Chiara Ramazzotti

Selena Bortoletti

Elisa Rossi

Caterina Luison

• word order
• punctuation
• use of the definite article
• use of preposition
• vocabulary

Group discussion of YOGA form and intercultural awareness

1. About completing the YOGA form we found difficult to understand the meaning of some questions clearly and to rate ourselves from 0 to 5.

2. We were unable to complete the third and the fourth parts of each dimensions because we haven't ever had experiences abroad for long time.

3. The first dimension about awareness and the second one about attitude made us reflect on things we hadn't ever considered because we haven't ever evaluated them during our academic studies. Moreover, these two aspects depend on your own personality and not on your ablilities; we can actually improve our skills, knowledge and language proficiency by studying, while we learn awareness and attitude indirectly though personal experiences.

4. We provided similar answers in most cases. We noticed that we tended to assess ourselves using low marks in those dimensions where our personal effort is required. While at the level 1 our evaluation is positive, at the second level it is lower.

5. Our goals for improving our intercultural competence from Italy are:

• to create opportunities to get in contact with foreign people as much as possible
• to get information about  other cultures
• to improve language skills

    The ways to achieve these goals may be:

• tandem learning program; skype; facebook; msn; blogging
• reading books, newapapers; watching movies, visiting  websites
• attending language courses actively; podcasting; watching movies; blogging

6. Intercultural competence is the ability of people to communicate successfully with people of other cultures not only from a linguistic but also from a human point of view; the main goal is to understand and respect other people's behaviours and opinions.

Division for task 2:

Serena Bortoletti and Elisa Rossi: candidates on the right (McCain and PDL)

Chiara Ramazzotti and Caterina Luison: candidates on the left (Obama/Clinton and PD)

Political election 2008

Berlusconi and Veltroni compared.

• they use a different way of interacting with their audience: Berlusconi uses a lot of gestures, clear and simple words and sentences which catch the attention;

          Veltroni is more quite and tends to use longer sentences and speeches.

• at the beginning of their speeches, both of them tend to accuse the previous government
• the main ideas of Berlusconi are: freedom, family, young people and their economic development, security from the point of view of immigration.

          The main ideas of Veltroni are: new technologies, research, the need of renewing the political system and health care

McCain and Obama/Clinton compared.

• Obama/Clinton focus their spechees on the importance of change: both of them represent a new prospective for America. Also their language is used in this sense; Obama, for example,often says: " I'm the new man".
• McCain focuses on the fight against terrorism.
• All of them show to the audience their own personality by enhancing their own values and abilities.

Caucus: a meeting of supporters or members of a political party or movement to coordinate members' actions, choose group policy, or nominate candidates for various offices.

Superdelegate: an informal term for some of the delegates to the Democratic Nation Convention, the presidential nominating convention of the United States of democratic party; they are not selected based on the party primaries and caucases in each U.S. state, but are seated automatically, based solely on their status as current or former elected officeholders and party officials.

Delegate: a member of a group representing an organization at a meeting or conference between organizations of the same level; the title of a person elected to the United States House of Representatives to serve the interests of an organized U.S. territory.

Primaries: one means by which a political party nominates candidates for the following general ection.

Convention: a meeting of a political party, typically to select party candidates; it refers to a U.S. presidential nominating convention.

 BASIC POINTS OF ITALIAN AND AMERICAN CANDIDATES' PLATFORMS

This section focuses on the platforms' basic points. Based on the current information found in newspapers and on the net, even though in Italy there are four coalitions the race is between the right- and left-wing delegates, which are Berlusconi and Veltroni. In the same way in the USA  the media gives its attention to the "fight" between the two democratic candidates Hilary and Obama, while McCain seems to be temporarily out of the limelight.

In Italy people should decide between two opposite political points of view, while in the USA  the race involves a decision between gender and skin colour.

In Clinton and Obama's personal webpages the basic points are:

• ending the war in Iraq
• providing affordable and accessible health care for all Americans
• securing American borders and creating new laws against hiring and exploiting undocumented workers
• reducing greenhouse gas emissions by leaving carbon-based economy and developing climate friendly energy supplies and achieving energy indipendence
• strengthening the middle class (e.g. lowering taxes for middle class families, making college accessible and affordable, bolstering retirement security)
• improving school system (e.g. recruiting new teachers also in the rural areas, having competitive people in an increasing global economy, pre-kindergarden for all four-year-old children 

McCain's platform focuses on:

• winning the war against islamic extremists (sending more troops to Iraq, dismantling al Qaeda)
• strenghtening national defence security
• reforming health care (e.g access to health car for all Americans, controlling health care costs, promoting competition throughout the health care system between providers and among alternative treatments)
• reforming Government  (e.g. increasing transparency, lowering taxes, enforcing fiscal discipline)
• ensuring cleaner air, safer and healthier water, finding alternative sources of energy

Veltroni concentrates on these basic points:

• reducing public debt
• reforming electoral system
• strengthening security (e.g. more police on the streets)
• deleting precarious work
• right to vote to immigrants in order to avoid criminality and illegacy
• strengthening the health care system (e.g. reducing waiting lists and more specialised personnel)
• more importance to Italy and its companies in Europe
• helping South Italy and solving the "monnezza" (rubbish) problem

Berlusconi's platform focuses on:

• refloating the economic development (e.g. new Inland Revenue for businesses, advantages for the world of work, support for "made in Italy" goods)
• sustaining families and giving to young people the possibility of a secure future
• strengthening security and justice
• improving services (e.g. school system, health care system)
• helping South Italy (e.g. advantageous Inland Revenue, infrastructures)
• promoting federalism
• creating a special programme of public finance (to lower taxes and costs of Politics)

 PROS AND CONS OF USING THE WIKI AND USEFUL TIPS:

According to our experience with Wiki we noticed that there are some pros, but also some cons.

Pros:

• you can update your page and correct it whenever you want
• you can find much information about an issue
• you can share your opinions and find different points of  you because everyone can write on it
• you can save the information you need online and you can use them whenever you want

Cons:

• it is not very known in Italy
• the information on the wiki could not be true, due to the fact that everyone can use the Wiki

If we should give some advice to someone new to using the Wiki, we would say:

• check the page regularly
• try to make it  pretty  by  creating a nice lay out using differente colours and uploading some images (we should also do it:-))
• indicate the references
• write clearly and comprehensible so that everyone can easly understand
• do not use complex sentences, prefear short ones

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