Be creative!

Hello all!
Hope you're doing well.

I'm feeling veeery good! I love these beautiful sunny days of autumn...there's a fresh breeze that make me feel happy without any reason!

BTW...I'm here just to tell you about an interesting blog.
I don't know about you, but I'm a passionate follower of any design product, especially concerning arts, fashion and accessories (bags, purses, rings, bangles, bracelets, earrings, etc.) and while I was surfing the net for bangles I found that blog: Coscablog. The blog is written in italian, and it's really absorbing and full of interesting information.
I love everything that comes from a creative process.

Hope you like it.
I also put the link in my blogroll.

Bye
Giorgia

Pics,pics...and pics again!

Hello all,

I found a wonderful image/video hosting, slideshow creation and photo sharing website that allows you to upload your pics and also modify them...It's called Photobucket.
The services offered are very interesting and there's a lot of space (bytes) for each account.
Check the tiny little icons I put beside my post-footer elements...I downloaded them from Photobucket!

Have fun!

Bye
Giorgia

I'm back...for a while!

Hi guys,
hope you're all doing well!

I've been very busy lately, but fortunately everything is going quite well.
I'll be resting a few days at the seaside so I won't update my blog as usual. Actually, as you can see I didn't work too much on my page during the last month...exams, study, exams, study! And now I'll take a well-earned rest :)

So...Have a good summer!

Bye
Giorgia

P.S. I'll do my best to succeed in writing something, if not, I'll be there again in September when I'm going to start my thesis...I'll need your support! :)

Hard Times!

Hi everybody...are you doing?

I just wanna tell you that I'm still alive :)
I'm studying a lot 'cos I have a couple of tough exams to do.
However, as soon as I finish them (successfully, I hope!) I will be back on the spot!!!

Take care

Bye
Giorgia

I write, You write...Everybody writes!

Hello all!

Hope you're doing well!

I was googlin' around in search of some good tips to improve my writing skills and I found an interesting blog called Copyblogger. Go and take a look to the right side bar...there's plenty of articles, concerning blogging and writing in general. The style is fresh and catchy.

Have a look to the article on Ernest Hemingway's tips for writing well...as Copyblogger says "Who better?" :)

Hope you like the blog!

Bye
Giorgia

My Tube!

Hello all!

I know classes have just finished but - as I said in my previous post - my learning path will go on and on, and on...and my blog will keep on helping me in this process!

During our last class my classmates and I talked with Sarah about the benefits of music & videos in learning English. Almost everybody agreed on the fact that listenting to music and watching videos in English turn to be particularly useful to improve our vocabulary, especially when combining these practices with the reading of lyrics, original subtitles or translation into English.

Personally, I've always thought about the fact that music was helpful to improve my pronunciation & vocabulary but I never tought before that rhythm could help me with intonation. Good discovery for me and for my obsession with 'paduan' accent! :)

As you can read in some of my last posts (here and here), I love music, videos and I join these passions using YouTube. It's an amazing tool!
In particular, I like the fact that in YouTube you can find loads of cartoon videos, such as The Simpson or Family Guy. I find this kind of videos extremely useful. They represent a good way to approach - in a foreign language - difficult communicative techniques, such as irony, cynicism, mockery or satire, using simple and immediate tools, that's to say images/cartoons.

Well, I can't post there every single video I found interesting but I want to give you an info to key in YouTube: "Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy". It is a channel that is broadcast directly on YouTube by BurgerKing®; the cartoons that are broadcast are drawn by Seth MacFarlane (the same cartonist of Family Guy). Hope that nobody get offended by the "adult-oriented" content ;)
BTW, they are awesome!

Have fun!

Bye
Giorgia

Mapping my mind out!

Hello all!

You know that my classmates and I have been through a long process of building up our own learning environment (see here and here). What I want to do in this post is to recap what I've done and learned so far.

My big little steps:

• I took Sarah's language classes to be guided in the building up of my PLE (from both a linguistic and computering viewpoint);
• I started running my own blog;
• I made a first draft of my possible [desired ;)] language path. I wrote on a piece of paper the aspects of my English that I'd have wanted to improve (writing & spoken interaction);
• I worked on mutual feedback with my classmates;
• I tried to take advantage of any profitable situations, using English whenever it was possible (e.g. DVDs, books, TV programs);
• I learned to use many interesting tools, such as GoogleDocs or Google Scholar (see Utilities on my blog's sidebar); they helped me to limit, perfect and focus my exploration of the Net in search of useful tips to improve my English.

As you can see the project involved a lot of aspects that had to be handled simultaneously. It was difficult to learn, search, study & improve at the same time but in the end the hard work is worth it. What's more, this kind of work - building up my PLE - will finish by neither the end of the English course nor the end of my academic career: your PLE is your own learning path, it's yours so it can last forever and be changed whenever you want!

Here it is the mindmap of my personal learning environment: MY PLE.

Bye
Giorgia
(photo source)