E-tivity 2 : Language Feedback

Dear all,

I read all of your blog posts, and most of your comments, and can say, without a doubt, that the communicative act in all of them is effective and appropriate. Nonetheless, they're not perfect. Some of your mistakes seem to be due to lack of proof-reading (like spelling mistakes) where others seem to be due to lack of knowledge (like using the present perfect incorrectly). None of them get in the way of understanding, but we're here to improve our English, aren't we?
Each week I will try and take two groups' work correct it and send it to you all as .pdfs linked to a post. I would like to ask you all to print them and carefully analyze the mistakes. I noticed that you often make the same ones and could have a lot to learn from my corrections of other people's mistakes. Please bring them to class on Monday so we can discuss what the common errors are. If you want, try and start making a list of common errors for Monday. In my corrections, I tried not to influence your style, but there are some basic rules that need to be followed if you want your posts to be readable.
I noticed that one or two of you, in your comments, pointed out language mistakes to your peers. Please do that as much as possible as I'm sure you have a lot to learn from each other and could really help each other out.
I've got a question for you: when you come across new words, what do you do with them? Do you just read and forget, or do you write them down somewhere? In other words, what can you do to use the language you find in blogs to help improve your English?
One last thing: as you might have guessed, there's no reading for Monday. I've got another activity planned and that will leave you time and energy to do e-tivity 3 and you deserve a break after your hours spent on the blogosphere!

Sarah

Group A posts and comments
Group B posts and comments

E-tivity 2 : Feedback

Hello there all,

You think exploring the blogosphere is hard work, you should try reading all of your posts and clicking on all of your blogs! Just joking :-) I really enjoyed hearing about all of your experiences and clicking around to see what you’d found. In addition to the aim stated in the e-tivity, the aims were also to help you understand how vast it is so that you’ll appreciate the tools we’re going to use to filter information on the Web and to help you get to know each other a little better. For example, many of you found blogs on travelling, while others focused on more social-political issues, and others yet on hobbies and things you simply just like.

Just a few observations. I noticed that two students received comments from blogs they had linked to. How did that feel? Then I wondered: did any of you leave comments on the blogs you visited? If not, why not? I found a few I left comments on J Then I noticed many of the blogs you found were written by non-native speakers of English in English. Why do you suppose these people choose to write in English if it’s not their native language? Finally, Martina also talks about the authority of the blogger and how you judge the quality of the blog. What criteria did you use to judge the authority of the blogs you visited? I noticed that some of you found blogs where the most recent post was a long time ago. One criteria you should always use is how often posts are published and how long ago the last one was.

I’m going to use your words to comment on your impressions of the blogosphere and the genre of blogs. I’ll be sending another message where I focus more on the language, by looking at the posts written by groups A and B.

Impressions of the blogosphere

You got tired…

So, surfing the blogosphere is pretty exhausting...(Enrico)

You got lost…

I lost myself on the net looking for blogs which could catch my attention and two or three hours later I found them. (Davide)

Perhaps, lost in technorati like me?! But, in the end, after hours and hours spent searching for blogs, I decided to suggest you these three wonderful blogs! (Elena V.)

..uf, I just got back from very long trip around the blogosphere. I have to say that I do feel overwhelmed with information right now. There is just so much out there to explore, read and learn about. (Nina)

You had fun…

I have never been very interesting in navigating blogs, but I enjoyed doing it! There are many things you can learn! (Claudia)

My trip around the blogosphere has been very interesting. (Marina F.)

is a so fashinating world....there are any sort of blogs that you can visit and so many interesting things to read and see. (Imma)

You felt frustrated…

I have to admit it was pretty tough and took me quite a lot of time to find out which blogs to choose for this week e-tivity, as there where so many I actually find myself 'drunk' of blogs. :-D (Anna, Group I)

I spent a lot of time searching for interesting blogs on the topics that I chose but I don’t believe I succeeded. (Elena B)

Bloggosphere is something I'm experiencing for the first time and I'm a bit disoriented. (Eva)

You did it!

At the beginning I had difficulties in finding the blogs, but then I tried to focus on my interests and I managed to find two blogs. (Giovanna Sim)

After having spent hours and hours on the blogosphere, I've finally found something interesting! It has been a hard work because there are so many blogs!!! (Sara B.)

Language

Some thought it was informal

I would say that the authors mostly use simple language with many colloquialisms and slang words in order to make their blogs more informal as possible, so that the readers can easily interact with them. (Valentina)

It looks as if the persons who wrote posts were directly addressing to somebody they know well. (Elisa S.)

the language must be clear, simple, colloquial and informal, as it is in a usual conversation.

(Alessandrasq)

Others thought it depended on the context

The language depends on the writer and his purposes: it may be quite formal for professional comments and technical details or informal if the writers decides to put more of themselves in their posts. (Federico)

the language can vary from specialized to everyday according to the topic and the audiance. It can be also spontaneous, just like a real conversation, or a little bit more planned when it describes something. Of course, the formality of the language used might be influenced by the relationship between bloggers and readers. (Selena)

I noticed that informal blogs containing personal experiences (I would call them ‘diary-blogs’) tend to be shorter and simpler than those dealing with more delicate and complicated issues of general interest (religion, education, linguistics, war...) , even if slang is sometimes not so easy to understand. (Elisa C.)

Others noticed a difference between posts and comments

Both blogs have an informal style, which can be seen in the use of abbreviations, smileys, colloquial expressions (like for example "by the way"..) and in the omission of the grammatical subject (like in the sentence "Can't wait to try this out.."). In particular, an informal style characterizes the comments visitors leave on the blog. (Marta, Group B)

Then I noticed that, usually, posts are longer and more formal than the comments people leave, which contain much more colloquial expression ( Oh my gosh., Cool!, Wicked!). (Sara DT)

Style

the name of the blog has to attract the reader’s attention, and the layout needs to be appealing but not too sophisticated. (Federico)

The impression I got was that writers were more interested in conveying the message in the most effective way, than respecting grammar and style-formality. (Anna, Group I)

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. (Elena B.)

Importance of linking

The idea of sharing all that we know and post it in our blog is supported by the use of links. Every blog has its part reserved to links, that are a series of blogs connected to yours that deal with the same topic. This allows you to surf and immerge you totally in the topic you want, to meet people with your own interests and above all to learn and compare what you already know! (Giovanna Sperotto)

generally the structure of blogs consists of quite little pieces of information, well divided and normally characterised by links or words in bold. (Anna, Group I)

Job well done :-)

Sarah

Group H: Giovanna (e-tivity 2)

When yesterday I started looking out for some interesting blogs, I couldn’t believe that the blogsphere was really so wide. If you think that everyone may create his own (or even more than one!), there could be billions of blogs in the net! As a matter of fact I started working for the task yesterday and I have finished now (obviously with a pause to rest!), finding two blogs, but above all after having visited hundreds!

The first blog I undoubtedly suggest you to visit is about sushi.
The url is: http://sushiday.com/
I fell in love with Japanese food during my Erasmus, and I want you to discover the originality and ethnicity of this cuisine as well. I hadn’t even tried to eat sushi, but Barcelona is full of Japanese restaurants, and above all of Japanese buffets, where you can eat whatever you want paying a fix, that I couldn’t resist. In practice, I was there eating every week!
The blog is very well organized, colourful and full of catching pictures. There you can find a lot of recipes and above all a well-structured glossary, because it’s obvious that not everybody knows what wasabi or daikon are or what the tools you need are. People can share comments, suggestions, tips and even recipes. Japanese cusine is quite a new fashion here in Europe, so I think it’s necessary improving your knowledge and practice sharing whatever you know through a blog with other people who have the same interest.

The second blog I invite you to have a look to is about the strangest places in the world.
The url is: http://mystic-places.blogspot.com/
I’ve always been attracted by mystery, myths, gothic and paranormal. It’s sound a little bit weird but I’m sure that more or less everyone once in her life has asked whether Ufos really exist, what happened exactly to Atlantis, or who built the pyramids or those strange statues in the Easter Islands. Through this blog people try to explain the possible (and even the impossible!), sharing ideas, anecdotes and evidences. I hope that here you could find some of the answers.
The background of the blog is obviously total black, as to introduce you to this dark side of reality, but I have to assure you that there are very clear and scientific explanations.

To sum up I can say that the language used by bloggers is colloquial and informal, as they were all friends. But they never fall into rudeness; on the contrary they behave always in a good way. I think that the blogsphere besides being a place where you can share opinions, it’s a place where you can always learn something and for this reason there is no room for impolite people.
The idea of sharing all that we know and post it in our blog is supported by the use of links. Every blog has its part reserved to links, that are a series of blogs connected to yours that deal with the same topic. This allows you to surf and immerge you totally in the topic you want, to meet people with your own interests and above all to learn and compare what you already know!

Hope you’ll enjoy visiting my blogs!
See you!
Giovanna

Group C: Zara

What is a weblog? How should it be organized? How should I use it and its contents? In order to understand these things I went to blog search engine Technorati to seek and check few blogs. I used tags like travel, comic, humour, news, books, life, music and movie. I've come across different types of blogs that sometimes surprised me for the way they were structured. Before then, I thought blogs had a proper layout in which posts and comments alternate and links and photos were added if needed. The Things We Think but Do Not Say is the easiest example of what I mean. In this blog people write short stories – according to the rules of flash fiction style –. For this reason, the words of posts are the very important thing. Within the texts photos and links are not put because they are not necessary. Of course, if you like reading, you should visit this blog and eventually leave your comment.

More complex is Treehugger. It is an on-line magazine in which posts seem to be articles on different topics such as cars+transportation, culture+celebrities, travel+nature, business+politics and others. Posts are centrally set. As a rule, links within the text of the posts have to do with other web sites, blogs, articles, photos and word meanings.

Many blogs are concerned with web marketing strategies, new technologies, people’s thoughts or news. However, typing gift in Technorati, I’ve found Gift Rap whose self-definition tells us it is 'a shopping blog of cool gift ideas[...]'. Depending on the occasion, the person and the category of the object you’ve in mind, Gift Rap suggests you what you should buy to give to someone the best present. Here, posts consist in blog masters’ tips and blog rules allows you to ask more. About secrets I've found two completely different but both very interesting blogs. The first one is Whisperasecret.com where people posts about their secret feelings and thoughts. Posts have no links and language is informal with abbreviations and emoticons. I'd like you to visit Post Secret because it shows us a very peculiar way to set a blog. Posts are not properly written but represented by hand-made postcards on which people puts a message. It's an artlog (see link above 'weblog'). lolcats 'n' funny pictures - I Can Has Cheezburger? is another artlog where members put mostly funny photos with cats and these images are filled with short writings. Here the language style is the most informal so far because grammar rules are not respected and people use slang to express themselves. (Click here to see Commonly-Used American Slang).

Summing up my observations I can say that in a blog:

- You should write with a formal language if your blog deals about news and short stories. The same if you want to give your blog a more elegant touch. In order to have a more effective and direct approach to the blog reader, news can also be written with the style used for newspaper headlines, especially if your posts are short and frequently updated.

- You can write with an informal language if your blog deals with your thoughts, ideas, photos. Also use it if your target is youth and you want to be more funny and confidential.

- If the whole text is written black on white background words shouldn’t be coloured and underlined unless they are links. Posts should have links in order to make the text and its meaning clearer.

- Within blog texts photos are usually small. In case, they can be enlarged by clicking on them.

- People do not sign when posting (because the name appears automatically) and use avatars or small images to represent themselves. Click here to create an avatar from a photo of yours!

Photo above by Cayusa.