E-tivity 1 : Feedback

After each e-tivity, I will try and provide you with some feedback on my observations of how you managed to do the task. Sometimes, like this week, I will focus on content, other times on language. So this week it's...

Feedback in your words ;-)

Below I’ve categorized your reactions to e-tivity 1 by using your own words. Let’s see.

You felt overwhelmed

• It took me some (quite a lot, I must say) time to get used to the logic of blogs, posts and whatever.
• Only after surfing the web for an hour I found out an interesting blog about movies.
• I started to search for a blog from Technorati and I must say that I was disoriented: the blogosphere is so huge that I had difficulties finding what I was looking for.
• I had never realized how huge is the blogsphere.
• This has been my very first experience with blogs and I must admit that I have found myself a little bit confused. The reason is that there is a huge amount of blogs but only some of them are interesting while some others aren’t at all.
• I've been surfing the web for two or three hours I guess

Some showed a bit of enthusiasm

• So, what can I say about my first experience in the blogosphere? To be honest, it was confusing. The fact is, I wasn't able to focus on one topic, there are so many blogs that I was curious to read a little bit of everything!
• I wasn’t familiar with blogs…I’d never written a post before our last lesson! I spent some time surfing on the Internet and I found many interesting things!
• I think that using the proper tools (e.g. Technorati) one can find a lot of interesting and authoritative blogs. Many blogs offer technical and reliable informanion through a plain and readable style, which is useful especially for those who are not practised in a certain matter, but want to know about it!

And you made many insightful observations about the language used in blogs?

• Blogs are mainly an informal way of communication, similar to oral conversation. People blogging are not concerned with language accuracy, but with communicative purposes.
• besides being a little weird, I found that her language is very fresh and spontaneous, as well as a blog language should be, since it is created in the very moment it is spoken/written/thought.
• It is written in a very spontaneous and witty way. There is a huge load of idiomatic expressions and everyday ways of saying. Sometimes the language tends to be a little foul-mouthed, but that's the style of the writer. The comments are mainly written by the fans and they are written in a very spoken style with the add of smileys and other internet stuffs!
• The blogs I looked at were written in a plain style, using contracted forms, abbreviations (such as lol, afaik, asap, cul8r etc...) and emoticons. The latter are very important: since netspeak lacks facial expressions and gesture, smileys can forestall a gross misperception of a speaker’s intent. Generally speaking, I can say that blogs are written in an informal style and the writers do not care about accuracy (for example, most of the people write the first personal pronoun without the capital letter).
• the blog has both a formal and informal language style, depending on the purpose of the message: quoting, comments, reviews.
• If you are also interested on reading a blog written in a formal style, here a good example of writing, that aims to distinguish itself and also its readers and writers.
• The linguistic style of the posts is quite formal, even if the use of the first person makes you feel closer to the writer. It is like reading someone else's diary.
  The comments are however much more informal and colloquial.
  

You noticed how the language used tells us something about the community of bloggers surrounding a given blog

• The language used is very informal and simple. The bloggers are all 'on the same level', they are young people who share an interest, and this permits them to be completely relaxed and feel free to write whatever they want. Some comments even contain insults and bad words to express disagreement on someone else's post, but I think it's fine: in informal contexts we all talk like that, so why shouldn't we be ourselves on the blogsphere?
• Unlike the majority of blog that are based exclusively on simple language, this site also includes technical words, and goes into details when for example they talk about photos and cameras. This helps us to understand that the all the bloggers share the same interest and knowledge of the topic.
• I think that the author of this blog is an artist and knows very well the topic he is writing about. The bloggers who make comments are less qualified, but equally involved in the topic. They use the links to advert to their own blog; while the author uses the links to give more information or post the blogs of his friends.

And, finally, you found some common characteristics of blogs

• Blogs are written in a simple way for they want to attract as much readers as possible but also because they reflect the oral interaction between persons.
• The links I found in the posts have the aim to develop some themes that the reader couldn’t know and in this way he could deepen them. The link are related both to other web-sites and to other posts of the blog.
• you can find extended links at the end of each post, with the aim of getting the possibility to find out more information about the topic discussed in the post. But you can also find links in the form of underlined and clickable words (they are links to external web pages).
• I like this blog because I think it is well organized, it is full of external links to other blogs or websites and it is possible to watch movie trailers directly from the posts. Moreover, every post has some tags so that you can easily find what you're looking for. It is also possible to subscribe to RSS or to receive updates by Email.

You may be happy to know that you're not the only ones who felt this way. Go see what your peers last year wrote. Click here.