MY PERSONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT (PLE)

During this last year of university, I succeeded in my English learning process thanks to the course run by Prof. Guth both in the first and in the second semester. In the first semester, we used a Wiki Page, which purpose was to write and to work together with American and Italian colleagues in order to learn to be fluent in our writing and speaking. Indeed, I improved both my writing and spoken production. Skype and the Wiki Page were two useful tools that supported my learning. The activities carried out in the first semester made me focus attention on:

_ American students’ lifestyle;

_ on their culture;
_ on their learning process with the Italian language and on their problems in learning it.

Anyway, after the end of the first semester I became aware that to learn a foreign language is a hard work that requires time and a total commitment. Once we reach a goal we have to keep on working on it and to do our best in order to make progress. In the first semester my speaking and my writing became more fluent, but I realized I had to take a step forward. My next goals were accuracy, conciseness, the acquisition of a more formal writing avoiding repetitions and to the proper use of relative clauses and punctuation.

The semester is at the end and I’d like to take stock of ‘my daredevil challenge’ with the English language (see my blog’s name =)). Firs of all, I think to have acquired more familiarity with the world of Internet and of its tools. Google Docs, Google Books, Google Scholar, Google Blogs, Bloglines, Delicious and Flicker are only some of the e-learning tools that helped me to reach my targets for the second semester. I realize that even if I make lots of mistakes when I write, I am more concise and my wordiness has notably reduced.

My Personal Learning Environment is made up by different elements that I use in learning foreign languages. I divided my Mind Map in six sections: the abroad experience, the free time learning, the academic learning, the working experience, the Internet and technical books. My idea was to show you what are the most important things I take into account when I learn a language. At the end of this month I’ll start to write my thesis and then I will decide if to go on with my formal learning or to stop for a while and enter in the working word. However that, I want to keep on learning English on my own and I’ll try to have an ever-increasing study, in order not to regress. I am sure I have to work more and more in order to keep the language level I reached and I have to be eager to learn, in order to be on a level with my future work. Professionalism and proficiency are some important values that each student should consider, and these are mine.

I thank you all for your help in these two semesters. I learned a lot and I will never forget this year of university. Thank you Francesca and Francesca for the corrections to my blog posts. Thank you Anna and Elisabetta for having worked successfully with me during the first semester and finally, I am especially grateful to Sarah for her patience and her enthusiasm in having thought me things I would have never learned at all. I’ll retain you as a wonderful teacher =).