Developing intercultural competence

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.

Second skype conversation

Due to the absence of my usual partner Rachel, this time I skyped with Ashley (who found herself without a partner too). As it was our first talk, we started by introducing ourselves. So I found out that she is in her first year and her major is archeology. Our first topic was the Easter (or spring) break: she asked me what people usually do on Easter Monday. I explained that we meet up with our friends and take a trip to the hills around Padova, we play soccer, eat, drink and, above all, have a good time!

We had the occasion to compare comedy in the English and Italian culture through two milestones of this genre: on the one hand Monty Python and on the other hand the "Fantozzi" series. Because the English series is almost unknown in Italy and viceversa, we came to the conclusion that comedy is deeply culture-bound and, therefore, people from different countries laugh in different ways. I suggested Ashely that she should take a look at what's available on youtube regarding the most famous "ragioniere" of the 80's. Being a cult series, I think it can be a good occasion to deepen her knowledge of Italian culture. Hope she enjoyed it.

Have a laugh!

Spiderman parody

First skype conversation with Rachel and Chiara

Despite some problems with the line (sometimes they couldn't hear me or I heard a lot of background noises), the conversation was definetely interesting. The very first topic was the weather and it seems it's very similar to ours! (though not as warm as here). Chiara is a first year student, is 18 and hasn't made up her mind yet on what she's going to study. Rachel is from Spain, and is going to stay at Dikinson's university for one year as Spanish teacher.

We talked about the differences in the respective school systems. In the US there is no distinction between "liceo" and "scuola professionale" and all high schools follow the same programmes. As far as university is concerned, the first year is the same for all degree courses and then students decide what to study afterwards. Campus is also a fundamental part of university life, so that there is no actual distinction between university and "private life". In Italy instead, the feeling that these are two separate things is much stronger, as students live either in private acommodations or with their family.

When the conversation switched to Italian, we discussed about the questions that emerged in the Wiki, namely about the meaning of the word "raccomandato". I explained to Rachel and Chiara that it is not something related to the feedback that students give to their teachers and that the so called "raccomandazioni" do not only apply to this field but to all jobs (unfortunately...). I hope my explanation of this typically Italian "phenomenon" was clear enough!

I'm really looking forward to seeing Chiara and hearing Rachel again.

Germans and the English language

Enjoy!

Raffa

E-tivity 3

Being my first approach to this nowadays very widespread way of communicating with people, I'd say it didn't go that bad. Once you understand how it all works (although I think I'm still far from that) you even enjoy it. Most of all when you fully realise that it can be a chance of using English you had never come to consider.
The fact that many people read what you write makes you definetely more aware of mistakes. In fact, I pay much more attention if I know someone is going to read my posts, especially if my teacher is included. Obviously, I also read other people's posts so that whenever they use new words, I can write them down and I'm going to remember them more easily because I can associate them to a specific context.
As everything takes place on the internet, we have the chance to make the most of what this source offers, that is an incalculable number of stimuli and sources to learn new words and know more about the English "cultures". Just think about youtube or the e-books on google: whenever you need to practice your listening or reading skills, you just need a click on your computer. Blogging becomes part of all of this because you can access these sources much faster, share them with others (and use theirs) and keep training with your writing.

E-tivity 2

As the wild wild web is really packed up with every sort of blog, it wasn't an easy task to find websites which could look both interesting and helpful at the same time. In the end, this is what I've come up with:

• http://www.politics1.com/ : like we all know there's al lot going on in the US because of the presidential elections and I thought it might be interesting to find out what Americans say about it. This blog is not just made up of comments but also of up-to-date information about the latest results of the campaign.


• http://www.cinemablend.com/ : and now something a bit more relaxing. This blog is not only about the latest films across cinemas but it also provides much much more like news, forums and comments on the newest DVDs. I suggest that you take a look at it if you are somehow interested in cinema or simply curious to now what's coming up on the market. Have fun!

This tour around the blogosphere made me understand that blogs have some features in common: they are written in a very personal style and the language used is very close to spoken and everyday English. This seems quite natural to me, as people who write for themselves and others aim at being immediately understood by their readers and try to appeal to them through a conversational style.

The use of links is essential to all bloggers who want to share more than just words and need to make reference to other websites or to different kinds of material (like podcasts).