Photo by ocean.flynnFirst of all I would like to say is that I really appreciated doing the exchange, it has been an amazing experience, one of those things which are, for me, the future of language learning. It belongs to that category of experiences you always look forward doing but you rarely have the chance to actually do. Hopefully we experienced it, and now I can say that it was absolutely worth doing and I hope other students will repeat it in the future.
As far as my own experience is concerned, I feel I really got in touch with the American culture, and I really liked the fact that our American peer was so nice, friendly and helpful. Moreover, the exchange has been a successful experience because it has been incredibly easy to communicate with people never heard before, who live on the other part of the ocean; thanks to this exchange I can now state that we’re not so “different” at all, apart from the obvious cultural and social characteristics linked to the country we live in. As for contents, I learnt so much about American politics, and I liked the fact that we focused on the issue of the 2008 election campaign, so that we were all well informend over a topic which is treated in the news everyday; in this sense, the exchange allowed us not only to compare our politics with theirs, but also to better understand and be fond of a topic of general interest nowadays. However, it was not always easy to talk about politics, and sometimes we had to face some misunderstanding, especially about Italian politicians and the Italian political system.
Furthermore, I realized that the problems the two countries have to face are not so different too. In fact, while dealing with the issue of immigration, I clearly understood that the American culture seems to have the same problems with Mexican immigrants that we have with people coming from Romania or Albania; give this fact, their attitude towards them seems also very similar to ours. The only thing that surprised me was that I didn’t absolutely realized before how much Spanish speaking people suffer emargination and prejudice in the US; I think I had just heard something about it before the exchange, so that this is an issue I would like to focus on, because it sounds so strange for a European. Europe, in fact, especially in the last few years, seems to love Spanish and and spanish speaking people, and they’re not marginalized at all, they’re extremely well-perceived, if not smart.Last but not least, I also learnt a lot from the skype sessions when we discussed the topic for the final project, which for us was “Young adults in US and Italy”; we had the chance to talk more freely and about more easy things, such as college life, habits of young people in both countries, marriage and so on. It was really interesting, and it also made me reconsider my own culture, given the fact that I’ve perceived the American culture as being much more flexible then ours. As far as language is concerned, I obviously improved by conversational skills and my ability in keeping the conversation going, and I also learnt a lot of new words, belonging to the semantic field of politics, but also of everyday life.
As far as my own experience is concerned, I feel I really got in touch with the American culture, and I really liked the fact that our American peer was so nice, friendly and helpful. Moreover, the exchange has been a successful experience because it has been incredibly easy to communicate with people never heard before, who live on the other part of the ocean; thanks to this exchange I can now state that we’re not so “different” at all, apart from the obvious cultural and social characteristics linked to the country we live in. As for contents, I learnt so much about American politics, and I liked the fact that we focused on the issue of the 2008 election campaign, so that we were all well informend over a topic which is treated in the news everyday; in this sense, the exchange allowed us not only to compare our politics with theirs, but also to better understand and be fond of a topic of general interest nowadays. However, it was not always easy to talk about politics, and sometimes we had to face some misunderstanding, especially about Italian politicians and the Italian political system.
Furthermore, I realized that the problems the two countries have to face are not so different too. In fact, while dealing with the issue of immigration, I clearly understood that the American culture seems to have the same problems with Mexican immigrants that we have with people coming from Romania or Albania; give this fact, their attitude towards them seems also very similar to ours. The only thing that surprised me was that I didn’t absolutely realized before how much Spanish speaking people suffer emargination and prejudice in the US; I think I had just heard something about it before the exchange, so that this is an issue I would like to focus on, because it sounds so strange for a European. Europe, in fact, especially in the last few years, seems to love Spanish and and spanish speaking people, and they’re not marginalized at all, they’re extremely well-perceived, if not smart.Last but not least, I also learnt a lot from the skype sessions when we discussed the topic for the final project, which for us was “Young adults in US and Italy”; we had the chance to talk more freely and about more easy things, such as college life, habits of young people in both countries, marriage and so on. It was really interesting, and it also made me reconsider my own culture, given the fact that I’ve perceived the American culture as being much more flexible then ours. As far as language is concerned, I obviously improved by conversational skills and my ability in keeping the conversation going, and I also learnt a lot of new words, belonging to the semantic field of politics, but also of everyday life.
Camilla
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