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

Reflecting on YouTube.com

Girls,

This week I came across a new and endless tool: Youtube.com Suddenly a completely new world appeared in front of my eyes: a huge list of videos dealing with any kind of topic, from all over the world. Something bizarre, don’t you think? I searched a great number of words in English and French putting tags in the search bar; well, I always found a video dealing with what I was looking for…this activity was funnier than last weeks!

I think that the most incredible thing is that this site enables users to share their own experiences with people all over the planet; as a matter of fact you aren’t a passive observer of what is going on because you can leave a comment getting in touch with somebody who lives really far from you. And what about “private” groups linking a close number of persons? I think this is a considerable advantage for people living abroad of being in direct contact with their own families.

As educational tool Youtube is great as well: if you are looking for chunks of conversations, movies or simple monologues in English, here you are able to find what you need; for a languages student, as we all are, there’s nothing better than listening at these things. Obviously all that glitters is not gold: among all this good things I found a sort of rubbish dump made up of meaningless videos, sometimes even morally harmful, which have nothing to do with all the things I mentioned above; personally I think that all depends on the way this tool is exploited.

Well girls I’m really waiting for reading all your comments!

yours alessia