Entry #4: The world is your classroom :)

Linguistic Interference:

During my internship experience this week, I really focused on my interference between French & English. I approve, I do have some interference between those two languages. I interfere more when I communicate in English than in French. During our course in class, we have talked about interference and it's called «cognates». It means when one words means the same in English and in French. Sometimes, I wanted to say something and I started to say my sentence and then, I stopped in the middle of it because I don't know the words in English. Each time, when I say the word in French, confused, the person I'm talking to told me that it's the same word in English than in French. In my head, it's like it can't be the same and I’m become confused. I have a blank memory and I can't remember what word was said during my discussion that is the same as in French.

Internship vs. Classroom:

Learning and practicing English in an immersion environment is really different than in a classroom. I realized that when I am in a classroom and I just don't know how to say the word in English or I don't want to speak in English, well I speak in French. However, when you are in an immersion environment, I am obligated to speak in English even if I don't know how to say my sentence, I tried and I make errors.  Also, not having a teacher beside you to correct you or to help you means that I had to develop some strategies to understand other people by myself. I use a lot the strategy of «guessing». My friends are not there with me, so I don't have any distraction and I really try to speak only in English the more that I can.  In my classroom, I’m in an environment that I am used to but at Eco-Quartier, the topics are often about ecological or environmental, so I don't have any vocabularies on that subject and I learned a lot of new words, but at the same time, it's really difficult because when I need to translate, I don't even know what the words means. Finally, that was a challenge for me to learn new words and to face obstacles like this. 

New Word or Expressions :

I had acquired some new words and expressions by talking with people, especially with Bill this weekend. It's was a funny day because I did not spelled the new words correctly and I made always the same errors, but I was trying so hard to say it right, it was really funny. For example, Bill wanted me to say « A wasp in a nest», but I was always saying « a waps in a nest» or a «wasp nest». I was always laughing because I was not able to say it correctly. Then, Bill told me that «waps» is a word that is bad, he told me that it's an insult in the Italian language. 

See you soon for another blog post :) Have a nice day everyone!