Intercultural Competence: the YOGA form

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I had never sat down and reflected on my intercultural competence before. By using the YOGA form I tried to assess and understand what intercultural competence is. I realized how important it is to have a cross cultural preparation nowadays: it is not only important if you work or study abroad, but it is also significant for other reasons. For example, if you simply go on holiday abroad, I believe, you need to be prepared and you need to know how you are expected to behave within a different culture. Of course, it is impossible to deeply know all cultures all over the world, but the awerness of the existence of other cultures besides ours is crucial.

Right now, I'm attending a course of international business at the Chamber of Commerce and from the very first lessons we were told how important it is to know other cultures, their differences and their similarities. We learned how similar situations are handled in different ways according to the country in which they take place.

I think I know the german culture better than any other since I've lived for one year in Germany when I went on Erasmus and now I go very often there. Before using the YOGA form I never examined my intercultural development. If I think about that, I realize that when I'm abroad I always attempt to integrate myself in with people who live there and I always try to communicate in the host language (of course when I can speak it), otherwise I communicate in English. It can happen that I see that some aspects of the host country's culture are very different from my own and if I have the possibilty I like to talk with people about it . It can be a nice comparison but it must be well-balanced.

Reading the YOGA form I realized that it takes a lot of time to deeply get to know host cultures. I think the most important thing to keep in mind is the attitude with which you face new situations and contexts. I personally went abroad many times and, as I like travelling, I always try to spend my holidays as far as possible. When I'm going to visit a new country I always try to get information about it before my departure even though I know that only by living there and being in contact with people I have the chance to know that society. In the end I can say that the self-evaluation guide helped me to analyze some aspects of my behaviour that I didn't considered before and I realized that although I don't know deeply many cultures I have a very postive attitude towards everything that is new to me and I hope in the future I can develop my intercultural competence more and more.

Skype exchange

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On Wednesday me and Stella talked to Ashley, an american girl from Dickinson University. We introduced each other and talked about different topics. We decided to organize our conversation talking 10 minutes in Italian and 10 minutes in English; we could talk for about 40 minutes approximately.

We discussed a lot on how different the education system in our countries is and we were all very surprised to see that they only have few things in common. She told us she lives on a Campus and she was very surprised to know that in Italy we don't have that kind of structure. I was very interested in her campus living experience and I believe it has many advantages: you can get involved in campus events and organizations, you can easily meet students from different cultures, you can live indipendently but you are not alone as you are surrounded by your collegues. I experienced something similar when I went on Erasmus in Germany, but it was rather a dorm and not a real Campus.

Then we discussed few minutes the meaning of 'meritocrazia'. I read on our wiki page that the Americans don't know this word and that they believe that a teacher who is 'raccomandato' is better than others who are not. Me and Stella explained to Ashley that here not always you get a job or you are appreciated because of your personal skills, abilities, or job's experiences. Most of the times you need a sort of 'abstract ID' which means you have to know certain people in order to make career or simply to get what you are trying to achieve. From Ashley's reaction I understood that this kind of thing doesn't exist in the US, or at least it is not as common as here. I believe this is a very negative aspect of our country, an obstacle which is hard to overcome.

Among another things we talked about the class size: can you believe that in America people who attend classes are 10 to 20? Here it would be utopia since sometimes there aren't even enough seats for students and one is compelled to sit on the stairs or even to stand. I think that class size matters and that students benefit from being in small classes. Unfortunately this is not the case with us.

I really liked this experience and I'm looking forward to doing it again.