let's yoga!

This week: Yoga!
Nowadays, the ability to deal with the diversity is ever growing. We actually live in a global world and we daily face the “different”. That’s why intercultural competencies and language proficiencies are very important. We are often afraid of the unknown and we don’t know how to behave and how to create a relationship with something that is new to us. Therefore, the development of competences in another culture and proficiency in its language becomes essential in our society in order to live without being frightened of the others, to enrich ourselves with new values and broaden our knowledge. Moreover, intercultural competences provide the opportunity for powerful reflections on our own native world view. In fact, as the Chinese philosopher Chung Tzu says: “looking in is looking out”. The ICC, intercultural communicative competence, is in fact a life-long process which enables us to understand better ourselves as subjects living in net of relationships.
One of the tools we can use to measure our ICC is the Yoga form. The term “YOGA” stands for “your Objectives, Guidelines, and Assessment” and it is divided into5 sections which are awareness, attitudes, skills, knowledge and proficiency, obviously in the host tongue.
This kind of test can be used as a self evaluating guide, useful to examine the development of our ICC.
As far as I am concerned, I filled in the form thinking about Spanish, which is the language I have studied better in my life, thanks to the Erasmus project. Actually, I only considered the first two levels of each sections (Educational Traveller and Sojourner) because I still haven’t got any professional or serious working experience.
I have never heard about this kind of Yoga before, this is one of the great amount of new tools discovered during this English course with Sarah; although we already had others occasions to reflect about our competences like for example with the PLE map, I think that this is a less free way to do it; actually, there are “strict” assessment to rate from 0 to 5, and this is surely a very objective way to assess. However, there is something new, a very interesting suggestion: “After doing so, it is useful to have a native of the host culture rate you as well”…This would be great! In this way we could have an idea of our ICC degree from an other point of view!
C U!

hello!

After the enthusiasm of the first skype xchange, the second conversation with my peer turned out to be much more difficult. This time my Italian class mate was speaking with someone else, so I was alone chatting with Corina. This would not have been a problem if the subjects we touched during the conversation would be familiar to me. My American colleague started asking to me what about the Italian government and the political scene…What!!?!? I mean, came on! Maybe I found the question very difficult because I almost hate politics and I actually don’t know anything about it apart from the fact that on the 13 of April we are going to vote! I know that this lack on information it’s my fault, but anyway this is not a trial. The only thing I can say is that I really didn’t know what to tell her! I surely going to inform myself before the elections…Anyway, I guess I cut a poor figure also because my peer is really fond of politics! She saw that I was a little bit in difficulty, so she told me a lot of things about the American elections and the various candidates explaining me very well what’s going on in her Country. We also spoke about Spitzer’s scandal and the insane world of the politicians. We agreed about the fact that they all seems to be free to do what the want and even if the make some kind of mistake they won’t pay for it! Speaking of corruptions we also spoke about those concept published on Cultura which are “raccomandato” and “meritocrazia”. Hard stuffs! I explained to her the difference between saying “it recommend quell professone” and “quell prof è un raccomandato” or at least I tried! I hope she understand me! I tell her that if the principle of “meritocrazia” is not in force, a “raccomandazione” is useful to obtain what you want, it is a kind of shortcut.
Apart from the problems concerning the political topics, I can undoubtedly say that this exchange is great! I love speaking English! At school we are often exposed to mother tongue speakers, but actually they are teachers and speaking with guys of almost our same age is completely different!
I want to add something about the conversations in Italian…Because half of the time we are supposed to speak in Italian, right?! Well, it is actually hard to have dialogue! I don’t know very well what to do…is it fine to skip this part? I mean, I have noticed that for our peers is very difficult to speak in Italian, so they often start in a language and than change as soon as they don’t know what to say. I guess, they should take all the time that they need in order to explain themselves, even thought this is hard! Let’s see what will happen next Wednesday!
See u soon!

Happy Easter

Happy Easter

to you all!!!

Just relax and have fun!

This Wiki no skype!

Last Wednesday no skype xchange…what a pity!
Our lucky American friends had their spring break! This should mean that spring has finally come…Or at least overseas!! Here the weather is making fun of us! :-(

Two days of warmth and spring and now everything’s grey and quite cold again!
The activity we have to do on the wiki is quite complicated, I still haven’t understood very well what am I supposed to do. Sarah divided us into groups and each group has to do some activities. As I can’t come to Mondays lessons, Sarah created a group for non current students and so Stefania, Elisa and me are supposed to discuss on the wiki page and do all the work as the others. The problem is that communicating on the wiki is not that easy! Maybe we all have to understand how it works exactly! Till now we had not the chance to actually have a discussion on he wiki!! I really don’t know how to communicate with the other peers of my group! We do need some time to settle in I guess!
So, I hope that we’ll soon solve this problem in order to do all the work the best we can do! I know that missing Monday’s lessons is a shame, because discussions in class are very useful, but my work really doesn’t allows me to come to Padova in order to attend the lesson.
See you on Wednesday!

First date!

Here I am again after a long and not relaxing break!
Not relaxing because of the exams I had, or better we all had to do! Anyway now I’m back and ready for this brand new adventure!
I was really exited about starting this second semester and particularly the exchange with foreign students. I decided to choose the exchange with the American colleagues of Dickinson University because I wanted to use Skype!! Skype it is not a new tool for me, I usually use it at home to speak with my foreign friends or to keep in contact with some Italian friends who live far away. The point is that it is a very useful and funny device which allows you to speak with who you wants and the geographical distance doesn’t matter!
I have to admit that, last Wednesday, at the beginning of the conversation I felt a little bit embarrassed but than after just few minutes we broke the ice and all my “fear” vanished.
Alice, Corina and me started talking quite easily and luckily our American peer speaks in a very comprehensible way! After the presentations we spoke about our University and I was very curious about college, so I had to ask to Corina if everything works like in the films, I mean the parties, confraternities and so on…You know what?! Corina confirmed my “stereotypes” about life in the college! It seems so funny, and everything’s so different from here! At least from my commuter’s experience…
Talking about subjects and courses we discovered many others differences between our two school system, the fact is that they seems to be very free to chose which course to attend not only at University but also at school!
So, after this 1 hour of conversation I can say that I’m very happy about this exchange!! It’s a pity (obviously only for us) that Americans are going to have their spring break this week, because we’ll miss the chance to connect to Skype and speak. Anyway 7 days are not too much!
See you soon!