I like Skype

Hi, here I am…
I come back with a new interesting experience: Skype.
Have you ever tried skyping? No? You are missing a big opportunity. You must try it.

This week I have skyped for the first time in my life and with my friend Lara and an American boy, Timothy.
It was great. I’m enthusiastic because I can practice my English in the way I like most: by talking to a native speaker who is also very nice and friendly.

I love skyping! Not only it allowed me to train my language knowledge, but also it gave me the opportunity of knowing a culture different from mine.
I must confess that at the very beginning I was scared about talking to a complete stranger and I feared my English did not live up to the situation.
But Timothy made me feel welcome: he was calm, he seemed to understand me perfectly and I felt I had to give him what he gave me. I mean that I felt that I was really learning a language by achieving its main goal: communication. On the other hand, I wanted Timothy to feel the same thing like me and I was happy to help him with Italian learning.
I’m aware that we had to talk about recycling and that this experiment involved several subjects, not only language, but I couldn’t stop thinking how wonderful speaking a foreign language was.

During the years I spent at the university, I was totally concentrated on accuracy, rules and formal structures. That was good but my passion for foreign languages and cultures was gradually fading. I felt that I was studying something deeply taken out of the reality and largely academic.

Skype is one of the biggest instruments the Net can offer to language learners.
During the first semester with Sarah we have practised two important aspects of languages: writing (with blogs, comments, wikis, etc.) and listening (with Podcasts). Speaking is developed this semester with skyping. We spoke to each other in class during our blogging course, but now speaking is becoming more and more important.
I understood that my difficulties in spoken English are also related to the fact that, usually, we don’t talk a lot in class because of the number of the students, but also because of a certain way of teaching languages. I’m convinced that I can make enormous progresses thanks to Skype.
It could be also an incentive to do my best to develop the weekly subjects and enrich my general culture… Timothy was really competent in recycling, I don’t want to cut a bad figure next week!

I look forward to skype again.

Francesca