Mind mapping my future

Hello everyone!

This is going to be my very last post for the English course. We have done a long travel from last October. In particular, now we are all well aware of the fact of having a lot to do even after our graduation. Indeed, languages have to be kept alive into our minds because unfortunately they tend to slowly disappear.

Some months ago we started reflecting on our learning purposes, on our next linguistic goals and on the means for reaching them. Then, during these months we found out new computer tools useful for training our linguistic skills. I think we did a great job together this year and that it will be very useful for our future needs.

We'll have a lot to do to keep in mind the languages we studied at the University. Now, we have to make one step further building our Personal Learning Environment. A PLE is a kind of a new approach to language learning. Indeed, using different computer tools we can train our linguistic skills. I think that a PLE recognizes the fact that the learning process takes place at different levels, in particular the informal learning level is of great importance in everyone's learning process.

As far as my PLE is concerned, I began to put down my ideas of what I think are the main tools I used until now to learn a second language. It is only a first draft because a PLE can be expanded in every moment. In fact, it is important to add new tools and ways of learning we find out during the time. I divided my PLE into 5 sections: formal learning, informal learning, who, where and how. 'Formal' and 'informal learning' are divided in turn into 4 sub-sections, i.e. the four abilities: writing, reading, listening and speaking. The section 'how' is also divided into 3 sub-sections, i.e. gathering information, acting on learning and processing information.

In my PLE I decided to focus my attention on the four abilities since I think that we use different tools to develop each of them and that each of them is equally important as far as our language learning is concerned. Furthermore, in my opinion our PLE's mind maps should give an important role to 'how' we want to consolidate our linguistic learning, i.e. the means to reach our targets.

Bye bye,
:) Chiara

(photo source)