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

 

 A. Feelings

 

·        Moments in which I felt uncomfortable: (what made me feel like this, with particular examples if possible) The thing that made me feel more uncomfortable has been the little interest of our peer in doing the final project. I don’t know if it’s a matter of notes; I mean, this exchange for us has been an undoubtedly funny and interesting activity, a way to practice and improve our english, a chance to speak about various different topics with American fiends. What’s more, the final project of this exchange it is also going to be evaluated and thus we actually had to make a great effort in order to make the best wiki page as possible. I don’t know exactly what this exchange has meant for our America colleagues, what’s sure is that our peer didn’t show so much interest. Maybe we have been  unlucky…To tell the truth, our peer  didn’t help us very much, she just strictly did what she was supposed to do and nothing more, she always left the skype conversations earlier then the others and after having wrote her part of the project she just  did not care about it anymore…I perfectly know that she were one, and we were three but the point is that she has been a kind of indifferent and  I can undoubtedly say that we have not been a close group.

 

·         Moments when I felt comfortable:(what made me feel like this, with particular examples if possible) Having the chance to speak with native speakers of almost our own age has been certainly  an aspect of this experience which made me feel comfortable. Talking to a teacher is always different and so this skype exchange gave us the opportunity to speak in a very relaxed way, without the constant “terror” of being corrected or evaluated. Nevertheless, our peer gave us useful  feedback which helped us improving our English in a very effective way.

 

 

 

B. Knowledge

• The most important things I learnt about family life and/or life at school. As far as the life at school is concerned, I can unquestionably  say that the situation in the USA is very different from the one in  Italy. The organization of the school system overseas let the students to be much more free. Students have the chance to decide the subject and organize their timetable as they want and so they experience great autonomy as far as their daily choices is concerned. This responsibility is undeniably important for a person and I think that here in Italy students at school don’t have the chance to be that independent. As a matter of fact, here students  are in some way submitted, they only face autonomy at University and this can be a shock.

   

 

 

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. On the online forum many different topics have been developed and many of them have been also the starting point of interesting discussion during the skype exchange. Among the various issued touched, one has been particularly problematic to face: la “meritocrazia” e le “raccomandazioni”. My peer could not understand why a professor which is “raccomandato” is not a good professor. To her, knowing that the professor was “raccomandato” was a kind of reliability and thus  something positive. It took me a lot of time to make clear to her that it was not good at all! I had to explained her what “meritocrazia” is and that therefore “essere raccomandato” was just a shortcut to achieve some goal without merit.

   

 

• 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)During the exchange we talk about the Elections. As a  matter of fact, both in Italy and in the USA elections were just round the corner. As I am not very fond of politics, I took advantage of the situation to ask my peer some questions about the situation in the USA and the different candidates which aspired to be elected. You know what!? Reading newspaper articles, magazines and web sites can be helpful, but my peer’s explanation has been much more clear and effective! Now I have got a quite clear idea of the USA politic situations and about Obama and Hilary too.

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

A self-assessment of my Intercultural Experience^{[http://inet.dpb.dpu.dk/infodok/sprogforum/Espr18/byram.html A record of my Intercultural Experi" href="http://tulanepadova.pbwiki.com/ICC_Assessment#footnote-3#footnote-3">3]}

 

 

 

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: What interested me more about our peers daily experience deals with university life;  first of all, because I am an university student and secondly, because films and TV-series always present to us a very particular kind of university life in USA colleges and thus I was really curious about all that stuffs. The first day of exchange I told my peer my ideas and stereotypes about colleges specifying that the source of all my knowledge were the media…It has been a surprise when she confirmed me everything…Parties and confraternities seems to be as nice and crazy as the ones that we can see in  films and movies; campus are green and well organized and students can play any sport in the university structures; the dormitories are so closed to the rooms where teachers give their lessons that they won’t lose any time like me (poor commuter!) to go to lesson. University Campus are then little town, perfectly organized inside of which students can study, live, have fun, play sport and do what they want. That’s great!

   

• I am also interested in the daily experience of a variety of social groups within a society and not only the dominant culture. Example:USA society is definitely multicultural and characterized by variety;  we can not think that the wealthy  student’s of a private college can be representative of the melting pot of the American society. Unluckily, I had not the chance to investigate this issue during this skype exchange but I am actually really interested in the minor social groups and non dominant society, As a matter of fact, besides studying  English, I’m studying also Spanish and as it is well known English and Spanish do give  birth to an increasing phenomenon which is spanglish. This language variety typical of the areas of borderlines is daily used by Spanish community living in the USA. It is actually a pity that I had no time to deepen this topic because it would  have been interesting to know what an American thinks about this.

   

 

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:I actually had no problems to communicate with my peers. There has not been misunderstandings. Despite the fact that we live in two very distant countries and that an ocean divides us, we had no problems! As I have already said, the problems concerned the content of the communication, the points of view but not he form or the way in which I expressed my opinions and ideas.

   

 

 

E. Knowledge about intercultural communication

 

• I know how to discover new information and new aspects of the other culture for myself. Example: There are many ways to retrieve information about the problems and issues we are interested in. Beyond doubt, Internet is a huge source of data within everyone’s reach. The point  is how to get oriented into this mass to find out reliable information, numbers and statistics that can be useful for our purposes. Thanks to the  tools we get used to during this course I learned how to find and where to find what I am searching for.  I have understood that a website to be reliable have to be updated and has to contain the author name; I finally found out what a wiki is, and thus that what’s written in wikipages is not always so correct or  trustworthy. What’s more, I realized that blogs can be fantastic sources if what we are searching for are evidences, real cases and testimonies. It has been right tracing the conclusion of our final project that we realized the utility of personal blogs. As a matter o fact, laws and acts are not enough to define such a matter like pregnant women’s rights at workplace. Only real cases, stories and testimony can actually give us a general idea of the situation. Also online forums are very useful since they permit a real comparison. So, information is there, now it is up to us to discover  the best way to find them out. Luckily technology is of help, and some devices like delicious and bloglines  can help us in the organization of our resources.

   

 

 

 

Self-Assessment of my Language Learning

 

 

 

Please provide specific examples of the following:

 

 

 

• words, expressions I learned in English:I learned a lot of worlds concerning internet and technology like for example feed aggregators, post a blog, blogosphere, PLA maps, pod casts and bookmarks.

   

• improvements in my pronunciation of certain words or intonation:The more you talk the best you talk! As always, it is a matter of training! So, after this exchange my pronunciation is definitely improved and I try to put the accent in the right word while pronouncing compound worlds.

   

• improvements in my listening:American way of speaking can be different from the english one; now, after this months of exchange we are used also to American language and pronunciation and this is a great improvement!

   

·         changes in the way I speak Italian to non-native speakers:Just a little Italian has been spoken during this exchange…I can’t say nothing about how I do speak Italian to non-native speakers. My good sense suggests me to speak slowly and with “easy” words, but anyway I had not the chance to speak a lot in my mother tongue to Dickinson students.

 

• words, expressions I learned doing the wiki project:during our final project about pregnant women’s rights at workplace, I learned many legal expressions (amendment, to promulgate).

   

• improvements in my reading doing the wiki project:As I had to read a lot of articles and web sites I actually had to find a fast way to understand if  the text was consistent with what I was searching for; for that reason, I found very fast and effective way of reading focusing my attention to the main issue and expression in order to understand if the piece of writing was interesting or not for me. Moreover, the more you read, the more your own personal dictionary develops and thus understanding new texts becomes easier.

   

• improvements in my writing doing the wiki project:Developing the wiki page we definitely had to write a lot and as the space was not that big, we had to find an effective way of saying the most important and relevant points of the situation.

   

 

 

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