Skype Exchange for our Final Project

On Wednesday we've been talking about the topic for our final project as group 5. It wasn't easy but in the end... we worked it out! We found our topic just at the end of the skype session!!! We'll be describing the life of students attending Univeristy in Italy and in the U.S.A.; we'll compare for example students aggregation opportunities and franternities. I'm eager to find out something more about the American fraternities, since when I first saw the movie "Animal House"!!! In Italy it seems that these congregation for assembling people fell out of the habit... I saw that in Padova there are two fraternities, but the first one hasn't got any web page, while the second one has it but the last time it was updated, it was in 2004... and to tell the truth, me tjat I'm attending the Univeristy here in Padua since 'many years', I didn't even know that they they existed!!! However, I think we'll have fun camparing customs of the two conutries, finding similarities and differences...

I'll write soon about what we'll be posting on our wiki!

See ya soon!

Alice

Immigration

The dabate about immigration is an issue which affects all those countries that are economically adavantged; representing opportunities for work and welfare to those people living in less developed countries.
What about Italy? As far as my personal experience is concerned regards this issue, it happend to me to get in contact with some immigrant families dealing with a number of difficulties. I remember that a few years ago, a friend of mine which was working for an association helping immigrates, asked me if could help him as a translator, because he had to talk to a woman, who had moved from Morocco, and she couldn't speak Italian. She had underwent a series of 'unpleasant discussions' with her husband and nobody could help her, since all her relatives lived far from her. What I learnt from that meeting was that although she had come and live in Italy - and therefore that should have represented an improvement, taking one step forward a better economical perspective, she had taken two steps back as far as her social condition is concerned. She was alone, she couldn't talk to nobody and nonbody could as a matter of fact help her.

My impression is that most of the immigrants, who not only live in Italy, but even in other countries, live in a sort of perpetual status of undefined situation: they'll never feel completely assimilated in the community and on the other hand they don't even belong any more to their culture and country of origin.
The question is, how could be these people helped in order that they won't live always in the borderline? What could we do for them? What are our social policies doing for these people?

Alice

Reflective Blogging on Skype

Hello everybody!

This will be a sort of reflective blogging post on my last Sype exchange with Dickinson students! Well, although for some reasons, I chatted very little with my American peer, I must say that this exchange is one of the most effective e-tivity of the course! I'm very happy with it, since I'm touch with an American speaker, (and I love so much her American accent!!!) I can improve my English and even learn something more about American culture and life. I really had fun talking to her, although sometimes it was difficult to me to find the right words to explain her about the Italian politics... I believe that we had an interesting chat, because first she asked me to explain to her how actually the previous Italian government stepped down, since she didn't know the role our Presidente della Repubblica plays in the governement. And then we spoke the American campaign which is still taking place in the U.S.A.
So, to conclude, it was interesting learning something new about the American campaign, which is not only what we see on TV, that is a fight between Obama and Clinton over the presidency.

As far as my final project is concerned... I haven't developed an idea yet...
Can I just think a little bit about it? ;-)

See you!!!

Alice

Intercultural Competence

Reading through the intercultural competence's presentation, I thought about the last English literature course, that I had attended with Professor Oboe last year. It was during that course, in fact, that I came across some points of intercultural competences for the first time. It was talking about literature in English coming from outside England, that I realized that till that time I hadn’t developed an awareness of how dealing with the differences between different cultures. But what had struck me more, had been that through those lectures I had been acknowledging more and more that I my cultural frame towards some people or cultures was incredibly narrowed; not only because I knew little about them (and that might even be excused), but also because I had strong bias against them, and I didn’t even know why... and it was so depressing realizing that! Sometimes we have a distorted vision of things just because it’s our culture that has injected it to us... and that’s a pity, isn’t it?
Finally, what I understood at the end of that course, was that I have to try to look at things, considering them from more perspectives... it can’t be that easy, I know and it might be taken for granted... Although I have been studying foreign languages for years and I’ve been dealing with different cultures too, I realize there’s still much to do for me, to enhance my intercultural competence.

Question to the Americans (from Group 4)

In the part of the questionnaire regarding Italy, some of you wrote about 'Free Health Care'. We know that in the U.S.A. you need a valid health insurance to get medical assistance. What happens if someone has a serious car crash and needs immediate aid, but he doesn't have any valid insurance? How do you cope with it?

Skype Exchange

Hello Everybody!

Just a few lines to say that I enjoyed my first Skype exchange really much! I really had fun talking to my exchange partner Corinna, who's a young student at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania... I say young, because she's younger than me... therefore I'm not going to say how old I am, but how old she is :-) She's 19! However, I got a good impression of hers, although she had waken up just 15 minutes before :-) it was quite early in the morning there, when we had our talk! We spoke about University and she tried to explain me a bit how a campus works and the opportunities that students have, while they're living in. I'd really like to experience it! She told me that there are excellent facilities for sport and recreation... while for me it is always hard to find spare-time for my hobbies, because I have to drive every day to Padova to attend courses and it's such a loss of time! That's why my only sport activity is running on Sunday mornings...
I even asked her, if life in a campus is similar to what movies pictured... like in Animal House :-) We laughed about that and she told me she's a serious student, however there are students who have 'fun' also...
Anyway, the experience has been not only amazing, since I met (met? more or less) a very kind person to whom talking about, but also very useful; I learnt some new words, I tried to listen carefully to her pronounciation, (thanks God, I could understand everything she said!).
Hope we'll be keeping in contact, even after the exchange has finished.

See you soon all!

Alice

Comments on PEL

Hi Everybody,

I must admit I had never thought about a 'visual' organization of my English learning before doing e-tivity 9! I tried to plan my learning environement so that it could apper as clear as possible... hope it will be so to you all readers! At the beginning I spent a bit of time experimenting Free Mind, which was totally a brand new program to me, however, finally, I could manage it... I had fun while I tried to organize my visual map of all my study activities and eventuatlly I was surprised as I realized that it is true that our language learning comes mostly from informal activieties and personal interests!
At the end of this e-tivity I reflected that I've been studying English since many years and there's still much I have to do to improve my pronounciation, the use of structures and so on... I mean, while I was building my map I understood that there won't be a time in which I'll be satisfied with my English... that is I'll be studying to improve my oral and written skills for the rest of my life... ;-) Even though I won't be the only one ;-) I was a bit disappointed about that...
However I've become aware, once again, of the fact that nowadays we have at our fingertips any kind of tools and sources which can help us to level our English up... and therefore they should be helping me not to get bored at practicing the language still for a long time ;-)
Since I'm sure that many of you Bloggers, who are attending our e-course, have written similar tools and sources to mine in your PELs, I'd like to focus a little bit on one main aspect of my English learning experience. [This aspect has to do with music, of course! ;-)]
Although there is a number of interactive English courses on the web, which offer free online lessons, conferences, podcasts, videos, and many others cool sources, I've come to the conclusion that to me there is only one strategy that till now has effectively made me improve my Engligh: Songs! :-) Since years I've been learning hundreds of new words from the lyrics of my favourite artists and it is obvious to me to say that they have helped me very much to widely enlarge my vocabulary. Some time ago I realized that listening to songs and reading lyrics, was not only a pleasure to me, but even a more successful device than reading books, to definetely learn new terms, structures, puns... The fact is that listening to a song, you can learn the pronounciation and the use of new words and because then you repeat them while you're singing the lyrics... you learn it, even without being aware of that!

What do you think about that? Do you have any different strategy to suggest me?

See you all soon!

Alice