The Result of my 30 hours English Internship

Goals



Goals are never obtained without setting them. Before I started my internship, I set some goals and these are to enrich my vocabulary, improve my pronunciation and learn new expressions in English. My vocabulary definitely added up and I also learned new expressions. Two of my goals were obtained and additionally, my next objective is to apply these words in my daily conversation if situations will let me. On contrary, my accent did not improve. People who I had conversation with still have a hard time understanding my pronunciation in certain words, the word ruler as an example. On the good side, I believe with motivation as well as being observant and being attentive helped me to obtain my two goals. Moreover, the strategies I chose to improve my level in English helped me a lot. One of the reasons, I can consider that stopping my progress in pronunciation is that I still speak in my Ilocano dialect. Even when I talk in my mother tongue people who came from my country can tell which region I came from because of my accent. The second reason maybe is because sometimes I talk fast that resulted to other phonetic sound. The word ruler as an example, if I say it faster I pronounce it like luler which does not exist at all in the dictionary and makes everyone say “Whaaat?”. This situation happened when I was asking one of my co-volunteers if she has a ruler. But once again I said it as luler and she gave me a confuse reaction.

Strategies 

As I stated above, the five strategies I chose that are written in my first blog served as one of the keys to attain my goals. Guessing is the most common strategies, I used to understand some new words that I met in my internship. Repetition is my other fundamental trick. I do not literary repeat the word or phrase out loud but I do repeat them in my head like 11 times. According to my boyfriend’s teacher, repeating eleven times a new word you encounter will help your brain remember it in the future. My favorite one is practice, I always try to talk to everyone in English so I can practice it. Furthermore, speaking English in my internship makes me more fluent. However, mnemonic technic and looking for patters in a language strategies did not work for me. It is because my knowledge in French is lower than my level in English. It is difficult to use this two strategies because I do not have a lot of refine vocabulary in French and I always struggle also in my grammar in both languages. Although, I only use three strategies so far and neglected the last two strategies. I will still use these five strategies to continue improving my English and other languages that I am currently studying. I will apply them also in my daily conversation, reading, listening and writing.

Language

The level of my English thus far in grammar is comprehensive. On the other hand, I still do my errors in preposition like using  “located at” for cities instead of “located in” and for conjugation of verb, not adding “s” in the end of singular verb like “say” instead of “says”. My vocabulary quite improved since my first day. As well as, my structure of ideas and fluency. I recognized that these three are the easiest to progress. I find my accuracy still the same as before doing my internship. For my pronunciation, I theorize that it will take me a while to improve unless I will stop talking in my dialect for a while which is not really an option for me.

Growth

Through this experience, I learned that I am capable of interacting a conversation even though I am not aware of the topic. All I have to do is listen, and be curious and most of all, start asking questions. In no time, I will be in the circle of conversation.  It taught me also that I have a hard time to follow instructions, easy or not. I tend to do what I know for me is right. It was my first day in social club when Ms. Sonia told me that the activity list must be given in the last part of the workshop. Suddenly, a senior asked me about it. Then, I went to get one and show her what the activities were for that month. Each of them saw the activity pamphlet and started to ask for it. As a result, I distributed it to everyone. Fortunately, Ms. Sonia did not get mad at me. This changed also my perception of Anglophone culture specifically about their belief in superstitions. The courage to interact in unfamiliar conversations is what I will take with me.  In gathering we see and meet new people but to be able to know them well. You have to have conversations with them. I believe taking this with me will help me more to know people and gain relevant information about life or about someone’s experience.

The internship 

I did not only learn about linguistic and cultural differences but also I learned how to approach someone in a better way. I also learned to show my interest in some topics and I gained motivation to improve expressing myself in social communication. I obtained some knowledge in laughter as well, sowing bonnet for babies that will be donated for women foundation, carving pumpkin, making papier-mâché and doing yoga. I had also the chance to visit one of the green houses that exist in Montreal. In addition, I had the opportunity to be inform about apple sauce recipes. Moreover, I had an opportunity to experience how to coordinate activities. My internship gave me all these advantages and moments to treasure. If the time will allow me to restart my internship again, I will not do anything differently instead I will do exactly mistakes that I did. Those mistake I have done from the beginning of my internship, resulted for me to be me more knowledgeable in English and about life.

Gratitude

Arina and I went together to give our gratitude to Ms. Sonia. First, Arina handed her our gift and Ms. Sonia was a bit speechless for unexpected moment. Then, it followed by giving the cards to her. And ended by giving us both a big hug and a statement from her that we are always welcome in Yellow Door.

 My thank you message to Ms. Sonia:

 

The placement 

Yellow door is not only a place to improve your English but a place where you can meet new friends, get information about life, society and inspiration. For me, I strongly recommend this internship placement to those student who love to be with seniors, who want to be more expose about life and different culture from different countries. This is because you gain a lot of experience and knowledge. The coordinator also give you an opportunity to experience how to be an activity coordinator. But if you prefer having an experience in doing phone calls, yellow door has it too. This institute also give you a bit of experience how to be a journal writer. If you worried about the host internship, I will tell you right away that she is one of the people who gave me inspiration to be more motivated in life. In addition, no matter how crazy the situation is she handles it with ease. 

In perception of others, 30 hours maybe is not enough to improve their knowledge in a language. But with my experience, these hours gave me the education I needed to development my English. The experience and exposure that I can use in applying in a daily English situation and even in other languages.

My Difficulties in English and Lessons I Learned from it

The day came when Arina and I have to coordinate an activity and in every activity there are instructions and explanations.

Giving Instructions:

Me: Now we have to make like the breast cancer symbol.

      (I did the symbol in an inverse way.)

Seniors: Ok! Like this? 

            (Some did it like exactly how the symbol look like.)

Me: You have to inverse it.
Seniors: How?  
Me: Like this!
Seniors:  Like this?
Me: You have to put the small part of strip outside the big strip.
Seniors: Ok!

             (Others were confuse and asking their seatmates.)

Me: Then, we have to put the small part of the strips inside the whole.
Seniors: Oh! We need to make a loop.
Me: Yes! And we need to do a knot.

What I would say in the future:

Me: Now the next step is to tie a knot in the end of the strip.

Seniors:  Ok! How we will going to do that?

Me:  First, we have to make a loop at one end of your strip.

Seniors: Alright! We have a loop, what now?

Me: The second step is to pass the short end through the loop.

Seniors: We are following…

Me: Third, we have to pull both ends of the strip carefully to close up the knot.

Explanation:

Senior: How come mine is not forming into a star? I did press in, the middle of each sides?

Me: Oh, because your paper is thin.

Senior: The paper is not thin.

What I would say in the future:

Senior: How come mine is not forming into star? I did press in, the middle of each sides?

Me: Let me take a look of that. Oh, it is because the amount of paper you wrap on the pentagon is not enough. You have to wrap more than that.
Senior: Oh, it is true to make it thicker.
Me: Yes! The reason is when your pentagon is thicker you will be able to push in each middle edges of the pentagon easily and then you will have the form of star.

My Ah-ha! Moment

On November 13 of the year, we had a small field trip in the green house located in West Mount. We took a bus to go there and it was about 15 minutes bus ride, while in the bus the seniors started a conversation and as indicated in my past blog I have difficulty interacting with them because of their topic but instead of just listening this time I asked couple of questions about their topic. Then, I ended up having a conversation with one of them about the trailer movies. We talked about shark movies and some horror movies as well. While the senior was expressing her thoughts about the movies that have been mentioned. She said the verb “creep up”. This word repeatedly ran in my mind. I was trying to understand it, but suddenly it came up in my mind the word careless in blog # 7 as a result, I realized that in French we don’t do this kind of verb like adding the word up or down. This made me figure out when I said “je vais monter en haut” and my French teacher said that there is no need to add up the phrase “en haut” because it is understandable that “je vais monter” is “I will go up”. Now it makes sense to me.

Writing these conversations that happened in my internship, made me realize that I answered and explained in a vague way. The look for patterns in a language will be a great strategy to apply in this kind of scenario so that I will be able to express myself comprehensively.

                                                                           

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.