Grammatical Status: 'COULD' AND OUR LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP

Hi guys!

It's time to check the grammatical tips of the week!
Thanks to my English professor Sarah I reflected on how to make my blog readable. This involves not only avoiding grammatical mistakes but also the right use of:

1. links,
2. words (repetitions and synonyms),
3. lay-out (font and color),
4. structure (introduction+body+ conclusion),
5. lenght of sentences and paragraphs (short is better).

In particular, it's important to remember that English is a 'writer responsible' language, that is that the author is supposed to write in a way that the reader is able to understand. I must admit that this is sometimes difficult for me; indeed, I'm Italian and Italian is a reader responsible language and we often tend to be long-winded. About synonyms, I realized I must be really cautious. For example, I used 'search' and 'research' as synonyms but their meanings are totally different.

• Search is the generic 'looking for' and is countable.
• Research is used for the academic field and is uncountable.
• Reasearch study is used for the academic field and is countable.

Furthermore, they require different prepositions when used as verbs:

• To search for/ on / (-),
• To research (-).

As you can see, I finally learned how to list things in the right way. Indeed, lists are considered as normal sentences and for this reason I use commas, semi-colons and full-stops. Finally, I realized I have a love-hate relationship with 'could'. I love to use it but I hate it because it is so difficult to use in the right context! For example, I must remember that:

• COULD is a generic ability in the past,
• ABLE TO is an ability referred to a specific action.

Bye and be cautious ;-)

Elisabetta

Opinion-polls: results and.....SEASONS!

Hi guys!

Here you are the results of my First opinion-poll about changing the lay-out of my blog. The final verdict is (as you can see):
NO (77%)!!!

Now I have a new question for you about your favorite SEASON! Mine is Summer. I love hot weather, seaside, holidays and last but not least my birthday!!!! And what about you? Please vote (under my profile) and let me now ;-)

Bye!

Elisabetta

Reflective Blogging: APA vs MLA

Hi guys!

I'm here again ;-) I'm sorry but I worked very hard on my thesis during the last few weeks, so I didn't have a lot of time :-( However, the work I did is useful for my reflections! Indeed, I'm going to write about APA and MLA. These are two international styles of formatting texts.
In order to compare the two styles I start giving you one example about a reference for a book.

APA (American Psychological Association):
Anastasia, B. and Corò, G. (1996). Evoluzione di un'economia regionale. Portogruaro: Ediciclo.

MLA (Modern Language Association):
Anastasia, Barbara and Corò, Giovanni. Evoluzione di un'economia regionale (underlined title). Portogruaro: Edicilo, 1996.

As you can notice, the APA puts before the year of publication and the title is in italics and there's only the initial letter of the author's first name. On the other hand, the MLA has the title underlined, the year of publication is written at the end and the first name of the author is fully given. This rule is followed in references for articles and in periodicals too. Another difference is that APA uses in-text citations characterized by the name of the author and the date of publication, while in MLA in-text citations require the page number too.
More in general, MLA has more strict rules about style citations, preferes abbreviations and involves many different style and options for the different kinds of works to refere to and to cite. On the other hand, APA has less options but provides tips for the format too. So, I think that APA is more easy to use when wrtining my references.

When I wrote my BA thesis I used a mixture of the two styles. Here you are an example:
Blake, William, The Early Illuminated Books (London:the William Blake Trust, 1998)

However, in my final thesis I'm using a different format that follows the APA style apart from punctuation and abbreviations (my marketing professor 'suggested' it to me) . Here you are an example:
Agnis, Teri (1999), The End of Fashion: the Mass Marketing of the Clothing Business, New York: Morrow.

So, choose the style and format you prefere and feel more comfortable with and GOOD LUCK for your thesis!

Elisabetta

Reflective Blogging: FOOTLOOSE SHOES?

Hi guys!

I was going to analyze the article I chose for my post about Critical Reading but I realized that I didn't like it very much :-( So, I decided to find a new article that could be useful for my thesis, as well. So, forgive me for my change but here you are the link of my new article: Footlose Shoes? International competition and Industrial Districts in the Italian Footwear Industry.

It was published in 1998 and the author is Jochen Lorentzen (Department of International Economics and Management Copenaghen Business School and School of Development Studies University of Natal). In this academic article the Italian footwear districts are analyzed from the point of view of international competition, internal cohesion and delocalization. The article respects the hourglass structure. Indeed, there is a general introduction about Italian districts. The body is divided into three specific paragraphs which go down in specific details respectively about: The global and the local, Competition in the world footwear industry and Delocalization. Finally, the conclusion sums up in a general way what was written before about Italian footwear district's strategies and evolution in local and international industry policy. The division into paragraphs helps the reader to follow the logical flow of ideas: the discourse starts about global and local market and then focuses about footwear industry and the strategy of delocalising the production abroad. In this way, the text is really clear and easy to understand. Furthermore, it can be considered clear because conjunctions and subordinators render it cohesive. For example, 'on the whole' and 'to sum up' are often used, and they are useful to understand when a statement is giving a general conclusive idea about the topic. However, sometimes the lexicon is complex and difficult to understand because the article's assumed audience are footwear or industrial experts.

I think that a blog post should have the same features of an academic writing. As you can find in Handout2, they should be:

1. well structured;
2. logical;
3. clear and concise;
4. coherent.

It is important to notice that these features are applied to a different writing genre with some different consequences. For example, the concision of a blog post is linked to the fact that if it is too long the reader get bored; the clearness of a blog is linked to colours, font and pictures' disposition; a blog is coherent when links are used in the right way. So, remember to apply your list to your blog posts but with the right adaptations ;-)

Bye!

Elisabetta

Reflective Blogging: PLAGIARISM

Hi guys!

Today I'm going to write about a very 'hot' issue: PLAGIARISM! In simple words, in the academic world plagiarism can be defined as the imitation of words, ideas or opinions without identifying their own original source. For this reason, many authors protect their materials with IPR (Intellectual Property Rights). These rights allow their holders to control the use and reproduction of their creative works, which could be books, songs, films, photographs, articles and so on. Some solutions to avoid plagiarism are CREATIVE COMMONS, which is my new discovery too!! It is a non-profit corporation that allows people to mark their works freely in different ways corresponding to the different ways in which people can interact with them. In the following list you can find the different types of licences.

• Attribution is when you can use the materials by crediting the original author.
• Share alike is when the derivative works can be distributed only under an identical license.
• Non commercial is when materials can be used only without commercial purposes.
• No derivative works is when only verbatim copies are allowed.

An example of creative commons can be identified in Flickr, which is a site about pictures.
About ethics and copyright laws, a simple way to avoid plagiarism in our blogs could be:

• attribution;
• paraphrase + reference:
• summary + reference;
• links.

So, simply put some references to the materials we use or cite. It's important to remember the structure of referencing style too!An example could be:

1. author's name and surname,
2. title of book/article + chapter/journal + edited book/title of the blog post,
3. editor's name,
4. pages of chapter or journal article,
5. publisher/ url and date of the last visit.

I think that reflecting on plagiarism is very important not only because it is an offensive and bad habit, but also because in some countries it is punished with the failing of your course or even expulsion from university! Indeed, in the websites of many American universities I found explanations about plagiarism rules and punishments. For example, at Tiburg University in the case of plagiarism within a thesis a new thesis has to be written and at the Saginaw Valley State University I found a lovely honour code written to demonstrate respect to the work of other people and to maintain the honour of the university. Often universities provide tips for avoiding plagiarism and here you can find an example about Northwestern University. I shared this and other information on Delicious too.
Now that you know (more or less) everything about plagiarism remeber to pay attention to it!!

Bye

Elisabetta


PS I realized I could cover my pictures with copyright!However, I don't think I'm going to do it because if a person decides to 'copy' my pictures this means they are nice!;-)

Happy Easter!!

Dear guys..

I know I'm late but I wanted to wish to all of you a

Happy Easter!

I hope you had a wonderful time with your family, friends and everyone you love...
.....and I hope you had a great Easter Monday too!

Elisabetta

Sunny Spring

Hi guys!
Today it 's so sunny and hot and I'm so happy! I think this is a typical spring day: sun shining, birds singing, .....my dog and me playing in the garden ;-) I love these kind of days and I think I'm really meteopathic. How could I be sad with such wonderful weather? And you?

Elisabetta

Grammatical status: BEWARE OF.........RELATIVE CLAUSES

Hi guys!
Here you some new grammatical tips. This time I want to focus my attention on the difference between subordinators and conjunctions:

• Subordinators are NEVER preceded by a comma (you can find some more information in my previous Grammatical status)
  
• Conjunctions are INDEPENDENT SIGNPOSTS and are usually followed by a comma and preceded by a full-stop or semi-colon. Some examples are:

1. first of all, firstly, first.....to introduce a list;
   
2. in conclusion, to sum up, to summarize....to introduce a conclusion;
3. despite the fact, however, on the other hand...to express contrast;
   
4. as a result, consequently, therefore, .....to express a result;
   
5. moreover, furthermore, otherwise......to reinforce and add information;
6. for example, for instance.....to give examples.

Another fundamental point is the use of RELATIVE CLAUSES. I admit that for me it's not so easy to understand the difference between defining and non-defining relative clauses. Here you some simple definitions in order to recognize them:

• DEFINING relative clause: gives essential information about the noun or noun phrase it modifies and without which the sentence wouldn't make sense (Pronouns: who, that, which, whose, where, when);
• NON-DEFINING relative clause: gives extra information about the noun or noun phrase it identifies, has commas at both ends and could be put into parenthesis (Pronouns: who, which, whose, where, when).

In order to understand the main difference between these two types of relative clauses, this week I tried to avoid the use of non-defining relatives and I finally understand that.....If you can put your information between parenthesis you are writing a non-defining relative clause and you have to use the pronouns 'who' (referring to a person) or 'which' (referring to a thing)!

Bye!

Elisabetta

Reflective blogging: CRITICAL READING

Good morning guys!

Did you read my post about evaluating on line source? I hope so because today I'm going to apply my reflections and my 4W to a Website I noticed surfing the Web thanks to Google scholar...my new discoveries are really useful! Indeed, I needed some information about e-learning and reading this abstract I realised that this article focuses on interesting topics, such as new systems used in education involving both formal and informal learning (WHY it was written). In the introductory page, I found not only the abstract but also the authors (WHO wrote it), the issue date (WHEN it was published) and I could look at the complete URL (WHAT the domain is). Thanks to this infomation, I realised that this article was authoritative and reliable because it was rather recent (19 the September 2006), the authors were linked to the University of Boston (among them there was a professor mentioned in other researches,too) and it was copyrighted. At this point, I decided to read it in full and I noticed that it was really well-structured and well-written using informal and academic language(WHAT style is used). All this evaluations didn't take me a lot of time and were really useful for my research..this is fantastic! I sometimes did it in an 'unconscious' way but now I am aware that I MUST do it all the times to be sure about the results of my researches. In conclusion,....I love my 4W!

Elisabetta

P.S. If you are interested in this article about e-learning I shared it on del.icio.us, too.

Reflective Blogging: EVALUATING ONLINE SOURCES

Hi guys!

How are you?Spring is finally coming!!!
Today I want to reflect with you about online researches. We started this reflection in class and I think it was really useful, indeed I always search for information and articles in the Internet, for example for my final thesis and for personal curiosity, too. You know that in the Web we have to be critical with everything we read, so I chose some main criteria I can use to make judgements about online researches and I found the 4W:

• who is the author (you can carry on a research on the publisher);
• what is the domain (.edu, .org,...) and what style, content, accuracy and structure is used;
• why it was published;
  
• when it was published.

You can fin a more complete and exhaustive list here... thanks Sarah ;-) Or if you have time, you can find longer descriptions in these Website: University of Essex, Purdue's Online Working Lab, San Diego Sate University. However, I think that you can easily get lost in these long and wide descriptions too full of suggestions.

And now I know that you'll be wondering..did she make any new technological discovery this week? Of course...YES! I have to admit that for my researches I used mainly Google and the online library catalogue, but I realized I used Google only in a 'superficial' way :-( But now I have my new discoveries in my mind and I can use:

• Google blogs, where you can find all blogs, some could be less authoritative but you can find blog of experts, too;
• Google books, the' you-tube' of books;
• Google scholar, where you can find abstracts, academic texts, journal articles,...

I want to conclude this post by saying that we should be critical not only with the information found on the Internet but also with everything we read and with any source, from journals to authoritative critics. They are often not independent but linked to associations and groups that conveys their ideas in 'certain' direction. So...BE ALWAYS CRITICAL and remember the 4W ;-)

Elisabetta