Xchange 6th week

Another exchange, another topic to develop with my dear American peer and another more Italian girl, who is going to work with Artem, Sara and I in the final project. Last Wednesdays in group, we decided the topic of our project, and after a little debate we all agreed to deal with death penalty. I was the first in the group who proposed that topic; I perfectly know that it's a very sad topic to talk about but, on the other hand, I think that it's interesting and unusual, too. Research materials about it will be helpfull to understand differences between American and Italian Laws on death penality, different opinions about its validity and if death penality is still usefull to prevent or punish crimes. As far as Italy, death penalty was substituted long ago with the “ergastolo”, that is life imprisonment, but the nowadays situation is getting worse after the last law of the government called "indulto"; it's the opportunity that normally the Italian president gives to those inmates of prison after a determinate periopd of time. After this government decision the number of murders and crime is increasing and the sense of fear is being rampant across Italian society. So, at that point of view it will be interesting to analyse which is the best solution to solve that situation, according to people opinions and ideas. We will see...

In the second part of the conversation we started talk about immigration, which was the week topic we were supposed to develop togethet in the lab.

In this case Arty was an important source of information for us: he comes from Ukraine, so he could descibe us the American situation and behaviour towards immigrant and immigration in general. He explained to us that he doesn’t consider himself an immigrant because he’ll be staying in the USA just for four years to complete his studies and then he’ll come back home; What is more in his personal opinion American has a open- minded on this topic, thanks to the important role that American universityie play inside the society, too, They are sort of “melting pots”, taking in people from all over the world so the help them to integrate themselves in American ordinary life, without making anykind of discrinmination. However, despite this positive situation he added also that the American society tends to treat immigrants in different ways according to their nationality and – above all – to their financial conditions. He said that there are deep differences between people that come from the South of American and those who come from the North,or even people coming from Europe are usually far better accepted than immigrants from Latin America and other poor countries. Artem reminded us that there is a great number of Italian immigrants in the USA and they are treated in a better way than American poor people which are terated are immigrant as well.

Then we tried to explain him our Italian Situation but he was already well- informed about that becouse he studied it during his scholar years.

The discussion was very interesting and useful for me to understand a different point of view, but, during this exchange experience with American people, I notice that there are not so much differnces in the way of think or behave, between America guys and we, as Italin students that live in the North of Italy. I think that this could be a good starting point for our next covesation with Arty.

see you...

Xchange, 5th week

Hi friends....

Today is Monday again, another week is starting and I'm already tires -sigh-. Sorry for the late of this post, but during last week end I didn't feel very well; on Friday I did a little surgery to my teeth and I was litteraly obbliged by my doctor to stay at home. But I'm used not to follow good instructions, Friday evening I went out with my friends and consequently, on Saturday morning I woke up with temperature. Todai is getting better and also my teeth are getting better too, but now I bitterly in late with all my works.

Anyway, last Wednesday during our Skype exchange, we were in 4: Artem, Sarah, me and a new Italian peer: Alice Violato who joined our chat. After a little presentation between Arty and Alice we went on speaking about elections and differences between Italian and American election system. Honestly we were a little bit boring to talk about that topic; first of all because we don't like that topic very much, and secondly because, in these days, we are "bombed" by media about politics and political elections. So we decided to change the topic and we spoke about immigration and after that Arty was curious to know why in Italy there is the distintion between "terroni e polentoni". After that crucial question the discussion changed its direction and we started analyse a little differences between Northen and Southen people.
There was a little confusion in our conversation, but It's was all the same interesting and nice...
See you soon...
cheers

Xchange, 4th week

Hi guys, how are you??

What about me I must confess that the previous week was very difficult and heavy … Maybe because there was the time changing and I’m still trying to conform myself with this new time, but I feel very tired and sleepy; as an Italian saying goes “Aprile dolce dormire”, it seems to be perfect to describe my physical an psychological state…
What is more the amount of homework that we have to do at university seem to become more and more heavy, exams and final projects are pressing on us and I become more and more nervous too.
Anyway, now it’s time to sum up my last Skype conversation. My fourth discussion with Artem and Sara was really interesting and intense too. We immediately started talking about what is happening in America and Italy during there political elections. First of all Sarah and I asked Artem how exactly America political system works and he explained us in details the differences between American and Italian political system. Then the discussion moved to our nowadays Italian situation and, inevitably we started speaking about propaganda and the 2 Italian videos that Sarah published in the blog. He admitted that he had had a very strange reaction when he watched them in YouTube, but he stayed completely astonished and shocked when we explained him Berlusconi’s video. He didn’t recognise that at the end of it, there are a group of young people that have as a background a terrifying building: the palazzo Della Civiltà Del Lavoro. It’s placed in Rome, was built by Benito Mussolini’s regime and is considered to be the symbol of fascism for the world.
Then Sarah and I expressed our political ideas and we both tried to explain them to Artem, mentioning also an interesting book that describes the political reality in this election period.

Then the discussion became lighter and we talked a little bit about music and plans for the weekend and finally we gave him the precise recipe to prepare Italian famous spritz!!!
I’m very happy of this exchange because I’m getting more and more involved on it and Artem, Sarah and I are creating a great feeling in our weekly discussion.

That's all folks!!!

... and now let's talk about YOGA...

Oh, no... it is not my last hobby; YOGA stands for "Your Objectives, Guidelines and Assessment" form. This week we didn't do our weekly Skype exchange with our American friends, and so Sarah proposed us to do a different work. We were supposed to reflect and examine the developement of our intercultural communicateive competence (ICC or Intercultural Competence, for short). We were supposed to fill a test and use it as a kind of self-evaluation guide. As the explanation of the test says, this document should help us to critically examine our intercultural objectives, serve as guidelines while undergoing an intercultural experience, and provide an assessment tool at variour stages of intercultural development.

The test is divided in 4 sections called: awareness, attitudes, skills and knowledge, and each of them is divided in 4 levels too, educational travel, sojourner, professional and intercultural/ multicultural specialist. I decided to complete the first and the third part, because these are the two that applied directly to my experience. The competences as "educational traveler" are linked with the experience that I had 5 years ago when I went to Edimburgh. I lived there for one month in a campus and I attended a summer school class with other international students.

It was my first time abroad and it was a great opportunity to develop my intercultural competences. Then, in filling the third section, I took into consideartion the experience that I had in January when I worked as interpreter during the Gold Exhibition in Vicenza. Then to fill out the test, I considered my experiences as a foreign languages' student and as a professional as well. I thought of my language competence in general but with an eye on English culture, which is the one I experienced directly.

I think that YOGA Form, first of all, is a good opportunity to sit down and reflect on my progress in intercultural competence. Most of the time we undervalue the importance of reflection on our developments in languages. We are used to study and practice them, without taking into account if what we are doing is useful or not for our everyday life and job's experience. In fact, while ackonowledging that contact and experience with people of other languages and cultures in a positive setting provide excellent opportunities to provoke ICC development, it is also clesr that once the process has begun, its develpoment is an on-going- often a lifelong- process. So, answering the questions, I found out some interesting things about my awaress and attitudes towards languages and cultures differences.

As far as my "educational traveler" experience I demonstrate awareness of differences across languages and cultural, how a specific context alters my interaction with others and I am viewed by members of the host culture. I demonstrate a willingness to interact with members of a host culture, try to communicate in the host language and to behave in "appropiate" ways and also try to deal with the emotions and frustrations caused by my partecipation in a host culture. About skills, I demonstrate flexibility in interactions with people from the host culture and I develop strategies for learning the host language.

Filling out the test, however, I notices that I had the most improvement in the "professional" field. I demonstrate willingness to grapple with multiple ways of perceiving, of expressing myself, and behaving; to engage with others and to try to understand differences in their behaviour and attitude. As an interpreter I tested my languages skills too, and I realized that i can use several cultural frameworks to improve my professional interactions,nad I can communicate effectively with people from various cultures in a range of social domains.

But, in both sections, I even noticed that I have a low competence in the knowledge of the essential norms and taboos of the host culture in general. In my opinion the reason is because during these years at university I more concentrated on studying grammars and theori concept about languages, without paying much attention to the real content of "culture. Having a full knowledge of what "culture" really means, must be essential if we want become great af efficent Mediatori Culurali.

Isn't it???

Xchange, 3rd week

Hi guy..
I hope you have enjoyed this Easter break and that you have time to restore and recollect you energies :- )
In my last post I wrote that I was very happy because of the start of spring; and, of course, in the following day the weather was a disaster; wind, cold, rain and also snow... It seemed as we were in winter...
I didn't do anything interesting in this break, exept eat chocolate, cakes and sleep a lot, but I was sad everydays because of the weather that damaged my Easter's plan..

Anyway, last week the Skype exchange didn't as useful as I expected. I think that the reason was because I didn't have the opportunity to speak with my previous American classmate, Artem. At the very last second Sarah changed the pairing because we Italian students were less than American ones, and so I spoke with a new girl: Michelle. She's very nice, but we spend most of the time to speak about ourselves, to introduce each others and we didn't focus enough about our weekly topic: terrorism and "anni di piombo".

Anyway, about this topic she told me that after September 11th, the situation in USA is completely different. People have become aware of the existence of a king of terrorism that they didn't know before. I asked her something more in details about that day, but she answered me that she hasn't now a vivid memory of what happened because she was too young. But when I asked her about the nowadays situation in USA, her answer caught my attention so much, because she said that now America people are not so much scared and worried about future attacks. They seem to be quite prepared; even better, they are conscious of the possibility that something else in the future could happen, but, on the other hand, they are still living as usual, because, in their opinion, this is the best way to face up too this problem and avoid panic in every-day life. I was very surprise by this consideration.

Fortunately she didn't ask me anything about "anni di piombo" or terrorism in Italy, because I wasn't so much prepared on this topic. I clearly explained her that this topic is not so much analyse during High School education because it's considered too recent by the Educational Minister, and so teachers decided to focused more on the First and the Second World War that the last years of the XX century.
Then our conversation finished without any kind of useful conclusions.
I hope that next time the topic will be more interesting...

See you on Wednesday the 1st...

Happy Easter to you all

Cheers

Xchange, 2nd week

Hello peers!
How are you? I hope you're all fine. Sorry for the late of thi post but this weekend my computer at home decided not to collaborate with me and with my scholar activitives, so I had to postpone the updating of imy blog until this morning.

Anyway.. Have you seen that, at least, SPRING is coming (very slowly,actually), but it's doesn't matter. This morning I'm very happy because walking from the railway station to the university, I saw that trees are already in blossom and the rays of light appared beyond the clouds. It was a wonderful moment. Despite the fact that spring is not my favorite season ( it's summer the best one for me), I think that spring it's a moment of "revival" and "refreshment" from the sadness of winter. It's a source of energy, that will help me for the last months of classes here, at university.

Anyway, about our Skype Exchange, unfortunately I have very few to say. Last Wendnesday, in the Lab, we didn't speak with our American collegues because they had Sping break and so it's a long time since of I hadn't news from my "little" Artem (my American peer). I wrote him a brief message but I haven't had any answer back, yet; who knows, how did he sent these spring holiday?? (maybe I will ask him the next Wendnesday!!!).

Despite this failure of contact with our American friends, last Monday in class we had the pleasure to know Chiara Olivi. She is one of the girls who makes the exchange with our in USA, and last week she came in Italy to meet her parents, that live near Padua. It's was really a nice experience: first of all because Chaira is a very pretty and sweet girl, and secondly because we had the possibility to pose her a lot of questions and discuss about everyting (hobbies, activities, Americal school system, "campus" and also she tolm us her impressions about Italy and our univerisity). I hope that she will take with her in USA a good impression of our group!!!!

About our weekly task, it was quite easy: we were supposed to discuss in our group and to come up with one question to pose to the Americans. After a lot of difficulties to come in contact with my Italian peers, and different opinions about the final question to create, we decided to ask them something more about the Americans' view of Italian lifestyle and in particular how much their view is influenced by mass-media. All our questions were equally interesting but my peers were right. As Martina noticed in hers blog, the question about the influence of mass-media could be a good starting point for a lively general discussion.

Ok guys, now it's time to attend the lesson with Sarah; I'm curious to discover which will be the topic of today!!!

See you soon!
Bye!