Hi
This is where you should post your reflections on week 5 of the Connect Program.
Today we had a meeting but only 4 of you were present - perhaps the others could come to my office hours on Tuesday or we can arrange another date.
We discussed your progress, group dynamics, how to try to stimulate dialogue by asking open questions and questions that ask for clarification - eg. tell me more about your view? or What led you to these ideas?
Some groups have been engaging in discussion of controversial topics, and getting heated, others are less dynamic, but I'd like to encourage you to take a pro-active role. Try to push discussions deeper, express yourselves openly, talk about how certain views make you feel, examine your own thought processes as well as those of others.
Finally a bit of language feedback on your diaries which I am really enjoying reading, keep up the good work!
Two main issues are tenses and reporting verbs.
Tenses: when you talk specifically about what happened in a session, the questions asked, what people replied etc. you should use the past simple as you are talking about a finished past time. So, we talked about terrorism and religion, some people agreed and others did not ....
If on the other hand you talk about changes in the group and in yourselves in a timespan which began in the past and continues up to now, then use the present perfect.
Eg. as a group we have got to know each other better, we have become friends, we have learnt a lot of new things...
Reporting verbs
As you are often reporting what was said in discussions it's a good opportunity to develop your knowledge and use of reporting verbs. Remember:
to say s.th to s.b.
to explain s.th to s.b.
to tell s.b. something, to tell a story, to tell a lie
to suggest (that) sb (should) do s.th
to argue that
to discuss s.th
to talk about s.th
to recognise that ...
to wonder whether
Here are some useful links
http://esl.about.com/library/grammar/blgr_reportingverbs.htm
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/writingcentre/learning_guides/learningGuide_reportingVerbs.pdf
This is where you should post your reflections on week 5 of the Connect Program.
Today we had a meeting but only 4 of you were present - perhaps the others could come to my office hours on Tuesday or we can arrange another date.
We discussed your progress, group dynamics, how to try to stimulate dialogue by asking open questions and questions that ask for clarification - eg. tell me more about your view? or What led you to these ideas?
Some groups have been engaging in discussion of controversial topics, and getting heated, others are less dynamic, but I'd like to encourage you to take a pro-active role. Try to push discussions deeper, express yourselves openly, talk about how certain views make you feel, examine your own thought processes as well as those of others.
Finally a bit of language feedback on your diaries which I am really enjoying reading, keep up the good work!
Two main issues are tenses and reporting verbs.
Tenses: when you talk specifically about what happened in a session, the questions asked, what people replied etc. you should use the past simple as you are talking about a finished past time. So, we talked about terrorism and religion, some people agreed and others did not ....
If on the other hand you talk about changes in the group and in yourselves in a timespan which began in the past and continues up to now, then use the present perfect.
Eg. as a group we have got to know each other better, we have become friends, we have learnt a lot of new things...
Reporting verbs
As you are often reporting what was said in discussions it's a good opportunity to develop your knowledge and use of reporting verbs. Remember:
to say s.th to s.b.
to explain s.th to s.b.
to tell s.b. something, to tell a story, to tell a lie
to suggest (that) sb (should) do s.th
to argue that
to discuss s.th
to talk about s.th
to recognise that ...
to wonder whether
Here are some useful links
http://esl.about.com/library/grammar/blgr_reportingverbs.htm
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/writingcentre/learning_guides/learningGuide_reportingVerbs.pdf
Hi everybody :)
RispondiEliminaI'm sorry I couldn't make it to come to the meeting but I had a very important lesson! Anyway I hope everyone is having a good time with this amazing Soliya experience!
This week I finished watching the footage provided by Soliya and yesterday I finished my project.. it was really interesting to watch the videos but working on them was quite hard. There were so many things I wanted to keep but I had to choose only 15 seconds, it was too short!!! Finally, after some technical problems (as usual, I am not very fond of technology :D ) I managed to complete my task, but I still have to submit it.
On Wednesday I had my 5th session and I have to say that it becomes more and more interesting each time. We are a really good group, we are talkative and we begin to know each other quite well. Thanks to facebook we can communicate also outside the chatroom and we know each other better, how we live, what we do during the day. Well, during my last session we mainly talked about religion role in society but we started talking about US elections, as we had the opportunity to speak with Gabby and Corina, two american girls, about what was going on that days. They both were happy that Obama won but one of the girls were also a bit annoyed by all the attention gave to elections. Then we started commenting on our readings, they were a lot but I managed to read them all. We spoke about veil across Europe and the role of religion in our personal lives and in our country, compared to the statistics we read in one of the articles. It was intriguing seeing that in Europe we are becoming more and more secularized, instead in America and in Eastern world religion's role is always playing a bigger part. One of the Egyptian guys infact, asked me about my country (as I am the only one from European area), how is the veil seen, if there's the possibility to have mosques. I explained that here in Italy the situation is a bit more complicated than the rest of Europe because of the roots of Christian religion and that there are anti-mosques movements too, if someone lives too far from the mosque he has to arrange something privately. Then I finally had the chance to ask directly questions about veil, how is it seen in America and how does it work in Muslim society. I discovered that every girl is allowed to wear veil in every kind of situation, and that they don't think it is dangerous to go around the city with a burqua on. I was also very pleased to know that, in Egypt and Tunisia at least, women are not forced to wear the veil. We also discussed that the veil is something many religions have in common, we must not forget that Christian nuns and other religions wants women to wear a veil too. After this topic Ingrid and Sumya, our mediators, divided us in two groups to go in separate chat rooms. My group had to speak about Arab spring and revolutionary movements. Fortunately I had Alaa in my group, a Tunisian girl who actively participated in revolution. She explained us what happened, what were the reasons of her revolutionary movement, the importance of Facebook and social network to spread their ideas and also about the disillusion nowadays, seeing that little has changed. I asked her what role had her parents and her family while she was engaged in it and Gabby asked if she thinks that there will be another revolution now. It was a gripping topic this one!! At the end of our session we all returned to the main chatroom and our moderators reminded us our video project, then we said bye to each other.
I think this was a great session even because for the first time I discussed a topic that I really knew a little bit of (Tunisian revolution) and I learnt a lot of new things. As far as language is concerned I noticed that my skills are improving but I still have a lack of vocabulary sometimes!
That's all for this week!
Sorry I apologize, that's my week 4 :)
RispondiEliminaGood evening to everybody!
RispondiEliminaI did the fifth Soliya’s session! We were a lot, unfortunately one facilitator missed and the other one was connected from a car on road so she was always appearing and disappearing!
We were in anarchy twice during the session, without any facilitator! It has been funny! A man – I think he is a technical supporter - came in the main room to pre-empt the two teachers and to solve of technical problems.
First of all, I did the questionary of the middle semester before logging in the chat room. I suggested that my facilitators should ask more questions to us and involve everybody in the conversation. Moreover I think It could be a good experience to divide us in small groups and use the other chat room. We could talk and know each other better.
What can I tell you about today? We started the discussion talking about stereotypes in our region. I said that Italy is sometimes known as the country of the Mafia. Furthermore I said that the northern people think that who live in the south don't like to work so hard. Am I right?!
The Chinese girls wrote that people usually think that they are good in maths but this is not true in their opinion! The girl from NY explained that the first stereotype is “the Americans are overweight”, sadly this is becoming truer. The boy who lives in Germany said that people usually think that there are a lot of Nazi guys in his country.
Then we moved on more specific questions: Are stereotypes having a concrete impact on the relationship between Western Societies and Predominantly Muslim Societies? In the relationship between the US & Europe? Do they affect the relationship between Arab countries and non-Arab Muslim countries?
The Pakistanis man answered with an expatiation!
I recognise that he is well informed about the Muslim area so he was so involved is in the issue!
After a moment of suspense because of the disappearing of the tutor, we closed the session thinking about three topics that we want to discuss over the remainder of the sessions. The majority of the group would like to talk about globalization and also capitalism. I prefer to discuss issues like family, love or life.. but it’s okay!
I’m going to upload my video in these days. I’m quite appeased! It has been the first time that I’ve made a video, so I learned how to use YouTube Editor and I enjoyed it.
See you guys,
Monica
November, 15th 2012
RispondiEliminaHI everyone!
Today I had the fifth meeting with my Soliya’s group. It was a bit of a deadline because by today we should had been done and had upload our VP online. I had such a hard time trying to complete the video assignment! I had to face technical problems- due most of all to the fact that I had never used the program before. But in the end I succeeded and got it done! =)
Our meeting today opened with a short brief about how we are doing and the common weather difficulties that most of our countries are facing now- a lot of rain in the US, the flooding in Venice. Then our group facilitators divided us into couples and make us play the “Why game”. We were asked to think about three events (only one could be a political) that had contributed to make us the people we are today. After a long thinking, I came up with my three events; it was hard to think about three selected moments that have affected my life and personality that much.
However, I was then in breakout room 1 with Abdellatif, a boy from Tunisia, who is very eagerly to talk. We discussed the three aspects and tried to played the game, even if at first we didn’t really succeed: we kept asking too many question instead of just “why”. When we moved to this, everything was easier and it was so funny.. Abdellatif couldn’t stop laughing! It was really involving and entertaining, keeping asking why-why-why made the other person going beyond what he/she just said to find a better, more logical explanation of his/her worlds.
When we went back to the main meeting room, we were asked to talk about our chats. Abdellatif and I talked about ours, but right after this I had to leave because I had to work today so I missed the other part of the meeting =( I was sorry about this, I wish I could have stayed longer and shared my experience with the other guys.
Cla
Hello!
RispondiEliminaFirst of all I would like to apologize for not having participated in our meeting last week but I had to attend some really important classes.
Today I completed my fifth session of the Soliya connect program and it was great as usual. However I have to say that unfortunately some people keep skipping sessions and this upsets me a little bit because they could take this project more seriously, however I just hope that they are not facing some serious problems. Unfortunately also this week I have experienced some technical problems but they were nothing serious and I could participate in the conversation greatly.
This week I have also watched all the required videos and I completed my video project, I have to say that this activity was really interesting even if a little bit difficult at the beginning because I never had the chance to do something similar before. Trough all these videos I managed to summarize perfectly my point of view and I really like the result, even if it is a little bit longer than required.
In todays session we talked about all those experiences ( both global and personal) that affected our perception of politics, culture and religion, and this conversation turned out to be really challenging also because we had to reveal something more about ouselves, for example I recounted a really personal story to my group and they asked me many question, they were really interested in knowing me better. In the second part of the meeting we talked about stereotypes and we discussed about a possible topic for next week, for example I suggested that it would be really important to talk about immigration and second generation immigrants as nowadays many different cultures are really coexisting in the same spaces.
HI!
RispondiEliminaMonday I had my fifth session with my group.
It has been very interesting because our facilitators divided us in group of two and sent us in the breakout room. What we had to do with the assigned partner was to talk about religion. Me and my partner had very different thoughts and ideas about the discussed topic being in this way a very heated discussion. We talked about 45 minutes.
Did that we returned back to the main meeting room and told to the other members of the group what it was said between the twos chosen partners.
Then we talked all together about religion.
It has been very very interesting!
Then I completed my video project of which I'm very proud!
See you next week!
Jessica
Hello to everyone!
RispondiEliminaMonday i had my fifth session. At the beginning when i entered the room the other guys were talking about religious holidays in their country, we did this to try the mic and to introduce the topic of that session, which was religion.
Firstly the facilitators shared us in pair to have a separate conversation in another room. My partner was a guy from Lebanon. He explained me that he is religious, but in his own way. he said me that he has a personal relationship with God, he guide him in life but he doesn't pray or do ritual. We were agree saying that sometimes religion goes far from its essence, and it become corrupted. It has been nice talk with him.
when we came back in the main room the facilitators asked us to tell others what we did in pairs, speaking from the partner' s point of view. For the rest of the session we spoke about religion and our thought but we had brief time because the work in pairs took at least 45 minutes. This is why i hope to jump in this kind of discussion another time in the next sessions, and try to understand better the guys opinion.
Anyway i do like this session, and how i always write in the blog i'm happy to see that we have become closer compared to the first session, and almost friends :-)
Hi everybody!
RispondiEliminaFirst of all I want to apologize because I missed the meeting last friday, but I was in Motta di Livenza for a "school trip" to vist CIMIC station.
My fifth session on Tuesday was a little bit complicated, I had an exam before so I arrived quite late and moreover I had connection problems so I actually missed what seemed to me a very interesting conversation about Syria, and the right or not to intervene of the Western Powers.
In the part of the meeting which I attended the conversation moved to religion and democracy and the possiblities of their coexistence in the muslim countries; among us there is an Egyptian guy that of course was really concerned about this topic, and he is sure that in general muslim religion and democracy can go together and in particular that his country will be able to set a democratic government. Apart from the positive hope of Mustafa (the egyptian guy) the others member of the group were a bit more hesitant in this, we all agreed that it would be extremely difficult to completly separate religion from politics because religion is part of a country's culture and consequently political choices are influenced also by religion, also in western contries, but on the other side we all recognize the necessity of a big step forward in muslim countries first of all to establish democratic governments where this is not yet the case. Sarah that comes from Pakistan brought Turkey as an example. Finally our facilitators asked us which events have led us to become interested in Western/muslim words relations and it has been really impressing, from my point of view, to see how different our answers were, some talked about very personal events, some others on the opposite about very general and main streaming events, like 9/11.
Even if I was not totally into this session because I lost part of it as I said before, I had a positive feedback from it, it has been interesting also because we shared some personal experience and personal informations.
Bye!
Anna
Hi!! Wednesday I did my fifth session with soliya. It was as interesting as each time, but this session was less fun and more serious for the topic we discussed. As soon as we all entered in the main meeting room, Victoria, our new facilitator, introduced herself. Our facilitator Sumiya infact, was absent because she was travelling so Victoria took her place. We talked about our week (one of the guys broke his foot!) and we introduced to Victoria too. Then we begun our session talking about the stereotypes about our culture that we don't like, we had to choose 1which is correct, 1 incorrect and the other one hurtful. We all chose many stereotypes and we discussed about them. We talked about the videos we had to see during the week. One was about stereotypes on Arabs, it was called "the planet of arabs".. personally I was stunned by this video because I never realized that there were so many movies which talk so bad about Arab people. They were represented as terrorists, dangerous, extremists and other bad sterotypes. It was tremendous and I asked to my American mates in soliya if they thought that 9/11 changed the american non politically correct behaviour towards Arab people. They answered saying that this attitude was a consequence of 9/11 because people felt threathened. The Egyptian guys said, infact that all the stereotypes were very hurtful, and that the most important thing is not to think with stereotypes. After this we discussed about the second video, that stunned me even more than the first one.. it was about the sterotype that Americans are stupid, or ignorant. I didn't had this sterotype but seeing the interviews of this people who don't even know what currency there was in Great Britain and didn't know where Iraq was (and thought it was in australia) I was speechless!!
RispondiEliminaThe American mates told us that it's true that there are many ignorant people, but that many young people are trying to study a lot to defie this stereotype. Our discussion went on with how 9/11 changed our lives.. this was the most moving moment of our sessions because we heard all the emotions of everyone. It was amazing!!
That's all for this week!
I am in late another time...I promise that I'll never happen again :(
RispondiEliminaWe opened our fourth debate starting with the topic that closed the third session,the issue of POLYGAMY.
Our egyptian fellow took the scene making an apology of this, saying again that is a good method to resolve the tragedy of prostitution, especially during the times of war.
I tried to set up the discussion asking why a man can marry more than a woman and a woman is not allowed to marry more than a man.
This question made my male fellows smile who didn't give me an answer.
Surprisingly the answer came from my female fellow from Egypt who said that only on this way you can be sure about the fatherhood of the child, and that she would accept in her future to have a husband with more than a wife.
Then we have tried a new way of dialogue with smaller groups of two or three guys in the "Breaking Rooms".
I was in group with a new dude, Ahmed from Egypt and we discussed about the Veil's ban in Europe.
I tried to explain that the reason of this policy may be the public security because if someone covers and hides his face you can't know if he is an ordinary citizen or maybe a thief or somekind of terrorist. To note the importance of keeping the face uncovered, I told him the curious example of Naples (as a friend of mine from Naples told me some years ago) where if you wear a helmet while you are driving the motorcycle you may be mistaken for a thief by the police because nobody wears the helmet in that city.
However I apologized for my country when my politicians melt security needs with racism and discrimination.
Finally Ahmed told me that the Koran doesn't require that women have to cover their faces but just the neck and the legs as his siters and mother do, and that this is a way for the islam to protect the women, especially if they are beautiful. I found this last justification a little bit sexist but I hadn't the time to reply because the time was over.
So this is my chronicle from my fourth soliya's session. It has been more educational and the atmosphere has started to become more chilled as the diary of my fith week will conferme!!!
Cheers, Luca.
The 13th of november I experienced my fith week in Soliya. This session was more exciting, positive and useful in order to improve my speaking.
RispondiEliminaWe started to feel more united, because now we begin to know better each other and our different general points of view, so the situation is more friendly and relaxed.
We broke the ice asking each other what has motivated us to choose our field of studies and if we think that it will be useful in the future...the common answer was "I hope so" :)On this way after many sessions we discovered that our american fellow Jessica studies meterology and we were so fascinated by this thing.
Because of the topic of the day was "How the western world perceive the muslim world and vice versa", the facilitators asked us to think a situation when we have felt discriminated, misunderstood or disrespected by another person for our religion, culture or opinions.
Jessica from U.s.a. said that sometimes people misunderstood her choice to become Wiccan.
Myriame from Morocco told us that at university a christian teacher made some sad jokes about the link between islam and Osama Bin Laden.
Interesting is the fact that instead my fellow from Egypt stated that they have never faced discrimination related to religion because islam is the major one and the muslims are very united without forgetting the respect for the minorities in their country.
In the middle of the session we splitted the group in two breaking rooms, the western one on a side and on the other hand the muslim one.
The facilitators introduced to us an hot topic: "How does your society view the muslim world?".
I started with my italian point of view that brought me a little bit off topic because this argument here in Italy is linked with the issue of the immigration and politics. I told to my fellows how politicians (especially of the North League Party) use the issue of the immigration from the north Africa to make false and racist propaghanda that unfortunately has a lot of feedback and has conviced many people that the muslim immigrants are mostly terrorists, thieves or "pushers" and on this way this italian citizens has got used to be indifferent or maybe happy when a boat full of diying immigrants is pushed back or is not rescued by the sea guard!
The american fellows told me that they experience the same situation in the U.s.a., especially with the mexican immigrants so they could understand my opinion and my anger against the politicians...but we cheered up because we know that not all the people in the western world are narrow minded, like us who partecipate to Soliya's :)
When we came back to the main meeting room the perceptions of each other were positive and optimistic because we are starting to know and understand better each culture, but Sharon (the facilitator) asked if there were some negative observations and Jihan from Egypt said "I don't like the Us politics...they think they are democratic but they aren't".
Jessica from S.Louis replied "Sometimes we don't care about the rest of the world".
We said goodbye inviting each other to visit the U.s.a., Egypt and Italy...and this was a great conclusion in my opinion, because it could suggest that we, the youth, we are tired of the "Clash of civilisation" and we want to live in peace and travel around the world.
Luca.
Giada Zanella:
RispondiEliminaHi eveyone!
First of all I have to apologise both because I couldn’t go to the meeting with you (I had an important class) and because I’m late writing the report.
My fifth session at the Soliya program was the most involving one, I went through so many emotions and impressions that it really touched me. I’ll explain to you why.
In the first activity we talked about stereotypes, and we told each other what the most common stereotypes we’re used to are, in the sense of what our country fellows (or ourselves) usually think about other countries, especially in the Middle East. The discussion kept going so well and spontaneous, I couldn’t believe we were just a group of almost completely strangers communicating via video chat! Everybody spoke their mind and asked questions in a very interested and curious way. I could feel everybody was keen to learn more about others.
With the second activity, things got even deeper and more personal: we were asked to list three events, one of them with political dimensions, that had a great impact in our lives and influenced us, making us what we are now. Most people mentioned 9/11, even though they were young when it happened, mostly because of its impact on intercultural relationships. I hadn’t realise before how such an event could influence people’s everyday life even if they were not personally involved.
Then Kaitlin, an American girl, told us how it’s hard for her to deal with narrow-minded people, among which family members of hers as well. I felt so close to her! Not that my parents are that narrow-minded, but they’re not even open-minded as I thought. I have problems about this topic even with some close friends of mine; fortunately, I received some good advice from Ameera, who’s always very encouraging. What I understood is that it’s always up to you, no matter where you come from, who your family is, it’s up to you deciding how to relate with different people and try to make things better.
Moreover, I did something I would never have done before: I talked about some very personal things in my life, something that I don’t’ usually talk about even with my friends. I believe this happened because I felt helped, supported and surrounded by a group of sympathetic people, however different they can be from me.
We talked a lot about Muslim religion and the differences between Muslim and Christian religion, what their values are, what they believe in, etc. I already knew some of it, but other things were completely new for me, so I’m really thankful to the girls who explained that in details. It made me feel curious about all kinds of religion, and I’m going to read and learn as much as I can. However, when a facilitator asked us what we think about atheists, I answered that as long as they have values such as love and respect I don’t see the problem. Then Yousra, the other girl from Egypt, started asking me a thousand questions about afterlife, hell and heaven, why God created us, and so on, making me feel quite uncomfortable. I felt like she was a bit upset about the topic of atheism, like it was nonsense living without faith, but maybe it was just my impression. By the way, I would like to point out that I don’t like being labelled neither as Christian nor as atheist, since I don’t feel I’ve got all the answers I’m looking for (and I’ll be looking for my entire life, I guess).
I hope I made it clear why it was an emotional meeting, and if I didn’t, well, believe me, it was! I felt sad, upset, angry, moved, involved, supported, fascinated, thankful, happy and satisfied in just two hours… A girl interviewed in one of the video from the footage material for the video project, said that we should connect different cultures personally, emotionally, in order to solve the existing problems, as we are not as rational as we think ourselves to be: in this sense, the Soliya program is doing well!