BLOG - 5 - My Study Programme

Hello class again, this our fifth entry. This time you will have to write about your experiences studying at the university.  You should include photographs or videos or some music in your post. Here are the instructions: 280 words (pay attention to misspellings, grammar errors and vocabulary). You will also need to write three (3) comments on your classmate’s posts and one (1) on mine (25 words as a minimum). Try to use all the English that you know and what we have learnt in class. DO NOT USE GOOGLE TRANSLATOR TO DO YOUR ENTRY. You will have 48 hours to do it.

 

My learning experience at college.

 

Among the many subjects I had to study when in College, there were two that I really enjoyed. First was English language history, the other was English phonetics. 

As for the later, I liked when we learnt the different sounds English has. We studied the different sounds for consonants, vowels, diphthongs and exceptions. We had to learn the RP chart and its variations across the English speaking world.

As for the history of the language, I was really motivated as the professor chose me as his 'class assistant' that was a real honour and a privilege as I was in charge of carrying the World map into the class, which I did proudly.

We had to read several interesting books from the top writers on the topic. Likewise, we had to interview people from different parts of the globe and see how do they get on with accents and perceptions around English.  

I interviewed a Singaporean. He explained that they lots of British influences but they have developed a peculiar accent, vocabulary and way to refer to things, mostly influenced by their Chinese mandarin, Malay and Indian Tamil. He commented it was hard for him understand to Americans and Canadians.

Finally, we had some exchange students on our last semester. I had the chance to work with two people. A French girl: Anastasia and a Cameroonian boy: Sekili Naseka. They used English as a second language so, there were many things I learnt from them. For example, the timing for speaking. French people are very Latin-like therefore, the interrupt each other constantly and gesticulate profusely when interacting. As for Cameroonians, they tend to signalise with their voice tone when is your time for speaking and they do not use their hands when speaking.