During this semester I had the possibility to improve my intercultural competence. I couldn't skype a lot because I was supposed to do the Poznan exchange, but I had the opportunity to learn many things about American elections creating the wiki page with my peers and about working women doing the wiki final project.
As far as knowledge is concerned, working on US elections I could learn the life and the political platform of McCain, Obama and Hillary Clinton and compare them with those of Berlusconi and Veltroni. Through the analysis of their speeches I could see how American politicians present their political platforms to the audience. To write a concise, easy to read section on McCain I read many sources of information, which helped me improving both my writing and critical skills: on the Web you find a lot of information, but you must select only what really meets your purposes.
During the course I had to communicate with American students using a forum. Apart from the cultural differences between the two countries, I found it a good resource to see how native speakers write in their own language, thus self-assessing my style.
As regards the final project, the topic my group had to deal with was 'Women at work' and I had to concentrate on 'working women rights' and the parallel section 'Diritti delle donne lavoratrici'. It had been not so easy to choose the subtopics because we had to decide with Chiara and, as you know, it is difficult to work with people who are not physically near you. However, at the end we were able to develop and create our wiki page, which I hope that my Italian peers will appreciate. Doing Skype with Chiara I could improve my listening skills becoming more familiar with the American pronunciation and learn more things about working women in The United States, such as the fact that Maternity leave is unpaid and usually granted for 6 weeks. Reading the Web sources I could improve both my reading and writing skills, learning how native speakers use punctuation, especially semi-colons.
I learned many words belonging to the political field, such as caucus, super-delegate, primaries, political convention, to be debarred from rights, to pass a low and others concerning women, i.e. c-section and Maternity leave.
I really appreciated the activities of this semester. I found them very useful because I think that learning a language is not enough to achieve a good English level, culture plays a leading role in your learning process. Furthermore, all the tasks helped me to mature. Now I'm able to do more effective researches on the Web and to write in English and in Italian more clearly and logically avoiding run-on sentences which create confusion and make the text difficult to read.
All the discussed topics aroused my interest. I could learn many things about immigration and American college life as well. In my opinion living together with other university students is a wonderful experience because it can help you to mature and to cope with life itself.
I'm very interested in other people's customs and traditions: they allow us to develop a critical view on Italian habits and maybe to improve your life. I hope to travel in the future and to improve my knowledge of foreign culture.
To conclude, I must say that I still have to improve my ability to cope with communicating in a different language with a different culture because in my opinion to interpret people's reactions a face-to-face communication is necessary. It allows you to see gestures and facial expressions, which sometimes tell you more than just an online distant conversation.
It has been a useful and wonderful year, which I will always remember not only from a knowledge point of view, but also, and above all, for a maturating experience.
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