La mia Italia

After Berlusconi's and Veltroni's questionable campaign jingles, here's my personal answer.

I hope a day I'll be able to post a song, somewhere, that will be beautiful like this one, bur more postive.
Waiting for that moment, that's how I see my motherland...

Learning to become part of...

Intercultural competence. What a meaningful, topical and controversial term! Nowadays we all continuosly hear words like multiculturalism and globalization, but what do they mean? Our society has changed a lot and is still changing: immigration and new media have radically transformed our old concept of order, based on single countries with their own definite identity, creating a more complex reality. So, the way we used to know our world doesn't exist anymore and we've to deal with other situations, with their own benefits and challenges. But how do we do it? Here is our intercultural competence. That's the way in which we move into our contemporary jungle, trying to understand who we are and who are the others, looking for a way to live in peace together. Learning how to deal with others in our own or in their own context, is important for everybody, but it's necessary (and I hope, also normal) for languages students, like us.

I've always thought to my intercultural competence as something continuosly changing inside me and difficult to weigh up. So, this is the first time I've had the opportunity to assess it thanks to a form: YOGA (an acronym which stands for Your Objectives, Guidelines and Assessment form). It's subdivided into five main areas, that reflect the “dimensions” that compose our intercultural competence: awareness, attitude, skills, knowledge and language proficiency. Each of them is further subdivided into four levels, in order to estimate people's degree of knowledge of a foreign culture, with reference to their personal experiences: educational traveller, sojourner, professional, and intercultural/multicultural specialist. Unfortunately, I’ve never been abroad for long periods, so I had to skip some parts of the questionnaire.

I generally am a bit sceptical about tests like this one, or, for example, the European Portfolio, since I believe that learning is a continuous process and we don't need to assess it point by point, in a so strictly way. We can't weigh up everything and that's the reason why these types of test generally are very long and take a very long time to fill in, in my opinion: they simply try to deal with every aspect of complex issues like learning or intercultural competence and that's no possible to do. However, they might be very useful for other reasons: for example, they can offer some occasions to reflect about what we do and how we do it.
In fact, from this point of view, I found this YOGA form very interesting, especially because it presents some aspects I've never considered before, such as awareness and attitude of learners. It made me reflect about the way in which I generally match my culture with another one. So, I realized that's there are situations in which my intercultural competence is more lacking and how I can try to improve it...waiting for the moment in which I'll become a little part of the worlds I'm dreaming about...

Shhh!

Our Skype exchange with Dickinson College goes on...This time, Serena and I talked with Leah Barreras. The topic we had prepared for that day was "terrorism". We discussed about terrorism of the present day, September 11th 2001 and how life in the USA have changed after it, but we also talked about Italian "lead years" ('70s) and Red Brigades. I particularly enjoy this type of exchanges, because I believe that when we study a language we also need to deal with historical and social aspects of its country. I think it's a fundamental step to really understand and give a sense to what we study every day on the books. It's incredible how little we know of the rest of the world, even of those countries like America, that thanks to movies and its leading role in international questions, has always been present in our lives, someway.

Obvoiusly we also talked about other things. Since it was the first time I Skyped (I do love using "Skype" as a verb!!!) Leah, we sarted talking about our universities, families and lives in general.

If I have to be honest our exchange was a bit strange at the beginning because we (Italians) were talking in a room where there was another lesson in the same time. So, our teacher told us to chat instead of talking, until the end of the lesson, but...it was impossible! The situation was more or less like that:

TEACHER: - Please, chat instead of talking until the end of the lesson...ok? - ALBERTO/SERENA: - Ok... -

ten seconds later...

ALBERTO/SERENA: - Hello? Leah? Hel...Do you hear us? Le...Ha ha, yes, technology is not our field, ha ha ha! -

TEACHER: - Shhh! -

ALBERTO/SERENA: - Ops, sorry -...(in a whisper) - Leah, we've to chat,ok? -

LEAH: - Oh, ok! Why? -

ALBERTO/SERENA: - Because there's another less..-

TEACHER: - Shhh! -

ALBERTO/SERENA: - Sorry! -

ALBERTO/SERENA: - (in a whisper) Let's chat! -

click , click, click...five seconds later:

ALBERTO/SERENA: - Ha ha ha! -

TEACHER: - Shhhhhh!!!! There's another lesson!!! -

ALBERTO/SERENA: - Oh, yes...Sorry! - ... - Oh, can you repeat, Leah? We didn't unders...- -Oh, yes, sorry, sorry, sorry -... - Leah,we've to chat...Eh? Ha ha ha!!! -... - Oh, why is she looking at us this way? Oh my God, we're talking again!!!... -

We must seem stupid! :)

Happy Easter!

Mmh...You may say I love dogs with hair bands...Well, I love dogs with hair bands! Anyway, happy Easter friends, classmates, teacher and people in the Web !!!

Waiting for Skype...

No Skype this week, :( but all our activities with Dickinson College made me meditate. So, while we're waiting for another exchange, I'd like to talk about an issue that may sound strange if handled by a foreign languages student: the other side of the coin of intercultural competency.

I do love languages and discovering new cultures, ways of life, knowing how people live, work, stay together, laugh and cry and why they do it in countries so far from mine. I like figuring the world like a series of stars in the same sky or a series of snow flakes in a winter day and I like finding that my life as I know it, is just one of infinite possibilities. This thought doesn't diminuish the love I feel for it, but makes me curious about others. I believe we're all at the same level of a huge, beautiful mechanism called life. This is the reason why I decided to study languages and I hope to go round the world.

Nowadays we can improve our intercultural competency very easily: the Internet and its potentials let us to share thoughts, pictures and experiences and put us in touch with the rest of the world as if we all were in the same room. No walls, no distance...no difference. Current tools are an important opportunity for us, but I'm afraid they also represent a great risk, that's the loss of our greatest richness: our differences.

I do love discovering others, but I think that everytime we share we also drop something of ourselves. We grow and it's good. And it's normal. And ineluctable. But I think that my grandparents know anything about India and somewhere in India, other grandparents know anything about Italy. And it's perfect exactly as it is, in my opinion.

Let's Skype!

After a loooong examination session, here we are again!

Our first Skype exchange has gone…and I do love it!
When I read the descriptions about the projects that Sarah proposed us, I thought they both were interesting, but when I found out that just the project with Dickinson would enable me to use Skype, I had no doubts. I had heard about this chance at the beginning of the course and I was very impatient to try it. It’s definitely my favorite activity, this year .
We generally don’t have many opportunities to talk in English and very rarely to do it with native speakers. This is the reason why I had (and still have) great expectations about this exchange.
My group is composed by Kelsey Taylor, Serena Santi and me.
When we came in contact, I think I said something like “Oh...Hi!...Well, yes...mmh..hello?”. It’s incredible how the first thing that came up in mind as I heard my voice was: “I can’t speak English any longer!”,
- “...Kelsey? ...mmh...I’m Alberto...” - “Why the evil I said my name with an Anglophone accent?!...I must be totally insane...”-.
Fortunately, after my initial mental confusion, things went on well and we started a real conversation. I perfectly know I make a lot of silly mistakes when I’m talking in a foreign language, but experiments like this are necessary, in my opinion, to really understand at which level I am and in addition, they spur me to improve.
We talked about the differences between public and private universities in the U.S., how’s life in a campus and how university system is organized in Italy and in America. However, I admit we didn’t talk just about education (that was our topic), since we were also interested in other, more general, issues, such as hobbies and family. I think that developping topics like these is a good first step to make somebody’s acquaintance.

I look forward to do another exchange!