Social bookmarks

At the beginning I found del.icio.us (as you have already read in the previous post) pretty difficult because I didn't know what to do, how it worked and even reading a lot of times Prof. Sarah's instructions I didn't understand the purpose of the task and the website. After working on del.icio.us I found it extremely useful because on the one hand it gives you the possibility of finding only what you are looking for instead of getting lost in a huge amount of websites, links, etc; it works like a filter and it's a sort of sponge. On the other hand it's really handy because you can save your favourite websites, look for them in every computer (if you don't forget password and username:-))) and share them with other people. If I only knew del.icio.us before!! I lost so many hours in front of my computer looking for websites that could be useful to my dissertation!
In order to read my classmates' choices I went to del.icio.us--->your network, where I immediately found the websites they saved. Considering that we have looked for topics related to our English classes I found them really useful to our studies even if they don't reflect our personal interests (this is the task, though!).

The most clicked websites are about:

• how to write and present essays, thesis or dissertations (e.g. Elena's choice; Ale_aia's choice)
• English or American pronounciation and accents, (I think that the Speech accent archive website chosen by Viola is really interesting because it can be used by native or non-native English speakers to analyse the accents of different English speakers);
• grammar and punctuation: with regard to this topic Erica Buzzaccarin's Good grammar and Punctuation is really helpful because it's an online writing lab with exercises on punctuation and different grammar skills;
• English slangs and colloquial English; (e.g. Alida's choice or Martina's choice);

These are the most frequent topics looked for by our class, however, I think that Martina's Online Etymology Dictionary and Acronym and Abbreviation Dictionary are among the websites that I prefer because their topics are different, clever and curious!

Tania

I'm happy!

Girls del. icio.us is brilliant!!! This course is fantastic and I'm very enthusiastic about it because I'm learning so many new things and discovering new websites like del.icio.us! Every time that I looked for interesting sites I got lost in a huge amount of information, links, unuseful sites but after I knew del.icio.us everything has changed! I'm like a child in front of a chocolate cake but when I typed "Irish slang" and in a second I found "Cork slang expressions" I was so excited! !!!! I was looking for it for so long!!!! I'm so happy!!
Tania

CEPU?! No, Thanks!!!

Hi girls!!! Sorry I made you wait for my blog but it was worthy so just go to CEPU?! No, Thanks
and have a look! I'm looking forward to reading your comments...if you write them :-)))
Tania

Trip to Rome

Photo from Bebo

Just wanted to show you this picture of the Coliseum because I went to Rome the last weekend to see the last match of the 6 Nations Championship between Italy and my beloved Ireland!!!....we lost....:-(((( but I sang Ireland's call live!

Tania

xxx

I got wrong!!!

Sorry to everybody but I gor wrong. I wanted to write "Reflection on this course" instead of "Reflection to..", this is a problem of blogs: contrary to what happened in the previous Wiki course here we cannot correct when we make type mistakes!!!

Reflection on this course

This is the 4th week of lesson and even if we met just only 2 times I can state that my knowledge on blogs has improved a lot. Before starting this course I had only heard something about blogs but I didn' t really know what blogs are, how they work, and what is their purpose. I learnt in this course and surfing Tecnorati all the day long that a blog is a website where entries are displayed in a reverse chronological order. Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as e.g. rugby, travel, politics; some function as more personal online diary where people write about their daily grind, however, their most important goal is to share information and give advice or suggestions to the topics discussed. Blogs are a great source of selectioned information but for sure you need to have time to take part to these discussions and also to be interested in them. This is also the reason why bloggers try to catch people's attention with effective sentences, colours and pictures. A typical blog combines texts, images and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Moreover, links are often used in order to facilitate other bloggers. What I found most striking is the language. The language used to communicate on a blog is very colloquial and informal because people are more interested in the content instead of the grammatical accuracy. There are a lot of slangs even difficul to understand, short forms, and symbols like :-)). I find this aspect very interesting and important. I know some words in slag and how English young speakers talk when they are together, how they text short messages because I lived in Ireland but if you study English only at the college you don't really know how young people communicate between them and a blog is a good way to start. I sometimes prefer writing something without giving attention to accuracy and language because I feel free to express myself in a foreign language giving importance only to my thoughts. I like using short forms particularly when I text to my Irish friens because they use abbreviations everytime and I had to learn them. If you can write only 160 letters in a short text the use of short forms like dis= this, r= are, txt= a text, 2= to/ too, ye= you and so on is obvious!

Why don't we share advice, suggestions or helps about the university world, exams, books and professors?
Every time students meet on Maldura's classrooms or during the break they ask to each other questions like: "What exam are you studying for?", "Do you know anything about this exam?", "Is e. g. Glottodidattica really difficult?" and "What about professor...?".
Questions like these are not new and unusual, and we know that if we want to survive at college we need to share this kind of information, every student does it, so, why don't we do it here in this blog?! It can also be a great opportunity to keep in touch with the people of our English class!