From Germany over Australia to the Netherlands...

In this reflective report I want to show you my point of view of my past, present and future concerning my knowledge for the language of English.

In order to get familiar with my language learning history I have to mention some points of my previous education, concerning my experiences. Back home in Hamburg, Germany, English lessons started in fifth grade. I always had serious trouble to keep up with my classmates learning English. Obviously, this led me to achieve low grades at secondary school, as well as in my previous school education. One reason for this might be that I raised up bilingual. I spoke turkish and german at home as well as with my friends outside. 

However, knowing that my English is not as good as I wanted it to be, I decided to go abroad for one year, to be precise I chose Australia, to practice my language. What I experienced over there was interesting. I remember my first day in Australia very well, I went in to a shop and could not understand anyone at all. I could not pick up that they spoke English to me, which was very frustrating for me. Nevertheless, after being in Australia for eight months, most people told me my English would be great and I would be able to speak like people who had lived in Australia for at least two to three years. After having been in Australia for a whole year, I decided to keep up with my English and even try to study in English.

Thus, I ended up in Groningen, the Netherlands. Before I came to class I thought my English was very good, but after hearing my classmates talk English I was surprised and realized quickly my English had to be improved way more. In fact, I have to start learning appropriate English. However, I reckon I can speak very well and understandably for everyone, although I keep my language simple. So, the area I have to improve firstly is my vocabulary concerning the technical terms, especially in terms of business English. And secondly, I need to pay slightly more attention to my grammar as well. Enhancing my technical terms and grammar I hope I will be able to write good statements and/or texts without using any help from dictionaries. Thus, I need more time to write a text compared to my other classmates in the next three years, due to the fact that I need to look up many words and learn in which content I have to use them.

Another point I want to mention at this stage is some advice for next year’s first-year’s students. At first sight when I saw on my schedule that I have English lessons, it sounded ridiculous to me and I thought my English is already good enough, due to my year abroad. Nevertheless, English is a very important subject, which shows you how to write appropriate academic texts or journals. The course provides you with a lot of know-how about the language itself. The most important advice is, keep up with learning all the vocabularies given by the tutors. This does not just save you a lot of time before the exam, all those vocabularies make it way simpler for you to read and understand academic journals, for instance the Harvard Business Review, which every first year student has to deal with in the first semester.

I am curious where I will end up after my studies. Do you have any ideas already?