ASSESSMENT OF INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE
To be intercultural competent in not a child’s play. And I think that a person cannot become intercultural competent communicating via Skype, filling and reading questionnaires…: these experiences can only be seen as a starting point of a long and challenging process which makes you consider others’ cultures as important and “worthy” as yours. I think it is one of the most difficult thing in the world!
Taking nothing for granted and trying to enter into others’ point of view is a hard work for your mind: all this requires lots of personal (both intellectual and emotional) efforts and studies. To be intercultural competence is not an innate quality but, as the word “competence” implies, it is an ability people learn to acquire in time.
In this second semester, we have the chance to have some contacts with American students and to start to reflect on how to manage a conversation with non-Italian persons.
I have never communicated via Skype. However, I keep on reading English web-sites, comparing American and Italian cultural aspects, following news…I think reading helps very much to come closer to other outlooks.
When you meet foreign people, one of the most important thing is to be able to speak their language. The language allows you to communicate effectively, to ask and answer, to reason and explain: if you do not have a common code, there cannot be good exchanges.
So, even if sometimes it is boring and hard, reading can help you to understand better, for example American culture, not only for the contents you read and things you've learnt, but also for the lexicon you’ve acquired. In other words, you become more educated but above all, you improve your reading and written skills, you enlarge your vocabulary. All these things provide you with those proper means or tools which make you manage a conversation with persons who do not share your cultural background.
When you study, new notions make you reflect on your own culture and lifestyle: being aware of the fact that your values, traditions, habits…are not the only ones possible in this world, help you to assume a more relative point of view from which to consider things, events and the other people.
I think that cultural notions and language represent a good basis for a very good exchange.
Taking nothing for granted and trying to enter into others’ point of view is a hard work for your mind: all this requires lots of personal (both intellectual and emotional) efforts and studies. To be intercultural competence is not an innate quality but, as the word “competence” implies, it is an ability people learn to acquire in time.
In this second semester, we have the chance to have some contacts with American students and to start to reflect on how to manage a conversation with non-Italian persons.
I have never communicated via Skype. However, I keep on reading English web-sites, comparing American and Italian cultural aspects, following news…I think reading helps very much to come closer to other outlooks.
When you meet foreign people, one of the most important thing is to be able to speak their language. The language allows you to communicate effectively, to ask and answer, to reason and explain: if you do not have a common code, there cannot be good exchanges.
So, even if sometimes it is boring and hard, reading can help you to understand better, for example American culture, not only for the contents you read and things you've learnt, but also for the lexicon you’ve acquired. In other words, you become more educated but above all, you improve your reading and written skills, you enlarge your vocabulary. All these things provide you with those proper means or tools which make you manage a conversation with persons who do not share your cultural background.
When you study, new notions make you reflect on your own culture and lifestyle: being aware of the fact that your values, traditions, habits…are not the only ones possible in this world, help you to assume a more relative point of view from which to consider things, events and the other people.
I think that cultural notions and language represent a good basis for a very good exchange.
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