1. GROUP 3: WHO WE ARE  
  2. Check list of our main mistakes in the mid-term paper:
    1. Definition of intercultural competence (5, March 2008):  
    2.       ELECTIONS 2008: political powers (10, March 2008)
      1.     The key issues of the right wing in Italy (Berlusconi):   
      2.     The key-words of the right wing in America (John McCain):
      3.     Similarities between Italy and America:
      4.    The left in Italy (Veltroni)
      5.      The left in America (Clinton/Obama)
      6.      Similarities between Italy and America:
      7.      Differences between Italy and America:
    3. ELECTION VOCABULARY 
      1. POLITICAL ELECTIONS 2008: THE CANDIDATES
        1. INTRODUCTION TO THE CANDIDATES
        2. Barack Obama
          1. Early life
          2.  Work experience
          3. Previous political carreer 
          4. Political program briefly
        3. Hillary Clinton
          1.        Early life
          2.       Work experience
          3.       Previous political carrier
          4.      Political program briefly
        4. Walter Veltroni
          1.  Early life
          2. Work experience
          3. Previous political career
          4. Political program briefly
      2. COMPARING VIDEOS
        1. THE WIKI
          1. PROS AND CONS OF WIKI PAGES:
          2. TIPS FOR NEW USERS OF WIKI PAGES:
          3.  IMMIGRATION: some questions to our American peers

           
           
           

          GROUP 3: WHO WE ARE

           

           

           

          Marta Guarda, Sara Babetto, Elena Boscaro, Nina Horakova 

           

           

          Check list of our main mistakes in the mid-term paper:

           

           

          1. problems with prepositions;

           

          2. problems with the organization of paragraphs:

           

          2.a more than one idea in the same paragraph,

          2.b putting them in the right order,

          2.c connectors between paragraphs

           

          3. lexicology: choosing the right words, choosing synonyms;

           

          4. use of articles;

           

          5. mistakes with verb tenses;

           

          6. clause/word order;

           

          7. problems with punctuation.

           

           

           

           

           

          Definition of intercultural competence (5, March 2008):  

           

           

           

          In our opinion, being inter-culturally competent means to know our own culture and to be open to and aware of other cultures. By this, we mean to be willing to accept and get to know languages, habits, traditions of other cultures, trying to limit any ethnocentric attitude but not forgetting our own culture.  

           

           

           

          List of the goals to improve our intercultural competence:

           

           

          -         better understanding of the other culture pointing out differences and similarities

           

          -         notice reactions and acceptable/non acceptable behaviours

           

           

           

          List of the ways to achieve our goals:

           

           

          -         joining some intercultural organizations;

           

          -         talking with Erasmus people;

           

          -    watching Youtube videos and specific programmes/movies on the television;

           

           

           

                ELECTIONS 2008: political powers (10, March 2008)

           

           

           

           

              The key issues of the right wing in Italy (Berlusconi):   

                                                                                     

           

             - security

           

             - family

           

             - entrepreneur situation

           

             - Keyword: freedom

           

           

           

              The key-words of the right wing in America (John McCain):

           

           

              - patriotism and nationalism

           

           

              - courage, faith and religion

           

           

              Similarities between Italy and America:

           

             There are some common issues, for example the importance given to security but with two different approaches. Both of them are good           speakers/communicators who use a lot of effective techniques.

           

           

             The left in Italy (Veltroni)

           

          - the need to change Italy

           

          - putting an end to tax evasion

           

          - reduction of costs

           

          - less paying if everybody pays

           

           

           

               The left in America (Clinton/Obama)

           

           

           

          -         universal health care (both candidates)

           

           

          -         put an end to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan (both)

           

           

          -         the importance to provide college education to everybody (Obama)

           

          -         economy (Clinton)

           

          -         hard work is the solution to everything

           

           -         it is high time to change America and its politics (both)

           

          -         we need to turn the page and write a new chapter of American history (both)

           

           

           

               Similarities between Italy and America:

           

          They both talk about the need for changing and turning the page with the current situation.

           

               Differences between Italy and America:

           

          We noticed that Veltroni, on one hand, and Clinton and Obama, in the other, have different ways of communicating and use different strategies.

           

           

          ELECTION VOCABULARY 

           

          CAUCUS: It's the meeting of members of a political party or subgroup to coordinate members and "actions, choose group policy, or nominate candidates  for  various officies" 

           

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wikiCaucus

           

           

          SUPERDELEGATE:  who could ultimately decide who gets the nomination, only in the democratic party . They're mainly chosen by the national party, they include senators governments  and national party leaders. Finally they are the ones who decide who will win the political elections. This system based on superdelegate is not considered very democratic.

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdelegate 

          http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/politics&id=5941313

           

           

          PRIMARIES: Term used in America for the elections which will select the two parties presidential nomination. They started in January of the election year in what is called "primary season". They are the means by which a political party nominates candidates for the following general election.

          http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/primaries.htm

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_election

           

           

          POLITICAL ELECTIONS 2008: THE CANDIDATES

           

           

          Hillary Clinton (Nina and Marta), Barack Obama (Sara) and Walter Veltroni (Elena)

           

          These are the main points we're going to deal with:

          •  

          • Early life

          • Work Experience

          • Previous political career

          • Political program briefly

        2.  

          3. INTRODUCTION TO THE CANDIDATES

           

          These are the three candidates of the left wing, respectively Walter Veltroni for Italy and Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for USA. While Walter Veltroni is the candidate of the major left-wing party in Italy, Partito Democratico, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are both running for the Democratic nominee in the USA. The three candidates are described focusing on the same basic points: early life, work experience, previous political career and political program briefly.

           

           

           

          Barack Obama

           campaigning with a smile (Barack Obama in Austin #3)

           http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2055/2287332094_c170aeddb1_m.jpg

          Early life

           

          Barack Obama was born in 1961 in Honolulu from a Kenyan father and an American mother.  He attended Columbia University where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations. Before entering to Harvard Law School Obama worked as a community organizer in Chicago, where he worked against the unemployment. In 1988 he entered Harvard Law School and two years later he was the first black president of the independent student group responsible for the journal, in that period he focused his attention on the issue of faculty diversity. He took the law degree magna cum laude in 1991.

           

           

           Work experience

           

          Before entering to Harvard Law School Obama worked as a community organizer in Chicago, where he worked against the unemployment.After his degree he directed a voter registration drive in Chicago and Chicago magazine acclaimed him to be “a new political star”. From 1993 to 1996 he worked as an associated attorney with Miner, Barnhill & Galland representing community organizers, discrimination claims and voting rights cases.

           

           

          Previous political carreer 

           

          From 1996 to 2004 Obama was a member of the Illinois Senate and in 2003 he became chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee. In 2004 he resigned from Illinois Senate to be elected in the US Senate (after un unsuccessful run for US House of Representatives in 2000). As a senator he supported welfare reforms promoting subsides for childcare, he worked for a legislation which reformed ethics and healthcare laws, he engaged with police organizations in legislate death penalty reforms.
          He was member of the Foreign Relations Committee and from 2005 to 2006 served on the Environment and Public Works Committee. Finally in February 2007 he announced his candidacy for the 2008 US Presidential Election.

           

           

          Political program briefly

           

          Civil rights: ensuring every citizen the ability to vote.
          Disability: fighting against unecessary barriers, stereotypes and discrimination
          Economy: encreasing investments in infrastucture, energy indipendence, education, research and development.
          Economy: ensuring all students a quality education regardless of race, class or background
          Energy and environment: goal: energy independence.
          Foreign policy: preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction and stopping genocide in Darfur
          Iraq: He has always been against this war.
          Technology: investing in scientific research
          Sources:
          Barack Obama, Wikipedia, retrieved on 2oth March 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
          Barack Obama, U.S Senator for Illinois, retrieved on 21th March 2008 from http://obama.senate.gov/
          Obama '08, retrieved on 27th March 2008 from http://www.barackobama.com/issues/

           

           

          Hillary Clinton

           

           

          source

           

           

                 Early life

           

          Hillary Clinton was born in 1947 in Illinois. Since she was a girl she was deeply concerned with issues of social justice and politics. She graduated at the Welleslay College in political science in 1969 and then entered Yale Law School, where she carried on researches on child brain development and child abuse; at the same time she started volunteering at New Haven Legal Services to provide advice for poor people (Hillary for President). After receiving a Juris Doctor degree from Yale in 1973 she started a year of post-graduate study on medicine and children at Yale Child Study Center (Wikipedia).

           

                Work experience

           

          After her post-graudate study Hillary began her career as a lawyer. In 1975 she married Bill Clinton—the future 42nd President of the United States—thus becoming the First Lady of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992 and the First Lady of United States from 1993 to 2001. She was considered as one of the one hundred most influential lawyers in America in 1988 and 1991 and was very active in several organizations concerned with the welfare of children (Wikipedia). In 1997 and 1999, Hillary Clinton played a significant role in the establishment of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (which aimed at supporting children whose parents could not afford to provide them with health coverage) and the Adoption and Safe Families Act. Throughtout her career as a lawyer, Hillary Clinton has published many articles on legal and social issues, many of which deal with childhood and medicine. As First lady of the USA she published several books: the most famous of them is her autobiography "Living history", released in 2003 (Wikipedia). 

           

           

           

                Previous political carrier

           

          Hillary Clinton was elected as senator for New York State in 2000, thus becoming the first female senator from that state. In the Senate, she initially supported the G. Bush government on some foreign policy issues, for example on the Iraq War. She then opposed the administration on its conduct of the Iraq War and on other national issues. She was re-elected senator of New York State in 2006 (Hillary for President). In 2007 she announced her intention to become a Democrat candidate for president in the elections 2008.

           

               Political program briefly

          (taken from her official website www.hillaryclinton.com/issues)

           

           

          1. Providing affordable universal health insurance

          2. Putting an end to the Iraq War

          3. Improving the American school system (college should be affordable for all)

          4. Supporting parents, caring for children, fighting for women rights against any form of discrimination

          5. Reforming the American immigration system 

           

           

                Bibliography

           

        3. Wikipedia. "Hillary Clinton". Retrieved on March 22, 2008 fromhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton
        4. Hillary for President. Retrieved on March 22, 2008 from www.hillaryclinton.com

           

           

           

           

        5. Walter Veltroni

           

           

          Walter Veltroni's photo taken from the website of Partito Democratico URL: http://www.partitodemocratico.it/gw/producer/index.aspx?t=/pd/organismi_dirigenti.htm

           

          Walter Veltroni is the leader of  Partito Democratico and the candidate for the major left-wing party in the next Italian political elections. He is married with Flavia and he has two daughters, Martina and Vittoria.

           

           Early life

        6.  

          He was born in Rome in 1955 and he has always lived there. His parents are Vittorio Veltroni, one of the first RAI managers and journalists in the 1950s, and a Slovenian woman named Ivanka Kotnik. Ivanka Kotnik was the daughter of a Slovenian ambassador who helped many Jewish people to escape from the Nazi persecution during World War II. During his youth, he attended the Instituto professionale per l’industria e l’artigianato and he had his first approach to the world of cinema thanks to his father’s job. At the age of 15, he started his political career joining the Federazione Giovanile Comunista Italiana. 

           

           

           

          Work experience

           

          Walter Veltroni’s work experience is highly intertwined with his political career. After being elected city councillor in Rome in 1976, he was appointed to the Chamber of Deputies in 1981. As a member of Partito Comunista Italiano (Pci), he was one of the leading figures, together with Achille Ochetto, of the transformation of the communist party into Partito Democratico della Sinistra (Pds).

          Beyond being an active politician, he is an editor-in-chief and author as well. When he was 40 years old, he became a professional journalist and he worked as editor-in-chief of the new born party’s newspaper called L’Unità from 1992 to 1996. Between 1976 and 1996, he published various books. Among these, there are Il Pci e la Questione Giovanile (1977), Io e Berlusconi (e la Rai) (1990) and two books dealing with two eminent figures of the recent national and international politics: Il Sogno Spezzato (1981), a tribute to Robert Kennedy’s ideas, and La Sfida Interrotta (1994) regarding the cultural and political legacy left by Enrico Berlinguer, secretary of Partito Comunista Italiano (Pci) from 1972 to 1984.

          He received a honoris causa degree in public Services by the John Cabot University of Rome in 2003.

          In 2004, one of his most touching books, namely Forse Dio è malato, was published by Rizzoli. This book is the output of Veltroni’s never-ending undertaking with Africa, both in terms of fighting for the erasure of developing countries' debt and in terms of providing visibility to the problems of Africa. He himself travelled through many African states. In 2007, he wrote the preface to the Italian edition of Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope. In an article dated February, 25th 2008 from Los Angeles Times, Veltroni has been referred to as one of  “Obama’s European counterparts” together with Zapatero in Spain.

           

           

          Previous political career

           

          His most active role in Italian politics started in 1995 with the birth of a new political party, L’Ulivo, run by Romano Prodi. This party will win the next national elections in April 2006 where Walter Veltroni proposed himself as vice-premier candidate. During the leadership run by Prodi, he was appointed Vice-president of the Council and Minister of Cultural and Environmental Heritage focusing in particular on show and sport. Thanks to his office, he worked hard towards the preservation, retrieval and enhancement of the rich Italian cultural heritage in order to turn Italy into the “nation of art”. 

          In 1998, after resigning from his previous appointment, he was elected National Secretary of Democratici di Sinistra (DS). In June 1999, he was elected among the deputies of the European Parliament where, in accordance with his passion for the issues of communication, he worked in the Commission for Culture, Youth, Education, Media and Sport. 

          His leadership of the Democratici di Sinistra’s party ended in 2001 when he was elected Mayor of Rome with the 53% of votes. Five years later, he was reconfirmed Mayor of Rome with the 61.4% of the votes. Walter Veltroni’s administration in Rome from 2001 and 2007 was characterized by the extraordinary economic growth of the city, together with the development of the tourism field, the revival of culture and the strengthening of the social net. Although he has always claimed to be atheist, he gave the honorary citizenship to Pope John Paul II in 2003 and in 2006 he was entitled Cavaliere della Gran Croce by Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, President of the Italian Republic. 

          As mayor of Rome, he visited the United States in 2005 and he met Illinois Senator Barack Obama.

          On October 14th, 2007 Partito Democratico was founded after the primary elections in which Partito Democratico gained the 75.8% of votes. Walter Veltroni, who was publicly asked to run for the party leadership by the majority of the centre-left politicians, presented his candidacy for the leadership of Partito Democratico and was elected the first leader of the centre-left party.

           

           

          Political program briefly

           

          After the defeat of Romano Prodi’s government in January 2008, Walter Veltroni acquired the leadership of Partito Democratico which is running for its candidacy in the next general political elections on April 13th- 14th, 2008. On February 2008, he resigned from his appointment as Mayor of Rome to focus on the electoral campaign of his party against its mayor opponent party, Silvio Berlusconi’s Popolo della Libertà. Partito democratico’s main purpose is to solve the four major problems of current Italy, namely economic inefficiency, inequality, impossibility for the Italians’ dreams to come true and democracy’s low quality. All the points in Walter Veltroni’s political program aim to find a solution to these crucial issues in Italy nowadays.

           

           

          Bibliography:

           

        7. Walter Veltroni, Wikipedia (Italian). Retrieved on march 25th, 2008 from http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Veltroni

        8. Walter Veltroni, Partito Democratico. Retrieved on March 25th, 2008 from http://2007.partitodemocratico.it/cgi-bin/adon.cgi?act=doc&doc=103463

        9. Partito Democratico, Wikipedia (Italian). Retrieved on March 25th, 2008 from http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partito_Democratico_(Italia) 

        10. Wilkinson, T. (2008). Obama's European Counterparts. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved on March 25th, 2008 from http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-eurobama25feb25,1,5411037.story?track=rss

        11. Popolo della Libertà, Votaberlusconi.it. Retrieved on March 25th, 2008 from http://www.forzaitalia.it/

           

           

        12.  

           

          March, 31st 2008

          COMPARING VIDEOS

           

           

          Looking at the three videos, we noticed that the American one is completely different from the Italian ones. First of all, while in the American video the singer is an attractive girl who seems like a pop star and plays the role of a sex symbol, the Italian videos are sung by young people who are representatives of the population of Italy. Italian videos show different aspects of the society choosing people with different jobs. On the contrary, in the Obama girl video Obama himself is represented and showed a lot of times. He is seen as a sex-symbol too and the girl interacts frequently with him focusing her attention on his physical appearance. In the video of PdL there is no reference to the opponent candidates whereas in the video of PD the other politicians are mentioned and there is a comparison with them. In Berlusconi's videos, the characters are all young and they probably belong to the same social category (middle class). They are all shown while they are at work. On the other hand, in Veltroni's video, one of the singers is an old man and there is also a family so maybe the video is addressed to a wider range of people. We think that the choice of young characters is due to the fact that these videos are mainly watched by young people who are able to use Internet and visit Youtube; in this way, the audience can identify with the singers.

           

           

           

          13. THE WIKI

           

          PROS AND CONS OF WIKI PAGES:

           

           

          PROS:

           

          • Easy to use

             

          • Free for everyone to contribute

             

          • Result of a team-work

             

          • Can be changed anytime at anyplace

             

          • Potential good working atmosphere if you follow the rules

             

           

          CONS:

           

          • Can get frustrating when people are not following the rules

             

          • Layout is chaotic (posted version is often different from the original layout)

             

          • Information can be unreliable

             

          • Can get chaotic when too much information is provided

             

           

           

          TIPS FOR NEW USERS OF WIKI PAGES:

           

           

           

           

          • Always write in Word and save your post before posting it online

             

            Respect other people’s contributions

             

            Respect the rules, which should be discussed before starting the work

             

            Use all the helping technology provided (comments, history, etc.) to be updated and keep in touch with the others

             

            Do not copy and paste. Try to develop your own ideas and text

             

            Check more sources and keep on being updated

             

            Update your wiki with news

             

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           IMMIGRATION: some questions to our American peers

           

          1. Are immigrants from different countries perceived in the same way or are there prejudices infleuncing people's judgement? For ex, if there were one Mexican and one Italian, would they be perceived in the same way without knowing anything about them?

           

          2. What is the process to get residence permission in the USA? Is it compulsory to have a job in the States in order to settle there? In Italy, according to the Bossi-Fini law of 2002, immigrant people can be given legal residence only if they have a job contract...

           

           

           

           

           

           

           

           

           

           

           

           

           

           

           

           

           


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            marta guarda:hI GIRLS!I've been trying to add a table of contents to our wiki page but..it's driving me crazy!if you look at "political elections" there's one part which should be "normal" but in fact appears as a heading..can y help me?? And then..colours are terrible, never as I want them to be..HELP!
            Elena Boscaro:To Nina: Busà's assignment. I think we are supposed to do both the assignment on words and the one on intonation. To have a print screen, you can open the window with your pitch in Praat and then press the "Stamp R Sist" key in your keyboard. It will give you a copy of your screen so that you can paste it (CRTL+V) in a word file. If you have time, you can also edit your image and remove some useless parts with Paint or other software for the editing of images. Hope to help you! ;-)
            Elena Boscaro:Hi girls! In the last few minutes of our lesson in the lab today, Sarah gave us some advice to improve our part of the election08 wiki page. First of all, we have to prepare a general introduction before starting the three biographies. Then, we must use the same strucure (parallelism) and so if we decided to divide the biography into four sections, we have to carry on with this division for all the three politicians. Then, It would be better to add some comparisons between the three candidates. Anyway, I'll explain it better on Wednesday in class...
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