Friday, October 19, 2007

Group A: Elena B

Hello to everybody!
I don’t know if somebody shares my opinion, but I think that e-tivity 2 was quite difficult. Yesterday night I spent a lot of time searching for interesting blogs on the topics that I chose but I don’t believe I succeeded. Technocrati web site offers a lot of possibilities but the majority of the selected blogs has nothing to do with the topics I was interested in. So I changed my tags, especially the second one, a lot of times…
TAG 1. The first tag I looked for in Technocrati web site is Business English. There are mainly two reasons for this choice. The first one is that at the University of Padua there isn’t a specific course for this micro-sector of English but I attended a course of Business English when I was in Ireland four years ago and now I’d like to go into it more deeply. The second reason is that two weeks ago I started to teach English and Spanish in a private institute for students who failed in the Secondary School and now want to attend two years in one in order not to lose school years. Since they come mainly from technical or accounting kinds of Secondary Schools, they are very interested in Business English: how to write a business letter, how to answer properly to the phone or how to do a good presentation of a project and so on… When I typed the words “Business English” in the web site, I was logged on only to one blog and even written in Italian! Not satisfied I clicked in one of the web sites at the end of the page and I logged on a really interesting web site called Business EnglishPod.com (www.businessenglishpod.com ). This is a very helpful web site for people who want to learn something about Business English. The thing that really strikes me is that there are video to watch and listen, online exercise (filling the gaps, quiz, comprehension exercises) and for every activity you can calculate your final score. I’ve tried one of the online activities and it was very funny. The problem is that only some samples of online activities are free, but to take advantage of all the possibilities of this blog you have to sign up and pay. If you want, you can also sign up only for a free trial of the new online practice exercises. Always dealing with this subject another interesting blog is http://eslincanada.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/english-vocabulary-for-fixed-income-investments/ where you can find a list of vocabularies for fixed income investments with their explanation.
TAG 2. The second word I looked for blogs is Pollution. Scrolling on the page I noticed an interesting blog called Surfing Magazine Blog http://actionsportsgroup.net/blog/ing/?cat=4 where issues of pollution and world environment are discussed. I focussed on a curious piece of news about thousands of volunteers involved in the action of sweeping NJ beaches clear. In addition, there are some other appealing posts dealing with alternative energies, new proposals for the usage of our resource and other nice things.
Observation of the style: I think that the two blogs that I’ve chosen are two peculiar blogs because thay are quite serious and the topics they deal with are hard and difficult. There’s one thing I’ve noticed in almost all the blogs I visited: the clearness of the layout and the simplicity og the design. What’s more, posts are always written with large fonts that appeal to your eyes and catch your attention. I think it’s a good technique in order to encourage people to read your blog.

That’s all for now!
I hope to have your opinion about these things…
Bye!

5 comments:

Anna B said...

Hi Elena! I totally agree with you... I also wrote in my post something about the increbible quantity of information in Technorati! I t was difficult to find what I was really looking for... Anyway, your links are really interesting, especially the one about business English! I've been studying business English during the laurea triennale (which I attended in Trento), and it's always useful to remember all that stuff!
See you on Monday,
Anna

elisac said...

Hi Elena,
I agree with Anna because I find particulary interesting the blog about Business English.Last year I worked in a factory and I had to write business letters in English and in German and to answer to the phone. At the beginning it was quite difficult because at university we didn't study business English, but then it became simpler because the words you use are always more or less the same. A course on Business English would be useful, but I think that the best thing is having a fluent English: the grammar is difficult but as regards words, you can learn them during your working experience.
Good work!
See you,
Bye
Elisa

Niko said...

Hello Elena, I've just visited the blog about pollution. I don't know exactly what it is, but it is a bit distracting. What I mean is that when I'm looking for some information on the net, I expect it to be provided in a straight and clear way.At a certaing point, surfing the blog, I got lost. Too many words, type changing, pictures that were not that important and so on. A blog should be something as striking as a peal of thunder, providing you want it to be constantly read and visited. What do you think about it? Hope we can talk about it again!
See you!
Have a nice week!
Niko

The Ghellers said...

Hi Elena!
I was just reading through your message and I found the blog about business English. I visited it and I found it very useful. There were really interesting posts such as the one about the ways you can interrupt a discussion. Each post is followed by some exercises you can do on line.
As Elisa wrote, business English is a question of words and I think that the esasiest way to increase tour vocabulary is to use the new words the more you can.

Davide said...

hi elena..how's goin'??well i visited blogs you suggested...thay are ineteresting in particular the one about pollution...the thing which caught my attention is that they tell you everything about a topic (when where why who and what) really good.It's a very informative blog. The other about business english is really useful. Last month i downloaded from e-mule stuff about business english 'cause I think it is important and interesting...see u around...cheers davide