My Experience of the Exchange

 

 

Description of my feelings, knowledge and actions during the Exchange.

 

A. Feelings

• Ways in which my curiosity and interest were aroused: (examples that made me re-consider my own culture)- Well, it is not so simple to describe ways by which my curiosity was aroused during this exchange. I can say that the entire semester was useful and very interesting, and every lesson in class or even in the lab, doing skype conversation, was a sourse of curiosity for me. At the beginning of this semester I had a lot of experctations about this exchange with an American univeristy, and now I can say that all those expectations were fulfield. Every single notion that I learned about American cultural helped me to arouse my curiosity and make me love America and the Americans, too. Doing Skype exchange, I had the opportunity to meet a wonderful peer (Artem), and I learned a lot from him. In this experience I had the possibility to test my oral language skills and my ability to mantain a vivid and  real conversation, without panic or fear. I perfectly know that there is still a lot of work to do on my oral English, but this exchange was a useful starting-point to analyse my mistakes and overcome them.
• Moments in which I felt uncomfortable: (what made me feel like this, with particular examples if possible)- I admit that the first time I heard Artem speaking in a perfect English, even if he's a non-native speaker (he's from Ukraina) I felt very uncomfortable. After more or less 12 years of studying English, my awful Italian accent is still present in my intonation, and it's a source of frustration for me. Fortunately Skype conversations were not damage by this problem, but it was a little bit difficult to overcome the feeling of constant inadequacy with my limits in speaking English.
• Moments when I felt comfortable: (what made me feel like this, with particular examples if possible)-  Well, as I said before, I particulary enjoyed the lessons in the lab when we did Skype convesation. For the first 3 weeks I worked with Artem and Sara. But in the last 4 weeks also Elena joined our group to work on our final project. This experience was wonderful for a great number of reasons. First of all, because it gave to me the possibilty to learn more about death penalty in America (it was the topic of our paper). Secondly, I could work with great and effective peers; we worked very hard on this final project, we shared opinions by skype, wiki, del.icio.usm and e-mails, too (so we used a lot of tools we met during this course), and we could compare our ideas each others. Last but not least, I could practice my oral English, using a specific language for that specific topic. It was great!!!! 

 

B. Knowledge

• The most important things I learnt about family life and/or life at school. The most relevant difference that I learnt about America lifestyle is about life inside a campus. I was very curious to know how students in a campus live and organize their time, and I spent a lot of my conversatio with Artem in asking informatiopn about that. I'm fashinated about the idea to live together with my peers in a campus, share with them spaces, moments and same situations, except those that one can live during a class. What is more, even the way in which American University are organized is completly different from ours, and in my opinion it's more precise and effective, too. During several conversations we spoke also about differences between Italian and American political system. I am not too much interested about that topic, but it was quite usefull to understand how it works now, that America is decideing for its next president.   
• The most important things I have learnt about the country, the nation, the state of the target language:  From this exchange I learnt that American are very open-minded in every thing concerning every-day life. They are able to accept  different opinions and discuss in detalis about them. They are also friendly, and this characteristic is clearly visible also in the way they organize their life and their interaction with foreign people.
• What I have learnt about customs and conventions of talking with people (topics which interest them, topics to avoid, how to greet people and take leave from them). Maybe I risk to repeat myself, but I can say that during my conversation with Artem I felt myself free and totally confidence to talk about everything. Most of the times we interruped our university speechs with more "light" topics: hobbies, sports, friends, differents habits or opinions about some interesting topics. I think that we didn't avoid any topics, but we came in contact with them uncousciously. It was the spontaneouss of our conversations that I appreciated the most.

 

C. Actions

• Incidents or problems which I resolved by explaining different cultures to people, helping them see the points of view of different cultures and how misunderstandings can happen. Fortunatlely, I never had these bad experiences during this experince.
• Examples of times when I have had to ask questions and work out my own answers (from ask for clarification to understanding cultural customs and beliefs)

 

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A self-assessment of my Intercultural Experience

 

A. Interest in other people's way of life

 

• I am interested in other people's experience of daily life, particularly those things not usually presented to outsiders through the media. Example: I was very curios to know details about American students life-time. Many times I asked to my American peer to explain me how the life in a campus is, and if it is exactly as American movies show us :-))

• I am also interested in the daily experience of a variety of social groups within a society and not only the dominant culture. Example: About American life inside the society, I'm interested in the way American people consider immigrants and immigration in generel, and how they can manage this problems with a good integration polices. 

 

B. Ability to change perspective

• I have realised that I can understand other cultures by seeing things from a different point of view and by looking at my culture from their perspective. Example: One of the most important "tool" that helped me to reach this ability was the update of the forum. In this wikipage, created by the American students', we hade the possibility to say our opinions and express ideas about different topics about political or social situations, both in American and in Italy. During this virtual debate I really could understand things belong to American culture by seeing them from another point of view. I apprecieated also the "funny" and positive ways in which my own culture was described by American students' in their comments.

 

C. Ability to cope with communicating in a different language with a different culture

• I am able to cope with a range of reactions people from different cultures may have to the way I express myself and what I say. Example: It's difficult to bring a precise example about the ways I was able to cope with a range of reactions people from different culture. In my opinion every single conversation was an important sourse of knowledge both for me and for my American peer. We tried to understand each other speech, not only the essential meaning, but analysing the context and the background where that speech was insert, and so, in this way, we implicity understand the most important differences between our cultures.

 

D. Knowledge about another country and culture

• I know some important facts about the other culture and about the country, state and people that I did not know before. Example: I can put in this section all the various topics that we discussed during our Skype  conversations (Election in USA, immigration, terrorism, death penalty in America, and so on), because from each of them I understand something new that I did not know before.

• I know how to engage in conversation with people of the other culture and maintain a conversation. Example: Maybe I have to ask Artem about this point :-)) Anyway, I think that now I know quite well how to engage in a convesation with people of the other culture and mantain it. Everytime we had Skype convesation Artem, Sara and I were always the last students who left the room, we were enthusiastic about going on talking and the all the convesations were full of new ideas and opinions; maybe it's the best example about how I'm getting better in this ability. 

 

E. Knowledge about intercultural communication

• I remember that once my American peers asked me about the use and the meaning of a bad words in Italian. It's was an embarassingly speech!!! I said him that these words are very frequent in Italian, but they are mostly associated with an impolite and rude person/speaker.

 

 

• I know how to discover new information and new aspects of the other culture for myself. Example: In the second semester I could usedall the techological tools that I met during the firts semester. For example, del.icio.is, wikipages, bookmarking and Skype helped me to discover new information and new aspects of American culture.

 

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Self-Assessment of my Language Learning

 

• words, expressions I learned in English: to dorm, internship, political platform, and some words about "death penalty": electrocution, firing squad, hangig, lethal gas and lethal injuction.

• improvements in my pronunciation of certain words or intonation: Ialways tried to listen carefully to my American peer when he spoke and sometimes I asked him to repeat some words that I had never listen before. I also tried to eliminate my horrible Italian accent to my pronunciation, trying to imitate that of Artem. In this way I learnt how to say more words with the correct pronunciation.

• improvements in my listening: Improving my listening skills was one of my main purpose in this second semester. When I started working with Sarah Guth I noticed I had a lot of problems in understanding what she said during lessons (she's American and her accent is quite different from an English native speaker). So, when the Skype exchange started, I was motivated to concentrate the majority of my efforts in mproving my listening skills. At the beginning it was a little bit difficult, but Artem was so kind and patient with us and so the comprehension was easier and faster. 
• changes in the way I speak Italian to non-native speakers: Since I study foreign languages, I'm well aware of how difficult can be speaking in a foreing language. Those difficulties increase if the language is Italian (the one that Artem was supposed to use for half and an hour during our convesation!), that is much more complex than English. So, I tried to be more patient and comprehensive as possible, speaking slowly and using simple and easy words. What is more, I decided not to underline grammar mistakes or bad pronuntiation to my peer, because I'm aware that these corrections can interrupt the conversation.
• words, expressions I learned doing the wiki project: Instead if words and expressions I learned doing the wiki project I must to speak about the new tools I learnt to use to create a good wiki page. I had a lot of problems with the table of content and with titles, too. So all the new words I learnt are linked with names of the tools that a wiki provides to built a good page.
• improvements in my reading doing the wiki project: To be honest, I had not a lot of improvements in reading skills doing the wiki project. Maybe because reading is the competence where I feel more secure and confidents.
• improvements in my writing doing the wiki project: The more evident improvements in writting skills doing the wiki are the easiness and quickness in creating a written content inside the page, avoiding a lot of typing mistakes.

 

 

 

 

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