We're all pieces of a puzzle..

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Has this last semester at university been useful for improving my intercultural competence and my knowledge of English? The answer is: yes, definitely!! This English course has given me the chance to work with students of different countries and share my ideas with them: having direct contact with other cultures is, in my opinion, the best way to achieve awareness of both their and my way of living. I'm just at the beginning of the process to acquire more cultural consciousness, that's true, but I do believe this course is a little piece of a great puzzle which, in the end, will show all its splendor!

This course has helped me develop my intercultural competence in many different ways:

1. It aroused my interest in a different culture: talking with native American people on immigration and politics made me appreciate and notice differences and similarities and re-consider both my own and their culture from a wider standpoint.

2. It helped me get to know new aspects of American culture: thanks to the exchange I broadened my knowledge on the American electoral and education systems, as well as on the way of living and habits of American young people.

3. It helped me explain and understand my own culture, as well as the American culture, by looking at them from a different standpoint: for instance, I had always considered quite nonsense the fact that American students can graduate in two different fields (medicine and German for example); however, after talking with native people and carrying on research on the university system in the US I understood that in this way students can get wider knowledge in many different areas, thus broadening their horizons. It was by changing standpoint that I could reconsider the other culture and appreciate some of its differences; similarly, modifying the starting point of view was equally important everytime I needed to explain my own culture to people from a different culture: to explain the Italian university system, for instance, I needed to start from their perspective trying to broaden it, so that they could understand my own point of view despite some differences.

4. It aroused my interest in conversating with people from other countries: I do believe there's much to know from the direct contact with foreign people, so I tried to make them feel I was much interested in what they were saying. I think this is always the best way to keep conversation going and to enjoy it!

5. It helped me learn new words and expressions in English and improve my reading and writing skills: more specifically, as I collaborated in editing two wiki pages (one on the political elections both in the USA and in Italy, the other on the American and Italian University systems), I learnt many words belonging to the corrspondent semantic areas, like for example "political platform", "caucus" etc.. What's more, in order to do some research on these two topics and to edit the final wiki page I had to read, select and re-arrange the materials I had found out on the Web.

Drawing some conclusion at the end of this semester is not easy, since this exchange has helped me work on many different communicative skills: anyway, above all it has given me much enthusiasm in communicating, sharing experiences and collaborating with other people using English as a means for expression. That's another piece of my ICC puzzle... Now I do need to keep up the good job!