Linguistic Interference and the Comparison of the English in Immersion and in Classroom

Linguistic Interference

The 23rd of October, we finished the papier-mâché that we started a week before. In the middle of doing my mask, I started a conversation with the new volunteer, named Grace. Then, she asked me how we made the papier-mâché.

Me: We used water and arena.

Grace: Did you just talk in your language?

Me: Oh! I mean flour.

This is not the only time I use the word arena instead of flour. For some reason, I always and always use this word to say flour.

The English in Internship and in Classroom

In classroom, I observed that we focus more in understanding the grammar but being in a language immersion, grammar is not necessary, as long as people around you understand what you are saying whether it is in good grammar or not, the conversation goes on. This does not mean I will not improve my English, because the more chances I have to practice the language I am learning, the easier I will progress. I also learn new vocabulary with talking to someone and sometimes it is easy to remember a new vocabulary we just heard or learned from a funny context.

New words, Expressions or Structures

Our activity yesterday was pumpkin carving, I have been in Montreal for a while but I never had the chance to do it, but yesterday I had the chance to experience it. Everyone was so busy to figure out how they will carve the pumpkin but thanks to our host internship she explained how we will carve it.  In the middle of the explanation, one of the senior said "what we are going to use as a smock?" and Sonia responded to her by saying "we can use brown paper as bib so we don’t dirty our clothes".

 Listening to this conversation made me wonder what are the words smock and bib. After our activity, I went to ask Sonia about it and she explained it to me and Arina, what these two words are, by giving us some examples. For the word smock she said that it is often worn to protect the clothes, just like an apron. While the word bib, she said, is what the babies wear around their neck before feeding them. These two new words that I learned will help me be more  specific for describing stuff instead of just using the word apron every time.