Hi, my name is Inès and I will be writing on this blog mainly about my thoughts on one of my classes this semester, which is Scientific English for Communication Studies.
I had my very first lesson of English on Monday at 10 o'clock in the morning. I stood outside the classroom with a lot of mixed feelings bundled up inside of me and without a clue what to do with them (yes, I'm very much aware of how cheesy that was phrased).
I felt nervous because I didn't know what to expect of the course, but also curious as I finally got to follow the first new course of my second year in university. I was scared because I've never really been the most spontaneous and natural speaker and speaking another language in a classroom full of people I barely know, definitely didn't help with that matter. But I also felt some excitement because, despite the struggles I have with speaking publicly, I have always liked the English language and I enjoy having a course I already know something about. I mean, the fist lesson turned out to be much like English back in secondary school. But what do I know? First lessons aren't supposed to be hard anyway, are they?
We went over and discussed a few academic genres, which I had heard from before, but never really bothered to think about whether they were formal or informal, for laymen or experts. So that exercise needed a bit of adjusting from my part, but after a while I got the hang of it and life made sense again!
Whilst making an exercise on hypernyms I learned that French, Romanian and Italian are actually Romance languages and not Roman languages as I thought they were called. So I guess I have been saying that wrong my entire life (not that I used the term Romance languages on the daily anyway, so I'm good, I'm good). A big thank you to the teachers (or do I have to say professors? I'm not sure) for correcting me and not letting me live a lie, thank you!
Another thing that struck me was that the teachers were very open and friendly, which instantly made me worry less about speaking English in the classroom. There was time for joking around and laughing, but also for paying attention and learning. This is, in my opinion, how every course and every lesson should be like. But I'm obviously aware of the fact that this is only possible when teaching in front of a small group of people.
To make an end to my endless and probably not that interesting story, I only want to say that I'm very thrilled to see what else this course has to offer and that I'll hopefully get used to speaking in front of the classroom in the near future.
Take care and I'll be back with more of my fascinating ramblings very soon!
Inès
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