The MexCo Intercultural Exchange Project

Hi everyone,

If you are interested and you want to be involved in university life, the university can offer you many intercultural activities and experiences. As I’ve told you before, I just can’t sit around and do nothing so when the opportunity came to me, I joined the MexCo Project. And I wasn’t alone. With 5 other students, we worked as a team – spending time to get to know each other and trying to complete our task. We had a great time and we talked to many Mexican students – I’m already planning my trip there. Don’t forget to take a look at the pictures below.

Have I got your attention yet? If so, let me tell you more about the MexCo Project. It was part of the module 100DEL Introduction to Studying English and Languages at University and a team of staff from DEL (Department of English and Languages) worked together to make this project happen.  They got our attention from the beginning by pointing out the most important thing: we’ll have the opportunity to learn about the Mexican culture and society directly from the source.

And it was like this: First we chatted with students from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México – they presented themselves, their city and they showed us pictures from their favourite national holiday, and we replied by describing our university, the city of Coventry and anything that the Mexican students wanted to know about the UK. I became good friends with a girl – Grecia Cristobal, and I was really happy when she accepted my invitation to talk to our group on Skype. We discussed for about an hour many subjects, from the way the weather is in our countries to specific modules from university. I enjoyed every second of it. Secondly, our group had to create interactive guides to Coventry and Coventry University for the students from Mexico, using the e-portfolio Mahara (http://mahara.coventry.ac.uk/view/view.php?id=12549) . We put together a guide which includes topics such as: the history of Coventry, the student life at Coventry University. We tried to equally divide our work, therefore every topic was written by one of the team members. We met twice a week to discuss our progress and we kept a group journal in order to prepare ourselves for the next task – the group presentation. Once the guide was done, every team member wrote their part for the presentation which I carefully put together in a Prezi presentation (http://prezi.com/tdbl-bgw-qhg/mexco-life-in-coventry/).

The entire experience was great, it helped me to improve my relationship with other students, to learn more about the Mexican culture and society, to make friends abroad, it helped me to practice my Spanish language skills even more, and I gained experience for future projects. It was a very good project and I would do it all over again if I would have the chance. I have to thank the team of DEL staff: Dr Marina Orsini-Jones  (Italian), Elwyn Lloyd  (Welsh), Zoe Gazeley (English), Gwenola Bescond (French), Inmaculada Gonzalez (Spanish), and Holly Vass (American) - a truly international team for giving us the opportunity to participate at this project. And the Mexican tutors: Felipe Bustos and Beatriz Vera Lopez, who did an amazing job. So when at Coventry, don’t just stand there looking at people, try to get involved!

Until next time,

Irina Griga, English and Spanish student.