About technology

There is only a thing...

Today I've been talking for an hour with a girl who lives in the USA, thanks to an exchange organized by my Language course at the University.

This morning I had to take a train To go to Padua to pick up a piece of paper to do my Easter homework for my Language course at the University.

Technology is a strange thing!

Hello, are you there?

There? Where?
I don't know, but that was the first thing that came into my mind to be sure that our phone call started! at the beginning it was...awkward! Because we do not know each other, but we were supposed to talk about several things!

We started in English, so that Elena could feel at ease, and talking about University, and why she decided to study Italian, I understood that her family (or rather part of it) live in a city very near to my Rovigo!

Then we went on talking about the new topic: terrorism and immigrants. I learnt a lot of things!For example, I thought that the"typical" immigrant in US came from Europe, or China, but now there are a lot of people coming from Mexico!
I appreciate the opportunity to ask her how did she feel about 9/11, because in Italy we saw it was a tragedy, but probably we felt it as a thing very far from us. I think she was a bit disappointed for my answer about terrorism, but she asked me about an "experience" (my own or my parents') that I could not tell her. It is quite strange but these are events so recent that we didn't study at school, and we are too young, so we didn't experienced it!
We talked a bit about election too, because Iraq is an important point in the candidates' programs, and it is time for election in US.

It was a nice experience! Really I was worried to succeed (technology problems of any kind could emerge!), but everything was all right!
I enjoyed it.

Padova-Dickinson: task 3

Ok group,
our task for Monday is to come up as a group with an interesting question about American Culture, looking at the answers they've given to the questionnaire!

We can start from my blog, where I'll suspend "moderazione dei commenti" for this week, and then we will post to our course-blog the question!

Looking at the wiki, I read that two topics we were interested in are politics and immigrants, and those two are the more different visions between Italy and America.
Then, there is another interesting observation written by Alberto about the idea of individualism...

The thing is Sarah pointed out we should come up with a question that could provoke interesting discussion, not that easy eh?
So, start making comments to say what you think could be an interesting topic!
I'll be waiting for your answers!

listen to the music....

I'm working quite hard, and I have little time to write... But I'm not only studying... the 7th of March I will have a concert, so my sister and I are studying, or at least trying!!

We'll perform a very particular duet: bassoon and guitar! we'll play this Paçoca, among many other works of Brazilian authors. I particularly like Brazilian music, and so to make you forgive my absence I post this video, obviously a flute and a bassoon are very different, but I hope you'll enjoy!

That's why I'm not blogging...

Have you ever heard of "Le sudate carte"? Leopardi knew how hard University can be !

That's what is keeping me busy!
Hope to finish soon...

Viva Viva la Befana!

As far as I know La befana is a whole Italian tradition, and once it was the only occasion in which children were given gifts! The Coca-cola hadn't provide Santa yet! (Before I was born, of course!)
When I was a child I accurately chose the socks to put near the window (we haven't a fireplace, so...). They had to be long, and strong enough to stand the weight of all my sweets... Before the 6th I wrote a letter to her explaining what a good girl I had been, but I've always found a bit of coal inside, which is the gift for those children who didn't behave very well, probably it was a way to explain that we can always improve!


Once, I saw her coming to our house, she arrived not flying on a sweep, but with an old Fiat Cinquecento; me, my sister and my cousins were outside in that very moment, playing something or running, I cannot remember, but what I cannot forget is that I was so scared... My cousin, who was a little older, and couldn't believe in such things, went on claiming that she was a fake, but the thing was that all our relatives were there, so it was hard to identify her real identity. To my eyes she actually was the real Befana, and I think that was the better gift I could receive!

...something like 10 years later we finally managed to understand who she was, anyway that's not important, our parents organized a marvellous surprise!

La befana vien di notte
con le scarpe tutte rotte
col vestito alla romana
viva viva la Befana!

Merry Christmas!

I was quiet sceptical about writing a post to describe my Christmas celebration before reading the comment to my last post, but now that I'm sure there's at least one's going to read me, I can't avoid!

This has been a very lucky Christmas, I had marvellous presents, such as time to reflect on what this Christmas means to me, chance to look into my friend's eyes wishing them a merry Christmas... I've seen my little cousins opening their presents as if there is nothing else they want, I've made some of Christmas presents by myself, and I saw how surprised was who received them, while I was afraid they could consider them too poor as presents...

It has been a Christmas full of joy, and I managed to organize what I usually have to do for this celebration in order to have time enough to do everything! And that was the great present I made to myself! I've seen so many people around me to remember me that I'm so lucky!

I wish all my Christmas could be so full of joy and laughing!

And I wish you are spending great time during this holiday!

What about Christmas?

I was wondering around the blogosphere, and of course reading many posts about Christmas, when I started thinking about writing my own post about Christmas... Then I realized that I 'm supposed to use English to write in this blog of mine, and I was considering how hard it could be to write down all my thoughts about Christmas (my feelings towards this celebration, what I'm doing for it etc, etc...).

To use a second language to express yourself is not that difficult, if you're not describing the way you feel; then you have to make an effort to find the right words, and it always seems to me that there are no words to translate exactly what you mean, because there are so many shades of meaning you're aware of when you're using your mother tongue, that you inevitably feel uncomfortable translating them!

On the other hand, that forces me to think before start writing, instead of writing whatever comes into my head! Which is of course an advantage for people who read my posts, they could never find a subsequence of words that means almost nothing... I hope!

I know that it has not a lot to do with Christmas, but it was thinking about Christmas that I made this sort of thought! So, I'll write something about the celebration during Christmas Holiday!

Our last activity... or just latest?

Hi guys!

Have you seen Sarah's post? We're going to work hard during Christmas Holiday!!

Anyway, she suggested us to get peer feedback before sending the papers, so... probably it would be useful to know our e-mail addresses!Thinking about it... you can send a comment on this post with your e-mail address, as you now perfectly know I read them before publishing (moderazione dei commenti is active on my blog), so I can read your addresses, then I'll send you an e-mail with our group's e-mail, and then I won't publish your comment, so that I'll be the only one able to read them!

Hopefully it will be easier to do than to explain!

Let me know whether you agree or not!
bye

My personal learning environment

This idea of environment where you learn is.... amazing! I've never thought of it, but actually I'm learning more from what I do in my everyday life than from the number of lessons I attend, and attended in the last years. I'm not saying that those lessons were of no use to me, rather I spent more time out of those lessons, so it is important to define a Personal Language Environment in order to keep on learning!


Let's start identify my Personal Learning Environment at University: my formal education consists of mainly two kind of language lessons at University, one is normally called 'lettorato', where we are supposed to train our language skill, and then there are Language Lessons in which we reflect on the grammar and its rules.
The first are occasion of speaking, and also writing in English, we did activities such as translation, or peer revision, so you can learn from your mates, you can collect suggestions and you learn also correcting them (we make almost the same mistakes...). Our mother-tongue teachers indicate us the best tools to improve our English even outside the lesson.
The second are the classical idea of an English lesson, where we learn the general rules and how to apply them when we're writing and speaking.
Another important part of my formal education are literature lessons, the aim of these lessons is not to teach us anything about the language, but of course they are a way of learning a lot about the culture of the language we're studying, and considering that, mostly in the final years, our teachers speak in English during the lessons, they are surely a way of improving our listening skill.

Then we can go and see the things I do to improve my English... First of all related to those Literature lessons I was talking about, I read a lot of books, and many of them are in English, for example I read all the seven volumes of Harry Potter in English, and that caused me the impossibility of talking about Harry Potter with anybody who read it in Italian, because many of the names of the characters, and of the places are translated (try and guess how many of my friends read it in English...). Normally I like to read in English when it is the language in which the book is written, I would never read any italian book in another language it would sound too strange to me!

Sometimes I read articles from English newspapers, my favourite is The Independent, because it has an easy site to navigate and it is not as formal as others like The Guardian, or full of rumours like The Sun.
I like listening to the music, and of course many of the songs are in English... I'm not convinced that listening to English songs help you that much to improve your language, but surely you update your knowledge because they contain a lot of contractions or informal use of the language!
I'm not forgetting my blog, and all the tools that this first semester provided me, but they are the latest! First of all my blog, where I write once a week to do my homework, but that would be part of my formal education, the thing is that I'm really enjoying this activity, and I started wondering the blogosphere or reading other blogs, and I even subscribed those blogs with Bloglines, so that I track them!
I'm not using so much podcasts, but I'm watching different videos on YouTube and some of them are in English, but that was an activity I did before my latest discoveries on the net, because sometimes I like to watch films in their original language!
Unfortunately I've no great opportunities to travel, but sometimes I go abroad, and those are the best occasion to test your use of the language, and to improve your ability.
I wish I could test my ability more often!


P.S. my personal computer is... in the hospital now, so I couldn't use my scanner to graphically write my PLE, I'll do it as soon as possible!
bye