Hi!!! I’m ready to write my first reflective blogging post! The topic is “my next language learning targets”. I think setting some targets is really useful because it allows me to focus on something in particular and work on it, instead of wasting time trying to do one million things at the same time! As I wrote last week, my targets for this 2nd semester are essentially three: I’d like to enlarge my vocabulary and improve my writing and communicative skills. I firmly believe that writing posts on my blog will help me to achieve my language targets. First of all, reading what my classmates write on their blogs I can learn new words; I’ve just read a new expression on Elena’s blog: smash hit, I’ve searched it on my dictionary and now I know its meaning! Then, writing on a blog I learn to be not only concise and accurate, but also spontaneous. And being accurate is certainly useful when you have to explain some complicated concepts in an academic essay, while spontaneity is a quality that is precious in a conversation with other people. I find it difficult to interact with other people because I can’t speak in a spontaneous way and I’ve always to reflect on the words I should use or not. In a post I don’t have to write complex sentences like in any other written text; I am required to be clear and straightforward as I should be in a spoken conversation.
As regards what I’ve done during this week, I’ve to say that I’ve been pretty busy with lessons, blogs and academic papers! And I’m trying to do my best, especially taking note of every new word I read or I hear while I’m in class, surfing the Net or simply listening to music! Do you know what an Oxford comma is? I didn’t know it before listening to a song by Vampire Weekend, whose title is Oxford comma: it aroused my curiosity and so I used Google to find the meaning. Anyway, the meaning of the title doesn’t help me to understand the sense of the song which is still quite obscure!!! :-)

That's all for now!

Ilaria.