TASK 6: ABOUT IMMIGRATION

Immigration is caused by a lot of factors; the possible causes are: politic, poverty, the possibility to find a job, natural disasters, overpopulation, and a relationship and so on.

Immigration can be legal or illegal, that is why it is very difficult to get exact datum about it.

Generally speaking, you can find two main arguments pro and against immigration. One theory regards economy: immigrants are employed to do not qualified job as factory worker; the second theory concerns Nationalism: some people do not want immigrants because they believe that immigrants have a style of life very far from the style of life of people who are not immigrants.
In USA the “melting pot” is quite usual: a lot of people in the American class have ancestors or parents who were/are immigrants, whereas in the Italian class is not a frequent thing.

Personally I believe that there are different types of immigrants: I do not feel a lot of difference with Western immigrants because they have a similar culture; of course I feel more difference with immigrants who have much different habits, for example a Chinese person.

One last thing, more close-minded is a community more difficult is to have some exchange with its members.

TASK 5: COMMENT ON FORUMS

The post in the forum called “women in politics” strikes my eyes... the reply of Kristen was very interesting, she says that the problem is not only the gender but also the color of the skin.
The examples of this electoral campaign clearly Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton; however, Kristen gives an other examples: Shirley Chisholm, who in 1972 was candidate for presidency although she was female and black, clearly she loose her campaign, the time was not mature.
What I think is that Hilary and Obama have a great possibility to win the campaign, both candidates have something different: one is black, the other is female. What a match!!
Personally, I like Hilary because, of course she is a woman and furthermore she has experience; in Italy it was said that during the government of Clinton it was her who commanded, I like the fact she is a strong woman and I believe she will govern her country without problems. I like Obama because he has fresh ideas and he did not take money from oil companies for his campaign.

This is about USA and what about Italy?
I write this post late because I was ill, now one knows that Berlusconi won the campaign in Italy against his main adversary Veltroni. The battle in Italy is always between white males, which is not a novelty. I believe that women in Parlamento are very few; the only female candidate was Daniela Santanché belonging to right wing. I like the fact that a woman was candidate, but when I heard her verbal fight with Alessandra Mussolini she fall into my disfavor…

YOGA FORM AND SKYPE

The yoga form is a little bit long... As a matter of fact, it contains a lot of questions to which I never relate. They are about multiculturalism and they reach me as an individual who has relationships with a host community or with foreign people.

I never thought about a lot of things but sometimes I found some questions that I could not understand or did not concern my experience. Sometimes I found the yoga form too much generic because you have to make a distinction between occidental foreign people –like European or American- and African and Asian people. Being occidental gives you a certain standard behaviour. If I meet an occidental person I feel more relaxed, because I know better the differences and I know we have similar habits and behaviour; while if I meet an Asian or African person I know that I have to pay more attention to my behaviour and of course to my language, because I think the differences are bigger. E.g. if I meet a Muslim person I know I do not have to take her/him to have a spritz or to eat pig meat!!! So, I try to adapt myself to their customs, I adopt this behaviour only with people who are very far from my culture. It is clear that an occidental person has less culture differences.

This time Skype was more culturally engaged, and the theme terrorism was more interesting for the U.S.A. than Italy. American terrorism is more famous in this time, although in Italy some terrorist events happened e.g. the organisation of the Brigate Rosse made some victims, but it is a confined phenomenon. I made some questions to Brian but the audio was bad, and he asked me if I saw a movie which I even do not know the existence. What a pity!!!

FORUM

Hello Guys!

Something about the forum of group 4.

This time we reflect about the Italian word “raccomandato”.

In Italy we talk a lot about this word. On one hand we are against the recommendation, on the other hand we understand people who are recommended. It seems a little strange, but if we try to understand the Italian economy and education system we can understand this contradiction.
I think that economy in Italy is not working well. A lot of private companies closed and fired their employers and the public sector, because of privatization, does not hire employers anymore.
It happens that a lot of worthy people move far from Italy to do their work (“la fuga dei cervelli”), in a country where their work could be appreciated. It is time to change, but clearly in my opinion it is a job for politicians, because normal people cannot change this secular system.
Probably the American system is so different from the Italian system: when I was on Skype with Brian (one of the American student) he asked me: “Why is not good a recommended professor?” At the begin I could not understand. Finally he told me that in America the name and curriculum of the professors are online and a recommended professor is one who has an excellent curriculum. It was interesting that in America recommended is a positive word while in Italy it is very negative.
I’d like to have the same system in Italy, because I think it is clearer and I can check the skills of my professor, furthermore putting their curriculum online I know better my professor and may be take advantage of what he/she knows better.

SKYPE EXPERIENCE

Hi everybody!
On Wed I talk with Brian, a boy who is American but his grandparents are Sicilian. We had a long conversation on Skype. I used Skype other times but this is the first time I talk, I used it only for chat. At the beginning it was difficult because the microphones did not work, so Alessia and I changed a lot of times the computer. Finally we find two computers that worked!!
In the beginning of my conversation I find myself embarrassed, I did not know what to ask although I prepared some questions and the fact that in America it was early in the morning did not help! Brian was a little asleep or maybe he was embarrassed too!!!
Luckily the conversation –after these embarrassed moments- started and we talk a lot about the American system of education and also about the sanity system and we made some comparison. We talk about other things such as: “how old are you?” etc..
Problems with Skype:
I do not know why, but I could not see Brian..
The audio is not very good and sometimes I did not hear him and vice versa.
Furthermore, the American class was too much loud.
Why I like Skype:
Of course the free calls (also international)!!!

My personal learning environment

My personal learning environment is very various. The first distinction I can made is about formal and informal instruction.

The formal instruction has two categories work and education.
What I mean for the category of education is books I have to read to pass the exams, courses I have to attend, when I have to speak in English with my professors and colleagues.
I put as formal education even my job, because sometimes I help my mother in the office or in the fair and I speak in English with the customers.

The informal instruction is divided in three categories: people, media and entertainment.
Interacting with people is the first category. For example it happens to meet some tourist in the streets and to give them some instructions for a place or to meet someone in a pub and to start a conversation with them, or to talk with Erasmus students, to travel around the world.
The second category is media. Sometimes I watch the television in English, in la7 channel the news of CNN are transmitted. I listen to the radio, I think it is English radio and I like to listen to the speaker and see if I understand the conversation. I like to read English review, journal and newspaper and I think that the language of gossip review is very interesting and difficult to understand. The web is a tool that I used also before our second year English course, but this course helps me to use the web in other different way: I do not know what are podcast, now I know that it could be a new way to improve my English I like YouTube, and also delicious is very good to find material online.
The third category is entertainment. I listen to a lot of music in original language and interview online and not online, movies and only one or two times I went to the theatre in original English language.

I can say this is my personal learning environment but I do not know how to download Freemind and put my scheme…

LOOKING FOR GOOD SOURCES

It is not easy to find all the information you need about a theme. In the website of the university of Essex it is said that some problems can arise (the web material change daily, the name of the author sometimes felt, it is difficult to locate the text in the exact part of the web page, the information of the web addresses are sometimes cumbersome; but there are some solutions (you can put the date you make the access, you use the smallest unit of responsibility, you can write the heading and use a footnote). However I think that these solutions are not definitive, something sometimes is missing compared to a book bibliography.
The second URL speaks about the quantity of information of the web. Sometimes there too much things and other times the quality is not good, so you are obliged to evaluate the sources.
The third website has some questions regarding the evaluation of sources. It gives importance to the publisher of information and to check the credentials and affiliations of the website. The third and fourth points are the date of the sources, which clearly should be updated and the information should be authentic. The last thing is the point of view of who gives the information.
All these are very good criteria which I can use for my research. I think the most important thing is the website: obviously for my thesis I will use web sites of English and American universities… because the writer should be an expert of the theme. The second thing is the date of the text, because the opinions may change so rapidly, so the website must be updated.
I think all these criteria useful because I write a lot of times in my previous posts that I feel lost in the big world web… but I consider these two things the more useful.