My living room

...and it's time to update my PLE!

2008-06-03T14:17:00.000-07:00

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Hi,

Now that my last English course has finished, I think it’s really important to update my PLE (Personal Learning Environment) and reflect a bit on what new tools I learned to use during the second semester to improve my Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC)

As you know, at the end of the first semester, I was asked to carry out my PLE for the first time in my life, and I found out that it’s extremely useful for critically thinking about the processes, people and tools that are involved (or not) in my learning environment. Of course, many of the things I included in my PLE at the end of the first semester (click here to see it) are and will be always central to my lifelong learning process! Anyway, I’d like to point out that there are some interesting ‘new entries’ in my PLE thanks to the Padova-Dickinson exchange! You can see them in the yellow nodes in the image above.

At the end of the first semester, I was undoubtedly aware that my last English course was aimed at improving not only my language competence, but also my intercultural competence. However, only in the second semester, I started to use new wonderful tools for my intercultural learning like Skype and Facebook. Thanks to these media, now I can get in touch with my friends from any place of the world, at any time and without spending anything (except for my 24 hours/day broadband connection charge of course ;-). That’s absolutely amazing! I can not only speak or chat with them but also exchange photos and videos… Sometimes images speak more than thousands of words!

Another great source of information is the Interculture Wiki which hosts the Padova-Dickinson exchange and other intercultural projects as well. There my peers and I developed some interesting wiki pages about U.S. and Italy, and I’ll certainly have a look at this wiki in my future to see what my colleagues will write about their exchanges. Then, there is an interesting forum/blog (Dalla marcia alla vespa) where we, Padova students, and our peers from Dickinson College discussed several issues that are relevant to Italian and American culture. I hope that in the next years this forum will be further developed, so that I can read more about Italian and American culture taking the perspective of common people actually living in the two countries!

Well, there is, then, a big appointment that I can’t miss in my life: after taking my degree, I want to travel a little abroad. Certainly, this will be the best way to directly experience cultural differences and, at the same time, improve and test my intercultural competence. Thinking about my future, I also hope to find a job that will allow me to meet a lot of people from different countries of the world. That would be a great chance to practice languages, but also to find out more about other cultures!

Finally, this course taught me that assessing your intercultural competence is important, and the only person who can do this is yourself! Two tools that can help me with this task are the YOGA form and the questionnaires I filled in at the end of our course (ICC_Assessment). I do think that it would be really useful to self-assess how my intercultural competence varies according to the experiences I will have in my future (social networking, travelling, working relationships, reading, watching movies, Skyping, etc.).

That's all! I just want to wish you all good luck and thank you for this wonderful year together!

Elena

It's time to assess my Intercultural Competence!

2008-05-11T06:00:00.001-07:00

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Here we are at the end of the second semester! As all my classmates know, this means the end of our last English course as well! It’s, thus, again time to think a bit about what I’ve learnt or not from this experience! So what this post is all about is reflecting on my learning process and assessing my intercultural competence.

Well, at the end of the first semester, when I carried out my Personal Learning Environment (PLE), I had the feeling that during the first semester I hadn’t increased my intercultural competence as much as I had my language competence. Second language proficiency is certainly an important component of culture but not everything. During this second semester, on the other hand, I focused more on my ICC (Intercultural Communicative Competence), and I improved it thanks to two projects which involved the use of very different tools. The first one, which occupied the first part of this second semester, consisted in the development of a wiki page on 2008 U.S. and Italian elections. I read plenty of information on newspapers from different countries as well as on the candidates’official websites, and I watched videos on YouTube dealing with this topic. All this enabled me to learn more about U.S. and Italian politics (the electoral systems and the candidates’ platforms in particular), but also about the main social issues in the two countries nowadays. For example, I learned more about the problem of health care, gender pay gap, and national security in the United States.

Then, the second part of the semester was even more interesting because Sarah gave me the possibility of Skyping with Chiara, my American peer, and taking part in the Padova-Dickinson forum. It was the first time I could have a conversation about American culture directly with an American student. This exchange was, therefore, a great opportunity to deeply explore the typical life of American young students and look at the U.S.A from their viewpoint. I could listen to what common people living there truly believe, need and experience everyday. Actually, besides travelling, an exchange like this is undoubtedly the best way to learn about the lifestyle, customs, habits, and tastes of people belonging to other cultures. Let me give an example or two. Our peers from Dickinson told us lots of interesting and curious things that are part of their college life: living in the campus, often very far from their families, travelling home just a couple of times a year, taking part in fraternities or sororities, and so on. As I said before, the Padova-Dickinson exchange was a unique chance to know the real opinion of young American people on their society, particularly on big social issues such as death penalty, women participation in politics and in the workforce, or illegal immigration.

With Chiara we spoke a lot about the problems women immigrants and women in general face in Italian and American society as far as job opportunities are concerned. This was, in fact, the topic of our final project. There my group mates and I discussed and compared the following points: women's participation in the labor force, i.e. unemployment and employment rate, women distribution in the labor market and wage discrimination, working women's rights and women's presence in the politics of both countries. Finally, we gave a general overview of the role women immigrants play in U.S. and Italian labor market and the problem of prostitution.

Anyway, I think that the most important evidence of my intercultural competence is that I always had a positive attitude when I spoke with Chiara, even when we had different opinions about, for example, the topic to be developed in our final project. I behaved like she was just a friend, no matter whether she was American or Italian. I didn’t perceive such a huge difference, perhaps, because her parents are Italian so she is partly Italian as well! I was always very open, curious and ready to hear how different U.S. culture could be from mine. Honestly, in my life, I always try to be very tolerant and open-minded in all my relationships even with people of my own culture. I think this is essential for a person studying foreign languages and cultures!

Finally, just a couple of things concerning my language learning. I must say that I’m very satisfied because this semester I practiced not only my reading and writing (wiki pages, newspapers, blogs), but also my listening and speaking (mainly thanks to Padova-Dickinson exchange and YouTube videos). In addition, to write the wiki page for my final project I read a lot of American documents, such as those published by the U.S. Department of Labor; this way I learned new vocabulary and paid a lot of attention to sentence construction and word order. I think that one of my most significant improvements is that I write less run-on sentences!

The very last think I’d like to point out is that in my group there were five people, including Chiara, so it was not always so easy to organize our work in a balanced way and meet everybody’s needs, such as finding a topic for the final project that interested everybody, organizing a parallel work, subdividing it, and so on. However, we all developed our collaborative skills and learned that good organization and co-operation are fundamental in order to be a successful team!

Ok! This is the end of my last blog post (at least for my Bloggingenglish course) and the end of an adventure so I just want to thank my professor Sarah for such an innovative, involving and helpful English course and all my peers (including Chiara) for their collaboration and help throughout this last year together :-)

See you!

Elena

Reflecting on my Skype exchange!

2008-04-19T09:50:00.001-07:00

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This week I had my third Skype exchange with Chiara, my American peer! As time goes, I enjoy skyping with her more and more. Although this time we had a conference call made up of five people, we managed to discuss about our final project successfully!

First of all my Italian peers and I proposed Chiara our individual topics.

- Elisa suggested music as one of the main channels through which the culture of a country is conveyed. For example, she pointed out that in America there are many genres, and this reflects the multi-ethnic composition of America.

- Silvia N. proposed immigration, in particular the problems immigrants face when they have to find a job. For instance, Silvia underlined that in Italy skilled immigrants who have a long work experience or a qualified degree are often discriminated when they apply for a job.

- Silvia L., on the other hand, wanted to compare the situation of working women in the US and Italy, focusing on discrimination women suffer as for wages, job insecurity, positions they fill and involvement in politics.

- Finally, my proposal was abortion to see how Italy and America have faced this big ethical issue so far: the abortion laws, if health care covers abortion, abortion rates, and the influence of religion in the two countries.

As can be seen, our topics were all very interesting, but also very different! That’s why it took us much time before coming to an agreement! By the way, after discussing the pros and cons of each issue, we decided to develop women issue given that Chiara showed a particular interest in health care and abortion. Unfortunately, at that point Chiara had to leave the conversation, so we went on discussing without Chiara. Sarah told us that women issue was too broad and suggested us to narrow the topic and focus on one particular aspect.

Eventually, we decided to develop a wiki-page on “Women at work” by comparing the situation in the US and Italy. We immediately sent an e-mail to Chiara just to update her about our choice. Meanwhile, we sketched a first outline, divided the topic into subtopics and decided who’s doing what too. Thus, I’m going to present some data about working women (percentage of women who works vs housewives and of working mothers vs stay-at-home mothers, kinds of jobs women are usually employed in, wage discrimination between men and women); Elisa is going to deal with working mothers' rights; Silvia Lovato is going to discuss women in politics, and Silvia N. is going to talk about women immigrants.

During this weekend we are carrying out some research on the Web; we also established that, if we find useful sources, we bookmark them on delicious with a tag that is specific of our group. In addition, together with Chiara, we chose to communicate via e-mail because, in our opinion, it’s the more effective way since you can easily forward Chiara’s replies to all the members. In addition, we set out that each week one person will have the responsibility for writing to Chiara if there are any updates, or other important things she should know. That’s all for the moment! Now I’ll search for some sources…Hopefully, we’ll do a good job!

Immigration in Italy

2008-04-13T07:43:00.001-07:00

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Italy faced the problem of immigration quite recently, in the 1970s; before Italy had been a country where people emigrated from, especially after World War II.

Since the end of the 20^th century and the beginning of the 21^stcentury the rate of immigrants in Italy has been increasing year by year. In the 1990s the Italian government tried to solve the problem of illegal immigration by holding amnesties, which allowed illegal immigrants to apply for Italian citizenship and not get punished for having been there illegally. This reduced the number of illegal workers and, thus, black economy, but it did not solve the problem! Quite the opposite! This measure attracted even more immigrants who could easily come to Italy and be legalized!

From a geographical viewpoint, Italy’s position is strategic. In the centre of the Mediterranean and with over 8,000 kilometres of coast, Italy is a “door” to Europe for African people (Moroccans, Tunisians, Algerians) – though the trip across the Mediterranean often turns into an odyssey. According to ISTAT, on December 31, 2006 there were 2.938.922 immigrants in Italy (4,97%). Moroccans are the most numerous, followed by Albanians, Romanians, Tunisians and Senegalese.

Undoubtedly, immigration is a cultural and economic resource too. Many migrants have entered the labour market: in the North-East, they mainly work in factories in almost regular positions; in the South, non-EU people are mostly employed in seasonal jobs and in the underground economy, particularly in the agriculture and building industry. Many immigrant workers, especially women from Eastern Europe, are employed to do the housework in our families or to help old or disabled people.

Unfortunately, illegal immigration has brought to Italy new social problems too: many illegal immigrants are involved in criminal activities such as drug-pushing, prostitution and petty crime, especially in big cities. This has led to intolerance, racism and violence between Italians and immigrants and to an increase both in the number of workers employed in the black-market and in the money spent by the State to keep immigrants in prison or in the “Centri di permanenza temporanea”, centres where illegal immigrants are held before going back home.

The various immigration laws have never been able to regulate the situation of illegal immigrants: the first attempt was at the beginning of the 1990s with the so-called 'Martelli law', which aimed “to plan migratory flows into Italy in collaboration with the immigrants' countries of origin”. In 1998, the centre-left government issued the so-called 'Turco-Napolitano law' which established the procedures for the deportation of illegal immigrants who, once arrested, could be deported only after being judged by a magistrate. After the magistrate issued an order of deportation, they had two weeks to appeal against the decision, but immigrants often used this time to go underground and out of sight. In 2002, the centre-right government enacted the ‘Bossi-Fini Law’; it states that illegal immigrants must leave the country within five days after the arrest, and during this time they are held under the control of the police. Non-EU immigrants can come to Italy only if they have a ‘contratto di soggiorno’, i.e. a contract of dependent employment providing for accommodation and the payment of travel expenses to return to their homeland. When the contract expires, the immigrant worker should repatriate. The truth is that forced repatriation is not always carried out as it should be! Always in 2002 a decree-law provided for the regularisation of irregular immigrants employed as domestic workers or home-helper, and dependent workers involved in other kinds of subordinate employment. All regularised immigrant workers received a residence permit which lasted till the deadline of the employment contract, but in any case no longer than two years.

These days immigration has been a hot election topic, as the title of this article says. The spread of gypsy camps on city outskirts and the increase of crimes committed by illegal immigrants worry Italians a lot. That’s why immigration is a central issue among the right- and left-wing parties, which have opposing positions as always. Given his coalition with Lega Nord (Northern League), Berlusconi promises to deport all illegal immigrants and “crack down on gypsy camps and centres linked to the preaching of Muslim fundamentalism", while Walter Veltroni, the centre-left candidate, is for integration and wants to increase the duration of legal immigrants' residency permits and, at the same time, “to guarantee that expulsion orders for illegal immigrants are really carried out”.

Sources:

http://www-pub.naz.edu:9000/~cmnewell/

http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2002/09/feature/it0209103f.htm

Thinking about my final project…ABORTION

2008-04-13T07:33:00.000-07:00

(Photo source)

Besides elections, there’s another big issue which is causing a bit of upset in Italy during these first months of 2008: abortion.

Exactly 30 years after the Law 194, which legalized induced abortion in Italy within 90 days since conception, the issue is again very controversial. As for my project, my idea is to discuss abortion in Italy and America as objectively as possible; however, I read the whole 194 law before writing this post, and I’d like to express my opinion about it in a few lines. I’m a Catholic person perfectly convinced that abortion should never be used to interrupt a pregnancy that could be avoided at the origin through contraceptive methods, but I also think that, in some specific cases, a woman has the right to choose for her life and for that of her baby. I find the 194 a very “human” law. Already the title, “NORME PER LA TUTELA SOCIALE DELLA MATERNITA’ E SULL’INTERRUZIONE VOLONTARIA DELLA GRAVIDANZA” (and not “abortion law”), explicitly shows that its first aim is not birth control (see art.1). From a legal point of view, it’s a well-balanced attempt to safeguard the rights of the foetus and the woman and to respect the medical staff’s belief too, i.e. whether to practice abortion or not as a doctor. This is a good law; the problem is how it is applied sometimes! The ethical questions “Is abortion a good or bad thing? or “Is the foetus already a human being?” are very complex and sensitive issues; undoubtedly, they would be worth a post; however they’re outside the purpose of my project.

Let’s explain, on the other hand, when and why this big debate about abortion started in Italy. On December 18, 2007 the United Nations Organization approved the moratorium (“an official stopping of an activity for a period of time” from Longman Dictionary) on death penalty. This event led to “a great thinking” about the right to life and, consequently, about abortion in the mass media in Italy (read the article). In January, the cultural organization Web Radio on the Air started a huge provocation, the Universal Moratorium for the Abolition of the Punishment of Abortion. At the beginning of February, the editor of the Italian newspaper Il_Foglio, Giuliano Ferrara, took this provocation to set a new political party “Aborto? No grazie. Per la moratoria con Giuliano Ferrara ” which aims to bring the cause of abortion in the next Parliament (read the article or watch the video). Ferrara is widely supported by the Church, pro-life movements and all the people who are openly against abortion and consider it like homicide.

These months abortion is a hot topic also because of some bad news reported by Italian mass media. Some weeks ago, the TV programme Le Iene broadcasted a video about some doctors who declared to be conscientious objectors and, thus, refused to carry out legal abortion in public hospital, but then they accepted to perform back-street abortion till over 5 months of pregnancy in their private practices. One month ago, a gynaecologist committed suicide in Genoa because he was accused of performing illegal abortion under the payment of 500 euros to women who wanted to end an unwanted pregnancy without following the legal procedure (read the article). In Naples the police raided a hospital where a woman was having abortion because her child suffered from Klinefelter's_syndrome. The police had received an anonymous report saying that foeticide was being committed in that hospital, which then proved not to be true. This caused a big scandal within women’s movements too (see the article).

To sum up, 30 years after the achievement of legal abortion (1978-2008), Italians are still deeply divided between for and against abortion: someone defines abortion of unhealthy embryos as eugenics; someone else calls it genocide perfectly authorized and financed by the State; someone believes it is a fundamental right of the woman to choose whether to abort or not.

I think that the project I’m going to do with my peers in collaboration with the Dickinson College students is a great chance to compare Italian and American culture and see how these two coutries have faced this big ethical issue so far. Below you find a list of points that could be discussed in an objective way.

PROJECT PLAN

- A comparison between Italian and American abortion laws to see similarities and differences, strong and weak points (late abortion term, i.e. how late abortion can be performed legally, parental notification for minors and privacy for non-adults, government funding, i.e. if health care covers abortion, etc.) and, given that legal access to abortion vary somewhat by state in the US, to see which states are more restrictive.

- A look at the methods of abortion which are legalized in the two countries: for example I know that in the US and most European countries the abortion pill Ru486 has been legalized for several years, while it will probably be available in Italian hospitals only since this year.

- Statistics: the trend of abortion rates in the two countries, differences between North and South, native people and immigrants, teenagers and adults.

- Measures taken to prevent abortion (ex. family advisory bureaux in hospitals).

- The position on abortion of US and Italian candidates in 2008 elections.

- Abortion and religion: influence of the Church and Christian movements in the two countries (such as “Il Movimento per la Vita” in Italy e “Moral Majority” in the USA).

Women in 2008 elections: Italy and US

2008-03-29T16:42:00.001-07:00

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This week I’m going to discuss 2008 elections again! To tell you the truth, I’m getting more and more involved in this matter because, while learning English, I can increase my intercultural competence and keep abreast of the latest political developments in both Italy and the U.S.A. For example, during my last English class before the Easter break, my group mates and I were thinking about analysing if and how women are considered in the platforms of the Italian and American candidates. For this reason, I decided to get some information on this issue. Instead of reading articles from newspapers, this time I chose to watch some videos taken from the candidates’ official websites:

- a video about a convention, “Donne per l'Italia. Protagoniste del cambiamento”, that Berlusconi hold in Rome on March 29;

- a video about a meeting of the Democratic Party (PD) which took place in Mestre on March 8^th and was dedicated to women.

- a video published on Hillary Clinton’s official website, under the page “A Champion for Women”, where the candidate talks about women's rights.

After listening to these speeches and quickly reading through the platforms, I can say that Italian candidates are more concerned with women role in society than the American candidates. As a matter of fact, only Hillary quotes women among her platform issues; McCain and Obama talk about family in general or children, rather than women. In Berlusconi and Veltroni’s platforms, on the other hand, women play a key role. Both candidates put the accent on their intention to increase women representation in Parliament and women participation in the socio-political life of our country. Veltroni stated that, if he won, there would be 130 women in Parliament (three times as much as in Prodi’s government). PdL (People of Freedom) wants women to be central figures of the next government – above all in fields such as economics, defence, security, foreign policy, etc. – because women politicians in Italy still suffer prejudice and poor support; they’re often victims of gossip or considered as recommended people.

Both Italian parties aim to valorise women not only in politics, but also in society, for example, by encouraging firms to hire women workers (one of Veltroni’s proposals is to benefit businesses that respect gender equality and to oblige state enterprises to have effective women representation in their boards) and by preventing women from choosing between professional career and motherhood. In addition, PdL and PD agree on the need to build public nurseries, and Veltroni supports women’s possibility of choosing flexible and part-time jobs as well. The two candidates share the same opinion on motherhood too: families have to be supported by giving them the so-called “baby bonus”, that is a benefit for every child born; finally, big families should be backed through significant tax cuts. Veltroni (who in my opinion provides more concrete examples of how he wants to achieve his goals) says that he will give families 2.500 euros for each new child, that he will introduce additional paternity leave, and that low-income families will get 100% of their wages for 12 months while on leave.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is totally involved in fighting against pay disparities between men and women. Actually, US women still suffer pay discrimination. In the speech I listened to, Hillary said that full-time women earn 77 cents for every dollar that a man makes and that for women of colour is even less: 67 cents for African American women and 56 cents for Latinos. If she wins the elections, she will close the pay gap between men and women by toughening the penalties for those who violate the Equal Payment Act, ensuring equal pay laws, and prohibiting employers to fire employees who share salary information to find out if they are treated unfairly. Moreover, she wants to raise funds for the research on breast cancer.

Comparing Hillary’s platform to that of Berlusconi and Veltroni made me reflect upon the fact that none of them has taken unequal pay practices into account, although this is a big problem that affects Italian society as well.

Happy Easter :-)

2008-03-20T09:31:00.000-07:00

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Let's compare U.S., U.K. and Italy's press!

2008-03-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

photo source

This week I want to discuss the way the news on American and Italian elections is presented in the online version of three newspapers from three different countries:

The New York Times (U.S.A)

The Guardian (U.K.)

Il Giornale (Italy)

First of all, I’d like to give a general description of the three journals – political alignment, coverage of political events, location of the news, differences and similarities. Let’s start with the NY Times.

The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed internationally; it is the largest metropolitan newspaper in the United States. According to a 2007 survey of public perceptions of media, "40% believe the Times has a liberal slant and 11% believe it has a conservative slant” (Wikipedia).

As for the U.S. elections, The NY Times website includes a section ("Politics") where all the articles about the election campaign are published and where the reader can find the link to “The Caucus”, the New York Times Politics Blog, and to another section, “Election Guide 2008”, which provides useful information about the elections in general (primary election results, candidate profiles, campaign finances, primary calendars, map of campaign events, comparison between the candidates about health care, abortion, Iraq, immigration and other issues). All in all, this newspaper offers a lot of information and data about the elections, though many titles regard the Democrats, Obama in particular.

Below there are the links to the most important articles (those in the upper part of the page with the biggest titles) that have been published during these last few days.

For Democrats, Increased Fears of a Long Fight (March 16)

Obama Denounces Statements of His Pastor as ‘Inflammatory’ (March 15)

A Free-Spirited Wanderer Who Set Obama’s Path (March 14)

Democrats Face Racial Issue Again (March 13)

Obama Wins in Mississippi (March 12)

The Guardian is a British newspaper; it’s published from Monday to Saturday. According to a December, 2004 survey, 44% of Guardian readers voted in favour of Labour, 37% for the Liberal Democrats and only 5% for the Conservatives, the lowest percentage of any large British newspaper. The paper's comment and opinion pages are dominated by centre-left writers and academics (Wikipedia).

The online version includes a section, “US Election 2008” (like The NY Times), where the news is presented in reverse chronological order. Like The New York Times, The Guardian gives extensive coverage of Clinton - Obama race, and here again the main focus is on the Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.

These days, The Guardian has been giving particular attention on the potential damage to Obama's campaign after the sermons by his former pastor, the Rev Jeremiah Wright, who accused the governement of racism and describes black Republicans as sellouts. The Guardian has dedicated three articles – The Times only one – to the question (see the links below) and, for three days, the news Pastor's sermons could hurt Obama has covered the upper-left side of the “US elections 2008” page.

Pastor's hellfire sermons put Obama's campaign in hot water (March 14)

Obama forced to denounce pastor's inflammatory remarks (March 14)

Obama faces potential damage from his pastor's comments (March 13)

Il Giornale is a daily newspaper published in Milan, Italy. I think it’s worth quoting a short history of the paper I found on Wikipedia to better understand the reason why it’s “characterized from its birth by strong opposition to the left-wing parties”.

It was founded in 1974 by Indro Montanelli, who did not support the new progressive line adopted by Corriere della Sera, where he was one of the historic names. In 1977 Montanelli, in economical difficulties, accepted a financing offer by Silvio Berlusconi, who thus became the newspaper publisher. Indro Montanelli edited and directed il Giornale from its creation, until Berlusconi entered politics (December 1993). At that time he decided to found the new daily La Voce. In 1994, Berlusconi sold il Giornale to his brother Paolo and Vittorio Feltri replaced Indro Montanelli in the newspaper editorship (Wikipedia).

As far as the Italian general elections are concerned, I’ve noticed that Il Giornale often speaks about Silvio Berlusconi and carefully reports all the events that concern the leader of PdL. In other words, the viewpoint expressed in the articles is nearly always that of the right-wing candidate, mainly because they’re full of quotes from his speeches. When you read the articles is more or less the same as listening to Berlusconi’s speeches, such as when he attacks the left candidate, Walter Veltroni, or denigrates what the previous left government did.

On average, articles on Berlusconi are published daily and cover at least two pages:
Berlusconi: brogli, rischio grandissimo. Fisco, introdurremo il quoziente familiare (March 16)

Crescita, Berlusconi:"La crisi Usa mette a rischio il Paese" (March 15)

Berlusconi: "Convinceremo gli indecisi". Dal Ppe polemiche su Ciarrapico (March 14)

Berlusconi: antifascista la nostra identità. Politiche, ecco tutti i candidati del Pdl (March 13)

It’s significant that from Thursday March 13 up to now, only one article has been published on Veltroni, and it’s only one page long. In addition, the articles on Berlusconi are posted in the central part of the home page, at the top, so that they have a privileged position on the page. The titles are always followed by big pictures of the “Cavaliere”, who is often portrayed with a very sparkling and self-confident expression, such as here or here .

Unlike The New York Times and The Guardian, Il Giornale doesn’t have a section entirely dedicated to the elections in Italy – polls, campaign events, descriptions of the platforms –, and all the news about Italian politics are published under the “Prima pagina” section.

Do The Times and The Guardian follow the news about Italy’s general elections?

The Times doesn’t follow Italian politics a lot, and (when it does) the accent is on the elections in general, except for one article on Berlusconi: Berlusconi’s Long Shadow Casts a Chill Over Italian Politics (February 2). In fact, it only reported the major political events that happened in Italy in February, after the crisis of Prodi’s government (see the links below), and in these first two weeks of March no articles have been published on Italian general elections.

Italy: Rome Mayor Resigns To Take On Berlusconi (February 14)

With Flawed System Unchanged, Italy Sets Elections for April (February 7)

Mired in Crisis, Italy Veers Toward Elections (February 5)

The Guardian seems to be more interested in Berlusconi's candidancy rather than in the election developments, as can be seen in the links below.

King of the gaffe charms Italy again (March 16)

Berlusconi poised for comeback in general election (February 6)

However, the accent on Italian politics reached its peak in February, when Italy announced the snap general election.

Italy announces election date (February 6)

Italy heads for general election (February 5)

Does Il Giornale follow the news about U.S. elections?

This paper is mostly concerned with the Italian campaign; a few events about US elections are reported under “Esteri”. One article about US campaign was published last week, on March 13 (Usa, razzismo nelle urne. Tra i democratici è rissa); however, I found several articles dated from March 9 backwards. As can be seen from the links below, Il Giornale updates its readers on the American elections every two or three days, and stress is put on the Democratic candidates.
Usa, Obama vince nel Wyoming (March 9)

«Hillary è un mostro»: si dimette la principale consigliera di Obama (March 8)

Tra i litiganti Obama e Clinton il repubblicano McCain gode (March 5)

Obama in turbante: la foto-scandalo in rete (February 25)

Primarie Usa: Obama e Hillary divisi su Cuba (February 22)

Primarie Usa, i superdelegati lasciano Hillary per Obama (February 15)

I super-delegati gelano Hillary «Potremmo seguire Obama» (February 13)

Now, let’s compare how the three newspapers dealt with the Ferraro case!

An event which caught the attention of all the three newspapers is the resignation of Geraldine A. Ferraro, former vice-presidential nominee, from Hillary Clinton’s campaign finance committee. Ferraro made no apologies for citing Senator Barack Obama’s race as the decisive factor in his success, i.e. for stating that Obama could not claim the Democratic nomination if he were white or a woman (“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”). After being accused of racism, she wrote a letter to the former first lady saying that she stepped down from the fundraising committee because the Obama campaign had misrepresented her remarks to deliberately hurt Mrs. Clinton: “The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won’t let that happen.” To be more precise, she accused Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, of “using race as a tactical weapon and of implying that her remarks were racist”. Clinton said she disagreed with Ferraro’s statements, and Obama defined her comment as “divisive”.

By comparing the three articles, I realized that The New York Times (Ferraro Is Unapologetic for Remarks and Ends Her Role in Clinton Campaign) and The Guardian (Ferraro steps down from Clinton campaign role) are more factual and unbiased, though the former is more detailed than the latter. The article on Il Giornale (Usa, razzismo nelle urne. Tra i democratici è rissa), instead, is less factual containing very few facts and a lot of comments and opinions by the writer: “Doveva succedere: bianco-nero, il razzismo, la segregazione. La minoranza afroamericana e la maggioranza bianca. […] : la questione razziale entra di colpo nella campagna elettorale delle primarie. […] E non si sa se sia stata una gaffe o una scelta precisa per togliere lo sguardo dallo scandalo di Eliot Spitzer”, “C’è un mondo che ruota attorno al sentimento di rivincita che monta nell’ambiente nero”, “Con Obama potenziale candidato presidente e primo afroamericano della storia che può davvero arrivare alla nomination, è tornato l’orgoglio black”, etc.

Yes We Can - Barack Obama (Italian subs)

2008-03-12T14:56:00.000-07:00

Yes We Can Lyrics by Will.I.Am

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.
Yes we can.
It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom.
Yes we can. Yes we can.
It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores
and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.
Yes we can. Yes we can.
It was the call of workers who organized;
women who reached for the ballots;
a President who chose the moon as our new frontier;
and a King who took us to the mountain-top and pointed the way to the Promised Land.
Yes we can to justice and equality.
(yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can…)

Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.
Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity.
Yes we can heal this nation.
Yes we can repair this world.
Yes we can. Si Se Puede
(yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can…)

We know the battle ahead will be long,
but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in our way,
nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.
We want change!
(We want change! We want change! We want change…)

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant.
We’ve been asked to pause for a reality check.
We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.
But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. We want change!
(We want change! I want change! We want change! I want change…)

The hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of LA;
we will remember that there is something happening in America;
that we are not as divided as our politics suggests;
that we are one people;
we are one nation;
and together, we will begin the next great chapter in America’s story with three words that will ring from coast to coast;
from sea to shining sea - Yes. We. Can.
(yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can…)

Will.I.Am - Yes We Can Song Info
“Yes We Can” is a song inspired by a speech delivered by Barack Obama following the 2008 New Hampshire primary, derived from the union catchcry “Yes we can”.

The song was released on February 2, 2008 by the Black Eyed Peas member will.i.am on Dipdive.com and also on YouTube under the username ‘WeCan08′.

Although the lyrics are entirely quotations from a speech delivered by Sen. Obama in New Hampshire during the 2008 campaign, his campaign had no involvement in its production.
The music viral video, shot in a sparse black-and-white, features Barack Obama’s image in collage fashion; the performers comprise a veritable Greek chorus echoing his words in a hip-hop call-and-response manner as his voice plays in the background.

source

Election campaign in the U.S. & Italian left wing: Clinton vs Veltroni

2008-03-09T08:20:00.000-07:00

(photo source)

Hi everybody!

On April 13 and April 14, 2008 a snap general election will be held in Italy after the defeat of the government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi. Under Italian law, elections must be held within 70 days of the dissolution of the previous government so, in April, we have to elect our next Prime Minister. The major competitors are Silvio Berlusconi, leader of PdL (Popolo della Libertà) and of the centre-right coalition, and Walter Veltroni, leader of PD (Partito Democratico), who chose to run alone with its own platform. On the other hand, November 4, 2008 is the United States presidential Election Day, and this date will mark the 56th consecutive quadrennial election for president and vice president of the United States. The candidates for the presidency are John McCain for the Republican Party and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic Party.

These are undoubtedly the two biggest political events of 2008 in the U.S. and in Italy, and there’s a question that links American and Italian people today: “Who will be the next?”. In both countries these are days of long political campaigns: right- and left-wing candidates have been campaigning throughout the countries and giving speeches about the main planks of their policy in order to persuade people to vote for them. It’s interesting, therefore, to listen to their talks and debates and try to identify key words and expressions that they use and also observe how they differently interact with their audience.
In this post I’ll analyze the language of Hillary Rodham Clinton (candidate for the Democratic nomination in the U.S. presidential election and current junior U.S. senator from New York) and Walter Veltroni (leader of the Democratic Party into the April 2008 general election in Italy).

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Hillary Rodham Clinton
By listening to Hillary Clinton's speeches, I found out that her way of speaking is characterized by the use of key words and expressions (see in bold) that reveal some topics that are central to her campaign:

- UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE
“health care, not for just some people or most people, but for every American”
- ECONOMY
”get the economy back on track”/ “for an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top, but every single hard-working American who deserves a shot at the American dream”/ “to turn our economy around”.
- NATIONAL SECURITY
“Protecting America is the first and most urgent duty of the president”/ “We're going to protect our country”/ “people need to take foreign policy and national security seriously”/ “strengthen our security”/ “to end the war in Iraq and win the war in Afghanistan”/ “safeguard our national security”/ “we need to keep our democracy strong and our nation safe”/ “Let's build a real coalition of allies to defeat terrorists in Afghanistan and other countries that provide a safe haven for al Qaeda. Let's make it clear that any terrorists who attack the United States, who have safe haven in any country, are putting that country at risk. That is one way for us to demonstrate that we will not be the aggressor, we will not engage in pre-emptive attacks, but we will defend our nation”.
- ENERGY
“We also do need to lead the world toward a sound energy policy that treats global warming as the crisis it is and not science fiction”/ “We need to demonstrate our commitment to home-grown energy”
- VALUES
“I will always protect and defend our nation and I will always advance the traditions and values that have made our country”
(the word values is repeated several times in Hillary Clinton’s speeches, and the values she wants to promote are usually presented in stark contrast to those of President Bush)

What are these values?

- diplomacy (not force/ military power)
- multilateralism (not unitaleralism)
- soft power (not hard power)
“Over the past seven years, we've seen what happens when the president presents the American people with a series of false choices and then is indifferent about the consequences: force versus diplomacy, unilateralism versus multilateralism, hard power versus soft”/ “our military power is absolutely essential but it cannot be viewed as the solution to every international problem.”/ “Yes, we must use force when necessary but as a last resort, not a first resort”/ “reviving old fashioned diplomacy”.
- moral authority & leadership
“I propose a new American strategy to restore our moral authority”, “re-establish moral authority and our leadership”
- honor
“Honor is important. It's important to our country. We are an honorable nation therefore we must do more to take care of those who sided with, protected and saved the lives of young Americans in Iraq”.

As for the way she interacts with her audience, she’s very smiling and friendly but also determined and resolute in her ideas. She usually starts her sentences by directly addressing her audience (“You know”, “You all know”, “This is your campaign and your moment and I need your support.”), or she uses the first plural pronoun we to involve the audience in her discourse (“we all know that…”, “We have two wars abroad. We have a recession looming here at home.”). However, she sometimes makes use of more impersonal forms such as they, Americans, people or America in general (“More and more people have joined this campaign”, “…they want their turn to help make history. They want their voices to count. And they should. They should be heard.”, “Americans don't need more promises”).

A significant instance is the speech she kept on March 4th after winning Ohio and Rhode Island primary elections (click here). In this video she is often interrupted by the applause of the audience, and she uses several expressions that are typical of propaganda speeches in order to encourage supporters to clap or sing “Yes, she will!”. Some examples are as follows: “The people of Ohio have said it loudly and clearly: we're going on, we're going strong, and we're going all the way”, “You know what they say, as Ohio goes, so goes the nation. Well, this nation's coming back, and so is this campaign”, “Ohio has written a new chapter in the history of this campaign, and we're just getting started”, “I believe I am the candidate most ready today to be that kind of president and commander in chief.”, “we're going to make history”/ “I have big dreams for America's future. The question is not whether we can fulfill those dreams, it's whether we will. And here's our answer: yes, we will.”

Furthemore, Hillary Clinton often puts the accent on how the next U.S. President should be, i.e. on how she would behave as President of the United States: someone who turns “promises into action, words into solutions, and hope into reality”, “Americans are looking for answers and they're looking for a president who will be a champion for them and start solving their problems”, “a president who will be a fighter, a doer and a champion for the American people again”, “ a president […] who will be ready to act swiftly and decisively in a crisis, who will pursue strategic demands of hard diplomacy to re-establish moral authority and our leadership, “a president who is tested and ready” (“also when that 3 a.m. phone call comes to the White House because an unforeseen crisis has erupted without warning. In that split second the president has to respond and make a decision that could affect the safety and lives of millions of people here in our country and around the world.”).

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Walter Veltroni
By listening to Veltroni’s speeches, I realized that he repeats words like change, new force, energy, growth, and simplicity several times in order to point out the need of our nation for reform, innovation and for becoming a freer, simpler and more open society. This idea seems to be a key concept in his campaign; as a matter of fact, with different words, he stresses that it’s time for Italy to change, breathe new and fresh air and put an end to its old-fashioned conservatorism and its static and frozen politics (“Il nostro paese è paralizzato dalla paura del futuro, dal demone del conservatorismo”, “Potere è mettere veti e bloccare il nuovo”). Veltroni’s commitment as next Prime Minister seems to go exactly in this direction: to build “a new, young and dynamic Italy”. Because of the different socio-political problems that affect Italy and America nowadays, Veltroni’s speeches – compared to Hillary Clinton’s – are less oriented towards terrorisms, the war in Iraq, and national security. On the other hand, special attention is given to topics that are particularly relevant to our national policy:

- protecting the ENVIRONMENT & developing alternative ENERGY from sun, wind and waste disposal (= SUSTAINABILITY)
- supporting the ENTERPRENEURSHIP by cutting down unnecessary BUROCRACY, i.e. by making the starting up simple and easy (“the less burocracy, the less corruption!”)
- assuring INDUSTRIAL SAFETY
- encouraging the ECONOMIC GROWTH of the country by making the demand rise again, in other words by increasing wages and pensions.
- assuring a “compenso minimo legale” (a minimum wage) of at least 1000-1100 euros/month to CASUAL WORKERS and discouraging JOB INSECURITY
- enhancing WOMEN’S EMPLOYMENT by doubling nursery places within 5 years
- helping FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN through a tax allowance of 2500 euros per child and building houses to be rent at no more than 300-500 euros a month
- building 100 UNIVERSITY campus within 2010 to avoid rooms being overrent to students on the side
- scientific RESEARCH as the key to innovation
- adjusting PENSIONS & WAGES to take inflation into account
- promoting SOCIAL MOBILITY by putting talent and merit in the front line so that “the son of a worker can become a lawyer”
- NATIONAL SECURITY means more policemen in the streets and “certainty of the penalty”
- TAX REDUCTION & fight against TAX EVASION (“everyboby pays taxes, everybody pays less”)

As for his way of interacting with his audience, Veltroni shows a good knowledge of rhetoric (he basically says what people want to listen to…) and makes use of a lot of encouraging and promising expressions: first of all “Si può fare!” (from Obama’s “Yes, we can!”), but also “Comincia un tempo nuovo. Tempo del coraggio e del cambiamento”, “Bisogna unire l’Italia e restituirle forza, ritrovare energia vitale, rischiare di nuovo, tornare ad avere voglia di futuro”); perhaps he aims at instilling a feeling of hope and confidence in his audience. He usually speaks in a deliberate and serious manner, and the handclaps of his supporters are rarer and more moderate in comparison to those of Hillary Clinton’s. In addition, he prefers canvassing by personally meeting people from different Italian towns to presenting his political plan through mass media and television debates as the American candidates and Silvio Berlusconi have been doing these days.

Bambi 2- There is Life

2008-01-25T13:58:00.000-08:00

Under the snow,
Beneath the frozen streams
There is life...

You have to know
When nature sleeps,
She dreams
There is life...

And the colder the winter,
The warmer the spring
The deeper the sorrow,
The more our hearts sing
Even when you can't see it
Inside everything
There is life...

After the rain,
The sun will reappear
There is life...

After the pain,
The joy will still be here
There is life...

For it's out of the darkness
That we learn to see,
And out of the silence
That songs come to be,
And all that we dream of
Awaits patiently,
There is life...

Berlitz Ad - Learn English

2008-01-25T13:54:00.001-08:00

EUROCALL CMC SIG Event

2008-01-03T09:28:00.000-08:00

Dear all,

Here I am to advertise a seminar about Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and Language Learning that is being organized by EUROCALL on 17-19th April 2008 at the University of Padova, Italy.

Bye,
Elena

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

2007-12-21T08:52:00.000-08:00

My Personal Learning Environment (PLE)

2007-12-09T14:16:00.000-08:00

Click on the image to expand it or click here

Dear all,

In the image above you can see my PLE (Personal Learning Environment). As Sarah (my English teacher) told us, there isn’t one single definition of PLE; however, I’d define it as “a mindmap through which you can organize your learning process, both formal and informal. It can be built on various nodes, such as the tools, places, people, skills, technologies that are somehow involved in your learning”. This is a very generic and wide definition because, as Sarah said, in the end “a PLE is yours, there’s no right or wrong, there’s just the way you see it”. (For more information, have a look at the links Sarah suggested us in e-tivity 9). As for my PLE I must admit that, after reflecting for a while upon the possible key nodes of my map, i.e. the nodes that had to function as the roots of the whole structure (language competence, cultural competence, information,…), the building process was quite straightforward since this map is actually the result, the product of what I’ve been thinking about all these last months, from October onwards.

Before starting my English course with Sarah, I was completely aware of what formal education could offer me to improve my language acquisition, and maybe I had never felt the need to think about other possible learning contexts more informal than university. I mean I had such a narrow vision of my ‘Learning Environment’ that it coincided more or less with university! A radical change started taking place in October for two reasons: October marked the beginning of my last year at university and the beginning of a surprising and revolutionary English course as well that was going to change my too restricted idea of ‘Learning Environment’. As regards the first reason, the fact that this is my last year at university urged me to reflect on how to keep my language knowledge ‘alive’ and how to achieve those goals I haven’t fully met so far at the uni. Considering the second reason, i.e. the course with Sarah, this has allowed me to discover the potential of Web 2.0 for language learners. Now I’m keener on the use of technologies to learn a language; in these months I’ve felt like a baby who is exploring the world and the people living in it for the first time! Well, I’ve been exploring a virtual world that is offering me what I’ve always dreamt of since when I was 14 and decided to study foreign languages: the opportunity to exchange ideas with foreign people, thus testing my language and cultural competence.

Going back to my PLE, I must say that, though I’d like to make a PLE for my German learning too, I built it mainly focusing on my English learning. Given that you can look at it, I think that a detailed description of my PLE would be boring and useless, that’s why now I’ll give you only a brief explanation of some choices I made while building it that can help you to read and understand the map. Let’s start with the four core branches:

1- LANGUAGE COMPETENCE

This was the most complex and difficult part to represent graphically. I pointed out what learning tools I’ve been using or I’ll use in the near future to increase my ‘language competence’, by making a distinction between the four main skills it consists of (listening, speaking, reading, writing); then, within each skill I distinguished between formal and informal learning contexts. Remember that with ‘formal’ I don’t mean only formal education (i.e. education at school, university or other courses), but any context that can help me to learn formal English (e.g. future jobs, media, academic writing); in other words, it is a matter of register. In order to highlight tools that are helpful to develop two or more skills at the same time, I used the same colour; for example, SkyPe is written in light blue so you can easily notice that it’s a tool I make use of for all the four skills: to practice listening/speaking if you have a phone exchange, or to practice reading/writing if you have a chat.

2- CULTURAL COMPETENCE

The ways through which I can increase my knowledge about English or American culture (lifestyle, food, traditions, holidays, educational system, religion, government, history, literature, etc.); again I distinguished between formal and informal tools.

3- INFORMATION

Under ‘Retrieving’ I tried to answer to the question: “How can I gather new information, i.e. material that can be exploited for my language learning (grammar rules & exercises, handbooks, podcasts, essays, software, social networks, etc.)?”. Under ‘Storing’, on the other hand, I included all the devices I use for keeping and arranging information (feeds, bookmarks, tags, folders, and links in my blog).

4- PLACES & PEOPLE

This node contains the places where I can find useful ‘information’ for increasing my language and cultural competence and the people ‘living’ in those places who can contribute to my learning process. At present my ‘learning environment’ is mainly made up of university education (English courses, lab lessons, literature classes) Web 2.0 (my blog and those of my classmates, podcasting, del.icio.us, Bloglines, YouTube, Myhappyplanet, Facebook) and some young students I’m coaching in English (sometimes giving private lessons allows me to refresh ‘real life English’, that is the basic vocabulary used everyday at home, at the restaurant, on the telephone, in a shop, etc.). In the near future I hope to travel a bit abroad and find a job that allows me to enrich my language knowledge (e.g. translator, clerk in a foreign trade office, English teacher).

All things considered, representing my own PLE was very useful; it forced me to categorize the tools I’ve got at my disposal to improve my English; this way I realized that in the last few months I’ve begun using tools through which, finally, I’m learning informal and colloquial language. I’m especially referring to social networks such as Myhappyplanet.com; this is a language learning community, a place to learn a language naturally by interacting with people around the world that speak the language(s) you want to learn and want to learn the language(s) you speak. Lastly, my map shows what a small role formal, academic education plays in my ‘Learning Environment’. That was a bit surprising but quite good now that I’m finishing university and need to find out new ways to keep up my lifelong learning!

Elena

Criteria to evaluate sources of information

2007-11-30T08:32:00.000-08:00

(photo source)

Judging a source of information as reliable or not can be very hard and challenging! This has become even truer with the advent of Internet as an unlimited source of online books, journals, essays, abstracts, articles, reports, conference proceedings, etc. because anyone can put material on it and online publications are less controlled than paper ones.

I’d like to start with an overview of some Web tools you can use to retrieve useful sources online:
(My reflections are based on information I found in the University of Essex & Monash University websites)

SEARCH ENGINES
In general, to find useful sources, I start asking a search engine using keywords related to the subject I’m interested in. This is often very frustrating because you can end up with so many useless results. For this reason I usually have a look only at the first result pages; there you’re more likely to find relevant links, and if I don’t get anything interesting, I try to reformulate my query in the search bar. As stated in the University of Essex website, in order to cut off irrelevant material, you can enclose the words you want appear together within inverted commas, or you can use the Boolean operators. Sometimes I carry out advanced searches with Google; this way I can ask only for PDFs (this is the file type academic papers written by university professors or experts are mostly published) or for .edu, .ac.uk websites, which are more trustworthy since they’re websites of American or British universities.

META-SEARCH ENGINES & SPECIALIZED SEARCH ENGINES
Reading the Tips from the University of Essex allowed me to learn of meta-search engines, like Mamma (i.e. ‘search engines which search other search engines and give you the most relevant returns from each’), and of specialized search engines, such as Google Scholar, which enables you to search for scholarly literature (peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and technical reports) belonging to all areas of research.

WEB DIRECTORIES
According to the Monash University, Subject Gateways or Directories are lists of webpages, divided into subject areas; I’ve never considered the usefulness of such tools to find sources, but if you are interested in Languages and Linguistics, as I am, let’s have a look at these pages from Yahoo Directory (click here) and from Google Directory (click here). They show how much directories can be of help to quickly find out a number of relevant sites that undoubtedly deal with the subject you are doing research.

DATABASES
There are lots of repository sites offering lists of links to other sites that are arranged by topic and that can be trusted because they have been evaluated and selected by subject specialists; two examples are the Librarians' Internet Index and the Intute website.

By the way, whatever tool you might use to retrieve reference material, before opening a webpage, you should always have a look at the URL: the domain can tell you a lot about the organization hosting the webpage: whether it’s a commercial (.com or .co), educational (.edu or .ac), non-profit (.org), military (.mil), government (.gov), international (.int) organisation, etc. The fact that a webpage is hosted by a .edu or .gov organization is a further guarantee of its quality and relevance. Another thing you ought to look at is the site rating. For example, now that I can subscribe to feeds or bookmark on del.icio.us, I often check the number of subscribers a site has. If it’s high, this can be considered further evidence for its reliability.

CRITERIA I used or will use to evaluate sources of information (no matter whether they are on paper or on the Web)
(My reflections make reference to information I found both in Purdue’s OWL and San Diego State University websites)

TABLE OF CONTENTS & PREFACE
First of all, I always have a look at the table of contents in order to have an overview of what is discussed in each chapter or section of the source and so to decide if it’s worth reading it. Then, I always read the preface or introduction of a document to have a deeper insight into its content and to better understand what the author’s aim is.

AUTHORSHIP
I try to find out who the author is (this can be more difficult if the source is a webpage), and once I know the author, I search for further information about his/her career: what his/her profession and education level are, what else he/she has written, if he/she is an expert in the field and why. Finally, another relevant aspect is to see if the author is quoted in other sources and whether he/she gives a contact address; this is actually a good signal of the author’s responsibility.

TIMELINESS
Another point is the publication date: when the source was first published, if and when it has been revised or updated. This is quite important since outdated material cannot be useful any more.

PUBLISHER
As I’ve said above talking about the importance of the domain in the URL, the publisher’s reputability (in case of a webpage the organization hosting it) is meaningful too. According to OWL, some publishers ensure some quality control over the material, for example, ‘a university press or a government agency is likely to be a reputable source that reviews what it publishes’. As a matter of fact, the fact that a work has been reviewed increases its reliability.

AUDIENCE
In the preface (and this again proves the importance of reading it), the author usually says who his/her target is. If not, you can realize if you are the intended audience just by quickly reading through some passages and check if the style, level of information, and assumptions the author makes about the readership are appropriate for you. According to your general knowledge on the subject and to your purpose, the source may be too scholarly, too specialized, or too general to be valuable to you.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
You ought to check what material the author makes reference to in his/her work, if it is dependable and, thus, if it could be exploited for your research as well. For instance, I always check if the author documents the sources he uses both within the text and, at the end, by listing them in a bibliography; I carefully read through the bibliography to see if the reference material is valuable and might be helpful for me too.

Elena

Dreaming of the sea...

2007-11-25T06:39:00.000-08:00

Hi there!

And finally I found a video on YouTube that reveals something about me: my love for the sea and my romantic nature! This video shows where I spent the most beautiful holidays of my life. It was in Sardinia in summer 2006 (Arcipelago de La Maddalena: Budelli and Spargi islands) and that memorable and lovely landscapes are still intact in my heart…Now I can only dream of them!

I'm sure you'll love it too!

Elena

Language Learning -YouTube or not YouTube: that's the question!

2007-11-25T05:38:00.000-08:00

(photo source)

Hi everybody,

This time I’ll delight you with a post about…YOUTUBE!!! By the way, before speaking about how it can be exploited for language learning, I’d like to share with you some data I gathered both from rev2.org and from a video on YouTube. Founded by three young PayPal employees in February 2005, YouTube is a free service that lets users upload, share, and view video clips. The first video ever was published in April 2005, and now there are, on average, more than 65,000 uploads and 100 million videos being watched daily; with 30 million visitors per month, it is the fourth most visited website in the world!

Hence, there’s clear evidence that YouTube is one of the greatest things Web 2.0 is offering us: YouTube is changing, or rather increasing, the ways we experience the world! Geographical, social, cultural boundaries have been knocked out and, thanks to YouTube, you can easily upload videos and let anyone in the world know something about you. Moreover, you can watch videos about things, events, places, TV programmes, conferences, ads, people from any country, comment them, or even start discussions about any topic: from politics to gossip, from sports to music, from religion to education,…It’s so amazing, nearly unbelievable! What’s even more startling is that it’s entirely generated by users! It’s us who decide what YouTube looks like, i.e. its content!

I was wondering if ‘Its Majesty YouTube’ :-) can be of help for language learners and education in general. Since I’m a bit sceptical, my answer is: “Yes, but with some restrictions!”. Let’s begin saying why YouTube can be an educational tool: in YouTube (mainly under categories like ‘Howto & Style’, ‘News & Politics’, or in TeacherTube) you can find a lot of videos, presentations, lectures, and tutorials useful in order to learn more about a subject (maths, science, geometry, IT, social sciences, etc.) or how to do something, such as creating a blog with Blogger or uploading a YouTube video.

As far as language learning is concerned, YouTube is an unlimited resource for language acquisition; i.e. you can listen to all kinds of spoken language (formal, neutral, informal) and genres (comic sketches, songs, parodies, debates, political speeches, talk shows, lectures, everyday dialogues,...) and, thus, learn a lot of vocabulary too. I assume, however, that the main and only edge of YouTube over podcasts is that you can watch (and not only listen to) clips; this helps memorize and hold your attention high. In addition, YouTube offers quite a lot of authoritative presentations about Web 2.0 tools applied to education and language learning, or video lessons to learn English, such as EF PodEnglish videos. I also think that creating a discussion group around a video (see the one I did in my English course this week) is a good and fresh way to practice English since students have to develop skills such as arguing in a public context that goes beyond class boundaries.

However, exploring YouTube allowed me to know its negative aspects as well. I found out very vulgar, filthy, or simply stupid videos, and this made me cut back my trust in it as an educational tool. As an English teacher, either of a primary school or high school, I’d never suggest my students to use it freely for their self-learning. It’s too dangerous! The best way a teacher can use it is to download a given video and propose it to students in order to start discussions. Anyway, I quite agree on using it freely for students at university level since it’s assumed they’re critical enough to choose what videos can be helpful or not for their language learning. What do you think?

Bye,

Elena

Web 2.0 & Language Learning

2007-11-23T02:07:00.000-08:00

Hi world!

I was searching for a video on YouTube that says something about me, when I found something that says a lot about the English course I'm atteding at university this year! Hope it can be of help for my mates but also for anyone who visits my blog and doesn't fully undestand what I have been talking about for some weeks!

Enjoy it!

Elena

Exploring the world of podcasts with the eye of an ESL learner

2007-11-17T08:04:00.000-08:00

(photo source)

Dear all ,

In this post I’ll speak about learning English with podcasts. Let’s start with a definition of podcast (iPOD + broadCAST) from pcmag.com encyclopedia:

An audio broadcast that has been converted to an MP3 file or other audio file format [Podcasts can be available in a number of audio formats including WMA and AAC, though MP3 tends to be the most favoured format due to wide spread acceptance by pretty much all types of portable media devices.] for playback in a digital music player or computer. The "pod" in podcast was coined from "iPod," the predominant portable, digital music player, and although podcasts are mostly verbal, they may contain music. Using the RSS 2.0 syndication format, podcasts are made available to subscribers just like news feeds. The client program that captures the audio feeds and synchronizes them with the music player is a "podcatcher," such as Curry's own iPodder.

The definition itself suggests that the greatest advantage of podcasting is portability: you can listen to whatever you want wherever and whenever you want! Podcasts can be listened to online and even offline by downloading them on your computer, mobile phone, Ipod or any other Mp3 player. It's wonderful! Podcasts enable you to listen to TV and radio programmes, videos, conversations, lectures, news bulletins, interviews, documentaries and books at home, on your way to school or work,... All you need is a PC and a tool not much bigger than, let’s say, a lighter, which is called Mp3 player! True that something very similar was possible with walk-men or CD players, but the biggest difference is the easy and quickly access to plenty of freely downloadable podcasts and the great variety of podcast genres available, which is definitely without precedent.

I remember that, when I studied English in high school, the most cutting-edge technologies my English teacher might use were audio or videocassettes and CDs! This implies that listening activities could be done only on a small amount of stuff and only in a lab or in class provided that a VCR, a DVD player or a stereo was available! How things have changed!!! Nowadays we have thousands of English podcasts belonging to a wide range of text types (dialogues, reports, bulletins, lectures,…) and dealing with plenty of topics, from a beginner to an advanced level. However, I assume this is true only with reference to English…Unfortunately, I don’t think that podcasting has developed so much in other languages too.

By the way, your criticism is essential with so many podcasts! The Web is becoming a ‘rubbish can’ full of podcasts; some of which are really of poor help with language learning… In order to find out useful podcasts to learn English, I suggest you to search del.icio.us, podcastalley, or odeo (these last two allow you to browse podcasts by topics).

Here are four websites I subscribed to in order to be always updated on the most recent podcasts:

www.eslpod.com & www.china232.com/podcasts:

On both these sites you can listen to freely downloadable podcasts concerning any possible situation in daily life and, by clicking on the podcast titles, transcripts are available too. Podcasts are very didactic: they are followed by exhaustive and friendly explanations on the vocabulary used.

ESLPod.com has a singular approach to ESL learning with podcasts, which is well explained by this quote: "We believe the fastest way to improve your English is to listen to conversations and discussions you can understand. Many people try to improve their English by listening or reading things that are too difficult. They understand only 40-50%, which means they are wasting half of their time!" It’s so frustrating not to understand the greater part of what you are listening to! On ESLPod.com it’s impossible not to understand: it’s not that the language used is too easy, but that they provide English at a slower speed; in this way you have time to reflect on pronunciation, to memorize and take notes of new vocabulary. Of course, this is only a starting point to be able then to understand audioclips characterized by more natural English.

China232.com, instead, is a really useful tool to learn how a daily English conversation works. In the first part of each episode there is a dialogue on a given topic, while in the second part explanations about the expressions used are given in a dialogic style. This kind of podcasting is, therefore, particularly useful to learn real English, right intonation, rhythm, and speed in spoken conversations.

www.englishpod.com:
EnglishPod.com includes a huge ‘Podcast Archive’ dealing with business and regular English used in very common situations: giving feedback, being diplomatic, building relationships with people, making presentations, bargaining, making contact over the telephone, etc. Podcasts are arranged from an elementary to an advanced level so you can choose which ones to listen to. Unfortunately, while podcasts are free, transcripts, sample sentences, glossaries require paid subscription, yet even advanced-level podcasts are not very difficult and things are repeated several times, so that you have time to memorize and take notes of new structures.

www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today:
This is the web page 'Today' from BBC Radio 4. There you can listen to today’s top news; latest reports on politics, international issues, science & nature, arts & culture; interviews with important and powerful people on current affairs. It’s a very useful tool to get used to formal speeches on major issues and to the language of broadcasts.

I can't wait for reading your comments ;-)

Elena

Save, tag and share! It’s so good…Oops, sorry, so del.icio.us!!!

2007-11-13T09:30:00.000-08:00

(photo source)

“Power is knowledge shared” (by Reid G. Smith)

Here I am with a new post! Perhaps it’s a bit too long, but I assume it’s worth reading it! After Blogger, Technorati and Bloglines, this time I’ll tell you something about del.icio.us, that is to say social bookmarking!

Last week our English teacher, Sarah, taught us what social bookmarking is and how to use del.icio.us (see e-tivity 5). Social bookmarking means storing bookmarks (links to web pages) to a public website, such as del.icio.us, Google bookmarks, Yahoo Bookmarks, that offers a social bookmarking web service. This is really different from older ways of bookmarking. As I told you on my post “Subscribe to Bloglines? Yes, please”, before I saved URLs under Favorites in Internet Explorer; this implies that it was only me who could access my bookmarks and that I could see them only from my computer at home.

Well, why is social bookmarking so revolutionary? Quite straightforward! It’s social! This means not only that, as a del.icio.us user, you can easily save web pages you usually visit and access them from any computer with an Internet connection, but also – and even more important – that you can share your online bookmarks with other people. These are the main advantages of using social bookmarking!

Since online bookmark services are public, you can search them (they’re supposed to be more authoritative than search engines since the bookmarks have been filtered somehow by the people who have saved them), see who has stored a given bookmark, go to his/her page and look at his/her bookmarks. But you can also create a network of people that, let’s say, have your same interests and this allows you to see all the bookmarks that have been stored on your network. This is exactly what I did in my e-tivity 5: I built up a network with all the members of my group (group E), so that I can see all the URLs they bookmark on del.icio.us!

Another great advantage is that social bookmarks can be associated with a brief summary of their content and, above all, with tags (e.g. ‘language’, ‘phonetics’ ‘ESL’, podcast’) instead of being arranged into folders as it was with traditional bookmarking systems. That’s great! Because this enable you to narrow your search and retrieve only the bookmarks that have been joined to a given tag! And, in addition, you no longer have to remember in which folder you saved this or that URL among ‘Your Favorites’!

However, I read in Wikipedia that tag-based systems present some drawbacks, which I myself have actually experienced; for example, mistagging due to spelling mistakes or the fact that there is no standard: capitalization, singular vs. plural (‘idiom’ or ‘idioms’? ‘English’ or ‘english’?). Have you ever dealt with such a problem when tagging?

By the way, I mostly appreciated the ‘social side’ of del.icio.us! It’s a powerful tool to share your ‘discoveries on the Web’ with people who have your same interests…For example, in our class we all share the passion for foreign languages, of course; therefore, adding my group mates to my network enabled me to visit all the websites they bookmarked on del.icio.us that deal with language learning!

And now… I’ll give you a taste of what my mates found out!

Camilla: common mistakes
“It is a list of common mistakes in English. It looks like a short dictionary of common mistakes.”

Mistake is such an eye-catching word for ESL students like me! I‘ve been studying English for so many years, but I still make so silly mistakes. :-( That’s why I found this site so useful even for advanced language learners. It consists of pairs of words, alphabetically sorted, which are spelled similarly but have a completely different use and meaning; for example, to refresh my memory, I had a look at the difference between anyone/any one, continual/continuous, economic/economical, hanged/hung, sensual/sensuous.

Silvia: History Channel
“This website can be an useful tool for researching information and learning something more about history. It includes also interesting videos and you can listen to famous speeches.”

I’m fond of history and Silvia’s words struck me immediately! The History Channel is an effective tool not only to learn a bit more about our present and past history, but also to practice your listening skills with the language used on TV or radio programmes. This site is definitely absorbing: when you start watching videos, you’ll never stop! For example, I watched a video about the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, then one about the launch of Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, by the Soviet Union in 1951, and then a video about global warming too. Just out of curiosity: do you know that from 2000 to 2006 we lost 22% of the ice on Mount Kilimanjaro and that by 2020 it will have completely disappeared? So fearful!

Veronica: useful guide to English punctuation
“This is a helpful guide to English punctuation that describes the correct use of each punctuation mark and provides useful examples.”

I’m especially interested in punctuation and I found this site extremely thorough. I’d suggest you to read “Why Learn to Punctuate?”. Just two quotes from it that I consider very meaningful: ‘The problem with poor punctuation is that it makes life difficult for the reader who needs to read what you've written’; ‘every punctuation mark has one or more particular jobs to do, and every one should be used always and only to do those jobs.’

Marina: English Idioms
“A brief list of English idioms with clear descriptions and examples. There are quizzes as well.”

I chose this site because idioms are part of the language and the culture of a country, and it’s a lot of fun to see if and how Italian expressions can be translated idiomatically into English or vice versa! In addition, examples make it easier to remember idioms because you can see how they are used in context.

Martina: British Council's site
“The site connects people with learning opportunities and creative ideas. You can find opportunities and news on the UK and the English learning.”

I’ve never been to England so I was quite interested in this site! There I found a lot of information on learning opportunities in the U.K., exchange programmes, how to study English in Great Britain, costs and possible sources of funding. My attention was drawn to the section ‘About postgraduate study’, which let me know what a MA, MSc, MRes, Mphil, MBA or a PhD is, and to the section ‘Living in the U.K.’, which provides a lot of tips on ‘surviving’ in England (accommodation, health and safety, contacting home,…).

Absolutely del.icio.us, isn’t it?

Bye,

Elena

4 good reasons for celebrating Halloween also in Italy!

2007-11-03T04:36:00.000-07:00

Hi, guys!

Here are 4 good reasons to celebrate Halloween also in Italy:

1. Halloween is simply an occasion to have fun and organize parties with friends! It is like any other celebration, when people just party together…

2. You think that Halloween is only a waste of money? Well, for the same reason you should not celebrate Carnival, New Year’s day, St Valentine’s day, Lady Day, mid-August holiday, Mother’s/ Father’s day,…Nor should you buy presents for Christmas! What a flat life!!!In addition, you don't necessarely have to spend a lot of money in order to celebrate Halloween!

3. If you believe that Halloween is another example of Europe americanization, you should bear in mind that…Halloween is NOT an American celebration; it has European origins and was exported to America by the Celts around the 1840s (click here for a brief history of Halloween).

4. From a religious point of view, it is a pagan tradition! Yes, obviously it’s up to you to celebrate it or not, but nowadays most people who celebrate Halloween don’t care about its origins or religious implications. By chance, do you know that also Carnival seems to have pagan origins? If you are curious click here. However, Halloween has obviously lost its original meaning, and now it's only a day when kids, teenagers or even adults enjoy themselves dressing up, carving their Jack-O’-Lantern or doing ‘trick or treat’! What still remains, maybe, is the appeal for death, horror, spooks, mysteries,…

All the same, it’s important to know the significance of Halloween symbols and its history and to have a bit of cultural awareness! So please read something about its origins, there are so many sites dedicated to this celebration:

http://www.halloween.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

http://www.holidays.net/halloween/

http://www.history.com/minisites/halloween/

http://wilstar.com/holidays/hallown.htm

Do you agree with me?

I look forward to reading your comments!

Bye, bye!

Elena

Subscribe to Bloglines? Yes, please!

2007-11-03T03:13:00.000-07:00

(photo source)

Hi everybody,

I am getting more and more expert in blogging! This week I have learnt how to register for an aggregator, i.e. Bloglines, and subscribe to RSS feeds (see e-tivity 4)! WOW! Am I a prodigy of skill or not??? Not at all, it is simply a matter of patience and boldness!

Since I cannot attend the lab lessons and, in my life, never had I heard words like ‘aggregator’ or ‘feed’, I felt terribly demoralized when I saw the task of e-tivity 4 for the first time! My first thought was: “ I’ll never be able to do such things alone! What a mess this e-tivity! Things are getting too tricky!”, but soon after I said to myself: “Come on, Elena! Have a go! If you don’t try, you won’t succeed!” At first I had some difficulties of course, but thanks to some help from my group mates and the videos Sarah kindly put on our course blog I finally managed! Cheers!

To tell the truth, now that I’ve fulfilled the task I must say that Bloglines is one easy and extremely helpful tool:
- to subscribe to RSS, XML RSD, or XML feeds;
- to know very quickly and at one stroke if the blogs or websites of your interest have been updated with new posts and to read them immediately;
- to create a playlist where your feeds can be sorted out according to the topic they deal with (ex.: travelling, animals, music, sports, literature, friends, etc.);
- to go directly with one click on the title to a blog/site to read a new post and comment it.

It is out of doubt that I didn’t even believe that such tools could exist, or rather that they were freeware and so user-friendly…Before I would use more traditional methods to check if a blog or a website had been updated or not: in Internet Explorer I saved the URL under ‘Preferiti’, whereas in my personal blog under ‘Blogroll’ and went through all of them one by one every time…What a waste of time now that I know about Bloglines!

And you, either as a blogger or as a regular Net user looking for the latest news from the world, do you think that aggregators are useful tools or do you still prefer traditional approaches? If so, why?

Bye,

Elena

PS: I hope that Sarah will post videos any time she explains new technologies; they are vital for students who cannot attend!Thanks very much for your help, Sarah ;-)

Becoming a blogger!

2007-10-25T12:27:00.000-07:00

photo by a trying youth

Hi,

Two weeks have already gone since when, for the first time in my life, I wrote a post in a blog, and with this ‘rite’ I was inititiated into the blogosphere, completely unaware that, in so little time, I would find myself updating my blog every second I can! Actually, my blog is really becoming ‘my living room’!

Obviously, in these two or three weeks I am attending my last English course at university, I have learnt several things about blogging: what a blog is, how to create my blog, how to send a good post, what the function of tags is, how to insert an image using Flickr, what rules belong to blog etiquette, how to search the blogosphere with Technorati, and so on.
It was, however, precisely e-tivity 2 which, unexpectedly, marked a turning point in my way of thinking about blogging: visiting a significant number of blogs made me abandon my strong belief that blogging was the latest rage among computer addicted people and that a blog was merely ‘a more technological and public version of a diary’, where one talks about his or her individual life. But what a wrong preconception!

I was positively surprised by the greatness and the variety of blogs…I had to reconsider them as creative and enjoyable tools not only to speak about our personal life and interests, or to keep in contact with ‘e-friends’, but also to widen our knowledge of the world through a constructive exchange of ideas. It is precisely this what I mostly appreciate about blogs: through them people can discuss not only frivolous things of everyday life, but also very relevant issues and events of public interest.
At this point a distinction should be made between you as writer of your blog and you as reader of other blogs:

- Writing your own blog means sharing your ideas and opinions on a topic in a virtual space where anyone can read them with the advantage of receiving other people’s comment – also from people that you do not know and that may live in a context/culture very different from yours. Therefore, it is a wonderful vehicle for spreading information, culture, ideas, plans,… and, first of all, for seeing other viewpoints, and thus broadening your horizons.

- As a reader of other people’s blogs, you can get a lot of information and sources on a given fact, theme, or problem; you can look for people who are keen on a particular thing and ask them for advice. I like thinking the blogosphere as ‘a huge, miscellaneous hyperbook’ free and available to anyone who just wants to read, read and read for educational or social purposes, or simply for his/her delight.

The use of blogs in the field of CALL, as a language learning tool, has been a revelation to me: thanks to the English blogging course I am attending, I can appreciate the usefulness of blogs to enrich my vocabulary and to practice different English registers (from formal to informal) with respect to both reading and writing. Moreover, on the World Wide Web there are a number of blogs dealing with language learning and translation, which are two fields I am particularly interested in; such blogs can be important sources of information and tools to improve our language skills. Of course, like anything you find on the Internet, you should always pay attention on the reliability and authority of the blogs you visit, especially when you do this for learning purposes!

Bye!

Elena

A friendly welcome!

2007-10-19T10:25:00.000-07:00

Photo by Ivan Makarov

Hi! I am Elena, an Italian girl of 23, and I am studying foreign languages at the University of Padua!

After a long search in order to find an image that best represents my personality, I finally found this wonderful picture of McWay Waterfall beach in Big Sur (California) - one of the few waterfalls in the world that empties directly into the ocean.

Why did I choose it?

It is simply my essence: a fusion of those elements that can make me feel as living in paradise: sun, sea, sand, silence broken by the sound of waves and waterfalls...pure nature. As a matter of fact, one of my passions is meditation and by contemplating images representing uncontaminated landscapes (such as the one above) or by listening to relaxing music made of sounds taken from the natural world (the sound of burning fire, of water or wind, the bird-song,…) as in New Age and Indian songs, I can relax and look for what I would define as ‘my peace of mind’.

I like daydreaming a lot and above all dreaming about things that perhaps I will never realize in my life, for example by looking at this image I can dream of me walking on that beach…plunging into the water…or lying down on the foreshore and look at the sunset…or just listening to the sounds surrounding me! Yes…definitely this is me!

Have fun reading my blog!

Elena