Hi, everybody!
I'm supposed to write some reflections about my first two weeks of blogging. Do you see the photo on the left? Well, it perfectly explains what kind of approach I had with this activity at first!
I knew what a blog was, of course, but I had never used one before. I usually don’t spend a lot of time navigating the internet, especially because I still don’t have the ADSL line at home, so my parents go out of their heads when they recieve the telephone bill! For this reason (and for many others ;-) !), I’ve never developed my t
echnological skills more than what was strictly necessary. So, try to image what my reaction was when I realized I would have to spend many and many and many hours developing my personal blog for the following eight months! Yes! I immediately became sad, worried and angry like the poor Donald Duck you see in the image on the right! So, I must admit that I began my experience on blogs a little mistrustful. But at the same time, I entertained hope because teachers told us that this year course would have been a good opportunity to improve our written and spoken English. And I need to improve a lot my English! I knew that it would have implied a lot of effort, but how can you better without any effort? Fortunately, after a first moment of disorientation, things have been bettered. I’m gradually finding my feet with blogging and soon I’ll have the ADSL line at home! :) After two weeks, I can say that the idea of blogging is quite good; I’ve seen that it’s a very useful way to share information. For example, thanks to my peers, I’ve discovered a great blog on recipes (thanks, Marta!), I got new information on translation tools, and I visited new web sites on travels, which could be very useful to plan my travel to Scotland. To tell the truth, I sometimes find difficulties in writing my posts and comments: I don’t like writing very much, especially because I spend many time to think about what to say and write: I’m a pedantic “writer”, so I want my thoughts to be expressed very well and I work a lot on my English, which should be as correct as possible. I surely should work more on the time, because I can’t spend the whole afternoon to write few lines… I’ve many others things to study!
As regard the language, I think that blogging could be very useful to improve our English. Until now, the English teachers have insisted on writing skills focusing particularly on formal register and academic writing. I was used to write in a formal way, so now I’m not still able to manage the colloquial written style, but I’m sure we’ll be able to learn it, even because blogging means a constant exercise and exchange of information. I still find difficulties in memorizing new words but I believe that continuing reading and writing every week is a good chance to improve my register. I hope that all this effort will bear fruit!
See you soon!
Bye bye!
Martina
3 commenti:
Hi Martina!! Somewhere over the rainbow..there are optmistic people like you! Wow, I do like your blog and the enthusiasm it conveys through all those pictures! It really confirms the first impression I got: you do seem an optimistic and serene person!
As for your comments on the Blogosphere: I think what you have written really mirrors my own experience (a part from the fact that I do have a high speed connection, unlike you..so I have no excuse for my inability to explore the Web!). As you said, after puzzlement there comes satisfaction and enthusiasm: surfing the Net can let you discover interesting websites and blogs, as well as share experience and information with your peers.. But above all I think this course will give us the chance to get used to a quite informal English style, which is not the usual kind of register we have been taught.. Like you, I still find some difficulties in learning new words, but I noticed that reading other people's posts can be quite useful. Take for example the expression "to find one's feet" that you used in your post: as it was new to me I immediately checked its meaning on the dictionary, trying to memorize it. This is a good example of how cooperation works, even at linguistic levels!
Now, Martina, let me add one or two suggestions on the language you have used in your post:
1. I would say you should rather use "high speed connection" instead of ADSL line (Sarah corrected the same expression in one of our posts!)
2. be careful when you use negations together with Advs: for example, "I don't usually spend.." is more correct than "I usually don't spend.." English is such a tricky language, isn't it?
3. I am not sure you can say "things have been bettered": why don't you say "things have improved" instead?
4. I'm afraid the expression "I spend many time" is not correct: since "time" is an uncountable noun, you should use "I spend much time" instead. Again, English is such a tricky language!
Well, I hope my few suggestions will be useful to you!!
;-) Marta
Hi Martina! Let me say that I really love the layout you chose for your blog! When I saw the headline taken from Louis Amstrong's song and "The wizard of Oz's" soundtrack I started to sing because I like these songs very much. What is more, the pictures you put in are fantastic, they are so relaxing!. I think that the image with the cheeky computer gives a very clear idea of your initial attitude towards this kind of activities! And I believe that it was pretty the same for many of us.
I agree with you when you say that our blog and our course blog are a great opportunity to exchange information and to learn new things from each other. The bad thing is that I spend a lot of time thinking what to write and to find the best way to express my thoughts. Reading what you wrote I can see that we both agree about the fact that there is so little time to do all this! But I also believe that this is a great chance to improve my writing skills, so I'll try to do my best and learn from my mistakes.
As regards language I very liked the sentence "I hope that all this effort will bear fruit", it gives the idea of a sort of hope for our linguistic future!
My suggestions are:
1.You could use "deal with the colloquial written style" instead of "manage the colloquial written style".
2.I'm not sure about the expression "things have been bettered". maybe you could use "things have improved".
That's all, I hope my suggestions will be useful to you!
Bye bye
Giovanna
Hi Marty!
Hats off to you for the wonderful job you did with your blog: it's absolutely fantastic! Despite your early mistrust and your lack of familiarity with this strange machine called pc, your page seems to have been realized by an expert "e-designer", because it shows the right balance between the information given in the posts and the other features that perfectly express your outgoing personality. Let's take, for example, the photos: they make your blog livelier and clearly transmit the care with which you tried to personalize your virtual space. I think that in the next months you will discover the pleasure of playing with buttons and links and will find the way to make your on-line diary even more eye-catching!
As for your efforts to use English properly, you shouldn’t worry: in my opinion your style has greatly improved over these years and since we are not mother-tongue speakers and we haven’t still lived abroad for long periods some mistakes can be forgivable (or can’t they?)! As I’ve already told Marta, I tend to read my posts over and over again to avoid inaccuracies as much as I can (and I regularly fail!), so I share your sense of frustration when you say that you have to spend many hours looking up words in the vocabulary and checking the correct use of prepositions. However, I find this course particularly challenging: it is a great opportunity to test ourselves against informal English, that kind of register that, generally, you never have the chance to practise until you find at the supermarket in London and you need to get the meaning across! You’ll see, we will manage to do it and then we can rely upon our peers’ help!
See you soon,
Elena
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