Pre-Departure

I am a fourth-year student in the School of Architecture double-majoring in Italian. Born in Tema, Ghana, I moved with my family to the U.S. shortly before my fourth birthday. As an architecture student, I spent a year abroad studying and falling in love not only with Italian architecture, but also with Italian language and culture. However, as the program was not meant to be immersive, I sought to have a more comprehensive and deliberate Italian education.

The Summer Language Abroad is important to me because it will be another opportunity to learn more about the Italian way of life and to integrate myself into their society. It will be another important way to prepare myself for moving there following graduation.

I hope this opportunity will allow me to improve my reading and grammatical language skills. I also hope it can help me to open myself up to being more outgoing in a setting where I may not know anyone. I hope it will give me the confidence in my abilities so that I feel able to strike up conversation with strangers.

My specific learning goals for language and intercultural learning this summer are to deepen my advanced reading comprehension, broaden my vocabulary, increase my spoken fluency, strengthen my grammatical skills, and have an overall greater sense of cultural awareness. My Italian fluency depends largely on my exposure to the language, and an immersive experience will greatly increase my fluency. In addition to on-campus courses, I want to utilize summer months through the SLA Grant to continue exposing myself to Italian both formally and informally.

My plan for maximizing my international language learning experience is to fully engage in the coursework that ItaliaIdea has to offer as well as extracurricular opportunities. Additionally, I’d like to make some friend who only speak Italian, that way I am forced to speak it with them!