WEBCAST!!!

Last lesson we had a chat with our American peers and for the first time we could see them on the screen! I felt really embarrased to speak to all these people, neve seen before, but already known, as every time we had had our SKype exchages,at the end of the lessons we spoke about our impressions of Americans..
I don't know if I prefer the webcast conversation or Skype, obviously when you use sKype you feel more comfortable, you share with your interlocutor only your voice, whereas with webcasts you share also your image and your personality. Seeing someone you can understand many things, from the way he/she is dressed, how he pays attention to what your are saying.. ect.
Skype is a more detached way of communicate, the different between the two systems is comparable to the relationships we have in our lives: Skype is like having a coffee with your colleguaes, whilst Webcast is like a dinner with friends, so you need a certain confidence.
I think that Sarah's decision of letting webcast exchange as last lesson was quite good, we had our first experience and after two months we needed to do a more step and finally see each other!!

AFTER EASTER

After Easter coming back to everyday life is always very hard, so before leaving the joyful atmosphere, go and watch this funny video of an Easter rap bunny:http://i.flowgo.com/greetings/rapeasterbunny/rapeasterbunny.swf
For one moment you'll be back to your Easter holidays!! ( which is always a great idea)
This week we were supposed to search for water resources in Italy, and I have to admit I was shocked by how important water in our life is , and how it can change our existence.
It's indispensable for human health and without safe water we are all exposed to a wide diseases, which now affect people from the third world.
Surfing the net I discovered that 1.7millions deaths could be avoided each year providing access to safe drinking water,sanitation and hygiene- I was wondering why wo do not try to stop these deaths,and why we do not try to behave in a more responsible way.. We need to set in our everyday life goals to reach, may be not too difficult,but which enable also other people to have what we use as duty.

The third Skype exchange was really funny, the teacher suggested us to do a conference, so the members of my group were Francesco, Alice and me. We spoke just a little about alternative energies in Italy and America, as none of us was really competent in the topic, it was difficult to keep on the conversation. We didn’t want to say pointless things or information so we move to an easier subject: stereotypes. We talked about what we think about Americans and he told us what Americans think about Italians.

To be honest our American peer is not 100% American and has Italian origins, so he was a bit partizan and in my opinion he didn’t say all the truths about the considerations that Americans express usually on Italians. However, I discovered many interesting things as the following ones: in America it is thought that PIZZA is a local product and that all Italians are fashion victims!!

During the conversation I noticed that Francesco had some problems in understanding me, and I think the main trouble is associated to intonation: even if a word was already a part of my vocabulary, and I was sure of its pronunciation, he didn’t understand me: Using a completely different intonation creates misunderstandings. For example I told a joke but I couldn’t convey the idea of irony in English and only Alice was able to understand me( Life is hard!). I think that listening to a native speaker is a perfect exercise to improve amd learn the right intonation, even if I have never been taught to paty attention at it.

The task of this week activity was to find information on alternative energies in America and to correct grammar and content mistakes in our wiki page about renewable sources of energy in Italy .I think it was a really effective assignment as to become a better conversational partner, we have first to develop a critical eye on the topic, otherwise it is an unprofitable job. Anyway one can find information by himself and then ask his/ her partner if what he found was correct or not, so he/ she improves their vocabulary and can try to guess the pronunciation . In my personal experience when someone corrects my pronunciation is easier to remeber the correction.