Now it's time to reflect upon this exciting intercultural experience we have had in the past two months: in other words our skype exchange.
Assessing myself is not an easy task. It needs a lot of awareness and objectivity. However, I feel that I gained some new competences. During this period I felt myself like a sponge, but this experience was not merely an exchange of information, it was more like a dive into a new culture. I improved my writing and reading skills, thanks to our wiki page project, and my listening too. Sometimes our American peer spoke fast and so it was a good training for us. What I appreciated most of our exchange is the fact that it aroused my curiosity about various aspects of the other culture: music, movies, politics, immigration, university life, etc. I learnt how to be more well disposed towards other cultures. I realized that my opinions are influenced by my culture and that people of other cultures may have different opinions. I'm able to accept these differences and I'm always curious to know different points of view. For example I feel not offended if what the majority of foreigners know about Italy is mafia. I know this is merely a stereotype. I had many stereotypes about Americans too and during the exchange I tried to understand if they are true. For example one of the first things I asked to my American peer was: 'Is your life in the university campus as we see it on tv and movies?'. Of course not. So, I think I became more conscious of my own perspective and I think that my position is a good one because I can help people, who don't have the same awerness, to approach and understand other cultures.
I also developed my ability of changing perspective. I mean, during the course I started to look at my culture from American perspective. I realized that after we discussed about politics (Italian and American) I started to see Italian politics from a different point of view. I think American and foreigners are more objective about our politics than we are. If we read some foreigners newspapers the world seems to go in the opposite direction compared to Italian politics.
I also learnt how to discover new information and new aspects of the other culture for myself. First of all I use Web 2.0 tools like del.icio.us and then I try to compare my information with my foreigner peer to have a more informal exchange of opinions.
The most interesting thing about the wiki project was that we had the possibility to choose as a group a topic and to develop it exchanging opinions, ideas, sources, etc. This aspect of working in groups was fantastic, it makes me appreciate more and more our course.
To give you an idea of my self assessment have a look to this link.
I want to tank you all my peers (American and Italian) and our teacher because I had the opportunity to make this unforgettable experience.
I want to conclude my post with a quotation taken from our wiki page:
'In short someone with some degree of intercultural competence is someone who is able to see relationships between different cultures - both internal and external to a society - and is able to mediate, that is interpret each in terms of the other, either for themselves or for other people. It is also someone who has a critical or analytical understanding of (parts of) their own and other cultures - someone who is conscious of their own perspective, of the way in which their thinking is culturally determined, rather than believing that their understanding and perspective is natural'.
