The course is over...some reflections:

Hi guys!!

It's May and our English course is over...It's time to think and reflect on it and see if I have learned something new! This semester was about culture and the way we look at differences in culture. Well, there's too much to say! First of all, I want to thank the members of my group - Selena, Caterina, Chiara and Corina, my American peer - for their kindness and dedication for the creation of our wikipage about Healthcare problems in Italy and in the USA. This week we were supposed to think about our way of living this exchange with American students and if and how this exchange helped us in changing our attitudes to different cultures. Obviously, we also had to reflect is this experience has been useful to improve our language skills. Thus, we made a questionnaire considering the state of our ICC (intercultural competence) in order to explain our thoughts about this topic.

In this wikipage you can find my answers to the questionnaire about my experience of the exchange with Dickinson University but here I will try to summaryze them. The first part of the questionnaire is about my feeling, knowledge and actions during the exchange:
Skype gave me the possibility to speak with an American girl, Corina, and I appreciated this possibility because, speaking with her, I discovered something new about American lifestyle and University life. I was very interested in her kind of life and we indeed spent lot of time taking about this kind of topic. I also liked serching information about American healthcare system because it was a new topic for me. The converstions were very pleasant and funny and we have never had misunderstandings or unconfortable situations. I discovered something new about American lifestyle and university life and, as far as our wikipage is concerned, I was happy to improve my knowledge about American healthcare system because we always think that it has no problems but actually it has.

The second part of the questionnaire was entitled "A self assesment of my Intercultural experience": with my peer Corina I talked about her lifestyle, healthcare system and immigration. These topics helped me in changing my point of view because it is not always easy to understand a different cultural situation if you only have your personal experience in mind. Moreover, while I searched for iformation on the oilitical campaign I was surprised by their way of "living" politics because it is very different from our way of seeing and interacting with it: this aspect helped me to change my point of view.

The third part of the questionnaire was "Self-assesment of my language learning": through this exchange I learned some particular words and expression linked with the specific field of healthcare and I surely improved my oral skills: it was not always easy to understand Corina and, on the other hand, I can say that it has been the first time in five University years, that I had the opportunity to speak with a native speaker so directly, so it was a really good experience for my speaking skills. Moreover, I learned how to speak Italian with a non-native speaker. The wiki give me the possibility to read many articles and essays about heathcare and I can say that, through this project I improved my reading and writing skills as well.

This is the end of the course...a long and interesting course which made me learn lots of useful things, not only from a linguistic point of view but also from a technological and cultural one. I want to thank all my peers and my teacher for this course and, even if it gives me only 3 credits, I think it has been very useful.

See you!!