Issues on Immigration

Immigration is a very hot issue for our country especially if we consider that Italy has always been more a country of emigrants than of immigrants. Personally I do believe in the great importance of cultural diversity and I’m extremely fortunate in being in contact with a lot of good persons who came in Italy just to have another chance, they work honestly and live regularly (not breaking the law). The real problem here is the illegal immigration and the fact that a lot of people look to Italy as an easy place to get into unnoticed. To the point, searching the net, I found a very interesting article which clearly explains not only the reasons why this is a huge problem for our society but also why the previous governments didn’t succeed in controlling it:
“One tactic the Italian government used to get these people to come out of hiding was to hold amnesties for any illegal immigrants, a time where they could apply for Italian citizenship and not get punished for having been there illegally. This worked on one level, since this reduced the number of workers in the underground sector, thus reducing the size of this unrecognized economy. Between 1986 and 1998, the Italian government held 4 amnesties, granting citizenship to about 700,000 people. But this did not solve the problem, it actually ended up attracting more migrants (…)Unfortunately, not only did these amnesties cost the government a lot of money, they made Italy's immigration policies appear lenient”.
“Another way these immigrants find ways into the country is quite creative; when their small boats are met by Italian coast guards as they are approaching the Italian shores, the immigrants find a way to make their boat sink, or cause the motors to stop working, so that there is no way they can be turned back. At this point, they know that the coast guard will have to rescue them by bringing them inland.”
“Some of the most visible problems being caused by this immigration are regional conflicts between groups of Italians and immigrants (racism, violence), fluctuating unemployment rates, increase of workers in unrecognized economic sectors, and the fact that the country is paying for a large amount of foreigners to be incarcerated in their prisons.” (taken from Illegal immigration in Italy)
During the last exchange we were supposed to discuss immigration with our American peer, Kristen…unfortunately, we had some problems with our connection and we spent almost all the remaining time talking about our final project and deciding on the topic it will deal with. Anyway, thanks to the forum I knew how Kristen considers this phenomenon and tomorrow we’ll probably compare our ideas about this very ticklish question.

The Right to Vote

Peers,
this week, for the second time, we (me, Martina and Allyson from the States) spent our Skype exchange talking about politics and politicians since in Italy we’re all living a crucial event: the election process is coming to an end (luckily I venture to say!)… we will know who will be the man by Monday! Considering that many people say they won’t vote because they don’t trust candidates’ good faith, our debate focused on the great importance of the right to vote because of the need we all have of being represented. I do believe in this powerful choice especially because in the past this right has been limited to a very small number of people. Without doubt I’m going to vote the next weekend even if I perfectly know that we, as voters, have to face a very complicated electoral system: too many candidates means an extreme confusion.

Final Project

Friends,
during these days I spent a lot of time thinking about my final project and meditating on the cultural topic my paper will deal with. I’m really interested in going into the American healthcare system, writing about issues on euthanasia. To be more precise I’d like to understand how the Americans perceive euthanasia: is it considered the right to die for patients terminally ill, or just a way to kill someone? Here in Italy, as we all know, euthanasia is an illigal practice; from this point of view we're still heavily influenced by the Church. I perfectly know that this is a very complicated subject but as you all know…nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Discussing terrorism

Hi peers,
last time with Anne, my partner from the US, I spent an enjoyable hour with her discussing terrorism issues and something US and Italy have in common… the election process! What I found really interesting was to see how much different things are: here in Italy terrorism is often related to all the bloody actions made by some active groups belonging to the extreme left wing, while in the US terrorism seems to be related only to Muslims… especially after the 9/11. As a matter of fact, Anne pointed out a meaningful word, that is “stereotype”: she definitely think that they all need to blame someone so that Americans often tend to assume that all Muslims behave in an aggressive way. Talking about this terrible moment it was natural for me to ask her what she thought about Bush administration and if she think he did something concrete against terrorism. Considering that a lot of people criticize Bush political action, her answer surprised me: she and her parents are Bush’s supporters because of both the decisions he made to face that situation and his encouragement to the nation; my peer said Americans needed to trust in someone and to believe that US was still the most powerful country in the world even after that attack.

I N T E R C U L T U R A L C O M P E T E N C E

Since I rated myself using the YOGA form I realized my need of improving my intercultural competence and the great importance of cross-cultural preparation to deal with differences in a constructive way. I must say that our classes didn’t offer us great opportunities to develop our intercultural competence, as a matter of fact the Skype exchange is the first concrete intercultural project we can experience. I do think that the “language proficiency” section was probably the easier to self-evaluate, while the “awareness”, as it’s an abstract concept, was something quite difficult to me: for example I had no idea about how my social identity is perceived from the host country; what’s more is that this assessment tool showed me how much narrow-minded I’m... I do believe that I really need to take into consideration other perspectives! What I liked most of this very useful tool is that it truly allows you to be conscious of some of your limitations, then to overcome them and to reach new objectives.

I'm a skyper!

Hi friends!
The first Skype exchange was something really amazing! First of all this new tool seems to be a sort of bridge to the U.S. students in Pennsylvania…they are so far from us but so willing to share with us their experiences!
I spent an hour talking with Anne, a very nice girl. Managing the conversation was easier for me than for her because Anne’s smiling face was on the screen so that I read her lips while she was talking (a considerable advantage!).
We had a quite long talk in English about our lives as students: we both tried to point out the similarities and the differences between the American and Italian educational systems. As I wrote on wiki, what struck me was an intelligent question she asked me when we switched into Italian: “Does meritocracy is important in Italy?” I answered that it should be; actually it isn’t. Arguing about this topic took me ten minutes: finding the proper words to express my opinion clearly using simple Italian vocabulary wasn’t such an easy thing! At the end she simply said: “Do you mean that in Italy people often take advantage from other people?” …well, I think she’s very acute!
And what about students and professors relationship? I definitely think that here in Italy professors often tend to emphasize their superiority which is closely related to their background, while in the U.S. students consider professors like parents or friends: according to Anne professors are always there when students need a help or even just when they need to confide in someone.(not only during their classes!)
I perfectly know that this chat was probably full of stupid mistakes and the greatest thing is that I felt there was no need to worry: for the first time the most important thing was communicating making my partner understand all my thoughts and opinions. I must admit that this virtual exchange was truly significant both because I was directly connected with the U.S. and because my partner wasn't acting as a judge but she was (and she'll be) simply an attentive and helpful interlocutor making me meditate on my pronunciation and oral fluency.

My P. L. E.

Dear friends,

as you can see from the title I’m writing about my Personal Learning Environment. I think that during these years we all enjoyed the same experiences so the great part of the elements I cited are probably contained on your tables as well. What I tried to point out with my work is that learning as a process is a sort of continuum: there are no definite borders between what we learned both in a formal and informal context; the most important thing is to put together (exchange) all the information we have in order to increase our knowledge and the Internet absolutely helps us! I really enjoyed this activity and while I was writing down all the sources that have improved my English during my life, I realized that I never finishes to learn so there was always something new to add. My biggest change is due to the online world: before doing this work I had never realized how many things in the net helped me with my English and most of them come from our blogging experience.
The world around us is ‘full of English’ we only need to grasp it using suitable criteria.

alessia

Ps: M e r r y C h r i s t m a s to you all!

Searching the web: criteria

Snoopy typing a thesis...

Dear friends,
we all know that a thesis declares what you firmly believe and helps you to focus your search for information. I think this is a very scrupulous work: you need to look at a great number of sources before saying “I know enough about this subject”. Writing a thesis is a sort of craftwork: you’re supposed to bring together what other people said about your topic; this process involves the so-called “intellectual honesty” which means that you should always declare who said what you’re reporting and where readers can find this piece of information. As regards books there should be no problems because you can easily check the author and the date of a specific publication. All troubles emerge when you’re looking at a website: in this case you need criteria in order to test the validity of your source. Here I suggest you several significant steps to organize your work:

- The Internet gives you a great variety of data so use a searcher engine ( e.g. “Google”) as a filter. Clicking on the links Mrs Guth suggested us I found how useful is the URL: you can immediately realize if your source is serious or not;

- website administrator: pay attention to the essential references (e.g. e-mail address; phone number) of the person who supervises the way the website functions;

- check when your website was last updated: ask yourself if the website is updated regularly and if the information you need is suitable.

- Del.icio.us.com: why don’t you benefit from what other people said about a website? Even just to have an idea about it take a look at the notes describing the content of the webpage.

Even after doing what I listed above there are still problems about content, style and completeness of the text. Moreover it’s possible to find texts without pages so…what a chaos if you’re writing your footnotes! And what about the author? It’s really difficult to know if the information is the original one or if it has been copied. Peers, have you found proper solutions to all these difficulties? I’m waiting for your replies!

kisses
alessia