Social Bookmarks

Social bookmarking is a type of activity which can be very helpful because you can create and publish a list of websites to put at your classmates' and more in general at an online community's disposal who has some interests in common with you. Moreover, this is a type of collaboration among people whose primary concern is to share useful information by using a simple method.

As regards my experience and impressions I think that this system is very helpful because we have explored many websites and analysed their contents. Then we have chosen some of them considered of "social" interest for us and for our classmates and put them in an online list on del.icio.us website. Besides being an easy method of sharing and finding information it is also useful for improving our English knowledge.

As far as the choice of the social bookmarks is concerned we have selected those bookmarks related to our English course and above all those concerning "English learning" or "blogs".

Exploring the social bookmarks chosen by my classmates
I have found that they contain interesting and helpful information. Some of them have some characteristics in common: they help people to improve their English knowledge.

Marco for instance has chosen "words for translation", and "bbc learning language". The former can be useful for enriching English dictionary; while the latter is helpful to improve English skills and abilities by using a funny method and interactive activities.

Svjetlana, Annalisa and Lucrezia's social bookmarks are helpful to improve English grammar as well.
In her choice, Svjetlana, has given more importance to writing skills, she has chosen: "complete guide to phrasal verbs", "guide to punctuation", and "50 tools which can help you in writing". I have found "guide to punctuation" very interesting because it contains simple and easy explanations which help you to use English punctuation in a more appropriate way. As regards Svjetlana’s choice I also found "Blogging for Beginners" interesting because it contains some definitions and suggestions which are useful for blog’s users.

Annalisa has given more importance to the listening aspect of the language. She has also selected a website about the use of articles in English, which is also one of the most frequent mistakes among Italian students.

Very interesting are also Lucrezia’s "not only chat but a source full with tips and idiomatic sentences" and Annalisa’s "Writing global English" on which you can find 24 useful guidelines for non-native speakers in order to write clear English.

Finally it is worth pointing out Maria Chiara’s choice about the blogosphere, in particular: "A genre analysis of Blogs", which delivers a description about blog as a brand new genre.

See you soon

take care

Francesca