Was that research article reliable???

On the internet, it’s really difficult to find exactly what you are interested in, especially if you don’t know how to do your search. When I was preparing my Tesi Triennale on SMS language, I didn’t know all the tools that are available on the Internet (I’m discovering them now!) and so I really wasted a lot of time in surfing the Net. But I think I was lucky because I found a very effective article that is still published on TXT2NITE.COM, in the sms forum of the website. This essay, “Generation Txt? The sociolinguistics of young people's text-messages”, is written by Dr Crispin Thurlow and it is an analysis of text messages sent by teenagers. The research article starts with an abstract that explains the aim of the research: the essay aims to examine the linguistic forms and communicative functions in a corpus of 544 participants' actual text-messages. It’s a quantitative study based on a quite large corpus of text messages. The data arising from the analysis of this corpus are interpreted taking into consideration many aspects, which can concern for example the socio-linguistic context, the technological characteristics, and the linguistic features. At the end of the article there is a conclusion that summarizes the significant observations emerged from the research.

I think this research article can be considered an authoritative source of information. First of all, we know the name of the author and we can easily found further information about him, about his status and his publications. Secondly, there are many references to other authors, books and surveys. In this version of the essay, we can also find a detailed bibliography. Then, the whole essay is protected by copyright.
If you are interested in this topic, you can certainly use this research article as a reliable source in your academic papers. This kind of articles can be very useful, especially in this case: there aren’t many academic works (I mean “traditional books”) dealing with SMS language, so the sources found on the Internet become really precious!

Ilaria.

What kind of information do we find on the Internet?

How do we evaluate reliability and authority of information we find on the Internet? This is a good question!

It’s important to think about it; we really need to have some criteria to follow in order to filter information on the Internet. The list we elaborated on Wednesday can be really useful to our research. Taking into consideration that list, I tried to evaluate the sources of information about "personal learning environment" that I found using Google Blogs, Google Books and Google Scholar.
I noticed that some blogs can be considered valuable sources of information: they show more “serious” graphics and layout than those showed by other personal blogs, they offer information about the author (even biographies), and they’re protected by copyright. I think blogs can be seen as the starting point of our research because reading blogs we can find the name of other authors, websites, books… It’s an easy way to know what other people think about a specific topic.
Then I used Google Books. The information I found is certainly reliable. Indeed, using this tool you find books and books satisfy almost all the criteria of our list!
For me, the most useful tool is Google Scholar. On Google Books we can find only parts of books, while on Google Scholar we find complete essays, journal articles, PDF documents … Moreover, it’s easier to choose what interests us because these kind of documents usually have an abstract: we just need to read it to understand if the document is what we’re looking for.
Taking into consideration the above observations, I decided that, from today onwards, my research on the internet will consist of 4 steps! I’ll use:
1. Google (especially Wikipedia) and Google Blogs to have a general idea and see what other people can tell me about the topic of my research
2. del.icio.us to find detailed information about authors, websites, books…
3. Google Books to see if a specific book is published online and to read bibliographies that allow me to find out other books, authors…
4. Google Scholar to see if I can find some complete documents published online.

I hope this method will work!!! :-)

Ilaria.

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del.icio.us: store and share wherever you are!

Hellooo!
I started to use del.icio.us last Wednesday and I soon found out it’s a very useful tool! I was in the lab at LAIF and I was trying to find some technical French words concerning the textile industry: not an easy search! Luckily, using del.icio.us I found a glossary that really simplified my work. And I saved the URL of that webpage so if in the future I need to translate the same kind of text I won’t waste time on the Internet looking for something that can help me! In addition, I saved the URL of two online dictionaries. I think they can be useful for you too, especially if you need to find technical terms.

Having a look at the bookmarks saved by my blog peers, I noticed that we have almost the same interests. That’s way I think the network we created on del.icio.us will be really useful! For example, both Arianna and I are interested in current English usage: Arianna saved a website about English idiomatic expressions and I saved Slang O’ The Day, a website about slang words. Then all of the girls in my group saved at least one website that can help us to practice our listening skills. Arianna’s www.elllo.org offers a wide range of listening activities and I noted that the people who record the audio files are not necessarily American on British: there are many people from other countries. In this way we can learn to listen to people speaking English with an unusual accent. Chiara saved a website about listening activities, too. As far as this website is concerned, does anybody know how we can download the podcasts and save them on my computer? Martina highlighted a website dealing with the main grammar rules. I read the pages about sentence fragments and run-ons: have a look at them, you’ll find a definition and some useful examples.

Speak to you soon,

Ilaria.

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And finally I discovered the TITLE!!!

Reading the corrections concerning e-tivity 3, I noticed that I didn’t write a title for my posts!!! Eh eh I don’t know why, but I didn’t notice the space in which we can put the title of a new post!
And now I wonder how many things are waiting for me to discover them! :-)

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I do like Bloglines!!! I think feeds aggregators are a brilliant invention! They are a very useful way to make the most of my time, because in this way I can easily find everything I’m interesting in, without wasting time. I only need to open a single window, on which I can see what’s new on the web pages I usually visit. Last Thursday, I added the feeds of Blogging English, Arianna’s blog and Chiara’s blog. Then I had a look at http://news.bbc.co.uk/ , I clicked on the orange button on the right side and I read the information about news feeds from the BBC. I subscribed to feeds concerning entertainment stories, the latest news from the world and from the UK. It was so easy! And now I can open Bloglines, see the title and read a short summary about the latest stories from BBC and choose to watch the video that interests me the most. I recommend the feeds from BBC to everyone, because I think we can use them to improve our listening and reading skills.

Ilaria.

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.

Welcome to my brand new blog!

This is my first experience with blogging! I think creating a personal blog is really funny, but it is also difficult: there are millions of interesting blogs in the blogosphere and creating one that can catch people's attention is a very hard work! Anyway, I'll do my best because it's a great opportunity to improve my computer skills and to write in English combining accuracy with spontaneity. And I'm sure you will help me leaving many comments on my posts!!! ;-)