Fourth Skype exchange

Hello everybody!
Here I am again to discuss my fourth Skype meeting which took place on Tuesday afternoon. This week we kept on talking about politics and elections in Italy and USA. Anyway, this time we went deeper into the issues each platform concentrates more on. Sharon asked me some questions about Berlusconi’s and Veltroni’s programs and when we switched to English we had a long conversation about American candidates.

As usual, we started talking in Italian and Sharon wanted to know more about Italy’s biggest problem: tax evasion. I explained her what the different governments tried to do in order to solve it and why the whole situation with taxes is so bad here, although this was quite a difficult issue to talk about. The system is pretty complicated and it was not easy to find the right words to give her an idea of how things work. Anyway, everything went well in the end :-)
We also discussed a little bit about immigration in general: she asked me if we have many immigrants in Italy, where they mostly come from etc…So we anticipated the topic we are supposed to focus on next week…Hope this will not be a problem :-P

As Sarah had asked us I had posted some questions about platforms on the forum, so I started from them when we began to talk in English. I have just answered these questions on our exchange page so I will not repeat the same things here ;-) I can only say that I got more information about American health care system and Sharon confirmed me what Chiara had told us in class.
For those who cannot afford insurance it is extremely expensive to get medical aid. Of course if you need assistance and you are not insured they will not let you die….But then you will have to pay for it for the rest of your life. Even calling an ambulance can cost thousands of dollars. It really sounds quite illogical to me: if I do not have insurance it means I cannot afford it, so how am I supposed to pay this huge amount of money?
Health care is a big problem in America and is a crucial issue in both Hillary’s and Obama’s platforms. The USA have always been well known for its private health care system…Now I am curious to see if things will change with the next president.
We agreed it is a real shame because in America there are a lot of excellent hospitals and doctors, but unfortunately only few people can take full advantage of them. It is absurd, isn’t it?

Ok, see you later for the post about immigration…

Third Skype exchange/Reflective blogging

Hi people!
Here I am again to reflect on my latest Skype meeting :-)

As always, at the beginning we started talking about what we did during the weekend and during class at university. It came as no surprise when Sharon told me that lately they have been focusing a lot on the elections (both in Italy and USA); actually, in these days 90% of the news on TV and magazines are about Obama, Hillary, Veltroni and Berlusconi ;-)
Therefore, it was pretty obvious that the core of our conversation was going to be the elections2008 and political issues in general.

The starting point of our discussion was the impression I had of the so-called political videos. Unfortunately, Sharon had not seen any of them so I more or less repeated what came out on Monday in class.
Then she asked me some questions about the previous Italian government and the candidates who are running for the new office. She told me she heard that Berlusconi has a high probability to win again, although most of the Italians she knows do not like him...(strange, isn't it?) :-)
Anyway, it is always difficult to talk about the political situation in Italy since it is really complicated!

When we moved to English, I asked her for further information about the American electoral system since I had been really struck by the difference between the popular and the electoral vote. In the end, we agreed that the “winner takes all” system might be pretty unfair, but it can be seen as a “necessary evil” to give the country the stability it needs.

As far as similarities are concerned, we noticed that both in the USA and in Italy the key word of these elections is CHANGE. It is clear that in both countries some wrong decisions were taken over the past years and now things cannot remain as they are. The only difference is that Americans still believe that changing is possible, whereas most Italians do not.
This point made me think a lot. Sharon told me that the majority of young people in the US are pretty excited about the elections. They are interested in political events, they try to be well-informed and seem eager to participate actively in their country’s social life.
Sad but true, in Italy is pretty much the contrary. Especially young people are generally disappointed about politics and I am sure many of them are not going to vote this time. I do understand them very well and actually I am also quite unhappy with most politicians (both left- and right-wing). However, I do not think that if you do not vote the situation will get better. And I do think that saying: “I do not care about voting because all politicians are the same” is quite superficial and, after all, not true. Whoever the Prime Minister will be, he/she will not probably be able to solve all Italy’s problems, but I am convinced that different electoral results can have quite different consequences.
Our vote is the only means we have to protect democracy and have our say. It is not much, but we should not forget that many people fought and sometimes died for this right….And in some countries they are still fighting and dying.

In conclusion, let’s spend a few words about our final project. In these months we have been exploring a lot of aspects regarding Italian and American culture, so it is hard to choose just one. I jumped back and read through the questionnaires again to get a clearer idea of what interests me most.
I would really like to learn more about the idea of family Americans generally have. Our peers overseas described American lifestyle as extremely stressful and career-oriented. I also noticed that in "Word Association" none of the Americans associated the words “family” or “mother” to American women.

From all this you might get the impression that nowadays family and children are a little bit in the background in American society. However, I read all the presentations on the Wiki and I saw that most American students have 2-3 brothers or sisters.
Are they just an exception or is the birth rate in the US (despite stress and career) higher than in Europe? Does the State help those women who have a family and a job? (i.e.: are places in nurseries easily available? Can women work part-time?) Do American parents spend a lot of time with their children? Do they think it is important to spend as much time as possible with their children?
I would like to answer these questions and compare the situations in the two countries. I think it could be interesting as the low number of births has been one of the most discussed issues in Italy lately. I wonder if in the US they have this problem as well. If so, I would like to know how they cope with it; if not, I would like to know how they prevented it.

See you on Monday!

YOGA form

Hello!
I have just finished reading and filling out the YOGA form…Wow, I must say I find the topic Intercultural Competence really intriguing! I am happy we are going to deal with it this semester.

As I read through the text, I was pleasantly surprised to notice that many reflections were not new to me. In the form there were some ideas which I had already expressed in the post I wrote on my blog two weeks ago :-)
I was already aware of the importance of Intercultural Competence in today world. I also agree that if you work in an international environment you need to be open-minded and to know how to cope with people with very different ethnic backgrounds. However, as I stated in my post, I am convinced that a whole life is not enough to get to know a culture/language which is not yours. That is why I completely agree with the statement that ICC development has no ending point. You can never consider yourself as “interculturally competent”, so in the end the aim is not KNOWING a foreign country but rather BEING AWARE of what is different there and why. Only if we learn to be critic we will be able to appreciate and accept diversity.

The YOGA form was quite long, so as I went on reading I stumbled across aspects I had never considered before. I am talking for example about the “double-edged” nature of the intercultural experience. It is pretty obvious that competence in another culture and proficiency in its language are part of the same process, but I had never thoroughly reflected on this matter.
I realized that when I talk or write to my foreign friends, I often tend to concentrate more on the language rather than trying to learn something new from them. I mean, I am a student of foreign languages so I just try to jump at any chance I get to speak them. Sometimes when I meet foreign people, practicing my English/German seem more important to me than getting to know their culture. But little by little I am learning that “language and culture are dimensions of each other, interrelated and inseparable”. (This was the sentence which struck me most.)

On the whole, I found the text about Intercultural Competence very interesting, but not so easy to understand, though. There were many specific terms I did not know (i.e.: endeavor, to be germane to etc…) and the concepts were not always straight-forward.
When it came to fill out the form, I had some difficulties as well. To tell the truth, I do not like judging my own competences in general. I may be wrong, but I have always had the impression the others can judge me much better. This was the first time I had to assess my Intercultural Competence and I must say it was a bit awkward to rate myself in such an issue. Actually, I am not sure you can even rate yourself in such an issue… :-)

Anyway, I tried to do my best….And I am eager to see where the YOGA form will lead us :-)

See you soon!

Second Skype exchange

Hi everybody!
Here I am again to discuss about my second Skype meeting.
As I had already talked to Sharon two weeks before, this time I did not feel ‘embarrassed’ at all and I suppose it was the same for her. In fact, we both started talking very spontaneously right from the very beginning.

First of all, she told me about what she did during her spring break and she asked me questions about my week (in Italian).

Then we shifted the focus to the main topic of this week: terrorism. We had a brief discussion about the film Buongiorno, notte! and the so-called ‘years of lead’. I tried to explain her what was going on between the Communist Party and the DC and why these upheavals led to Aldo Moro’s murder. I stressed the relation between what happened in those years and some of the main problems of today Italy; for example, I told her about the big scandal of “Mani Pulite”, in which many politicians, entrepreneurs and judges were involved. The huge debt we have now partially comes from that long period of corruption, although many Italians seem not to realize that.
From here we moved to the present situation: Sharon asked me about the elections (how many parties we have, who the candidates are) and who in my opinion is going to win ;-)
We drew a comparison between Italy and the US, since they are also having elections soon. We tried to figure out what the most important issues are (for the new Government/President): economic growth, health care (mainly in America), immigration (mainly in Italy) and, once again, terrorism.

Afterwards, we switched to English and talked about terrorism in the US and American politics in general.
As is well known, after the terrible events of 9/11th the American government tried to do whatever possible in order to ‘defeat’ terrorism and prevent other attacks to happen. This was President Bush’s main goal when he was reelected for the second time.
Unfortunately, most Americans think that Bush failed in his duty and would like the new President to pull all the troops out of the Iraq. That would probably help American economy bounce back since huge investments have been made in a war which is actually leading to nothing. In addition, people would feel safer and not constantly under threat of terrorist attacks.

As you may notice, in our conversation we did not strictly concentrate on the topic we were supposed to develop.
Last time we were to talk about university life, and so we did. This time it was much more difficult because we felt more confident and at ease; the conversation was very spontaneous so it was harder to stick to one single issue. We started talking about terrorism but then we digressed and talked more about politics and social problems in our countries. I hope the task can be considered fulfilled the same :-) After all, we talked ½ hour in Italian and ½ an hour in English and we learnt something new from each other…This is what counts, isn’t it? :-P

I am really satisfied about how this exchange is going on. We are just at the beginning but I feel we are on the right way. Contributing to the forum is a great chance to get to know something about life overseas and to find out things we do not know about our own country. In fact, when Sarah told us that this week topic would be the ‘years of lead’ and the Red Brigades, I was kind of puzzled. I realized I just had a faint idea of what was going on in those years; unfortunately, we do not usually study this period at school. So it was a great opportunity for me to learn something new about Italian history…I really appreciated it! :-)

See you!!!!

Mid-term paper

Hello everyone!
Before taking these few days off for Easter break, I would like to discuss about the mid-term paper I got back from Sarah two weeks ago.
I had a look at my peers’ works as well, so that I could get a general idea of what people thought about this course.

As regards the content, I was not surprised at all to read that all of us were satisfied and happy with what we did during the first semester. We all wrote more or less the same things and defined this course as informal and thought-provoking…Something pretty different from what we had been used to.

From the point of view of language, the papers were quite different from each other. Some of us used a more formal, some others a more colloquial style.
Although we all have a “bachelor degree” in English and should all be more or less at the same level, I noticed that there are quite big differences among the students.
I am neither a teacher nor a native speaker of English, so it is not my intention to judge anyone, but I must say some papers were much more accurate than others. Some people really came up with original reflections and went deeper into the matters, while others were a little bit superficial and the language was not always appropriate. What’s more, I had the impression that someone concentrated too much on the description of the ”e-tivities” and did not pay enough attention to the learning process (as we were supposed to do).

However, I realized that most of us made the same kind of language mistakes. We still have some difficulties with punctuation and verb tenses. In her comments Sarah often pointed out that we tend to mix verb tenses (simple past and present perfect); for me, after 13 years studying English is still hard to get these two tenses right since we do not have the same distinction in Italian.
In my paper there was also a lack of connectors, whereas some students used them either too often or in the wrong place (i.e.: ‘Moreover’ at the beginning of a new paragraph). In my first posts I used too many connectors, now I have tried to ‘reduce’ them but maybe I am exaggerating too much ;-) I will try to get better in this sense.
Another thing I noticed is that many of us misspell words sometimes. In my paper there are no spelling mistakes just because I always use a spell-checker (even when I am writing in Italian) and I would suggest that my peers should do the same. We all know that English spelling is not a piece of cake (I was also sure it was ’partecipation’ instead of ’participation’ :-/…); thank goodness, technology can help us avoid silly mistakes :-)

On the one hand, I think in my paper there are some mistakes I could (and should) have avoid:

• The repetition of the subject when it is the same in two coordinate sentences (I was told a million times about it…)
• The use of ‘consistent’ instead of ‘significant’ (I should have checked its meaning and thought it might have been a ‘false friend’)
• The use of wrong prepositions (you should always look them up as they can be really different from Italian)

On the other hand, I realized there are things which are not so straight-forward. For instance, although I studied all possible grammar rules about it, I am still not sure about the difference between ’also’ and ’even’. I mean, I do know there is a difference between the two and I think I have understood it, nonetheless when I write the choice does not come so naturally.
The same happens with prepositions sometimes: for example, ’to expect something FROM someone’ and ’to expect something OF someone’ are both possible…I read some sentences and I noticed they are slightly different, however this difference is almost imperceptible to my ’non-native speaker’ ear.
Let’s hope watching films and talking with my Skype-peer and other foreign friends will help me get better from time to time.

Last but not least, I would really like to thank my peers for providing me feedback. They gave me a lot of useful tips and good pieces of advice…Without their help my paper would have been much worse, that’s for sure!

OK, that was long enough ;-)

Happy Easter to everyone!!!!

BYE