Guest speaker next week

Next week professor Rosemarie BRISCIANA, « Maître de Conférence» in Civilization, Geopolitics and American language, SciencesPo, Paris will be giving us a guest talk on US Public Diplomacy: Language and Communications Techniques. She will be talking to PID students on Wednesday 3rd December, and SEU/SGP students on Thursday 4th.
Here is some diplomacy vocabulary which will help you prepare for her talk.

Exploring the blogosphere

According to wikipedia the blogoshpere is "...the collective term encompassing all weblogs or blogs as a community or social network. Many weblogs are densely interconnected; bloggers read others' blogs, link to them, reference them in their own writing, and post comments on each others' blogs. Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown their own culture." 

Here's a short, recent report on the blogosphere

Purpose: To search the Internet for blogs that interest you in order to become aware of how large and varied the blogosphere is and to get ideas for your own blogs. To start analyzing some of the characteristics of blogs as a genre.

Task: Search for blogs that might interest you. The Council on Foreign Relations has some blogs you may find interesting. Read some of the blogs. Choose one that interests you. Come back to our course blog and write a comment to this post about one of the blogs you have found. Give us the url and explain what you like about the blog and why you would recommend others visiting it.
Start considering how blogs are written and how links are used in blogs. What kind of language is used (formal, informal, vulgar, elegant)? How do bloggers make use of links in their posts? At the end of your post, write a few sentences about your initial observations of the styles used on the blogoshpere.

N.B. Be concise ;-)

Respond: Read the comments of the other students and go visit at least one of the blogs they have suggested. 

Deadline: Next week

Your blog project

Aims of blog project:

• to read, listen and write in English on a topic of interest to you and also related to your studies.
• to develop online literacies, such as evaluating websites, selecting sources, re-presenting and paraphrasing information, writing for an audience, developing critical thinking skills

For this project you will have to create a blog in groups of max. 4 people.
Choose a topic that you are interested in, and also relates somehow to your studies. It could be a particular area or country, it could be an area of European policy, it could be a cause you feel strongly about and want to write about and even campaign for, such as public goods (like water...), racism, poverty, media, it could be an aspect of life in Italy or Europe, or how Italy or another country is viewed by the international press (here's an Italian version).
If you're interested in political blogs, here's an interesting summary of different kinds of political blogs
Make sure that it is a topic all group member have some interest in, or a topic which each group member could focus on from different perspectives.
At least one person in your group should feel comfortable with using technology and be able to resolve technical issues.

ALTERNATIVELY you could choose to FOLLOW and comment regularly on an English language blog on a topic of interest to you, or contribute to a blog such as Italia dall'estero

Each group member should post at least one entry a week. Your posts can be a personal commentary or reflection on the topic, a summary of information from other sources (with links to these), applications of what we do in class to the topic you are writing about.
Your posts can contain links to other websites, embedded videos and photos.
Make sure you do not use images with copyright. If you want to include a picture on your blog, this is a good site http://compfight.com/ but remember to select Creative Commons Licence.
Here's some advice on writing blog posts:
http://www.wikihow.com/Be-a-Good-Blogger

Every week one or two group members will give a 2-3 minute presentation to the class on the group's blog
Every week each group member should post at least one comment on another group's blog.

Your blogs should be up and running by next week: 3rd December.
ONE member of each group should send a comment to this post with a short description of the blog, the URL of the blog and names of group members.

Lingue, Linguaggi e Politica

Here is a link to the programme of the conference I told you about in class, which runs from the 27th to 29th November.

Lingue, Linguaggi e Politica

I strongly advise you to attend a session or two, even though most sessions are in Italian, to get more of an idea of some of the links between language and politics.

Today's lesson - 26th November

Today we looked at the story about Emily Thornberry's tweet and the consequences of her publishing it. A pdf of the slides and some links are available for you below.

slides from today's lesson

´Emily Thornbetty’s Twitter account

´"Snob Labour MP's Twitter dig at White Van Man's England Flags“
´http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/11/21/uk-britain-politics-flag-idUKKCN0J515Z20141121´Guido Fawkes’ blog´The Guardian explains the story´Article we will be analysing in class on Friday

Here are links to some quizzes on vocabulary related to social media

Reading comprehension and vocabulary exercise

Vocabulary exercise

Homework:
Write a cv and/or cover letter for one of the following internships or in response to an advertisement that you yourself find.
World Bank
OECD Young Professionals Programme

To help prepare yourself and understand your skills try some of the quizzes  on the University of Kent website, and follow their advice on writing a cv and cover letter.

You will have to bring a printed copy of the cv and/or letter (and the ad if you are applying for a job other than those posted above) to class next Wednesday 26th November.

I've seen from some of your comments in the texts you wrote is that one of the main issues you have as students is that of career opportunities, some of you even mentioned the likelihood of having to go abroad to find work, others the desire to do an internship abroad with Erasmus+, which I think would be an excellent opportunity for you! So this week, as well as getting ready for the blog project and discussing other issues we will also look at cover letters and cvs.

University of Kent has an excellent university website providing advice for graduates on writing cvs, cover letters, online application forms.
iHipo This is a useful website with links to international internships and jobs, and also advice on cv and coverletter writing. Prospects is also a useful site.
Wikihow has advice on How to write a letter of Intent
Eurodesk is also a useful site with plenty of opportunities.

 

Please could you complete this survey before our next lesson.
Thank you!

Welcome

Hi everyone,
This is the course blog for the 2014-2015 Advanced English courses in the Master's degree courses in International Politics and Diplomacy, European Studies and SPG, at the University of Padova. This is where you will find messages and materials related to what we do in class, and also where students will post written work in the form of comments to posts, links and also their own blogs as the course progresses.