First post: A new experience

Hi everyone,

my name is Cedric and this is my blog about the internship that I will be doing this first semester. I currently study at André-Laurendeau college in the: art and letter: trilinguism and culture program.

Goals:

During my internship, I hope to improve my fluency in English. I know that since I am in the 103 level of English I should be quite strong in English but it does not prove anything at all. I feel that I am still quite far from being bilingual, however I can still handle myself quite well when I need to speak in English. I also hope to improve my writing skills by making less mistakes when I write essays for example. My first goal is to be able to speak fluently and more clearly since I tend to easily get nervous when I start to talk. My other goal is to make less spelling mistakes and to enrich my vocabulary.

The strategies:

In class, we learned a few techniques to help us learn another language more easily. I chose five of them that I think that they will be useful. Here they are:

Utilisation of mnemonic techniques: It means to make association with words that we know.

Talking to yourself: Talking to yourself can prove to be useful in a lot of situation. It helps me to talk more fluently and it helps to remember more easily.

Constant search for meaning: It helps a lot to remember words and make connections with others words that you know

Repetition: Repeating a word helps to practice with pronunciation.

Monitoring: I tend to search a lot in a dictionary, especially when I don't know the meaning of a word.

My first meeting:

Before:

As I said before, I started my internship quite soon. In fact, my first meeting with my host was scheduled on Wednesday the 25th of September. I went to meet a nice lady at the LaSalle Multicultural Resource Center. My first concern was if it was far from the college or not. Since I live in Chateauguay, I was scared to be sent off to someplace far away because it would take a lot of my time just to go there. When I discovered that it was close to the college, I felt relieved. My second concern was that I was not sure what I would be doing there. I knew that I would have to translate but I was not sure if I would have something else to do.

After:

As I said before, I tend to easily get nervous when I start to speak English. Hem and haw was almost the only thing that I could do. I was still able to answer her questions correctly and it was over before I could even realise it.

Little note to my futur readers:

I'm  not very good in arts. As time goes, I will try to embelish my blog with pictures and colors. Juste be patient and I hope that I will be able to make my blog more beautiful.