful of course, and in blogs, web sites and wiki pages you can find really a great amount of information. But testimonies and real evidences given by friends or person in flesh and blood are different. My own dictionary grow a lot during this course and I learned a many words and expressions dealing with the different topics and issues we developed. Consequently, also my listening reading and writing skills have improved. It’s all a vicious circle: the more you read, write and speak, the more you learn!

2008-04-17T05:30:00.000-07:00

Hello!

This Wednesday we started talking about the topic of our final project. So, new groups and new peers. I have to confess that we all had many different ideas about interesting topic to develop but then we had to choose just one. We explained to our American colleague Ashley our ideas, and voila, thanks to her opinion we made the choice. We decided to analyse the situation of pregnant women’s at work place and their rights. Even though we are quite young women, and we are not actually think about having a family (or at least this is my situation) we do agree that this is something that will surely touch our lives in a close future.
The conversation went on talking about the channels throw which communicate in order to realize, practically, our project and, actually, the wiki page, skype and the e mails have been designated!
We really had many things to talk about, and it has been a pity that our peer had to leave the conversation a little bit earlier; anyway, we went on planning the work for this week and deciding some deadlines to find the material and information.
Now, a week of research in waiting for us!

2008-04-13T05:08:00.000-07:00

This week skype xchange has been quite difficult because of some technological problems with the pc and the microphones, so we actually waste a lot of time trying to establish a connection with our American peers! Moreover many of us, and many Americans too were absent so groups and couples were different. In my group we were 4 plus a colleague from Dickinson…what a mess! Anyway, we went on speaking about politics, candidates and who is probably going to win here and overseas. I discovered that in the USA, there are people who go to schools and Universities to explain to the students the different ideas and programs of the candidates and I do actually think that this is a very nice enterprise. I mean, schools and University should be kind of neutral but one of education’s aim should be that of create capable and careful citizens. As matter of fact, young people may not be interested in politics at all, or they can often be too lazy in order to find out helpful information which can facilitate them in deciding who to vote for. For that reason, informing boys and girls it’s a very good idea. I also asked to my peer what about Obama girls’ songs…Lol! She told me that this is not a real group but we agreed about the fact that this videos are quite funny and mocking. She also told me that she saw the videos about Berlusconi and Walter which are on our course blog. As far as our peer said, it sounds as if Berlusconi is the only Italian politician well known …What a bad image we have got around the world!!
Speaking about politics and elections, which are the outstanding topics in this period, Sarah asked us to express our ideas about immigration and consequently the relevant problem of the voting right for the immigrants! As a matter of fact, every country follows its immigration policy, and citizenship is the goal to reach which confers duties and rights among which there is also the right to vote. As far as Italy is concerned, the article 48 of our Constitution, sanctions that the persons entitled to vote are those over 18 and with Italian citizenship. Thus, the origin of all the troubles is the Suffrage-the right- to vote which generally derives from citizenship…So, the main point is how to get citizenship! European foreign residents, even though they are not Italian, can vote here in Italy, while others, non-Europeans, did not. Thus the problems deals with the foreign and extra-communitarians which are regularly established in the national territory. In fact, those people are not allowed to vote and any change in order to allow them to vote, would imply a constitutional amendment. The situation in the other European countries is quite different, in many of them, like Ireland, Swedish, Denmark, Holland, Luxemburg and others, the criteria is easier. An immigrant has got to demonstrate that he/she is living in the country, that he/she establish and after some month (6 month in Ireland) or years (3 years in Swedish) they obtain the right to vote.
But here in Italy everything’s complicated. It seems like Italy forgot its past, as a matter of fact, some time ago Italy was a country of emigrants, whereas now it has become a country of immigration. Nowadays, there are around 3 million immigrants living regularly in Italy (ISTAT 2006 estimate), making up 5% of the total population. Caritas suggest that 3.7 million migrants live in Italy but still there are many undocumented immigrants which live in very poor and often unhealthy conditions. Even though immigration is a reality here in Italy, we still haven’t got a good strategy to face this phenomena! From one point of view there is no doubt about the fact that we need immigration! Immigration brings here manpower and often, immigrants do all the jobs that Italians don’t want to do anymore, immigrants do care our elders and contribute to the increasing of births. But from another point of view, immigration raise a lot of problems about social aspect of life as economy, welfare, education, heath care, prostitution, crime and human rights.
Personally, I think that Immigration and the voting right are serious political issue in this period of election and the debate is really fervent because it touches many aspect of our social and political sphere. There is not a univocal solution to this problem, and the way is still long. Let’s hope that the commonsense and the integration would prevail!!

2008-04-05T07:32:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday I was not in Padua and so again no skype exchange for me. I actually went to Gorizia because a friend of mine got graduated…Lucky her!
For this reason I have nothing to write about the exchange and so I had a look at the online forum to see what’s going on there, and I found very interesting topics of conversation!
The first which attract my attention, deals with something which, to me, marks a very big gap between Italy the USA: the death penalty. Here in Italy we have got many problems like the corruption, the mafia, “le raccomandazioni”, the Church interferences but, luckily, here we don’t have the death penalty. Reading my peers comments, I saw that we do all agree about the fact that the death penalty is something awful, unjust and that goes against all the basic human rights. As far as the justice is concerned, it seems that Italy and the USA are at two extreme poles: on one hand, as Stella said, here in Italy the penalty are often inadequate and thus people do not pay for the crimes committed; on the other had, overseas, the capital penalty may kill people who are just alleged criminals. So, here in Italy everything seems to be quite free, the justice is slow and complicated. In some way you can feel free to do what you want because the worst penalty that you can get is a sentence to life imprisonment (20 or 30 years) but to tell the truth there are often discounts, reduction and if you’re really lucky even an “indultino”! Opposed is the situation in the States, where people run the risk to be killed even if the are innocent because the death penalty does not allow any afterthought.
Personally, I think that every Nation has got its big troubles and issues to face, and even if here in Italy the justice may not offer safety and protections to its citizens, I am very happy that death penalty it’s not in use. No one has got the right to decide about the life of the other people! To kill a criminal it is not a good and democratic solution at all!
Oh, I forget, we are supposed to start thinking about our final project…this means that our course is almost over…L! During this months we analysed a lot of cultural aspects and we actually found out not only differences but also similarities between us and our American peers. Now it’s time to clear up my mind and decide to concentrate on one of the aspects which has particularly struck me…The problem is to take a decision! Right now I am a little bit confused, I have such a big amount of information in my mind that I don’t know how to organize it! I hope to wake up on Monday morning with some clearer ideas about my final project…You know what!? The night is the mother of counsel!

let's yoga!

2008-03-28T10:23:00.000-07:00

This week: Yoga!
Nowadays, the ability to deal with the diversity is ever growing. We actually live in a global world and we daily face the “different”. That’s why intercultural competencies and language proficiencies are very important. We are often afraid of the unknown and we don’t know how to behave and how to create a relationship with something that is new to us. Therefore, the development of competences in another culture and proficiency in its language becomes essential in our society in order to live without being frightened of the others, to enrich ourselves with new values and broaden our knowledge. Moreover, intercultural competences provide the opportunity for powerful reflections on our own native world view. In fact, as the Chinese philosopher Chung Tzu says: “looking in is looking out”. The ICC, intercultural communicative competence, is in fact a life-long process which enables us to understand better ourselves as subjects living in net of relationships.
One of the tools we can use to measure our ICC is the Yoga form. The term “YOGA” stands for “your Objectives, Guidelines, and Assessment” and it is divided into5 sections which are awareness, attitudes, skills, knowledge and proficiency, obviously in the host tongue.
This kind of test can be used as a self evaluating guide, useful to examine the development of our ICC.
As far as I am concerned, I filled in the form thinking about Spanish, which is the language I have studied better in my life, thanks to the Erasmus project. Actually, I only considered the first two levels of each sections (Educational Traveller and Sojourner) because I still haven’t got any professional or serious working experience.
I have never heard about this kind of Yoga before, this is one of the great amount of new tools discovered during this English course with Sarah; although we already had others occasions to reflect about our competences like for example with the PLE map, I think that this is a less free way to do it; actually, there are “strict” assessment to rate from 0 to 5, and this is surely a very objective way to assess. However, there is something new, a very interesting suggestion: “After doing so, it is useful to have a native of the host culture rate you as well”…This would be great! In this way we could have an idea of our ICC degree from an other point of view!
C U!

hello!

2008-03-27T06:39:00.000-07:00

After the enthusiasm of the first skype xchange, the second conversation with my peer turned out to be much more difficult. This time my Italian class mate was speaking with someone else, so I was alone chatting with Corina. This would not have been a problem if the subjects we touched during the conversation would be familiar to me. My American colleague started asking to me what about the Italian government and the political scene…What!!?!? I mean, came on! Maybe I found the question very difficult because I almost hate politics and I actually don’t know anything about it apart from the fact that on the 13 of April we are going to vote! I know that this lack on information it’s my fault, but anyway this is not a trial. The only thing I can say is that I really didn’t know what to tell her! I surely going to inform myself before the elections…Anyway, I guess I cut a poor figure also because my peer is really fond of politics! She saw that I was a little bit in difficulty, so she told me a lot of things about the American elections and the various candidates explaining me very well what’s going on in her Country. We also spoke about Spitzer’s scandal and the insane world of the politicians. We agreed about the fact that they all seems to be free to do what the want and even if the make some kind of mistake they won’t pay for it! Speaking of corruptions we also spoke about those concept published on Cultura which are “raccomandato” and “meritocrazia”. Hard stuffs! I explained to her the difference between saying “it recommend quell professone” and “quell prof è un raccomandato” or at least I tried! I hope she understand me! I tell her that if the principle of “meritocrazia” is not in force, a “raccomandazione” is useful to obtain what you want, it is a kind of shortcut.
Apart from the problems concerning the political topics, I can undoubtedly say that this exchange is great! I love speaking English! At school we are often exposed to mother tongue speakers, but actually they are teachers and speaking with guys of almost our same age is completely different!
I want to add something about the conversations in Italian…Because half of the time we are supposed to speak in Italian, right?! Well, it is actually hard to have dialogue! I don’t know very well what to do…is it fine to skip this part? I mean, I have noticed that for our peers is very difficult to speak in Italian, so they often start in a language and than change as soon as they don’t know what to say. I guess, they should take all the time that they need in order to explain themselves, even thought this is hard! Let’s see what will happen next Wednesday!
See u soon!

Happy Easter

2008-03-21T05:05:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter

to you all!!!

Just relax and have fun!

This Wiki no skype!

2008-03-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday no skype xchange…what a pity!
Our lucky American friends had their spring break! This should mean that spring has finally come…Or at least overseas!! Here the weather is making fun of us! :-(

Two days of warmth and spring and now everything’s grey and quite cold again!
The activity we have to do on the wiki is quite complicated, I still haven’t understood very well what am I supposed to do. Sarah divided us into groups and each group has to do some activities. As I can’t come to Mondays lessons, Sarah created a group for non current students and so Stefania, Elisa and me are supposed to discuss on the wiki page and do all the work as the others. The problem is that communicating on the wiki is not that easy! Maybe we all have to understand how it works exactly! Till now we had not the chance to actually have a discussion on he wiki!! I really don’t know how to communicate with the other peers of my group! We do need some time to settle in I guess!
So, I hope that we’ll soon solve this problem in order to do all the work the best we can do! I know that missing Monday’s lessons is a shame, because discussions in class are very useful, but my work really doesn’t allows me to come to Padova in order to attend the lesson.
See you on Wednesday!

First date!

2008-03-09T11:39:00.000-07:00

Here I am again after a long and not relaxing break!
Not relaxing because of the exams I had, or better we all had to do! Anyway now I’m back and ready for this brand new adventure!
I was really exited about starting this second semester and particularly the exchange with foreign students. I decided to choose the exchange with the American colleagues of Dickinson University because I wanted to use Skype!! Skype it is not a new tool for me, I usually use it at home to speak with my foreign friends or to keep in contact with some Italian friends who live far away. The point is that it is a very useful and funny device which allows you to speak with who you wants and the geographical distance doesn’t matter!
I have to admit that, last Wednesday, at the beginning of the conversation I felt a little bit embarrassed but than after just few minutes we broke the ice and all my “fear” vanished.
Alice, Corina and me started talking quite easily and luckily our American peer speaks in a very comprehensible way! After the presentations we spoke about our University and I was very curious about college, so I had to ask to Corina if everything works like in the films, I mean the parties, confraternities and so on…You know what?! Corina confirmed my “stereotypes” about life in the college! It seems so funny, and everything’s so different from here! At least from my commuter’s experience…
Talking about subjects and courses we discovered many others differences between our two school system, the fact is that they seems to be very free to chose which course to attend not only at University but also at school!
So, after this 1 hour of conversation I can say that I’m very happy about this exchange!! It’s a pity (obviously only for us) that Americans are going to have their spring break this week, because we’ll miss the chance to connect to Skype and speak. Anyway 7 days are not too much!
See you soon!

My Personal Learning Environment!

2007-12-09T13:16:00.000-08:00

The PLE is our Personal Learning Environment…Great! I mean, I never thought about it, but that’s right! We all have our “channels” through which we learn and improve a foreign language! Day by day we construct a net around us that helps us learning!
Usually I don’t make mind maps to study so at the beginning I thought: “What do I have to do?!?!” But then, after just a while of doubt I started the activity step by step, as Sarah said and…Voila! Done it! I mean it has not been hard! I just had to put down what I do!
I tried to construct my map with FreeMind…but still my relationship with technologies is not that good! So I took the dear old “paper and pencil” and started working on my PLE map!
I decided to divide my personal learning environment into 5 big categories which are “Formal learning”, “For fun”, “Digit@l” “Friends” and "Around me”.
First of all, we have to make a distinction between the formal and the informal learning: "formal learning" deals with school, University and all the “classic” tools like grammar books, dictionaries, homework and activities that we, as students, have to do. I think that this point, is the most prescriptive one, and probably also the less funny…Is it learning grammar rules and their dammed exceptions funny?! NO! At all!! But at the same time it is the most important point of all the map, is the starting point of everything because without an academic course that gives us the basis to learn a language, all the other aspects would not exist! Well, maybe that’s not completely true…many people do learn a language without studying grammars and things like that…But that’s another story!! This has to be my personal learning environment, and this is how it works for me!
So, having cleared up, what the formal learning is, I can now explain you the other 4 point, which all belongs to informal learning!
Under the etiquette “for fun” I put things that I usually do in my spare time like listening to music, watching television or reading. I have to confess you that I have to know the words of the songs I like, it’s stronger then me! I always check the lyrics on the net and in this way I learn a lot of new words and expressions! All those activities are like hobbies, they are not heavy nor boring and they are surely useful to learn a L2!
Another category I put is “digit@l”, actually many of the tools I indicated could be also part of the “formal learning” as we discovered them attending Sarah course at University…But to tell the truth they are so informal!!! I mean, many teachers still work in class with old books and photocopies…Anyway, here I put all the technological tools that I use to find information, to search for what I am interested in and to save and organize my favourites.
The forth category is called “friends” and to me, this is the best one! Leaving philosophical considerations about friendship, I can say that speaking with my foreign friends is the best way to improve my language! I have a lot of Spanish friends, and some English too, unluckily many of them are far away, but thanks to technologies I can always speak or chat with them! And if I’m lucky I can have also conversations face to face!
The last category is named “around me” and contains all those input that come from outside and reach us without my will like fashion, advertisement, the labels of food and products in general. These are all things that surround us and we do implicitly learn things from them!
So, learning a language is a lifelong process, and the channels are several; the most important thing that never has to fail is the personal will! Learning an L2 is not like learning how to ride a bike…Learning a language implies exercise, dedication, study and enthusiasm! We all have to find our incitements and it doesn’t matter if they are formal or informal input! The point is reaching a goal, and my goal is learning English!

A compass, please!!

2007-11-30T05:05:00.000-08:00

As it has already been said many times during this course we are living in a digital era! Mass media and Internet with their tools seem to make information easily available for all the people, but is it completely true?
When navigating on the net we are assailed by an enormous amount of information and it’s not easy to orientate ourselves! We definitely need a compass to find our way about in this mass!
If we search for something in the net, we’ll see a lot of info matching the topic of our research…But is it everything valid and reliable?
The answer is no!!!
We surely have to think critically about the returns!
As far as I’m concerned, I always try not to waste my time consulting untrustworthy websites and sources…But how do I judge them?! I have to confess that many times I follow my inspiration saying “Ok, this seems to be a useful web site!!” I guess that following my sixth sense it’s not always a good thing and that’s why many times I lose the sense of direction!
During this course Sarah suggested us many tools and strategies to face this problem: Bloglines is one of these, as well as Google advanced research or Del.icio.us.
In the three websites we had to consult for e-tivity 8 there are some interesting criteria for judging the sites, their authority and validity!
First of all we have to know clearly what we want to search otherwise…what are we going to search!?! Opinions, facts, news reports, history!?
Secondly, when on the screen appears the list with the returns we have to look at the URL of the different sites before follow up a link! As a matter of fact, URL can say something about the seriousness of a web site: e.g. if it ends with “edu” it means that the responsible for the information is an educational institution.
Once we have decided which links we want to follow up, we have to check who the responsible for the site or the author is and if the site is regularly updated.
So, to draw a conclusion, we can say that evaluating is something that we need all the time: not only for academic purposes or for our theses but daily in our lives!! The temptation to accept what ever we find is real, but we have to pay attention because everyone can be a potential publisher of Web documents, all we need is an Internet account!
So we have to be critic and clear-headed in order to find what we need!

2007-11-26T06:59:00.001-08:00

I love this song...don't u?!?!

I Tube, You Tube...

2007-11-25T05:37:00.000-08:00

You Tube is a video sharing website where any user can watch videos for free!! If you get register you can upload your videos, create an account with your favourite videos and make play lists too.
I love you tube!! It is very funny! You can watch any kind of video, u just have to write some key words (tags) and then press the search button and…Done! A list of video will appear! On the left side of the page there are some stars indicating the quality of the video so u won’t waste time watching bad videos. There are also important information like 4 example the duration of the video, or how many time it has been watched and in this way we are able to make a quick selection of what to see.
There are a lot of funny and stupid videos, about animals, children, cars, sports and whatever available on the net! I could spend hours watching other people’ videos!
But there is something more! It can undoubtedly be an educational tool: You Tube allows us to get in contact with real english speakers!! Well, not only english of course!! You can find videos in any language!! The point is that watching part of TV programs, interviews, jokes, sketches and comedies we face real speakers’ language! There are real conversations…But u know what!? You can click the “pause button” any time you need!! That’s great! You can watch the video all the times that u want or need in order to understand what’s going on!

2007-11-16T02:37:00.000-08:00

A podcast is an audio file that you can download for free onto your pc or mp3 player.
Nowadays podcasting is really widespread around the world and on the net you can find a lot of podcast about all the different topics that you want.
I mean, this is great!! I don’t know if you like Radio Deejay, but I do! On Radio Deejay website you can download podcasts of the different programs…U have to try “Deejay chiama Italia”!!! Linus and Nicola are great!! Just an advice: if you walk around listening to them on your I-pod you’r surely going to laugh a lot….Other people may think that you’r mad! Hahaha J
Well, obviously podcasts can be useful also for educational purposes, I think that they have replaced the old cassettes of the language lab we grown up with!
Thanks to this technology the audio files available have increased incredibly and so we have got a lot of chances to improve our listening skills.
Searching for podcasts in Google I found some interesting things:

1) http://www.voanews.com/english/podcasts.cfm
This is a web site where you can find many different podcasts; you can choose a region like Africa, USA, Europe and so on, to see the news about those areas, or you can choose a topic like for example arts and entertainment, environment, education, sports an so on. I mean, many different kind of information available to be downloaded!! And moreover you can also see the scripts of the audio files!!! I think it can be very helpful to check whether you have understand it well or not!

2) http://www.englishthroughstories.com/scripts/scripts.html
Also in here you can find podcasts , but this time there are short stories divided into episodes. At the beginning of each audio file, a voice tells us who is going to read the story and sums up what happened in the previous episode. It is also possible to see the transcription of what the voice is reading and, as I have already said, this is very useful: you can see what u have actually understood and it is a good tool to make auto corrections.

3) http://www.manythings.org/jokes/
Here there are jokes for ESL students…To tell the truth I thought it to be funny…But the jokes are terrible!![John says I’m pretty, Andy says I’m ugly, what do u think Peter? I think u’r pretty ugly!L ] Is it a matter of cultural differences!? I guess so… Anyway it can be interesting to listen to them. A part from jokes there are also short stories, exercises of “listen and read along” and “listen and repeat” to improve our pronunciation.

Del.icio.us

2007-11-13T03:02:00.000-08:00

Delicious!
Del.icio.us seems, at the first sight, a sort of “preferiti” online, but it is more than that! It is not just a site for saving your favourites and bookmarks!
It is very useful because we can save a link to anything we view on the web and the list of our favourites exists virtually so that we have access to our bookmarks anywhere, we just need a web access!
The registration on del.icio.us is very simple, just a username and a password and…Done! You can store and organize all your bookmarks!
Once we have created the account, we just have to click on “post”, on the top of the page, to add the sites we are interested in. For each url that we save, we have to provide a brief description (notes) and some keywords (tags) to identify rapidly what we are saving.
The best aspect of this brand new tool concern the fact that it is a social bookmaking: it is not a private way of storing, but everything that we save on del.icio.us is shared!! Del.icio.us works like a filter for the overload of information available on the net: in this way we can easily see what the other users have saved, seeing which sites are actually used and useful! We won’t waste our time consulting useless and unreliable sources of information anymore!!
It is also possible to create a network in which we can add the usernames of our friends, or in our case the users of our peers, in order to have a very quick access to their bookmarks!
In my network there are the names of group F members of and having a look to my group mates bookmarks, I found many interesting things...

Elena saved this link:
http://esl.about.com/od/englishgrammar/a/a_punctuation.htm

It is a guide to Basic English which provides the basic rules of punctuation cleared up by examples.
On the left column of this site there is also a list with the different topics developed, e.g. grammar, vocabulary, listening and so on. Since we can’t deny that we often have doubts about english grammar, it seems to me a very useful site to consult! Moreover there are also quizzes in order to keep trained!!

Monica saved this link:
http://www.slf.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/

It is a website about the International tandem network, which in other worlds is a great chance to learn a language with a mother tongue peer! In this site they explain you how to find a partner and how this tandem project works! I never took part such an activity, but it sounds great to me! I mean, the only way to learn a language is practicing and so, what’s better than finding a mother tongue partner to have a conversation with?

Ah, one last think, I put this pic because I love it! It gives the idea of doing something together with another person, don't you think so? Something like...Learning a language! :-)

Valeria saved this link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/

It is the BBC learning zone in which you can find good exercises with sessions dedicated to the vocabulary, the grammar and the exercises. I guess it can be particularly useful to improve our skills listening to the radio and watching videos!

Elisa saved this link:
http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/

A dictionary of slang!! That’s great! Slang and colloquial/informal expressions are very difficult to understand and translate! The different expression are in alphabetical order and followed by a definition which helps us to get the message and tells us also where (geographical indication) those expressions are used!

Bloglines: our personal secretary!

2007-11-05T11:17:00.001-08:00

Eureka!
Every week we do discover something new: first the blogosphere, then how to develop our blog and now…feed aggregators! Wow!
We all agree that surfing the net and blogging are very time demanding activities, but luckily now bloglines aggregator came to our aid!
We are speaking about a technology which manages all the new information that are posted in the blogs or web sites we regularly visit and then tell as everything new! In this way we won’t waste time opening

all the different blogs like our course blog, our peers’ ones and so on! Once we have created our account in Bloglines, and subscribed to the web sites and blogs we are interested in, we just have to check out one page to be updated!! Isn’t it great?! I mean, this is a very useful tool, it is like having our personal secretary! Cool!:-)
Thanks Sarah!

I hate Halloween

2007-11-04T06:23:00.000-08:00

So…group F is against Halloween! Well, to tell the truth I’m not against this holiday, but I can surely find good arguments against this imported tradition.
According to Wikipedia, Halloween is celebrated on the night of October 31, the term Halloween is the shortened form of All-Hallow-Even, which is also known as All Saints’ Day. The modern Halloween has got its origins in an ancient pagan Gaelic festival ( Samhain): the Gaels believed that on October 31 the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops. The festival involved bonfires and people usually wore masks and costumes in order to mimic the evil spirits or placate them.
The symbol of Halloween is a pumpkin, or better a carved pumpkin with a candle inside and all Halloween imagery is connected to death, magic, witches and monsters, ghosts and spiders. There are also games and activities which are traditionally associated with Halloween parties like for example children’ “trick or treat!”: children disguise themselves and go door-to-door ringing at doorbells asking for a little gift or a candy.
First of all, I have to say that here in Italy it is not a rooted tradition, there are not historical or religious reasons: Halloween is just a consumer party! It is just an occasion for spending money, buying silly orange ornamentations and decorate pumpkins! At the end of October our cities are invaded by spiders and spiders’ web in every corners, skeletons at the doors, ghosts and orange pumpkins at every window, but why? Why are we overwhelmed by something unknown? Why can’t we choose wheatear to celebrate it or no? We should be all aware of what is going on, whereas, to me, for many people it is just an occasion to party, have fun or go to the disco!

I am a neo-blogger

2007-10-26T07:08:00.000-07:00

I have never read a blog in all my life before starting this course. And I firmly thought that I would never read one.
But you know what? You never can tell!
I have always been suspicious to blogs, maybe also because I didn’t exactly know what they were, and we are always afraid of the unknown.
But navigating around the web I discovered this new world: the blogosphere. And I have also discovered that blogs are not all the same; some of them are very interesting, they look like a web site, but they are much more useful because you can communicate in order to ask questions, give your contribution to the topics and leave your opinion. But I have to admit that I still don’t understand why people write blogs even if they have nothing interesting to say. It seems like a matter of fashion, that’s why many young boys and girls write their blog like they were writing a diary...a public diary! But who on heart is going to read it?!?!
We were told to create and develop our own blog...what a shock! I really didn’t know what to do! So, I sat down and looked around the blogosphere to see what people usually say and writes in their blogs in order to find some sort of inspiration, and finally I realized what I wanted to put in mine.
Ok, now that my blog exists I have to write posts...and here comes the second shock! We have been studying english for a very long time, they made us write commercial and formal letters, sum up newspaper articles and translate the strangest articles about the cannon balls of the english army...but colloquial english is something different and I felt a little bit lost! Colloquial English is what people daily use in their life to communicate but for me it’s not that easy! I am sure that it is just a matter of training: we have to read, to write and to speak to get used to this register.
So, leaving all my suspicions behind, I face this course with excitement and curiosity, I’m sure that we’ll learn a lot about blogs and “technologies” and improve our english!

2007-10-22T08:24:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody!
I'm Cristina, and
this is the Avenida de Gaudí in the Eixample quarter in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Right at the end of this street is where I have been living during my Erasmus. I have chosen this pic to represent me beacuse the 9 months I spent in Barcelona have been the best of my life. Once I saw a guidebook on Catalonia in which they where analysing the different kind of poeple living in Barcelona and to be an erasmus student was considered as a social role...kind of strange! Living in this city has been a great experience, but not only because I was away from Italy, without my parents, in one of the best European city for having fun.. well, that's important too! But there is something more, something deeper, something that only who as been an erasmus can understand. I have learned a lot in BCN, I studied, worked and had fun. I met a lot of persons with which I'm still in contact, of course :-). I discovered a magic city that goes beyond the same old tourist places, there are some corners and little streets that leave me brethless, there are museums and artistic buldings, there is the crowded beach that becomes suddenly sparkling with its parties and bonfires in summer, there is the colourful market of La Boqueria full of exotic products and the Rambla with its street artists catching the turists' attention.
So...that's me!!

Now, here there are two web-sites I often visit:
http://www.hostelworld.com/index.php?affiliate=hostelsworld.com
first of all, I tell you that I love traveling but I'm often hard up :-) and so, this is a very usefull site where you can find cheap solutions to sleep while travelling. You can choose the country and the city where you want to go to see the various hostels and B&B!
http://www.ferroviedellostato.it/
this is another web site that, against my will, I often have to use! The point is that I commute between Treviso, that is where I live, and Padova...That's a hard life!

Draft

2007-10-22T05:16:00.000-07:00

This is a draft!