Last week we learnt another interesting tool, which can be very useful for our e-learning process. It’s de.licio.us, a website created for social bookmarking. Your question will probably be: what’s social bookmarking? Well, instead of bookmarking your favourite websites and blogs on your own computer at home, you can use this site to post them in a sort of community, where everybody can save the URL of the sites they found interesting while surfing the net. In particular, we used de.licio.us to create a list of many useful links to English e-learning resources. I think it’s a good chance to compare our results and find out interesting websites we can just visit once or we can use more frequently as reference sources to improve our English skills.
I was asked to choose one from each of my classmates’ bookmarks and go visit it. Many of us picked the same websites (the most common were those of BBC or on-line dictionaries) or focused on the same topics (for example, many of us posted feeds concerning listening activities). I read all the notes my peers wrote to introduce their sites carefully. I think we all chose useful sites and blogs and I was really happy when I realized that everybody selected at least one fun study site. I think that the best way to improve a language is to play with it and use it in a relaxed entertaining way. Then, after choosing and visiting one site for each peer, I decided to write down my personal top five, giving you the links and a brief summary. In this way, if you’re interested in one of them (or maybe all of them…who knows?) you can go straight to the source. I hope you’ll enjoy it.
ELISA suggested:
http://www.elllo.org/
This site offers many recorded conversations and interviews about various topics. It is a very useful website for those who need to improve their English listening skills. After listening to each audio file you can test yourself through a related quiz and you find the complete transcription, as well. This can be very useful for self-study, because all the tools you need are provided by the site.
GIOVANNA suggested:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/
This website is an on-line writing lab. It suggests you how to write different kinds of texts properly, such as academic papers, professional and technical texts. You find many downloadable PowerPoint files concerning different text-types, and there are also good links to grammar resources.
VALENTINA suggested:
http://web.ku.edu/idea/index.htm
It’s so fascinating to see how the English pronunciation changes from one country to another! In this website you find many recordings of native speakers coming from all over the world, so you can listen to many example of different accents and pronunciations or, as they call them, “English language dialects”. Just click on the continent and then to the country to download the mp3 and the transcription.
EVA suggested:
http://www.readprint.com/
This is an on-line library offering a wide variety of free books ready to be printed. You can look through a long list of authors to find the author you desire. By clicking on the name, you’ll go to an introductory page with biography, notes and a list of downloadable works divided into fiction, non-fiction, poetry and essays.
ALICE suggested:
http://www.acronymfinder.com/
This site is an acronym and abbreviation dictionary. In the introduction they say that it is “the world's largest and most comprehensive dictionary of acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms”. I think it’s very useful when you don’t understand their meaning or when you want to check if they are the same in English and your own language (they are often common mistakes!).
I was asked to choose one from each of my classmates’ bookmarks and go visit it. Many of us picked the same websites (the most common were those of BBC or on-line dictionaries) or focused on the same topics (for example, many of us posted feeds concerning listening activities). I read all the notes my peers wrote to introduce their sites carefully. I think we all chose useful sites and blogs and I was really happy when I realized that everybody selected at least one fun study site. I think that the best way to improve a language is to play with it and use it in a relaxed entertaining way. Then, after choosing and visiting one site for each peer, I decided to write down my personal top five, giving you the links and a brief summary. In this way, if you’re interested in one of them (or maybe all of them…who knows?) you can go straight to the source. I hope you’ll enjoy it.
ELISA suggested:
http://www.elllo.org/
This site offers many recorded conversations and interviews about various topics. It is a very useful website for those who need to improve their English listening skills. After listening to each audio file you can test yourself through a related quiz and you find the complete transcription, as well. This can be very useful for self-study, because all the tools you need are provided by the site.
GIOVANNA suggested:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/
This website is an on-line writing lab. It suggests you how to write different kinds of texts properly, such as academic papers, professional and technical texts. You find many downloadable PowerPoint files concerning different text-types, and there are also good links to grammar resources.
VALENTINA suggested:
http://web.ku.edu/idea/index.htm
It’s so fascinating to see how the English pronunciation changes from one country to another! In this website you find many recordings of native speakers coming from all over the world, so you can listen to many example of different accents and pronunciations or, as they call them, “English language dialects”. Just click on the continent and then to the country to download the mp3 and the transcription.
EVA suggested:
http://www.readprint.com/
This is an on-line library offering a wide variety of free books ready to be printed. You can look through a long list of authors to find the author you desire. By clicking on the name, you’ll go to an introductory page with biography, notes and a list of downloadable works divided into fiction, non-fiction, poetry and essays.
ALICE suggested:
http://www.acronymfinder.com/
This site is an acronym and abbreviation dictionary. In the introduction they say that it is “the world's largest and most comprehensive dictionary of acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms”. I think it’s very useful when you don’t understand their meaning or when you want to check if they are the same in English and your own language (they are often common mistakes!).
1 commento:
HI!!
You've done a great job! I like your list of top five very much. Your descriptions really give the idea of what the sites are about. If I had to choose one of your bookmarks, I would opt for the BBC Learning English. I find it very useful and interesting, which is, as you said, very important when learning. I know from my personal experience that I'm most successful at something when I enjoy doing it. And I think this holds true for everybody. Ok, I hope we will keep on exchanging our bookmarks! See you!
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