Week 2 Reflections

Hi everyone,
well, we've reached the end of Week 2 of the project - I hope you are all enjoying it and learning from it. Some of you have already posted your reflections, which is great! The others ... come on!!
This week you have to start working on the video project, I hope you have all managed to download the material from the computers in the department. It's important you start early on the project otherwise you may have difficulty completing it. I also want to remind you that just for this week your meetings will be one hour earlier than usual.
Now some comments on your diaries so far!

Reflections

I have enjoyed reading your reflections on your experience in the video conference sessions. I particularly appreciate the examples some of you give of things that actually happen during these sessions or views that are expressed, and your interpretations and analysis of them – this will help you reflect more and explore further. So, please DO give some examples of interactions, your opinions (and others’) and interpretations of these as well as the general account of topics that were discussed during your session. You can also read each other's blogs and comment on them.
Misunderstandings are also important to reflect on – if they occur then you might want to write about them, why you think they might have happened, how you behaved/reacted and how your behaviour or views might have been interpreted.

Some practical, linguistic advice

Before posting your blog entry you could paste it into Word, and then run a spell check (controllo ortografia e grammatica) – make sure you first indicate English as the language you are using (on my very old version of Word 2003 it’s Strumenti > Lingua > Imposta Lingua. This will help correct some of the minor spelling and typing mistakes.
If you have doubts about language issues please don’t feel afraid to ask or write about them. If you learn some new words or expressions record them somewhere, even in your blogs.
I noticed that Martina kept open a window linked to an online dictionary on her computer as she was discussing with her peers – she would then type in words she perhaps didn’t understand. That’s a very useful strategy you might want to adopt!

Terms related to Islam
There’s a lot we may not know about Muslim culture, and also the appropriate terminology used when talking about Islam. Some of you have said that you will be talking about women and Islam next week, and one topic that is very often (too often!) addressed in the Western media is the issue of clothing, how Muslim women dress. Again here, even in the press a lot of words are used perhaps wrongly – do you know exactly what a burqa (or burka) is? What is the difference between a burka, hijab and niqab? The general term I’ve found used in English a lot is “the veil” or “headscarf”. Of course, you can ask your peers in the discussions, I’m sure they will explain. If you want to look yourselves, there’s a very useful website by the BBC about Religion and Ethics and there’s a lot about Islam. If you click on this link about beliefs and then go to the words hijab and niqab you will find some explanations. There are also a lot of other, perhaps more important Islamic beliefs and practices dealt with in the site. Another useful site is this illustrated one.