English as a second language...

... I have to confess that I have been approached with English since I was 6 years old, in Primary School at Mexico City. The problem was that my mother is from Belgium, and her mother tongue is French, so in my family it was always more important to learn French and of course Spanish. On the other hand, I listened all the time to English from the US and to be honest, as a Mexican, I don’t have good feelings at all about our big brother; actually I used to hate English as a language. The truth is that now the feeling has totally changed and now day after day I’m trying to improve my English skills

Occasionally is hard, mostly when you are living in a country far from home and you have to speak that language to communicate with everybody. Sometimes, is like going back to your childhood when you are learning to speak and all the adults are just trying to correct how you speak. Because I have Spanish as a native language some words are more difficult to pronounce, for instance thought, through, throughout and throat and in addition I confuse the meanings. I know that everything is in the practice and as my teacher says “the best way to improve reading is reading, speaking is speaking and writing is writing...”

One of the things that I’m feeling and is not very nice is frustration!! Normally I’m a very extroverted person and I can speak to everyone about anything... actually I believe that in normal conditions, I’m a very sociable person. But the things are totally different in English, my personality changes and I feel shy when I have to speak with natives or with somebody who converses very well, sometimes I prefer not to talk or give my opinions and it’s so frustrating for me. Even in my first week at LCC, still that I know everybody is like me and maybe they have more difficulties than me because of their origin, I continue feeling that embarrassment. I’m sure that with time I can be better is just matter of patience.

My first impressions of London

When I got to London 5 months ago it was really cold because it was winter. The funny thing is that after a couple of weeks I saw that not only the city was colder than my country. The people were also cold, nobody cares about nothing in the streets and this was very weird for me. On the other hand I really liked that people respect all the rules. This order also felt different, so I had good and bad feelings about London when I arrived.

London is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. This made me think about the different cultures and about the flexibility that people need in order to live with each other. In this city you have to be very open to different types to thinking and this is very interesting because you learn something new every day from everyone.

After a month in London I realised that the city had good and bad things. I was very happy to be here, thanks to all the things that it has to offer, so much culture, so many different things like food, museums, and theatres. Although I missed my country I was really impressed with everything.

As I said I have been in London for five months in total and with time I have learnt to enjoy living here. London makes me think a lot about the world and about all the things I have to learn in life, I’m happy that part of that is studying my masters and sharing time with people different from me.

To finish I would like to say that I love my country, the weather and the people there and living in London makes me value more all the things at home. However I am enjoying my time in London very much and I know this time will make me a better person and better professional in the future. I know that at the end because of London I will have better opportunities in the following years and that I will have a better life.