The Difference of my English from Beginning to Present

Listening Comprehension

When it comes to listening, I always try to put all my concentration because if not I will lose track without delay. Luckily, I had no difficulty in the beginning in my listening comprehension. I was able to understand them and I responded to them quite quickly. On the other hand, I did not have a lot of changes about it. Maybe the one thing that changed is that I got use to their way of talking. For strategies, I constantly use guessing. For example, if out of nowhere someone will call me and ask for something. Sometimes I got confused but because of this technic I was able to catch on. Most of the time, when we talk we do some actions related to what we are saying. By guessing using their gestures as a clue I was able to answer them back.

Accent

I am not quite sure if my accent has changed. In my opinion, it seems like before. So far, I do not have any misunderstanding except from my previous experiences that are written in my recent blogs. I did notice though that Chinese do not pronounce strongly the letter R that make me feel confuse sometimes and ask them to repeat the sentence one more time. Additionally, when I started studying English, I have problems pronouncing the word “word and ruler”. Which until now, I have trouble saying it. Unfortunately, I never have any observation about the different positions in my mouth that I believe I have to check as well because it will help me a lot to improve my accent.

Fluency

For me, I am certain that I am not quite fluent yet but attending the social club every Wednesday made me more knowledgeable for different topic that I hesitate to interact before. Like about the humor topic, my friends tend to tell me that I don’t have humor for not laughing at their jokes and I stayed speechless and if ever I defend myself, it was a hassle for me to say anything because I was lacking some information. The Laughter workshop that we had in Social club made me understand why I do not find funny some other jokes, even it is said in my language. According to Ms. Helen, we have different humor depending the place we came from. Since most of my friends came from different region of my country. I will always have dilemma to find some of their jokes comical. However, the next time they will tell me I do not have humour I can explain them no problem. From the beginning of my internship, I have been using the guessing, repetition and practice technics that I chose before I started my journey in the English environment. This method helped me a lot to get the idea of the meaning of the new words and new expressions I heard.

Humour

Sarcastic humor:

Senior (Female): Is this yours? (While hanging in the air the small skirt)

Senior (Male): Yes! That is mine for sure!
Senior (Female): I knew it! Thank you for donating, it is really big! Hahahaha!

Comparing English and French humour is quite difficult on my view of point. Since I do not understand French jokes. As for English, half of the time I am always wondering how their jokes become amusing.

Accuracy

I do try to speak accurately in my internship but when I do it seems that I speak a little bit slower than usual. And if I speak faster, especially when I am describing a girl a lot of times I witch using the pronoun she to pronoun he that makes the person I am talking to, to be confuse if I’m talking about a guy or a girl. It is because in my mother tongue we only have one word for she and he which is the word “siya”. Similarly, when I started speaking in French I always say “je parle avec toi”. For this reason, I tend to literally translate it and say “I am talking with you” but because of my exposure in different conversations in the social club I notice that English people use the proposition “to” instead of “with”. This observation will make me more accurate next time I will say this sentence.

New words, Expressions or Structures

My discussion about horror movies with one of the elders made me discover the word creep up which means to move slowly and quietly especially in order to not be noticed. I can use this in writing in future because it is a refine vocabulary that will help me to be more accurate in describing movements or actions of one being. The second new lexical I learned is the word clove. I stumble up this one from the statement of the German woman. She said that her mom used to put cloves on the apple sauce when she was young. Since this is a sort of spices that came from dried flower bud of a tropical tree. I can use this word in supermarket if I will be needing this in my recipes in the future.

My English improved a lot in comparing from the beginning. My vocabulary and expressions enriched as one of my goals. Although my pronunciation stayed the same, I am still happy because as an exchange I gained experience and knowledge in life from seniors.