My improvement in English

In my fifth day of internship, I met a new person named Catherine. Habitually, I’m in my internship on Wednesday morning, but my host said she didn’t need me anymore on that day. So I’m doing my hours on Saturday morning. When I first saw Catherine she talked to me in English and it was very easy for me to respond and to understand what she said. I was impressed of myself because she didn’t notice I wasn’t an English speaker. Well, I think my English is better than in my first day of internship. I use like strategies when someone speaks to me I need to think in the English and to not traduce in my head what the person said.

Since I’m young I try to pronounce correctly the ‘’TH’’ in some words in English but I have difficulties. We don’t have this type of pronunciation in French so it’s hard for me to say it correctly. For the fluency, my English is really better. I remember automatically to say the ‘’ED’’ at the end of a verb in the past. Moreover, I can have a conversation in English even if sometimes there is only one word I don’t know or I really can’t remember, so I try to find a synonym.  For example, we talked about the subway in Montreal. I said what is near of my house, but I couldn’t remember the word: near. I didn’t want to worry about it so I just asked what it means in English. I also noticed that I’m not good to give directions in English… I should practice it because it’s kind of important. In the store, someone came and asked the direction to go somewhere and I knew where it was, but it was really hard for me to tell the direction correctly.

For the cultural difference between English and French, since I’m in my internship I didn’t notice a lot of things. In my fifth day when I met Catherine she said that at college Dawson (an English college) they didn’t have a strike at their school and every other English school didn’t have it either. I didn’t have the time to ask her why, but it’s a big difference with the French schools.

Finally, I heard the expression from Catherine: kind of. She always says that when she speaks. It’s a kind of informal English. I didn’t learn new words on this day.