taken from http://www.fantom-xp.com/
martedì 25 dicembre 2007
lunedì 10 dicembre 2007
My Personal Learning Environment
Hi everybody!
This week we’ve been supposed to develop a mindmap of our personal learning environment. I’ve never heard before of this definition but it has happened to me a lot of times to reflect on what I should do to learn a language. I must say I’ve already tried to organize my own language learning because in these last few years at university I even more realized that learning a language is really difficult if you just rely on your formal education. I believe studying languages at university, even if you’re attending a master course, is not enough to learn them properly. So I wasn’t surprised at what studies in the field have shown and I completely agree with them.
As you see from the picture below I haven’t made a clear distinction between formal instruction and informl learning. I think the tools you use and the people you deal with to learn a language might be sometimes the same in both contexts. Moreover I think the map wouldn’t be balanced because most of situations in which I’ve realized to learn something effectively take place outside of the classroom.
This week we’ve been supposed to develop a mindmap of our personal learning environment. I’ve never heard before of this definition but it has happened to me a lot of times to reflect on what I should do to learn a language. I must say I’ve already tried to organize my own language learning because in these last few years at university I even more realized that learning a language is really difficult if you just rely on your formal education. I believe studying languages at university, even if you’re attending a master course, is not enough to learn them properly. So I wasn’t surprised at what studies in the field have shown and I completely agree with them.
As you see from the picture below I haven’t made a clear distinction between formal instruction and informl learning. I think the tools you use and the people you deal with to learn a language might be sometimes the same in both contexts. Moreover I think the map wouldn’t be balanced because most of situations in which I’ve realized to learn something effectively take place outside of the classroom.
My Personal Learning Environment
I think just attending classes is not an effective way to learn a language because you don’t always feel compelled to use your brain. Even if you try to memorize grammar rules and new words you will soon forget them because you are not experiencing the situations in which you would be supposed to use them. Instead, if you experience real situations you will remember them for the rest of your life.
As most of you know I’m having a short work experience in a hotel in England. I feel responsible for the job in which I’ve been placed and I’m motivated to do it well. I think that stress and emotions have a great impact on learning.
I’m aware that the most difficult skills for me are listening and speaking. Understanding colloquial English is sometimes hard work because people use a lot of phrasal verbs and slang expressions and might have different accents. For this reason I’ve decided to dedicate my informal learning to activities that could help me improve above all my listening and speaking skills. I believe experiences abroad and activities like talking with friends from abroad, listening to radio and watching foreign TV programmes play an important role in my language learning.
Bye bye!
Selena :)
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