The genre of wikis

Hi people,
this time we are exploring a new genre, that is the genre of wikis. Before starting to create our own virtual spaces, where we can create texts together, it would be useful to understand what the word "wiki" means.

DEFINITION
First of all what wiki means? Wiki is a type of Web Site, in which everybody is allowed to change, adjust or remove contents. We can say that it is a some sort of “collaborative authoring”. Furthermore, the term wiki also can refer to the collaborative software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a Web site, or to certain specific wiki sites. The first ever wiki is WikiWikiWeb, created by Ward Cunningham in 1994. While, already in the early 2000s, wikis were increasingly adopted in the enterprise as collaborative software.

MAIN CARACTERISTICS
Here after I am going to list some of the manin caracteristics of wikis.

• it does not require users to know HTML
• wiki system may include various tools and meta-content
  
• in many of them there is no need for registration, therefore they are open to the general public
  
• it provides some tools to verify the validity of recent additions to the body of pages: for example using the “Revision history”
• there are also cases of vandalism and incorrect contents
• many wiki communities are private

WIKIQUETTE
First of all, let me explain you what the word "Wikiquette" means. The word comes from wiki and the English word “etiquette”. It refers to rules to follow in order to behave correctly and how to collaborate with others. The main rule is to treat others with respect, but I’ll list some other rules that in my opinion are important and to be followed:

• be careful of the words you chose, trying to be polite and never ambiguous or rude
• always add your name and the date to your posts




• don’t ignore questions and others critics
  
• be civil and treat others with dignity
  
• avoid reverts and deletions whenever possible
  
• recognize and praise the best work

EXPLORING WIKIS
I spent some time exploring wikis in order to discover their main aspects, such as language, audience, purposes etc.

1. Wikipedia: it is a multilingual, Web-based free content encyclopedia project and it is written collaboratively by volunteers.




2. Wikihow: it is a collaborative project to built the world's largest how-to manual. They try to offer clear solutions to the problems of everyday life: travel, pets, health, communications...




3. Wikibooks: it is a collection of free content textbooks that everybody can edit. They treat different topics such as arts, biology, education, history...




4. Wikitravel: this wiki is a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable world-wide travel guide. If you want to travel round the wolrd you should have a look to this website.

ANALYSIS
All these wikis have quite the same characteristics. In all of them the layout is very similar to that of Wikipedia. They are characterized by a huge amount of hyperlinks, always well organized and divided into separate sections. This sort of websites are addressed to people all over the world. In fact, very offen there are sections in different languages. The language they use is very clear and simple. In my opinion articles contained in these wikis, expecially in Wikipedia and Wikibooks are more formal and accurate then, for example, that of blogs.

This is all for now.
Have a nice week-end.
Buy, buy.

Improve your English with podcasts!

Hi people.

Unfortunately, for me, I missed the last lesson. Therefore, I’m now obliged to do everything by my own. And, only by reading this e-tivity, I find it quite difficult especially the part in which we have to record an audio file. I don’t have Internet at home and now I am at my uncle’s house trying to do this registration but I think that it would be very hard.

The topic of this e-tivity is Podcasting. I have to admit that when I’ve read the title of this activity it surprised me a lot. I’ve never heard nothing about this argument before. And, once again, it was a some sort of adventure trying to understand this new topic.

Podcasts are multimedia files, either audio or video. The name comes from the combination of the word “broadcasting" (from radio and television) and "iPod" (the most popular mp3 player). Everybody can download podcasts from Internet onto personal comuters and mp3 players. Users can then listen to the files anytime and anywhere they choose.

Surfing the net, especially Google and Del.icio.us I discoverd some interesting Podcasts for our English course:

1) Interesting things for ESL students:
This is a very funny site for learners of English as second language. Here you can find a very huge number of interesting podcasts. For example, you can learn to sing songs! In fact, there are some songs with their text and you can listen to them and just learn to sing. Then there is a group of podcasts about verbs, especially irregular verbs. They can help you to memorize irregular verbs by listening and repeating them daily. You can also practice rhythm, intonation and pronunciation. And, finally, there is a section with jokes in English. So you can also have a lot of fun in your English learning.

2) English Caster:

In English Caster you can find English lessons podcasts and other study materials. In this website podcasts are divided into different areas: contents, kind of English, level, target age and target nationallity. There is really a big amount of podcasts and some of them are very interesting. “Englishfeed”, for example, can be useful because here podcasts focuse on important grammar and vocabulary subjects while providing great listening practice. Many podcasts are on pronunciation and intonation. Also podcasts about idoms and slang can be helpful for us, as English learners.

3) Yahoo. Podcasts:

This website too gives numerous podcasts dealing with differet topics. On the homepage you can find the most recent episodes. But this website also help you to find other websites that contain podcasts about the topic you have chosen. For example, "Listen to English – Learn English" give you three short podcasts every week in clearly spoken English that will help you to improve your listening skills and learn new words and expressions.

In conclusion, all these podcasts are quite similar. All of them contain pieces of discourses where speakers use a very clear and simple language. In fact, their intention is to help learners to improve their skills therefore they speak slowely and clearly. Most of them add to podcasts a written text, so that learners can follow both the text and the voice. I found all of them very usefull. In order to improve our English we have to listen to native speakers. And this can be one way to do that.



powered by ODEO

Can we say there is a genre of websites?

First of all, let me tell you what the word “genre” means?
The word ‘genre’ is used to indicate different types of artistic and literary works. These works can be business letters, narrative, diaries but also e-mails, blogs and websites. When we talk about genre we are referring to communicative purposes of a piece of writing, and not only to its grammar and lexis. Although most genres are often only vaguely definable, genre considerations are one of the most important factors in determining what a person will see or read.

E-tivity 5:
This week, on our English course, we are going to explore websites in order to discover and understand what sort of genre is it. The particular aspect of websites is that the audience is really unknown. In fact, there is a huge number of different genre on websites that they are really difficult to categorized. Other thing to say is that the genre of websites is a very new and in continuous evolution. This is another reason why they are difficult to talk about.

Analysis of two websites:
Surfing on the web, and more precisely among those websites my colleagues have chosen on del.icio.us, I found two of them being very interesting and useful.

1. BBC Learning English:

• Everybody, all over the world, have an idea about what BBC is. Therefore, I think that there is no intended audience of this website because everybody can have a look at it and use it if they want. What I want to say is that the audience is not made up only by English students and teachers but also by anybody who wants to improve his or her English skills. The creators of this website are trying to help people to learn English in an easier way, that is to say by using different areas of real interest to people, such as music, sports, news, business and stories.
  
  On the top of the home page there is BBC logo and in my opinion this make its English Learning Course more formal, serious and valid, if compared to other.



• There are many hyperlinks, which are not confusing but well organized. The home page is divided in different areas, and in three of them there is the site map, which helps the reader to surf the site. On the left there is only a list of different parts in which the entire site is divided, in the centre of the page there are images and more detailed descriptions about the single parts of the web and ,finally, there is another list at the bottom. So it is very easy to look at this website!



• The language used on the homepage is simple and concise. There aren’t complete sentences nor long descriptions, only lists of words and noun phrases. While verbs are all in present tense.



• On the other hand if one explores the activities there are many news paper articles, therefore the language becomes more formal and descriptive. But they also use a lot of images just to capture reader's or ‘learner's’ attention and make his English learning more interesting and easier.

2. Urban Dictionary:

• Comparing this website to the previous one, I identified many differences. First of all the audience changes. This website seems to be aimed to a specific discourse community, that is to say to young people, teenagers, which are those who use slang most frequently. Furthermore, at the bottom of the page the same creators of the website say that their site is not appropriate for all audiences (in fact there are many swear words).



• The home page of this site is very simple. There is a big image with photos of young people, it seems to be an advertisement that continuously change. Then at the bottom of the page there are some hyperlinks with images and, under every image, a word. If you click on it you have all the definitions of the word in question. While at the top of the homepage there is an alphabet that helps you to find the definition of the slang word or colloquialism that you are looking for.



• The language used on the homepage is very simple, only one word tags and few sentences.



• On the other hand, this situation changes a bit if one looks at definitions. Every single letter contains numerous definitions. When one chose a word, then appears its definition. Some of these words are illustrated by images, but they are not too much. Definitions are short and written in a very informal and colloquial language. Quite every definition have some examples to make the meaning more clear.

Summing up, what can I say about the genre of websites?
Through my brief analysis I become aware how websites can be different. In fact, the two web sites I’ve analysed are completely different. The first one is formal and descriptive, while the second one is totally informal, colloquial and simple. Also the organization of the web is opposite. One, the BBC website, is huge with many hyperlinks, lists and article while the second is small and poor in contents.

Del.icio.us: first impressions on social bookmarks

Hi colleagues! Here we are again doing a new e-tivity, but this time exploring the Del.icio.us-sphere. We are learning a lot of new things in this English course! Not only we are improving our English but also our abilities in using net tools. I have to confess that I never heard anything about social bookmarking before. Therefore, it was a kind of adventure to do something completely new as this e-tivity.

Well, what is Del.icio.us? Del.icio.us is a huge space on web where you can create your own little space, which contains your personal bookmarks. This means that you have a small space where you can put all web sites that you are interested in. Furthermore, you can put a new title to the link you have chosen and add a brief description to it in order to simplify your future searches.

But why is it called Social bookmarking? The greatest thing of Del.icio.us is that it is a community where everybody can share everybody's web sites. That means that you can always spread your personal bookmarks by adding those of other people. That also means that if you need more infomation about a particular topic you can just put it as a tag and all links that deals with it will appear.

Another peculiar aspect of Del.icio.us is that it does not contain every single web site that you can find on Internet but only those chosen by Del.icio.us users. If you are doing some searches on Del.icio.us you are going to find only web sites contained in this big area. Therefore, there is a some sort of selection.

I've also looked at my collegues' bookmarks and I've discovered that all of them have found very useful links. First of all, I think that Urban Dictionary chosen by Alice and Dictionary of English slang and colloquialisms of the UK chosen by Lucrezia are very interesting. I adore music and learning lyrics of my favourite bands and singers. Very often their lyrics contain slang terms and colloquialisms that I can't understand. Obviously these type of dictionaries are very useful in informal and colloquial conversations. Almost all of them have found sites that might help us to improve our English; grammmar, punctuation, vocabolary... Lucrezia, for example, has discovered a way to find if words are spelled correctly. I think that I will post this site to my favourites because very often I have some doubts about spelling. Marco and Giorgia give us sites to translate words to use especially if you are doing your e-tivities far from home and you don't have a dictionary (Just like me!!!).

First two weeks of blogging

I started this new English course without knowing anything about blogging. The blogosphere was something very far from my world and my interests. But now I can say that, in only two weeks, I've learned many interesting things. Even though I am aware that there are many other things that I have to learn.

I think that this experience can influence my language learning a lot . First of all, I have to read and write in English weekly in order to finish my e-tivities. Obviously this is very useful and it helps us to improve our English day by day.

Another important aspect is the fact that we work on the computer. In my opinion sometimes it is better that those lessons in which the professor speaks and students listen and take notes. I feel more active when I work on computer. It captures students' attention and makes them to interact.

Other aspect of blogging is the fact that I have to read and write in colloquial English, while in the past I was used to learning, speaking and writing in more formal language. So this can be a challenge! I think that everyday language is more similar to the one we can find in the blogosphere than the one used by Shakespeare. But, on the other hand, I think that blogs can also contain mistakes.

Welcome to my blog!

Hi people!

These are my first experiences with the blogosphere. The way in which I've discovered this new world is through university lessons. In fact, in October I've started a new English course. No more grammar and translations but a new and interesting way of teaching languages: using Internet, and in this case the blogosphere.