...and it's time to update my PLE!

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Hi,

Now that my last English course has finished, I think it’s really important to update my PLE (Personal Learning Environment) and reflect a bit on what new tools I learned to use during the second semester to improve my Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC)

As you know, at the end of the first semester, I was asked to carry out my PLE for the first time in my life, and I found out that it’s extremely useful for critically thinking about the processes, people and tools that are involved (or not) in my learning environment. Of course, many of the things I included in my PLE at the end of the first semester (click here to see it) are and will be always central to my lifelong learning process! Anyway, I’d like to point out that there are some interesting ‘new entries’ in my PLE thanks to the Padova-Dickinson exchange! You can see them in the yellow nodes in the image above.

At the end of the first semester, I was undoubtedly aware that my last English course was aimed at improving not only my language competence, but also my intercultural competence. However, only in the second semester, I started to use new wonderful tools for my intercultural learning like Skype and Facebook. Thanks to these media, now I can get in touch with my friends from any place of the world, at any time and without spending anything (except for my 24 hours/day broadband connection charge of course ;-). That’s absolutely amazing! I can not only speak or chat with them but also exchange photos and videos… Sometimes images speak more than thousands of words!

Another great source of information is the Interculture Wiki which hosts the Padova-Dickinson exchange and other intercultural projects as well. There my peers and I developed some interesting wiki pages about U.S. and Italy, and I’ll certainly have a look at this wiki in my future to see what my colleagues will write about their exchanges. Then, there is an interesting forum/blog (Dalla marcia alla vespa) where we, Padova students, and our peers from Dickinson College discussed several issues that are relevant to Italian and American culture. I hope that in the next years this forum will be further developed, so that I can read more about Italian and American culture taking the perspective of common people actually living in the two countries!

Well, there is, then, a big appointment that I can’t miss in my life: after taking my degree, I want to travel a little abroad. Certainly, this will be the best way to directly experience cultural differences and, at the same time, improve and test my intercultural competence. Thinking about my future, I also hope to find a job that will allow me to meet a lot of people from different countries of the world. That would be a great chance to practice languages, but also to find out more about other cultures!

Finally, this course taught me that assessing your intercultural competence is important, and the only person who can do this is yourself! Two tools that can help me with this task are the YOGA form and the questionnaires I filled in at the end of our course (ICC_Assessment). I do think that it would be really useful to self-assess how my intercultural competence varies according to the experiences I will have in my future (social networking, travelling, working relationships, reading, watching movies, Skyping, etc.).

That's all! I just want to wish you all good luck and thank you for this wonderful year together!

Elena

It's time to assess my Intercultural Competence!

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Here we are at the end of the second semester! As all my classmates know, this means the end of our last English course as well! It’s, thus, again time to think a bit about what I’ve learnt or not from this experience! So what this post is all about is reflecting on my learning process and assessing my intercultural competence.

Well, at the end of the first semester, when I carried out my Personal Learning Environment (PLE), I had the feeling that during the first semester I hadn’t increased my intercultural competence as much as I had my language competence. Second language proficiency is certainly an important component of culture but not everything. During this second semester, on the other hand, I focused more on my ICC (Intercultural Communicative Competence), and I improved it thanks to two projects which involved the use of very different tools. The first one, which occupied the first part of this second semester, consisted in the development of a wiki page on 2008 U.S. and Italian elections. I read plenty of information on newspapers from different countries as well as on the candidates’official websites, and I watched videos on YouTube dealing with this topic. All this enabled me to learn more about U.S. and Italian politics (the electoral systems and the candidates’ platforms in particular), but also about the main social issues in the two countries nowadays. For example, I learned more about the problem of health care, gender pay gap, and national security in the United States.

Then, the second part of the semester was even more interesting because Sarah gave me the possibility of Skyping with Chiara, my American peer, and taking part in the Padova-Dickinson forum. It was the first time I could have a conversation about American culture directly with an American student. This exchange was, therefore, a great opportunity to deeply explore the typical life of American young students and look at the U.S.A from their viewpoint. I could listen to what common people living there truly believe, need and experience everyday. Actually, besides travelling, an exchange like this is undoubtedly the best way to learn about the lifestyle, customs, habits, and tastes of people belonging to other cultures. Let me give an example or two. Our peers from Dickinson told us lots of interesting and curious things that are part of their college life: living in the campus, often very far from their families, travelling home just a couple of times a year, taking part in fraternities or sororities, and so on. As I said before, the Padova-Dickinson exchange was a unique chance to know the real opinion of young American people on their society, particularly on big social issues such as death penalty, women participation in politics and in the workforce, or illegal immigration.

With Chiara we spoke a lot about the problems women immigrants and women in general face in Italian and American society as far as job opportunities are concerned. This was, in fact, the topic of our final project. There my group mates and I discussed and compared the following points: women's participation in the labor force, i.e. unemployment and employment rate, women distribution in the labor market and wage discrimination, working women's rights and women's presence in the politics of both countries. Finally, we gave a general overview of the role women immigrants play in U.S. and Italian labor market and the problem of prostitution.

Anyway, I think that the most important evidence of my intercultural competence is that I always had a positive attitude when I spoke with Chiara, even when we had different opinions about, for example, the topic to be developed in our final project. I behaved like she was just a friend, no matter whether she was American or Italian. I didn’t perceive such a huge difference, perhaps, because her parents are Italian so she is partly Italian as well! I was always very open, curious and ready to hear how different U.S. culture could be from mine. Honestly, in my life, I always try to be very tolerant and open-minded in all my relationships even with people of my own culture. I think this is essential for a person studying foreign languages and cultures!

Finally, just a couple of things concerning my language learning. I must say that I’m very satisfied because this semester I practiced not only my reading and writing (wiki pages, newspapers, blogs), but also my listening and speaking (mainly thanks to Padova-Dickinson exchange and YouTube videos). In addition, to write the wiki page for my final project I read a lot of American documents, such as those published by the U.S. Department of Labor; this way I learned new vocabulary and paid a lot of attention to sentence construction and word order. I think that one of my most significant improvements is that I write less run-on sentences!

The very last think I’d like to point out is that in my group there were five people, including Chiara, so it was not always so easy to organize our work in a balanced way and meet everybody’s needs, such as finding a topic for the final project that interested everybody, organizing a parallel work, subdividing it, and so on. However, we all developed our collaborative skills and learned that good organization and co-operation are fundamental in order to be a successful team!

Ok! This is the end of my last blog post (at least for my Bloggingenglish course) and the end of an adventure so I just want to thank my professor Sarah for such an innovative, involving and helpful English course and all my peers (including Chiara) for their collaboration and help throughout this last year together :-)

See you!

Elena

Reflecting on my Skype exchange!

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This week I had my third Skype exchange with Chiara, my American peer! As time goes, I enjoy skyping with her more and more. Although this time we had a conference call made up of five people, we managed to discuss about our final project successfully!

First of all my Italian peers and I proposed Chiara our individual topics.

- Elisa suggested music as one of the main channels through which the culture of a country is conveyed. For example, she pointed out that in America there are many genres, and this reflects the multi-ethnic composition of America.

- Silvia N. proposed immigration, in particular the problems immigrants face when they have to find a job. For instance, Silvia underlined that in Italy skilled immigrants who have a long work experience or a qualified degree are often discriminated when they apply for a job.

- Silvia L., on the other hand, wanted to compare the situation of working women in the US and Italy, focusing on discrimination women suffer as for wages, job insecurity, positions they fill and involvement in politics.

- Finally, my proposal was abortion to see how Italy and America have faced this big ethical issue so far: the abortion laws, if health care covers abortion, abortion rates, and the influence of religion in the two countries.

As can be seen, our topics were all very interesting, but also very different! That’s why it took us much time before coming to an agreement! By the way, after discussing the pros and cons of each issue, we decided to develop women issue given that Chiara showed a particular interest in health care and abortion. Unfortunately, at that point Chiara had to leave the conversation, so we went on discussing without Chiara. Sarah told us that women issue was too broad and suggested us to narrow the topic and focus on one particular aspect.

Eventually, we decided to develop a wiki-page on “Women at work” by comparing the situation in the US and Italy. We immediately sent an e-mail to Chiara just to update her about our choice. Meanwhile, we sketched a first outline, divided the topic into subtopics and decided who’s doing what too. Thus, I’m going to present some data about working women (percentage of women who works vs housewives and of working mothers vs stay-at-home mothers, kinds of jobs women are usually employed in, wage discrimination between men and women); Elisa is going to deal with working mothers' rights; Silvia Lovato is going to discuss women in politics, and Silvia N. is going to talk about women immigrants.

During this weekend we are carrying out some research on the Web; we also established that, if we find useful sources, we bookmark them on delicious with a tag that is specific of our group. In addition, together with Chiara, we chose to communicate via e-mail because, in our opinion, it’s the more effective way since you can easily forward Chiara’s replies to all the members. In addition, we set out that each week one person will have the responsibility for writing to Chiara if there are any updates, or other important things she should know. That’s all for the moment! Now I’ll search for some sources…Hopefully, we’ll do a good job!

Immigration in Italy

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Italy faced the problem of immigration quite recently, in the 1970s; before Italy had been a country where people emigrated from, especially after World War II.

Since the end of the 20^th century and the beginning of the 21^st century the rate of immigrants in Italy has been increasing year by year. In the 1990s the Italian government tried to solve the problem of illegal immigration by holding amnesties, which allowed illegal immigrants to apply for Italian citizenship and not get punished for having been there illegally. This reduced the number of illegal workers and, thus, black economy, but it did not solve the problem! Quite the opposite! This measure attracted even more immigrants who could easily come to Italy and be legalized!

From a geographical viewpoint, Italy’s position is strategic. In the centre of the Mediterranean and with over 8,000 kilometres of coast, Italy is a “door” to Europe for African people (Moroccans, Tunisians, Algerians) – though the trip across the Mediterranean often turns into an odyssey. According to ISTAT, on December 31, 2006 there were 2.938.922 immigrants in Italy (4,97%). Moroccans are the most numerous, followed by Albanians, Romanians, Tunisians and Senegalese.

Undoubtedly, immigration is a cultural and economic resource too. Many migrants have entered the labour market: in the North-East, they mainly work in factories in almost regular positions; in the South, non-EU people are mostly employed in seasonal jobs and in the underground economy, particularly in the agriculture and building industry. Many immigrant workers, especially women from Eastern Europe, are employed to do the housework in our families or to help old or disabled people.

Unfortunately, illegal immigration has brought to Italy new social problems too: many illegal immigrants are involved in criminal activities such as drug-pushing, prostitution and petty crime, especially in big cities. This has led to intolerance, racism and violence between Italians and immigrants and to an increase both in the number of workers employed in the black-market and in the money spent by the State to keep immigrants in prison or in the “Centri di permanenza temporanea”, centres where illegal immigrants are held before going back home.

The various immigration laws have never been able to regulate the situation of illegal immigrants: the first attempt was at the beginning of the 1990s with the so-called 'Martelli law', which aimed “to plan migratory flows into Italy in collaboration with the immigrants' countries of origin”. In 1998, the centre-left government issued the so-called 'Turco-Napolitano law' which established the procedures for the deportation of illegal immigrants who, once arrested, could be deported only after being judged by a magistrate. After the magistrate issued an order of deportation, they had two weeks to appeal against the decision, but immigrants often used this time to go underground and out of sight. In 2002, the centre-right government enacted the ‘Bossi-Fini Law’; it states that illegal immigrants must leave the country within five days after the arrest, and during this time they are held under the control of the police. Non-EU immigrants can come to Italy only if they have a ‘contratto di soggiorno’, i.e. a contract of dependent employment providing for accommodation and the payment of travel expenses to return to their homeland. When the contract expires, the immigrant worker should repatriate. The truth is that forced repatriation is not always carried out as it should be! Always in 2002 a decree-law provided for the regularisation of irregular immigrants employed as domestic workers or home-helper, and dependent workers involved in other kinds of subordinate employment. All regularised immigrant workers received a residence permit which lasted till the deadline of the employment contract, but in any case no longer than two years.

These days immigration has been a hot election topic, as the title of this article says. The spread of gypsy camps on city outskirts and the increase of crimes committed by illegal immigrants worry Italians a lot. That’s why immigration is a central issue among the right- and left-wing parties, which have opposing positions as always. Given his coalition with Lega Nord (Northern League), Berlusconi promises to deport all illegal immigrants and “crack down on gypsy camps and centres linked to the preaching of Muslim fundamentalism", while Walter Veltroni, the centre-left candidate, is for integration and wants to increase the duration of legal immigrants' residency permits and, at the same time, “to guarantee that expulsion orders for illegal immigrants are really carried out”.

Sources:

http://www-pub.naz.edu:9000/~cmnewell/

http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/eiro/2002/09/feature/it0209103f.htm

Thinking about my final project…ABORTION

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Besides elections, there’s another big issue which is causing a bit of upset in Italy during these first months of 2008: abortion.

Exactly 30 years after the Law 194, which legalized induced abortion in Italy within 90 days since conception, the issue is again very controversial. As for my project, my idea is to discuss abortion in Italy and America as objectively as possible; however, I read the whole 194 law before writing this post, and I’d like to express my opinion about it in a few lines. I’m a Catholic person perfectly convinced that abortion should never be used to interrupt a pregnancy that could be avoided at the origin through contraceptive methods, but I also think that, in some specific cases, a woman has the right to choose for her life and for that of her baby. I find the 194 a very “human” law. Already the title, “NORME PER LA TUTELA SOCIALE DELLA MATERNITA’ E SULL’INTERRUZIONE VOLONTARIA DELLA GRAVIDANZA” (and not “abortion law”), explicitly shows that its first aim is not birth control (see art.1). From a legal point of view, it’s a well-balanced attempt to safeguard the rights of the foetus and the woman and to respect the medical staff’s belief too, i.e. whether to practice abortion or not as a doctor. This is a good law; the problem is how it is applied sometimes! The ethical questions “Is abortion a good or bad thing? or “Is the foetus already a human being?” are very complex and sensitive issues; undoubtedly, they would be worth a post; however they’re outside the purpose of my project.

Let’s explain, on the other hand, when and why this big debate about abortion started in Italy. On December 18, 2007 the United Nations Organization approved the moratorium (“an official stopping of an activity for a period of time” from Longman Dictionary) on death penalty. This event led to “a great thinking” about the right to life and, consequently, about abortion in the mass media in Italy (read the article). In January, the cultural organization Web Radio on the Air started a huge provocation, the Universal Moratorium for the Abolition of the Punishment of Abortion. At the beginning of February, the editor of the Italian newspaper Il_Foglio, Giuliano Ferrara, took this provocation to set a new political party “Aborto? No grazie. Per la moratoria con Giuliano Ferrara ” which aims to bring the cause of abortion in the next Parliament (read the article or watch the video). Ferrara is widely supported by the Church, pro-life movements and all the people who are openly against abortion and consider it like homicide.

These months abortion is a hot topic also because of some bad news reported by Italian mass media. Some weeks ago, the TV programme Le Iene broadcasted a video about some doctors who declared to be conscientious objectors and, thus, refused to carry out legal abortion in public hospital, but then they accepted to perform back-street abortion till over 5 months of pregnancy in their private practices. One month ago, a gynaecologist committed suicide in Genoa because he was accused of performing illegal abortion under the payment of 500 euros to women who wanted to end an unwanted pregnancy without following the legal procedure (read the article). In Naples the police raided a hospital where a woman was having abortion because her child suffered from Klinefelter's_syndrome. The police had received an anonymous report saying that foeticide was being committed in that hospital, which then proved not to be true. This caused a big scandal within women’s movements too (see the article).

To sum up, 30 years after the achievement of legal abortion (1978-2008), Italians are still deeply divided between for and against abortion: someone defines abortion of unhealthy embryos as eugenics; someone else calls it genocide perfectly authorized and financed by the State; someone believes it is a fundamental right of the woman to choose whether to abort or not.

I think that the project I’m going to do with my peers in collaboration with the Dickinson College students is a great chance to compare Italian and American culture and see how these two coutries have faced this big ethical issue so far. Below you find a list of points that could be discussed in an objective way.

PROJECT PLAN

- A comparison between Italian and American abortion laws to see similarities and differences, strong and weak points (late abortion term, i.e. how late abortion can be performed legally, parental notification for minors and privacy for non-adults, government funding, i.e. if health care covers abortion, etc.) and, given that legal access to abortion vary somewhat by state in the US, to see which states are more restrictive.

- A look at the methods of abortion which are legalized in the two countries: for example I know that in the US and most European countries the abortion pill Ru486 has been legalized for several years, while it will probably be available in Italian hospitals only since this year.

- Statistics: the trend of abortion rates in the two countries, differences between North and South, native people and immigrants, teenagers and adults.

- Measures taken to prevent abortion (ex. family advisory bureaux in hospitals).

- The position on abortion of US and Italian candidates in 2008 elections.

- Abortion and religion: influence of the Church and Christian movements in the two countries (such as “Il Movimento per la Vita” in Italy e “Moral Majority” in the USA).

Women in 2008 elections: Italy and US

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This week I’m going to discuss 2008 elections again! To tell you the truth, I’m getting more and more involved in this matter because, while learning English, I can increase my intercultural competence and keep abreast of the latest political developments in both Italy and the U.S.A. For example, during my last English class before the Easter break, my group mates and I were thinking about analysing if and how women are considered in the platforms of the Italian and American candidates. For this reason, I decided to get some information on this issue. Instead of reading articles from newspapers, this time I chose to watch some videos taken from the candidates’ official websites:

- a video about a convention, “Donne per l'Italia. Protagoniste del cambiamento”, that Berlusconi hold in Rome on March 29;

- a video about a meeting of the Democratic Party (PD) which took place in Mestre on March 8^th and was dedicated to women.

- a video published on Hillary Clinton’s official website, under the page “A Champion for Women”, where the candidate talks about women's rights.

After listening to these speeches and quickly reading through the platforms, I can say that Italian candidates are more concerned with women role in society than the American candidates. As a matter of fact, only Hillary quotes women among her platform issues; McCain and Obama talk about family in general or children, rather than women. In Berlusconi and Veltroni’s platforms, on the other hand, women play a key role. Both candidates put the accent on their intention to increase women representation in Parliament and women participation in the socio-political life of our country. Veltroni stated that, if he won, there would be 130 women in Parliament (three times as much as in Prodi’s government). PdL (People of Freedom) wants women to be central figures of the next government – above all in fields such as economics, defence, security, foreign policy, etc. – because women politicians in Italy still suffer prejudice and poor support; they’re often victims of gossip or considered as recommended people.

Both Italian parties aim to valorise women not only in politics, but also in society, for example, by encouraging firms to hire women workers (one of Veltroni’s proposals is to benefit businesses that respect gender equality and to oblige state enterprises to have effective women representation in their boards) and by preventing women from choosing between professional career and motherhood. In addition, PdL and PD agree on the need to build public nurseries, and Veltroni supports women’s possibility of choosing flexible and part-time jobs as well. The two candidates share the same opinion on motherhood too: families have to be supported by giving them the so-called “baby bonus”, that is a benefit for every child born; finally, big families should be backed through significant tax cuts. Veltroni (who in my opinion provides more concrete examples of how he wants to achieve his goals) says that he will give families 2.500 euros for each new child, that he will introduce additional paternity leave, and that low-income families will get 100% of their wages for 12 months while on leave.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is totally involved in fighting against pay disparities between men and women. Actually, US women still suffer pay discrimination. In the speech I listened to, Hillary said that full-time women earn 77 cents for every dollar that a man makes and that for women of colour is even less: 67 cents for African American women and 56 cents for Latinos. If she wins the elections, she will close the pay gap between men and women by toughening the penalties for those who violate the Equal Payment Act, ensuring equal pay laws, and prohibiting employers to fire employees who share salary information to find out if they are treated unfairly. Moreover, she wants to raise funds for the research on breast cancer.

Comparing Hillary’s platform to that of Berlusconi and Veltroni made me reflect upon the fact that none of them has taken unequal pay practices into account, although this is a big problem that affects Italian society as well.

Happy Easter :-)

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