When one fully realizes that language and culture can be seen as the two sides of the same coin, it's time to start to take a closer look at both. We can imagine it as a journey and each stop as a new idea that we can put in our bag and make ours. Stop by stop our understanding of the other's culture will become ever deeper and more complete.
This is the aim of the YOGA programme: to assess our intercultural communicative competence. The good thing about this form is that it helps us to focus on some specific issues, i.e. awareness attitude, skills, knowledge and language proficiency. In my opinion, being conscious of what we have been doing so far and at which stage of the process of learning we are can be the right attitude to improve ourselves.
The big challenge, though, is that not only do we need to become aware of what we can do but also endeavour our abilities to cope with another cultural ambience. The key to that is our will to know and learn more about it, and at the same time to be constantly ready to modify our opinions on it. Moreover, we should not forget that the observation of another culture always includes the critical observation of ourselves and of our way of living.
